Kamen Rider Zi-O, Dimensional Descent

"Huh...?"

They were initially confused, but what happened next cleared up their doubts.

Under everyone's watchful eyes, Teed's lifeless body suddenly began to... dissolve.

His entire body turned into a pool of nauseating liquid, slowly dissipating on the ground, eventually leaving only a large, human-shaped trace in the same spot.

"This...could it not be the original body...?"

“That’s right. The Tede who has been talking to us until now is just an avatar. That’s why he can stand in front of us so brazenly.”

Yan Ming had already guessed this, so he wasn't surprised at all.

but…

As Yan Ming glanced to the other side, a faint white light slowly flickered in the room.

Om-!

The girl named Yuzuki Hana, who had been lying to the side, disappeared from the spot after her body emitted a white light.

"Ah! She's disappeared—! What happened to that girl this time?!"

"It's her magical girl ability that's taking effect. She can use her own power to transfer to random parallel worlds within this worldview. Didn't Teed mention that earlier?"

As he spoke, Yan Ming also looked in Ryotaro's direction.

“Mr. Nogami, in a way, she and you are almost identical.”

The world's...singularity.

Ryotaro was slightly surprised, because... until now he had only ever seen singularities at specific times, but he had never heard of singularities in the world...

"Now we can finally understand why Teed chose this child to keep by his side."

"But... what exactly is that guy's goal? I still don't understand what he's trying to do..."

"That's no longer a big problem."

For Yan Ming, everything was settled.

"That guy knows most of what will happen in the future, and the fact that he still chose to tell us this most important information means that he no longer needs to hide it from us."

Even a fool could understand what Yan Ming meant.

So Yan Ming didn't keep them in suspense and spoke directly, as if sounding the final battle horn.

“That’s right… the final stage of Tide’s so-called plan has officially begun.”

————————————————————————————

Then, time returns to its original timeline.

The girl lay in the dimly lit room for an unknown period of time.

After a moment of frowning, she finally came to her senses.

"I…"

The experience of the last moments before losing consciousness surged from the depths of my mind.

Have I been defeated?

Teedo seems to have told me that... that guy called Den-O is the weakest among all the Kamen Riders that have appeared so far.

So I couldn't even beat the weakest one...

Jieyuehua laughed, her laughter bordering on self-deprecation.

"But no matter what, I... I still have to keep going."

The girl leaned against the wall beside her. Although she still had some pain in her body, she didn't care at all and tried her best to stand up again.

"They actually dare to go this far?"

At that moment, a familiar voice suddenly came from the darkness.

The sound startled Jie Yuehua, and she quickly looked into the dark room ahead.

A man emerged from the shadows.

He was dressed in black and red, and his expression... seemed to be one of complete indifference to everything in the world.

“Teed…”

"What are you doing? I don't think I asked you to do those things, but you just did them voluntarily."

Yuzuki was surprised by the appearance of the man in front of her, while Tede looked at him with a rather novel gaze.

"Since I've known you for a while, I never expected you to be such a hardworking person... You'd be perfect to be a loyal henchman for another boss in the future."

"What...what are you saying, you strange man!"

It seemed like she was just putting on an act, as Yuzuki replied in a slightly awkward tone.

"Speaking of which, you... saved me again."

"Of course, I can't let you die."

"But those guys probably won't kill me, right? Didn't you say they're all the kind of people who are really nice?"

"Well, there's one guy who doesn't seem to be like that... but it doesn't matter."

Just as Yuuki was about to say something more, she felt a gaze coming from Tide's direction...

He seemed to be scrutinizing himself closely.

This situation immediately made the girl blush.

"What's going on... looking at me like that all of a sudden, it's kind of awkward..."

"...No, I just happened to confirm a few things."

Teed, on the other hand, calmly smiled.

"My final plan can now proceed officially."

"The final... plan?"

"So, it seems I haven't been telling you all this, have I? What exactly I'm planning to do, what my true intentions are—you have absolutely no idea about any of this..."

He was talking to himself when he suddenly turned his head away.

"But now, I think I can tell you all my thoughts, right?"

"Tell me your thoughts? Ha... How could I possibly do that? Anyway, you're definitely lying to me again..."

Yuzuki had intended to say that, but when she noticed Tide's gaze, she quietly shut her mouth.

It was a look she had never seen before… a very serious look, and he was staring intently at her with that look…

What...what's going on? This feeling...

"You really... intend to tell me your story?"

"I'm only telling you this."

This seemingly sudden addition of a sentence caused the girl to freeze in place once again, her heart pounding wildly, unsure of what to do.

"To me, all those other magical girls who were used are just disposable trash that can be thrown away anywhere, but you are different, Yuzuki Hana..."

"...Even if you say that, you're still using me, aren't you?"

"Ah, you're absolutely right... I've kept you by my side all this time just to use you, and I'll never abandon you. I'll keep using you like this forever."

The girl stood there motionless, as if she were a statue, but Tide knew very well that her heart had been touched.

Listen carefully.

Therefore, Tede would not hide anything.

Tell her as much as you can about yourself.

"I actually died once."

The girl in front of him listened attentively, though with a hint of nervousness.

“I used to plan to wipe out all those freaks called Kamen Riders… starting from the very beginning of the Heisei era, uprooting them completely. That was my plan, but because of their obstruction, my plan was completely destroyed, and even my own mind and body were destroyed.”

"Fortunately, I am a Time Jacker, and a Super Time Jacker at that, so I was quickly resurrected."

"Is that so... Then, your purpose in coming into this world is to..."

"No, I'm not going to all this trouble for something as trivial as revenge."

Teed leaned casually against the wall and sighed softly.

"...At that time, I was resurrected in a place that seemed like a corner of time and space,"

Teedo still harbors hatred for the Kamen Riders and is determined to make them all pay the price.

"I didn't know exactly where I was at that time, or which corner of time and space it was, or even whether I was in time and space at all... I just wandered around aimlessly, just looking for an exit."

This went on for a long time, half a month, a month... maybe even half a year.

Sadly, no matter how hard Tede tried, he couldn't find any way out.

The lack of reward over a long period of time took a toll on his physical and mental health, and Tide's spirit gradually crumbled over time.

"And guess what happened?"

At this point, a smile appeared on his face.

"On one day, at the very moment when I had absolutely no hope left, I discovered a gap I had never seen before."

“I went into that gap. At first, I was so scared by the eerie atmosphere that I couldn’t even move my legs, but now—I’m so grateful that I actually went in there.”

"Because the place I was in wasn't some corner of time and space at all... it was a much more terrifying place."

The land, weathered by time, is a black world with no visible edges. A few drops of water fall nearby into a small ditch surrounded by various totems and paintings.

And something deep within that place, which is like a ruin.

"I saw an 'eye'."

Deep within the ruins, on something as ancient as a stone pillar, is engraved an image of an eye.

The murals there revealed all the true secrets that had been hidden from Teid—

There is a world that was not born naturally, but was created by some being through imagination.

The world created then connects to the worlds of many other creators, linking them together one by one... ultimately forming a collection of writings that is like a hodgepodge, and all the life forms in it are merely characters created within the collection or the novel.

In that world, there exists something that is unwilling to exist merely as a creation... unwilling to exist merely as a puppet.

It was the eye that Teed had seen.

That eye once tried its best to destroy the script written by the creator in order to seize what it believed to be freedom, and resisted to the best of its ability.

But in the end—it failed, defeated by the characters created by the author… defeated by the "protagonist".

It was a humanoid monster with white hair, red eyes, and gray wings on its back that transcended all terror... It defeated the eye with its own power and restored peace to everything.

This is the story of another world.

However... after that ended, the battlefield where they fought did not disappear.

As time passed, while all things continued to live and rest according to their own laws—that battlefield deviated from its original world.

Drifting endlessly toward the end of the world... until finally reaching the true end.

That's where Teed is.

That was the boundary between their own world and the world where the eye and the white monster existed...

And when Teed fully understood everything—the change began.

"And then... what happened?"

Jie Yuehua asked him with a slight hesitation.

"What happened to you after that?"

"It's actually very simple."

Then, Tede extended his hand to Jieyuehua.

On the back of that hand, there were faint gold and black runes... and a deep red eye tattoo, etched there.