Purgatory.

The Grey Family mansion:

Alex had returned. Today had been a truly exhilarating day for him. Training with Lucius had been pretty draining, but a change of scenery and trying something new was pretty refreshing.

Clara and her 3 daughters had come to receive him, and only Jane was missing. Alex left without saying much, he just wanted to rest. His fatigue was almost full.

Today, Alex decided not to visit the system space. He had been training all month nonstop with little sleep, so his fatigue bar had never been completely depleted this past month. It would be better to relax every once in a while. He would worry about his hectic schedule from tomorrow.

He jumped onto his bed and fell asleep.

As soon as he fell asleep, he found himself inside a burning field. Raging flames were all around him, changing colors continuously. From red to blue, blue to white, and then back to red. He was standing in these flames, distinctly able to feel the burning sensation due to the flames. His body was slowly charring, but he couldn't move.

'Have I world hopped again?'

A looked at his feet, which had already been burned beyond recognition. His arms were going through the same predicament. While looking at his feet, he heard a very loud sound of an explosion.

Alex moved his sight towards the source of the sound. A figure appeared in front of him, and Alex recognized this face in an instant.

It was Mark. He approached Alex with a smile on his face.

Alex tried putting in all of his strength to move. This was one hell of a nightmare.

"You won't be able to trust anyone without remembering me."

He was looking in his eyes, and that smile was making Alex truly realize what the real meaning of helplessness is, once again.

He closed his eyes. It was better to concentrate on the pain than the illusion in front of him.

"Or me."

The voice of the illusion changed. Alex opened his eyes, and in front of him was the only person he ever trusted. His mentor, John.

Alex was staring at the illusion in front of him, feeling extremely depressed. He never wanted to see this person again, and he still felt a bit melancholic. John was the only person in that world who gave him a chance. He couldn't come to completely hate the man in front of him, but he was really disappointed in him.

John came even closer and stretched his burning arm out to grab Alex by his neck. Alex kept staring at him, without flinching.

The hold started to get tighter.

And tighter.

And tighter.

And then after it couldn't get any tighter, his neck cracked.

Before dying, the last words that he heard, were played in his mind in repeat.

"He is just doing what he has to do."

Alex woke up in his system space. He was panting hard. That was a dream that he would have never wanted to see in his life.

After getting ahold of himself, he stood upon the ground. For him, that was true purgatory.

After standing in silence for a moment, he screamed with all his might.

"F*CK!!!"

His voice echoed. He couldn't shake off that feeling of helplessness.

After getting that out, he continued with his training. There was no way he was going to sleep anytime soon after a dream like that. It would be better to dump all of his frustration in his training.

-----------------------------------

The next day, Alex was the first on the training ground. Meditation had helped a lot, but the impact hadn't vanished. The two demons of his past had made a home in his consciousness, and that could only cause more problems.

"You are here early today. What happened?"

It was 3 am. Even the crows were not up at this time. Steven was unable to sleep, so he decided to take a stroll outside, but he wasn't expecting Alex to be training at this time.

"Nothing. Just had a nightmare, so I wasn't able to sleep."

Alex responded. He was still afraid of venting everything on Steven, so he decided to be as polite as possible.

"Same! So what was your nightmare about?"

Steven would jump on any chance that he got to initiate a conversation with anybody, except when people wanted to talk about work.

"Can't say. Sorry."

Alex denied his excitement as swiftly as possible.

"No problem. I'll tell you about mine though."

Steven proceeded to narrate the entire biography of his nightmare to Alex while he was training his martial art moves on a dummy. In the end, it became so branched and confusing that he wasn't able to understand it, so he gave up on listening to him and focused completely on his training.

"So how was it? Scary, right?"

Alex smiled and nodded. He appreciated and respected Steven for being patient with him as a teacher, so he didn't say anything that would make him dejected.

"Well, it was nice talking to you. I need to go and sleep now, make sure to not overwork yourself."

After yawning for a bit, he left. Alex, who had been holding himself back this entire time, attacked the dummy with everything he had. The entire time Steven had been speaking, he could only see the faces of the antagonists of yesterday's nightmare in his eyes. He had to suppress his killing intent so that he wouldn't attack Steven, but his mental state was making him hallucinate so much that he could see John in place of Steven and Mark in place of the Dummy.

After rampaging for about 20 minutes, the dummy was torn to pieces. Alex was exhausted, but he was afraid to sleep.

Lucius had been watching Alex. He had arrived after Steven had left, and he saw pure hatred in his actions.

"Looks like he still hasn't calmed down completely. Is that technique not enough?"

Lucius frowned. What sort of mental demons did this child have, that even his own meditation technique was not enough to suppress them?

"I'll have to contact him then. This can't be allowed to continue."

Lucius decided to ask help from one of his other friends from the Smirnov family.