Mr Love: Dream Date Chap 18 Time’s End

Chapter 18 unlocks at level 66 which took me about 6 days to climb. It is also the final chapter of the End of the Abyss expansion. After a 2 week dearth of events, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the next expansion Infinite Future will be coming out on May 25. It will comprise the chapters 22 – 24. So exciting!! Which is why I’m even more motivated to completed summary of chapter 18 now. Spoilers ahead!

You were in a dream state, replaying the words from the other you repeatedly in your mind. You considered carefully what she meant by sacrifice and new world. You didn’t feel brave enough to have the future of the whole world placed on your shoulders. As you recollected memories of the city, you realised chillingly that the other you had always been present in one form or another but you hadn’t taken notice of it till now.

You hugged your legs close to you in a curled up position. Then you felt the familiar warm hand on your head comforting you. It was your dad, or your memory of him. He told you not to worry so much and to keep the faith no matter how dark or evil the world became. Then your dad’s face merged with another and you saw it was Uncle Chuck who had come into the special dimension to check in on you. Apparently the one place you had mentioned where you can find the solution was this special dimension at Uncle Chuck’s place. Perhaps you hoped to see the past or the future or simply to run away.

By the time you left Uncle Chuck’s house, it was sunset. In the distance, there was a silhouette of a familiar person. It was Victor whom you have not seen for so long. (Come to think of it you haven’t seen him since Chapter 11!) You rushed up to him and grabbed his hand enthusiastically. Victor pulled his hand back and told you to come with him. You felt that something was different about Victor and the indifference couldn’t be due to loss of time but rather he was someone totally unfamiliar. You asked him a few questions and soon realised that this person was an impostor. You tried to run away but he grabbed hold of you and you screamed for help.

Suddenly, you were pulled away from the man’s grasp. You looked up at your rescuer and saw Victor, the real deal with the right smile and smells. He looked at you tenderly and then used his powers to get rid of the impostor. Victor hugged you tightly from behind, glad to finally see you again. You were a little lost on how to react to this but just stood there quietly until he spoke again. After a brief banter, you turned around and hugged Victor back. In doing so, you had flashes of what Victor had seen in the future.

You tried to find yourself in this future but to no avail. Victor pulled you away and looked at you questioningly. He wanted to know what was bothering you. You didn’t know whether you should burden Victor with the decision you had to make or would he think that you are going mad so you kept quiet. Victor then opened his palm to you and asked if you would like to see the future. You took him up on the offer. In the future, everything looked pretty much the same. Though some buildings have changed, the world seemed to have progressed well with no drastic impact from the virus. You asked Victor how the virus incident was resolved and he told you it must have been resolved very early on as there was no mention of the virus 10 years later.

You asked Victor why you couldn’t see yourself in the future. Victor looked furtively away then told you that you were doing very well and almost impossible to meet due to your busyness. You were puzzled about how the virus incident could be resolved so easily and completely and surmised that Lucien’s research could have found the cure. If that were the case, perhaps you needn’t bother yourself too much about the choice you needed to make. Victor then asked you what you were doing at Uncle Chuck’s house. You decided not to tell him what was bothering you so you gave an excuse that you wanted to ask about your dad.

Before leaving, Victor told you to wait for him as he entered the house to find Uncle Chuck. Apparently Victor didn’t want you to know any dealings he had with Uncle Chuck. Uncle Chuck told Victor that you could see the future and that you trusted your premonitions. To reply to that, Victor said that you only needed to trust him. He handed the broken sundial watch to Uncle Chuck. Uncle Chuck looked at the watch and told him there was nothing more he could do to help Victor. Victor acknowledged that he had already helped alot. Uncle Chuck simply sighed and told him that he had seen too many futures and now he was just happy to sit by and wait for his time to come.

On the way back to your apartment, you updated Victor on what had happened to the city while he was away and how the virus had taken a turn for the worse two weeks ago. As you entered the city, you were greeted by the desolate streets and dreary landscape. More and more people had fallen ill or gone completely missing. As you neared your apartment, you saw columns of people filing out of the building by personnel in hazmat suits. Victor got off to enquire about what had happened, returned and sped off. Apparently someone in your building had gotten the virus and everyone is now required to go to the quarantine zone. Victor offered to house you at his place in the meantime.

As you looked at the forlorn faces of your neighbours getting onto the vehicles through the mirror, you began to feel the weight of the decision on your shoulders again. You turned away from Victor, clutching the seat belt and remained in that curled position all the way to his place. The ride went on for hours, lost in your thoughts, and you didn’t realise that the vehicle had stopped quite a while ago. You turned to look at Victor. When he noticed you were awake, he told you to get off the car as you have arrived. You told Victor to go on ahead as you wanted to sit in the car awhile longer. Victor told you in no nonsense tone that the world wasn’t going to be a better place tomorrow but you could either choose to move forward or just mope around. With that he left the car keys with you and walked towards his house. You got out and hurried after him.

You saw Mr Mills in Victor’s house. Apparently Victor had also offered his place to Mr Mills instead of being sent to the quarantine zone. Mr Mills was about to prepare dinner and you hurriedly asked to help him so as to stop your mind from wandering. While thinking about how Victor had helped both of you escape from this crisis, you decided to carve the words Thank You Victor onto little pieces of mushroom. However you were caught in the act by Victor himself which brought redness to your cheeks. You told Victor you will try to be braver and not let circumstances overwhelm you. Victor told you he had promised to take care of you and wanted you to trust him.

That night while everyone was sleeping, Victor left the house to go to an obscure building hidden in the woods. It was the only building that still had lights in at this time of the night. Victor keyed in some buttons on the door and it slid open to reveal a room filled with scientific equipment. Within the room was Lucien who didn’t appear surprised to see Victor. Victor asked Lucien about some explosion incident at the White House back in 1908, and how all the survivors disappeared one year later. He wanted to know what was the box that Lucien mentioned when they had met earlier. Lucien conjectured that someone could have opened the box back then letting the cat out to breed and spreading it all over the world. He asked Victor if he intended to close the box and Victor nodded. Lucien asked what if the box was actually inside another box. Victor only made one resolute statement, ‘I will not be boxed in,’ before leaving the building. All I can say is that I like it whenever Victor and Lucien meet each other.

Unbeknownst to both of them, they were being observed with another person. The person is the Time Observer who appeared before Victor as he made his way home. Whenever the Time Observer appeared, it is accompanied by a mechanical violin sound.

You woke the next morning feeling refreshed. At breakfast, you realised that Victor was not around and wondered where he had gone so early in the morning. After breakfast, Mr Mills excused himself as he needed to go get some groceries. You decided to face the new day watching the news report but it only contained more and more bleak news about of more people getting infected and the quarantine zones struggling to manage the large volume of patients. You saw that Victor had left his jacket on the sofa so reached out to fold it. As you did so, a vision flashed before you.

It was Victor in a white shirt. He was standing by a road and then there was alot of blood. A heartrending pain pierced your heart as the words ‘No matter where you are, I will always find you’ sounded in your head. This was the second time you have heard it, but you had no idea who had said it. You quickly tried to get in touch with Victor but couldn’t get through to him. Not wanting another of your visions to come true, you rushed out frantically in search of Victor though you had no idea where to find him.

Suddenly you heard a mechanical violin play which shot another pain to your heart. You saw Victor across the busy main street in the same white shirt in your vision and a public bus rumbling towards him. It was a slow motion video playing itself before you. You rushed headlong into traffic desperately calling out Victor’s name. As you weaved your way through the oncoming cars through blurry tear-filled eyes, you realised this felt like deja vu all over again, as if you had been through this moment before.

The loud horn of a car rend the skies as it sped towards you. You felt the strong arms of Victor pull you away from danger mere centimeters from being knocked down. Victor reprimanded you severely for behaving so recklessly. You told him that you had a dream about him being in danger and couldn’t just not do anything as Victor wiped the tears off your face. He made a bet with you. He told you that in about 5 minutes a mother carrying a red umbrella and her daughter wearing a blue dress would cross the road. If he was right, he wanted you to stop trusting your precognitions and only have faith in him. You didn’t think that this could happen in the midst of the virus outbreak and the streets were deserted. You waited and was shocked to see the exact same mother-daughter described by Victor crossing the road not too soon after.

Victor smiled triumphantly at you and told you to just trust him as he knew what he was doing. This gave some reassurance and you decided that this will do for the day. With that, both of you started to walk home together. You realised that you had run a really long way from Victor’s house in search of him. Victor asked how you could have the confidence to find him with no bearings and directions. You told him that in your dreams you heard someone saying that no matter where you are, I will find you, hence you had gone with your gut feeling. Victor paused at your words and asked if you heard anything else. You shook your head then both of you headed home without further words.

Meanwhile in a faraway barren town, Perry’s power was raging out of control. Waves of power kept emanating from his body cutting every down in its wake. Buildings, vehicles and people who got in its way. Perry screamed mournfully trying to stop himself from hurting others. He used his powers to lift debris around him to pulverise him. However the structures disintegrate into dust before it could touch Perry. A fleet of camo vehicles appeared at the scene, at the lead of it was Gavin.

Gavin saw what Perry had become, a pained expression on his face. He called off his troops from attacking as he approached Perry. In between burst of power, Perry sobbed and knelt before Gavin. He asked Gavin to kill him and stop him from hurting anymore people. Gavin tightened his hand into a fist. He had not made that promise to Perry’s father and undergone that transformation to still remain powerless to protect the people he swore. His heart broke as he raised his hands towards Perry. Oh my goodness! How can they kill Perry?!

That night as you lay in your bed, you felt confident of changing the future again, just like how you had saved Victor. You closed your eyes to sleep but was haunted by the image of a young man who bore stark resemblance to Victor, same build, same white shirt but lifeless sunken eyes as he fell into a puddle of blood. You started awake at the vision. Then you felt her presence, the other you. This time she wasn’t just locked in a mirror, she was actually in the room with you.

You were startled by her presence but the other you also known as Black Queen wore an angelic smile on her face as you reached out towards your face to wipe the tears off your eyes. She told you that that because of your actions to save Victor today, you had caused the inadvertent death of another person whose wife had just given birth. When you defended that you had also successfully saved Gavin from the fire, she told you that Gavin had lost his Evol as a result. (huh, I thought he lost his Evol due to the electro-magnetic waves?). It was then you realised that all your efforts were indeed futile.

Black Queen told you humanity would be destroyed in exactly one week’s time at 19:17 and there was nothing you could do to change that future. When the world and everyone you loved in it is destroyed, you would carry all the memories of them into the next world again and again. She had experienced this countless times and have come to a conclusion on how this can be prevented. If only you could come to your senses now and let her take over. As she disappeared, the glass next you shattered into tiny pieces, like the shards in your heart.

The next moment, you had hopped off your bed, frantically picking up the pieces of glass trying to put them back together again. You hoped that by doing this you could reverse the impact of your actions. Amidst your tears and panic, you didn’t realised that you were bleeding as you clutched the glass bits tightly. Then you felt overwhelmed by a warm body that gripped your hands tightly preventing you from doing any further harm to your body. It was Victor.

You struggled desperately to get out of his hold to no avail. Victor kept telling you to let go and finally your nerves broke and you cried loudly into his arms for a very long time. After all the energy in your body had been expelled, Victor carried you back onto your bed and wrapped a bandage around your hands. You turned away from him and pretended to go and sleep. Victor vowed to bring back your past self and left. However you continued to stare blankly into the dark skies.

Another morning arrived. It was 6 days to the end of the world. Mr Mills knocked on your door and asked if you had seen Victor. Worried, you got out of the bed and started hunting the whole house for him. During the search, you chanced upon a secret staircase leading to an attic. Heading up, you found Victor slumped against a wall, looking thinner than before, with dark shadows under his eyes. On the table next to him was the broken glass cup that he had probably spent all night putting together piece by piece. Your heart broke at the sight. When did tall proud and confident Victor become so haggard, all because of you. You knelt next to him and noticed that he had cut himself on one of his fingers.

As you applied a plaster on it, you saw another vision. It was an image of Victor, red eyed, pained expression and look of despair on his face. You quickly took your hand away, not bearing to watch the scene any further. However you now felt resolute on the decision you needed to make. Nobody ever agreed or volunteered to be the hero, if anything, they would rather look out for themselves. But the events of the last few months, all the miseries, losses, sacrifices that the people you loved had gone through for you, as well as those of innocent bystanders, have convinced you of the right decision.

Victor opened his eyes and was surprised to see you. You tried to put on your biggest smile for him and told him that you’ve found your past self. You promise that you wouldn’t break down like you did the night before anymore. Victor passed you the cup and you thanked him for it. Then he left the room to get ready for the day. As you watched his tall and broad back, you whispered softly, let me shoulder this burden for you now.

Coupled with the earlier scene when Perry had to be killed, this scene pretty much squashed it into jelly bits. I can feel the despair and hopelessness of the MC and also the burden she feels when she sees the people she love around her suffering especially this proud and confident man looking so defeated. There was obviously something he knows that he’s not telling you.

That night Victor paid a visit to the Time Observer. We don’t really know what’s happening between the two of them except that Victor had summoned him to this time and space in order to get him to do something. The Time Observer told Victor that doing so would result in lifetimes of repayment which Victor will need to bear. Victor told him that he ever only had one goal. From this exchange, I’m beginning to understand that this world you’re living in is just one of probably million similar worlds that keeps repeating itself over and over again. Perhaps what everyone is trying to do at the end of the day is to just stop it from ending prematurely. The box that Lucien spoke of. However he alluded to even after closing this box, they might just realise that it’s a box in another box, an endless cycle of meaningless existence.

You spent the next day recollecting the beautiful memories you have of all your quirky colleagues and wishing them all the best in building up and making the studio stronger. In your own personal way, you said goodbye to Kiro (buying up all the potato chips in the convenience store), Gavin (leaving a folded paper plane for him in the piano room back in college) and Lucien (giving a young boy sitting under a camphor tree a kite with your wishes written on it). I felt a pang in my heart when you said that spring was over and that it was too late to fly kites now.

You received a call from Gavin to check in on you. He was currently away on mission. He asked if you would still believe in him if he had to change. You told him that people change all the time to keep up with the world around them and you would never lose faith in the goodness in him. You also asked him in return if sacrifice was needed to protect this world and why people would make those sacrifices. He told you sacrifices were necessary and people probably made those decisions when fate is thrust upon them. However he wished you never had to make them. It would be a few more days before his mission was over. Knowing that you probably won’t see him again, you wished him well.

After saying all your goodbyes, you walked back home with determination and a certain sense of acceptance and freedom. It started to rain heavily but you continued in your walk in the warm summer evening until a tall shadow appeared before you. It was Victor and he sounded a little upset that you had disappeared the whole day without your phone. You smiled and asked him if he wanted to make a bet with you, that you would be able to change the future. He didn’t bother to entertain you.

The next few days passed in peaceful existence as you waited for the Black Queen to appear. One day before the D-day, a letter mysteriously appeared again. It was an invitation to a battle royale taking place at the largest quarantine zone in Loveland City at 6pm today. You were puzzled that this would happen a day before the appointed day for the end of world. However you couldn’t bear to let anymore people suffer on your accord so you slipped out of Victor’s house. As you made your way to the quarantine building, you realised that security was lax but this was probably expected to welcome you.

As the metallic gates opened before you, Victor rushed up towards you. He chided you for breaking your promise again. You hurriedly pushed him away as you ran through the gates before they closed. Victor however stopped time and walked purposefully through the gates towards you. You shouted at him and asked why did he choose to come through together with you. With that, he smiled solemnly and said he would take you up on your bet and that he wouldn’t lose.

Victor pulled you into the spacious lobby of the quarantine building where you saw that files of people in quarantine uniform were shuffling in. There was a cube hanging in the middle of the room. After the room was filled with people, a voice which was projected over a modulator rang out. It announced that the cube in the middle of the room contained a vial of the only antidote available for the virus. Anyone who could get their hands on the antidote would be free to consume it. As if on cue, a spotlight lit the cube revealing a vial within. Immediately people started to rush towards the cube, doing whatever it takes to stop others from getting to it. What ensued was an all out hand to hand brawl and battle between desperate people fighting for the cure. You tried to stop them from this madness but the scene before just descended into a horrendous scene.

Then a man managed to grab the vial and there was shouts of triumph. As he opened the vial to drink it, his eyes suddenly widened as another man had sliced his stomach with a knife. The other man grabbed the vial and the battle ensued as other people crowded around him. At one point the vial fell to the ground spilling drops all over the floor and people got down on their feet to lick it off the ground. They were behaving no better than dogs. The voice laughed maniacally and asked if this was the humanity you wanted to save. Victor averted your gaze from the scene but you couldn’t block out the voice. Mustering up courage, you told the voice that you believed that there were still good and righteous people worth saving in this world and you wouldn’t turn your back against it just for a few poor examples.

The voice sneered and questioned if those you sought to protect were really so righteous. A scene appeared on a screen before you. You saw Gavin and Perry. Gavin had raised his hands on a tear streaked Perry who closed his eyes. The black swirl of wind intensified around Perry and then he disintegrated before your eyes. Gavin knelt to the ground in defeat. Then you saw the silver-haired man who resembled Kiro stepped before Gavin asking him to lend him his strength before the scene faded away. Though you don’t know what had happened, you believed that Gavin had a reason for it.

Suddenly, the doors sprang open. Agents of the STF rushed into the lobby led by Eli. He was surprised to see you there. He told you that STF had received information that a powerful Evolver was causing a deadly incident here. Then the lights went out. When it came back on again, you saw a stage had appeared before you and on it was the Black Queen. This whole madness was created by her. She had lied about wanting to save humanity. She told you that she had been through this path many times, having chosen sacrifice each time. However after everything went back to normal, the humans started to fear the Evol gene and went on a witch hunt to exterminate all Evolvers as they were threatened by their presence. Having seen the depravity of humanity, she has determined it was pointless to save them. She also said that whatever Victor was plotting with the Time Observor would be too late to save the world.

At this moment, she used her powers to raise the dead on the floor as zombies to attack the others. Eli ordered his team to open fire on Black Queen. As the torrents of bullets rained down on her, you felt the excruciating pain of the bullets as they entered her body. You slumped to the ground writhing in pain and finally realising that she and you are indeed the same person. Victor covered your body with his and in that instant you saw visions of his past and future. All the times he had spent with you, and one final image where he threw the sundial watch on the ground and his body disintegrating.

A moment of silence passed. You opened your eyes and gasped in horror as you saw that a stream of bullets were suspending in mid-air. As the Black Queen got back up on her feet, she laughed coldly that she cannot be killed. With a swish of her hands, the bullets came flying towards you and Victor. You heard the sound of bullet piercing flesh and Victor grunting in pain as blood spilled out of him. You quickly lay him down on the ground and tried to stop the bleeding as his face turned paler and paler. Black Queen walked slowly towards you. You vehemently denied her actions as anything else but evil and that she would need to pay for her actions.

Black Queen told you that now her sins would you yours as well. As she reached out to touch you, you felt her consciousness merging into yours. Victor struggled to get up on his knees. He took the sundial watch out of his pocket. You rushed up Victor and told him that you have found a way to resolve the problem. He would need to kill you. Victor told you to shut up. Before he could try and break the sundial watch, you snatched it out of his hands. It was then that you revealed that you already knew the truth behind the pain in his eyes. In every of the futures that Victor had visited, he had always ended up killing you and then smashing the watch which destroyed him. You finally realised how much pain you must have caused Victor for him to revisit this scene over and over again, however it was the only logical solution.

As Black Queen continued to possess your body, you desperately pleaded with Victor to stop you before the transfer is complete. With the same pain and despair in his eyes, Victor raised a dagger, his hands trembling as he plunged it into your heart. You tried to force a smile and asked him to live on well. Victor’s final words as your life slipped out of you were ‘No matter where you are, I will always find you’. So it had been him all along.

What a dramatic ending to the arc! Though we were clued in that you needed to make some sort of sacrifice or bargain with the Black Queen, who knew that in the end, it was about fulfilling the same ending as in every future Victor had witnessed, which culminated in your death. I guess Victor had tried to find one thousand and one ways to change this inevitable future which included making some bargain with the Time Observor. I don’t quite get the part about the sundial watch though. Does the watch allow him to move through time to change the course of the future but at what cost?

Of course we know that you couldn’t actually die die, otherwise the story cannot continue. However, how you come back to life again will only be revealed in the next expansion called Daybreak.