Alma had backtracked.
Instead of heading straight for the nearest town, he made his way to Torrington first, carefully scouting out the area from afar.
Lyman was closest to Henry, but that was exactly why Alma avoided it. Going there first would be too obvious. If Cordell had agents stationed nearby, if any at all, they'd concentrate their forces around Lyman, expecting Alma to move in a linear pattern—nearest first, then further towns like Torrington or Scottsbluff after.
Of course, the opposite strategy might have been just as predictable: going to the farthest city, Scottsbluff, first, then looping back toward the others. Alma knew that kind of logic would be easy to anticipate.
So instead, he chose Torrington—not the closest, not the farthest—just wrong enough to seem stupid. And in that calculated stupidity, he found safety.
From a distance, his Evil Eyes picked up another black dome encasing the small town, just as he suspected. Shapes moved around the outskirts—armed individuals, subtly patrolling.
There was no surprise in what he saw. In fact, the confirmation only heightened his suspicions regarding Cordell.
The agents were equipped in full tactical black, military-grade gear from head to toe. What surprised him more than their presence was how clearly he could see them. Alma's normal eyesight—enhanced only slightly beyond perfect vision—was limited. But his soul perception was another matter entirely.
Through Evil Eyes, he could see not only the physical forms of the agents, but their very souls. And something about them was wrong.
He couldn't explain it—not yet—but these people were different. Not like Graviel, Kojo, The General, or even the others from his Earth. These souls felt altered, skewed in some way he couldn't quite define.
Still, the real challenge lay ahead: destroying the black dome by eliminating the Beast of Ruin lurking at its core. That would be relatively easy. However, Alma doubted Spear could pierce such a vast distance between him and his target—at least not yet.
More concerning was a sudden weakness. It wasn't just fatigue. It was something deeper. A feeling he couldn't quite place.
He thought back—to the bridge, to that moment where he'd used a power that shook even him. Before that incident, Evil Eyes granted him near-supernatural physicality—speed, strength, reflexes. He had felt unstoppable. The ultimate version of himself.
Now? He felt less. Not weak, but not his strongest. As though that pinnacle state had somehow been surpassed.
But then, memory returned—of a strange sensation in his eyes. A massive, almost overwhelming surge in physical capability that had gone unnoticed.
Why hadn't he registered it? Because in that moment, he had all the despair in the world, and in the next, he'd lost all of it. The huge gain and then sudden loss of despair made it impossible to feel the surge that replaced it, despite how overwhelming it really was.
Now, however, he remembered. And now, he understood.
Evil Eyes was no longer his peak.
The triple sixes once etched into his irises began to spin, accelerating until they blurred into motion. They collapsed inward into a single, blazing red circle in each eye. Alma's body surged with strength—greater than before. He was faster. Sharper. His perception—both physical and spiritual—multiplied a hundredfold. This wasn't just an upgrade.
This was the Eyes of Despair. A crude name. But fitting.
And there was more. Something that had always eluded him—until now.
The true effect of Shield and Spear. He could feel them, on an intimate level. Before, he could never feel the depth of their power. He assumed he had used them at full strength. But now, he realized that he was only using them at half power. Now, he knew. With Eyes of Despair active, both Shield and Spear were at their absolute maximum.
Yet something felt off.
Even with the sheer doubt Alma had in Spear, it still retained its strength, never wavering in its power. What caused the decline of Spear and Shield was doubt. Doubting his abilities is what led to them being weak, or easily avoidable or less durable. But now, despite his current doubt, they remained at full power. That wasn't how they used to work. Their durability was absolute now—stable in a way that defied what Alma remembered.
Ahead, the agents continued to patrol the outskirts of Torrington. Watching their movement patterns, Alma noticed several gaps in their formation—openings he could exploit.
When one of the agents drifted just far enough away, Alma made his move.
He sprinted—faster than ever before. He didn't know just how fast he could run, so he limited himself to using only a fraction of his full power. However, even limiting himself to such little power, he still moved incredibly fast. So fast that he even crossed the open plains, the bridge spanning the river, and entered the black dome in less than thirty seconds.
Inside, the atmosphere changed.
The air was heavy with decay, thick with rot. The stench was nauseating, making Alma's stomach twist. The streets were lined with corpses—people, animals, all dead. Dogs, cats, rats… nothing with a heartbeat had been spared.
The buildings were no better. Rotting wood, rusting rebar, mildew clinging to crumbling walls. Shattered windows, collapsed porches. The entire town was in ruin. The mayor was likely dead. Everyone who had once lived here—gone. Everything without a pulse served as a memory of what was.
"I know what happened to you," Alma muttered softly.
Nearby, a metal trash can clattered as something unseen darted into the shadows.
"Unfinished business... that's the cause," he said again, louder this time. "But the kind of person you were—that's the deciding factor in which you become."
The ground beneath him trembled faintly.
"Regret. Desire. Decay... that's failure," he continued. "Craving destruction—reaching for something you couldn't achieve in life—and still failing in death."
The trembling grew into a rumble. The earth cracked open—and from it, a hulking, grotesque form erupted.
A massive, oily black creature emerged, resembling a furless, swollen molerat. Limbless, it would have to slither around instead of walk. Its red eyes glowed like blood moons. Four enormous teeth—two above, two below—jutted from its jaw.
Black smoke poured from its flesh, decaying everything it touched.
But Alma had tracked its presence through the soil long before it surfaced. He wasn't surprised.
"Shield," he said calmly.
Rocks from the First Circle fuzed, forming a dome around him, impenetrable and absolute. The creature struck, but the dome held. Even the foul black smoke of decay couldn't seep through.
Frustrated, the Beast of Ruin burrowed back underground.
Shield faded, and Alma stood exposed—but not defenseless. He hesitated. He hadn't realized it until now, but both Beasts of Ruin he had previously killed—one during the plane crash, and the one in Henry—had fallen to Spear.
But Spear was designed to erase souls. Completely. There was no exceptions.
Yet now, with his new eyes, he realized something terrifying: those past uses of Spear were at half power. And despite that, he had assumed their souls were erased. He had moved on without question.
That ignorance disgusted him.
Now, Spear was fully awakened, more so realized. Its potential... absolute. If he used it now, he would erase everyone of the trapped souls in the creature. But a part of him hesitated.
The First Circle frightened him. The price to pay for using these eyes was the fear of using that ability again. Alma didn't fear it for its power—but the experience. Wandering its endless tunnels left a deep discomfort, a fear he couldn't admit to himself. Somehow, Alma knew: Shield and Spear ended with the First Circle. There was no higher evolution.
With that understanding, of Shield and Spear being at full power, and with the ever growing fear of the First Circle, Alma switched back to Evil Eyes. Just in time.
The Beast burst from underground, jaws open wide.
Alma raised his hand.
"Spear."
The half invisible, rocky spearhead launched from utop his fingers and entered the creature's gaping mouth. It tore through the Beast's entire spiritual body, puncturing its heart, tearing through its intestines, and finally piercing its bladdar. Cutting clean through. A burst of agonized shrieks echoed across the town.
Then Alma saw them.
Thousands of souls. Finally free, rising and fading into peace.
He blinked. Why hadn't he seen this before? Had he never paid enough attention?
As the Beast of Ruin perished, the black dome evaporated. Alma didn't wait, and reluctantly activated Eyes of Despair, for Evil Eyes wouldn't get him out of there as fast as he wanted to. And once more, he darted away, escaping the town, and slipping through the same weak points in the patrol formation he'd entered through.
He broke through the boundary and accelerated—hard.
A shockwave boomed behind him as he hit near-max velocity, unintentionally overshooting his destination. In mere seconds, he passed through Lingle, and nearly reached Fort Laramie—5 miles away—in five seconds flat.
He tried to stop. That was a bad idea.
Momentum hurled him forward like a missile. He skidded across the ground, tumbling violently, until he finally smashed into a massive boulder—shattering it into timy pieces.
"Ugh… that hurt," Alma groaned, climbing to his feet and rubbing his head.
"I even dropped to two-fifths speed…" he muttered. "And I still went too fast."
He looked around, spotting a mileage sign in the distance.
"Fort Laramie…" he said under his breath. "Aw crap, I'm too far. I have to go back."
With that, he ran again—this time prepared for the velocity.
In less than three seconds, Alma reached just outside Scottsbluff. And this, too, at only two-fifths of his total speed.
Fourty-eight miles in three seconds.
No man was ever meant to move like this.
But Alma had done just that.
Alma arrived just before reaching Scottsbluff, carefully scouting out the area from a distance. As with Torrington, a black dome encased the city, but this one was far larger—truly massive in scale. Its size left Alma stunned; he hadn't expected the dome to stretch so completely around the city's limits, consuming it in an unnatural darkness. Yet, what struck him even more than the dome's enormity was the eerie absence of guards. Unlike Torrington, which had been heavily protected, there were no sentries patrolling the perimeter, no soldiers, no watchful eyes. The silence was unsettling. A chill swept over Alma as tension settled deep in his chest. The most pressing thought running through his mind was a simple yet gnawing question: why?
Why wasn't this place guarded like Torrington had been? Why did it feel… empty?
Alma was certain this wasn't some illusion. Each time he deactivated Evil Eyes, the black dome disappeared—proof that it existed, that it was real, and not just some trick of the mind or enemy sorcery. Yet, despite all signs pointing to this being a genuine threat, there were no traps, no ambushes. And that's exactly what made him tense. It didn't add up.
Doubt crept into his thoughts like a whisper in a quiet room. He wondered whether saving Torrington had somehow compromised him. Would freeing that city come back to haunt him? His mind, rooted in logic, argued firmly: no—it hadn't, and he had done what was necessary. It told him to move on, to press forward to the next objective. But his heart, stubborn and hopeful, whispered a different truth: those people had been prisoners, and they had needed saving.
Letting out a deep breath, Alma finally made his decision. With a flash of determination, he rushed into the black dome, arriving at the exact center of Scottsbluff in the blink of an eye. He scanned his surroundings, searching for any signs of movement, resistance, or life—but found nothing. The streets were empty. The silence was suffocating.
He took a cautious step forward.
And then, without warning, the ground quaked violently. The road beneath him split open as a deafening screech tore through the air. From the fissure burst a massive, oily black moth, its grotesque body erupting into the sky. The screech echoed like twisted metal, its pitch unnatural and unbearable.
Alma leapt back instinctively, his expression a mix of surprise and horror. The creature's head was grotesquely malformed—flat and narrow, tapering upward like a jagged steel beam twisted by force. One eye sat disturbingly on the top of its head, while the other was unnervingly located beneath its jaw. Its swollen, grotesque abdomen pulsed with movement, and its wings leaked a thick, tar-like oil.
As droplets of this black substance splattered onto the ground, they sizzled and writhed. From them rose humanoid figures—twisted, malformed, and varying wildly in size, from child-like small to towering and lanky. Regardless of height, all the creatures shared a haunting similarity: they were skeletal, malnourished in appearance, with no facial features or distinguishing anatomy. They were shadows brought to life, manifestations of living darkness.
Alma's brow furrowed. His left eye squinted in suspicion, while his right widened in realization. These creatures… had souls. That alone stunned him. His thoughts flickered briefly to the Hatman—an entity that had haunted the fringes of his memory and dreams. Though he had long since pushed thoughts of the Hatman aside, the presence of these soul-bearing constructs stirred that buried fear. Still, he reassured himself: wherever that entity was now, as long as it remained distant—both from the waking world and from his subconscious—it posed no immediate threat.
The creatures moved suddenly, their grotesque forms lunging forward with unnatural speed. Some crawled on all fours, twisted limbs bending like broken branches, while others staggered and flailed their arms like uncoiled springs. Their movements were sickening to watch—erratic, jerky, and void of purpose beyond destruction.
Acting swiftly, Alma ripped a blue metal mailbox from the sidewalk and hurled it with precise force at one of the creatures. The impact knocked it off its feet, but the mailbox was quickly consumed by corrosive black liquid. It dissolved in seconds.
Alma wanted to fight—truly test the skills he had honed under Jiang's brutal training—but he knew this wasn't the time. The risk of contact was too high.
He darted into motion, running directly at the swarm. With a fluid series of evasive maneuvers, he avoided their grasp, making himself a phantom among them. Each step misled them, each feint caused them to miscalculate. With precise movement, Alma herded them, manipulating their attacks until they had all lined up—one straight row of impending targets.
He raised his hand.
"Spear," he whispered.
A sharp projectile burst forth, instantly skewering every last one of the oily creatures. Their bodies disintegrated, leaving behind nothing but the hovering moth.
For a moment, Alma expected a second wave—but none came. It appeared there was a brief cooldown, a period during which the moth could not secrete more of its black liquid. Had it not been for that, Alma might have been overwhelmed. He knew that much.
The moth circled above him, staying high in the air, far out of easy reach. It was smart enough to recognize danger, but not quite clever enough to account for Alma's speed.
Without hesitation, Alma sprinted up the side of a nearby building and launched himself high into the sky. He could have easily ended this from the ground—the creature's strategy was rudimentary, even foolish—but he chose not to. He wanted to end it up close. Perhaps for dramatic effect. Perhaps out of habit.
He aimed his hand toward the creature and released his thumb. "Spear," he muttered.
The weapon struck true, piercing through the creature's core and ending it in a brilliant explosion of black ichor.
Alma landed gracefully. With a brief pause to reflect, he realized how underwhelming these enemies truly were. These Beasts of Ruin were strong, certainly stronger than any average foe, but he had dispatched them with ease. They weren't the strongest—not by far, he hoped—but they were formidable. Likely, it would take a Monarch to deal with just one of them, which made the situation all the more puzzling.
The world treated Monarchs and Beasts of Ruin like titanic forces of nature—natrual disasters—beings of immense, mythic power. But if this was what they truly offered, then that fear was misplaced. Perhaps his thinking was crude, even arrogant—but he couldn't help how he felt. In fact, he believed the military could have handled that creature, given proper coordination. Then again, Alma wasn't just any civilian.
Whatever the case, Scottsbluff had now been liberated. Only one city remained: Lyman.
After briefly scanning the city, Alma found that people were beginning to come back to life, escaping their state of timeless imprisonment; however, some had died, having been drained of their energy completely—perhaps even their soul.
But Alma could not stay for long—to greet the mayor of the town, nor to tell any resident what had happened—as there was another Beast of Ruin that needed to be dealt with.
Alma activated Eyes of Despair once more, and with a thunderous shockwave at his back, he launched himself out of the city, racing toward Lyman. Within ten seconds, he had arrived.
But there was no black dome. No guards. Nothing. It could have been dismissed as Alma simply arriving faster than the enemy expected—but this was different. Lyman was closer to Henry's location than Scottsbluff had been. The absence of any resistance here told Alma that this was undoubtedly a trap. Besides the obvious, Cordell had likely stationed these guards long before Alma ever set foot on this Earth. This was, without question, a trap. But Alma didn't care. As long as the lives at stake were real—and not just bait to trigger the snare—he would act, no matter the cost. And he would bear that cost alone.
But another question began to echo within Alma's thoughts, persistent and quiet, yet impossible to ignore: why? If this was a trap—and all signs pointed toward it—then why hadn't Cordell acted? Why was everything so still? The silence wasn't comforting. It stretched on far longer than it should have, far longer than Alma expected from someone capable of orchestrating something like this. And that in itself was the problem—he didn't know what to expect. He had only met Cordell once, briefly, and even then, the man had kept his intentions buried beneath layers of calm and control. But there had been something off. Something too composed, too measured. Alma couldn't name it, but he remembered the feeling—a quiet wrongness, like standing in a room that looked normal until you noticed all the clocks ticked backward.
And now, standing here with no present guards, Alma found himself spiraling through possibilities. Was he overthinking this entire situation? Was he letting paranoia take root and grow wild, feeding on silence? Or worse—was Cordell not the threat Alma had suspected, and he had spent all this time preparing for a storm that would never come? That felt wrong too. The doubt Cordell had planted in him, even in that brief encounter, didn't feel accidental. It felt deliberate. Designed. Like a seed that had been waiting for the right moment to bloom.
So then what was this? What was the delay? Why, if this truly was a trap, had it not yet been sprung?
What was Cordell waiting for?
And more importantly—what was Alma failing to see?
A gut-wrenching feeling consumed him. His legs weakened. A hollow pit opened in his stomach, wide and endless. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. His instincts screamed it.
Before Alma could reflect further, the ground beneath him shook violently. At the center of the city, the road exploded open, and from it emerged a colossal Beast of Ruin—twice the size of the one that had previously destroyed the airplane he was on.
Alma saw it. It was a nightmarish construct, a creature of raw malice and absolute fear. Its head resembled a hammerhead shark, but eyeless. Its right arm was a massive cannon barrel, and its left was a jagged, cursed blade, wreathed in an oily black mist. Its torso was skeletal and starved-looking, and its lower body twisted like a wet cloth wrung by invisible hands.
Alma stared, his face tightening in horror. He almost recoiled from the sheer grotesqueness. This was the largest concentration of souls he had ever seen inside a Beast of Ruin. The hatred. The fear. The presence alone would have subdued the mightiest people.
The monster bellowed, its roar splitting the air like thunder. The shockwave traveled across vast distances, shaking mountains, far in the distance, splitting clouds, and shattering the ground around it—including beneath Alma's feet. He barely managed to stay standing due to the quakes.
Suddenly, Alma heard an approaching roar overhead. Two jets screamed through the sky, launching missiles at the creature. To his astonishment, the rockets passed harmlessly through it. Then Alma remembered what the mayor had told him. The military couldn't even see Beasts of Ruin. So that begged the question: were the pilots using some sort of spectral camera? And: was there even anyone inside?
The Beast of Ruin roared again, rattling the jets and threatening to bring them down. Then, it twisted its body and pressed its left hand to its chest. It began charging.
Alma's eyes widened. He immediately bolted away, instinctively running at only half his full speed—still fast enough to escape. The beast unleashed a sweeping attack, and the resulting wind rivaled the fury of an E5 tornado. The force of the attack ripped through the land, scarring it with canyon-like grooves, obliterating the ground for twenty miles.
Alma had narrowly escaped. He stared in awe at the destruction.
More jets attacked, but it was futile. Alma realized only he had the power to end this. Only he had the ability to actually harm the Beast of Ruin. Without hesitation, he dashed back toward the creature. The pilots, if there were any, could only see a blur on the ground—but the Beast of Ruin saw him clearly.
It raised its left arm and pointed it at Alma. A blue glow radiated from the barrel before several orbs shot out—four flew up and then behind it toward the jets, and several at Alma.
He destroyed the ones targeting him with a few shots of Spear, but the stray orbs missed the jets and sailed into distant mountains. They detonated seconds later upon contact, obliterating entire peaks, as a light so bright it darkened the sky appeared.
Alma's urgency grew. He activated Eyes of Despair again, summoning every ounce of strength he had, and leapt high into the sky—so high, in fact, he overshot the Beast of Ruin entirely.
"HEEEEELLLPPP!!!" he screamed mid-air.
As he began his descent, he steadied his arm. He activated Eyes of Despair, and raised his arm. "Spear," he said, then released the weapon.
The creature attempted to defend itself, to intercept with a counter-orb, but Spear shredded through its attack. It tried to escape, it's body trembling with desperation, but it was too late. Spear struck the crown of its head and tore through its entire form.
The Beast of Ruin let out one final, pained roar before dying.
Alma smiled to himself, unaware at first that he was now plummeting from the upper atmosphere. A strange peace washed over him, knowing he had freed those lost, tortured souls. It was the only joy he had felt in a long time.
Then—it hit him.
He was falling. Fast.
"AHHHHH!!!" Alma screamed. Then, mid-yell: "AHHH—Oh, wait. Can't I just use Shield to break my fall? Whoopsie~"
With calm precision, he activated Shield as he neared the ground, absorbing the force of his landing. He stood unharmed.
Without pause, he activated Eyes of Despair again and ran—once more at half speed. The pilots had undoubtedly seen him. Perhaps only a blur, but the risk was already too great. Still, what choice had he had? Let the Beast of Ruin go on a rampage? Sure, the President or another Monarch might have shown up eventually, but who knows how long that would've taken—or how many lives would have been lost in the meantime?
The pilots. The innocent civilians. Even a Monarch. Or the President.
Alma couldn't say for certain that even he would have survived a direct hit from those blue orbs, shutting down the underwhelming Monarchs and Beast of Ruin belief he once held.
But what he did know, without question, was this: the cities that had once been seized by the Beasts of Ruin were now free.
And to Alma, that was all that truly mattered.
Property damage could be replaced.
Lives could not.