The Novel's Sidekick



Q: What is the way to destroy a rift space?

A: Destroying or separating the Matrix core—which is also known as the Reality core in some twisted form of rifts—is the way to destroy a rift space.

- - -

Oscar sighed in relief, finding an empty fountain in the mid-air above the floor they were rushing towards. It was the only singularity in this twisted maze of a rift.

Yeriel eyed the floor, however. This floor was oddly similar to the one they fell first, though there was a hole with a halo of light in the middle of it. It should be the portal out, but what interested them more were the other things tossed around the floor.

Oddly enough, they found four unconscious human bodies, and also a three-and-a-half-metre-long beast lying on the floor surrounding the floor, too. Coming closer, they found the heart was breathing, even though the faces looked quite dead.

“Oh, we finally found our bodies,” Oscar said as a smile appeared on his lips. “What do you say, Yeriel, want to play with a different body now?” He chuckled. “You have four options: an uptight male knight, a strong woman in her late twenties, or an infuriatingly handsome youth with red hair. What do you say?

"Well, I can understand if you want to stay put with the one you’re born with. It's pretty hard to abandon such a gorgeous face, after all.”

Yeriel only gave him an incredulous look.

“I’m just kidding,” Oscar said, chucking and advancing towards his own body. “Even if you want a different body, it's not possible to--” Without completing his sentence, he jumped off into his body and then the body started to squirm on the floor for a few seconds. Oscar’s eyes opened properly as he stared at her. “--take someone else's body like this.”

He stood up, stretching his limbs to ensure everything was working properly. “This is the first time for me to experience this--” he paused as if remembering something— “you know why it's impossible? Your soul, body, and mind share a unique link. For that link alone, it's almost impossible to occupy someone else’s body.”

Yeriel said nothing like before, remained spotted there with a flat look. She hadn’t even joined with her physical body yet. Perhaps having second thoughts, finding the antlers on her head.

“We’ll find a way,” Oscar said to her. “You literally have no idea what's possible in this vast cosmic universe.”

That was quite puzzling since a soul body’s first instinct of finding the physical body was to jump back into it. It was almost instinctual, like breathing. Oddly, Yeriel fought it back for some time, until she found it was only futile. She finally threw herself into her physical form.

Oscar smiled, looking at her, and then his eyes darted towards the middle of all things, where a small empty fountain stood with nothing else. He held his hands out towards it as if catching it in his palm. “It almost took everything out of me to reach here.”

Then he got back to what’s essential. Without wasting any more breath, he held onto two of the front legs of the soulless saint beast and dragged it towards a specific staircase. he could kill the physical body of the beast easily now, but that won't stop the problem, will it? As its soul-body should be still wandering around only some time away from reaching here.

The weight of the saint beast was definitely something that he could barely drag with his C-grade strength.

The fountain was almost a hundred metres in the air, in the middle of all the staircases surrounding it. That was the spot of zero gravity. Dragging such weight on his back would take more than just a couple of minutes to reach the level of the fountain on the staircase. Unfortunately, the reality was even grimmer than that.

Oscar hadn’t covered ten steps, but his breathing got twisted as steam-like vapour oozed out of his face and body. There was spiritual energy in the space, but no air to breathe in. Gritting his teeth, he moved further as the stream thrusters behind him worked to make his job easier.

It took a few moments for Yeriel to understand what was going on. The floor she was standing on seemed to support all their physical needs, but the same was not true for the staircases. It was seriously mind-bending and excruciating.

Oscar seriously couldn’t fly with over a ton of weight on his back. He barely reached halfway there on the stairs when they heard the roar of a berserk beast.

Oscar clicked his tongue. "You couldn't weight a few more moments, could you?" he said, gritting his teeth.

Yeriel’s mind chills and the suffocating power inside her—which emptied in half after all the usage—twisted and churned. She should have been gratified that half of it was already lost, but the other half that remained was enough to forget about that. She just wanted to waste all of it as soon as possible.

She unconsciously drew the heinous power, looking for the beast.

“Yeriel,” Oscar shouted at her. He left the beast’s body and flew upward on the staircase. “Jump in the portal.”

She didn’t. Rather than withdrawing, she climbed the stairs, running to help Oscar.

“Yeriel, listen to me. There’s no need to fight it.”

The beast appeared in the next moment. Oscar looked at it for once and ignored it, and the beast did the same. However, it didn’t do the same to Yeriel. It cried in a raging outburst, finding her as the staircase surrounding it got wrecked. Its eyes never left Yeriel as it went for its physical body first. Whatever was left of the beast was just on an instinctual level.

Yeriel tried to stop it from reaching its physical body, but she failed to do that. It didn’t take more than a moment for it to lurch out, roaring at her. The outburst of soul aura around it seemed to have decreased for some reason. Perhaps because it was in physical form. Yeriel didn’t know enough to draw a conclusion.

However, only with spiritual energy, the beast could do anything that she could barely stop.

Oscar reached the same level as the fountain in the staircase. He turned his head to look at Yeriel, who engaged with the beast in the battle, and returned to the bowl-like fountain again. Letting out a breath, he was charged with fiery steam releasing from his back.

The leap was about a dozen metres, and after he covered eight metres, the gravitational pull decreased enough for him to get a hold of the fountain. Oscar floated in zero gravity, and there was no air to breathe in.

He grimaced again without knowing it. Hanging on the fountain, he found a vial of viscous liquid and an all-white fist-sized sphere. The sphere seemed to be glowing with odd sparks of light. There seemed to be viscous liquid inside it, though it was not transparent like the liquid in the vial, but entirely white. While the other vial was twice the size.

Without waiting for one more breath, Oscar shattered the all-white vial with spirit force. In the next moment, an all-blinding white light surged through the Rift of Disorder.

Oscar screamed as the white light dug through his soul, pouring in the unfamiliar power as if creating a link with something broad, something vast.

The process was definitely excruciating, enough to make even the bravest of men pass out.

A few seconds passed, and the blinding white light cleared, with the unconscious body of a red-haired youth handing in zero gravity.