"His ring..."

Cyan straightened his posture, while pointing to the glowing silver ring on Leon’s ring finger.

Along with the silver and blue luminous light the ring was also emitting the densest form of pure mana.

"I am sensing Ice Mana." At this point Will got closer to Leon’s body as well.

The entire room chilled with coldness. A shiver ran down on everyone’s body.

Irene also didn’t know what this is, after thinking for a second, she deduced.

"Rumi." The spirit’s name slipped past her mouth.

"What? Rumi?" Cyan looked at her.

Irene didn’t explain to her, but instead she ordered Cyan.

"T-the Elf mana Core! You guys said you took an elf’s mana core while travelling here. Where is it? Bring it to me!"

Irene tuned all the ER machines examining Leon’s brain waves.

Cyan ran past the bed to the locker, where Leon’s belongings were kept. From there he scrammed through his clothes and took out his dimension pouch.

The Elven Mana core that they stole from the A.R Magitech’s ship was kept here. Leon had told him that.

"Ah found it." He brought it to Irene. "Here."

As soon as Irene took out from the box, the core released an absurd amount of mana. It was so intense that Irene didn’t need to bring it closer to Leon’s ring.

The Ring started to devour the mana all at once.

The more it devours the colder the atmosphere becomes.

"What is happening?" Will asked.

Irene didn’t replied, she looked so focused while monitoring Leon’s brainwaves.

’Come on....’ Irene thought in mind. ’Give me a fluctuation. Just one.’

She was reading a change in Leon’s brainwaves. Any abnormality would indicate that Rumi was awake.

As a humanoid spirit, Rumi had a capability to change form. She usually ties herself with Leon’s consciousness. But after Leon went into a coma she vanished.

All the ER devices are just for her. To see if Rumi shows any sign of awakening.

Two hours had passed. Irene was still focused on the monitor.

She was freezing cold. Same for Cyan and Will.

They had already shifted the other patients to another room and quarantined this room specifically for Leon.

"I am turning on the Quantum Neural Scanner." Dr Anise said to Irene.

Irene nodded without looking away from the screen.

After Anise found out what was happening she had rushed here as well. She needed to monitor Leon’s brainwaves at the quantum level to detect any spiritual activity.

Six hours had passed since then.

They had also tightened the security around their hideout. Will took control of monitoring the surrounding areas. Cyan had moved to channel his heat mana to the others so they would not freeze to death from the cold radiating from Leon’s ring.

Irene and Anise worked on Leon’s condition together. They were all coordinating to at least wake their last hope.

Half a day had passed and the core had only absorbed seventy percent of its stored mana.

None of them felt tired.

Four more hours had passed and the core in Irene’s hand shattered with a loud crack.

The glow in it stopped and the only glowing source left in the room was Leon’s ring.

It pulsed like a heartbeat. With each pulse the veins in Leon’s hand and around his head glowed with a slight bluish light.

The room’s temperature normalized after a beat and the glowing suddenly stopped too.

Silence followed.

"...?"

Everyone’s hearts stopped. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"What... what happened? Did we fail?" Cyan raised his concern.

"But the core is completely drained." He looked at Anise. "Doctor...?"

Anise bit her lips. "I do not know. Spirits such as her work beyond conceptual understanding. It had to work, but..."

Her voice stopped as a cold icy aura burst from the ring.

"Keuk...!!"

Irene grabbed Anise and they all three crashed hard against the walls.

Smog filled the entire room. Everyone adjusted their eyes toward the centre as a figure took shape.

She looked as if she was naked at first. Then out of nowhere a fabric like structure wrapped around her body. Her silver frosty eyes glowed like a pretty jewel. She looked around until her eyes settled on Leon’s body.

Will with a wave of his wind mana cleared the smog.

"Rumi!" Irene called her and tried to rush toward her.

There she was standing with her usual black long frosty hair. Her old unreadable expression.

"Rumi... are you alright?"

Rumi looked at Irene and the others. She fully turned to them and bowed deeply.

"Thank you for taking care of him."

She beamed a slight smile towards Irene.

"I was hearing everything you were saying to him."

Irene flushed heavily. Heat rushed to her cheeks but she did not react much.

"What happened to Leon?" Anise asked.

Rumi replied.

"It was a recoil of his unique skill, which let him fall into a coma after one usage of it."

"Wait really?" Cyan said. "That’s a messed up drawback."

"Seriously." Will added.

"Was it the same skill he used to freeze Dreamweaver?" Irene asked.

Rumi nodded.

"It is. Though because of the rank and scale difference between them, he was put in this condition for this long."

Cyan added a question which he had wanted to ask for so long.

"So this skill of his which he used, what does it exactly do? Does it freeze the opponent for a lifetime or a specific duration?"

Hearing this, everyone’s face turned pale. Even Anise.

She had been studying Dreamweaver’s frozen body for the last seven years and found out that every atom in his body had stopped moving. Even light could not refract over his skin. It was as if he had become non living. But he was not dead. That much she was certain of. If what Cyan asked turned out to be true, then Dreamweaver could wake up anytime soon.

Rumi eased their worry.

"You all are mistaken. The skill he had used was never so trivial as to just freeze anything. It was beyond that. It was something else completely."

"What do you mean?" Irene asked.

Rumi looked at Leon’s face.

He looked calm. Very calm even. As if a child sleeping carefree.

"With this skill, he can technically do anything in this world. Static manipulation, life reanimation, reality restoration, reality deletion, matter reconstruction, causality reversal, dimensional anchoring, existence negation, conceptual binding, temporal stasis, spatial reformation, universal constants override.... Name it."

Everyone gulped at the same time.

The things which Rumi had been saying at first sounded like a joke. But they had seen Dreamweaver in that state after Leon used his unique skill. Irene had witnessed the whole world stop after Leon gave a single command.

A reality tampering skill such as this would make him a literal...

"God." Anise muttered. "How... how can this be sensibly possible?"

Rumi turned to look at Anise.

"Because the skill does not operate on mana principles, nor does it operate on any other form of energy found in five realities. It operates on something far more fundamental... When he used the skill upon Dreamweaver. It basically commands the world itself to stop acknowledging his movement. The world followed his command."

Cyan’s hand tightened around Vivy’s sword.

"Then why didn’t he just kill him? If he has that much power, why would using it knock him to just freeze here?"

Rumi’s expression softened with sadness.

"Because the world does not give power for free. Every command he gives to reality comes with a cost. The greater the change, the greater the price. One time when he used the very skill to Freeze a Primordial Demon for just a few minutes, it cost him two weeks of his life. But upon using it on a literal Calamity..."

She looked back at Leon.

"Cost him more than decades."

Silence fell over the room.

Anise sat down on the chair and stared at Leon with newfound understanding.

"A skill that rewrites reality itself." She muttered. "No wonder he said he could fix everything."

Irene’s hand trembled as she held Leon’s.

"Then... will he wake up soon? He will, right?"

Rumi smiled gently at her.

"Yes. He will wake up very soon."

Irene’s eyes filled with tears. She quickly wiped them away.

"How soon?"

"If my calculations were correct, then using this skill to set the whole world to static for a minute along with freezing a Dream Calamity for more than a decade... he should have been in a coma for more than fifty years. But because his consciousness is bound to a true spirit such as I who just consumed a rich elven core, I was able to reduce his penalty. It was not easy for me either. The skill is very powerful and it cost me half a decade of my life too. But at last, I was able to succeed."

Anise wanted to ask how she did it, but restrained herself for now.

Instead she asked something more urgent.

"So Dreamweaver will wake up soon, am I right?"

Rumi nodded.

Anise understood now. Why Rumi had to come out now and why she had shortened Leon’s penalty. The original penalty must have been something like Leon waking up after Dreamweaver.

That would have been a disaster.

Anise sighed and rubbed her forehead.

"Why are you doing this..." She muttered while looking down.

Even he had used his daughter’s life to reach what he wanted. Just how heartless and power hungry could he get.

"..."

Rumi looked at everyone’s faces.

They were worried sick just moments ago. But now that she had said that Leon would wake up, all the worries had gone.

They had trusted his words and protected his body. Even a few had sacrificed their lives for it.

She lightly felt pride.

With that, she did not waste time and said.

"I have your last task from Leon for you all. He had devised a strategy which would avoid everything and fix what had already been done. For this to work, he needs your help."

Everyone straightened their posture at once.

Cyan was the first who stepped forward.

"What does he need us to do? Just tell and consider it done."