Read Novel Full Chapter 200: Reuniting the family (1)
Chapter 200: Reuniting the family (1)
"What is this place?" At first, when the whiteness fully covered my vision, I expected another memory to appear in front of my eyes, shedding some light on the entire situation I was involved in. But no matter how long I waited, absolutely nothing happened.
Once my patience ran out, I started walking. With nothing blocking my path in this endlessly white world, I could at least make sure that I was either daydreaming somehow or was completely immersed in an illusion that replicated even the feeling one would have while walking.
"Just what I'm supposed to do here?" Surrounded with nothing but whiteness, without anything to use as a reference point, I could only wander aimlessly around this place. In fact, even walking in a straight line didn't seem to be a good option, given how I had no directions to follow at all.
Or did I?
Even though the area around me was completely empty and the same in every direction, there was one thing that was actually working properly in my situation.
My system.
"Okay then, let's do it like that." Closing my eyes for a moment, I took roughly about a minute to calculate how many times did the green light of my side-mission name flashed. Once that was confirmed, I fixed my position before resetting this inner clock back to its starting state.
"Go!" Encouraging myself with this little shout, I started running at my top speed. Using every means I possessed to move as fast as I could, I quickly reached the breaking point where the phasing finally came to use.
'Fifty-seven, fifty-eight,' with only a few seconds remaining, I started decreasing my speed. Using the phase in the way directly opposite to what Teria taught me, I managed to quickly lose quite a lot of my momentum, allowing my body to come to a perfect halt when my inner voice reached 'sixty'.
"Now, let's see if it did anything…" Turning my eyes towards the notification window I sadly couldn't spot any difference in the intensity or frequency of light's flashes. After taking a short moment to calm my breathing down, I once again closed my eyes before venturing for yet another counting of the flashes.
"Fifty-nine, sixty." This time, I didn't need to take some time before the end to slow down, as all I did was counting the flashes of the green light. "Forty-seven… Three more than before."
This was the only way that I could figure out to find the direction in this abyss of white nothingness. While I had no clue what awaited me at the end of my path, I turned towards the general direction I was running to before, only to turn ninety degrees to my right. Bending my knees, I restarted my inner clock once again before going for yet another minute of sprinting.
While my initial direction appeared to be roughly okay, I didn't know if I was moving towards the objective hidden within this white world or just slightly angling towards it. As such, once I finished my second run, I calmed myself down once again only to turn around by another ninety degrees and repeat the sprint.
If someone were to somehow mark the path of my running around, it would end up as a slightly uneven square. But what was important, was that I now could roughly calculate which way I should actually go.
"I was getting closer during the first and the last part of the run, with the difference being far greater in the last run than the first one…" While all I had to my name right now were the rough numbers created from my definitely imprecise calculations, for the task of figuring out the general direction of my march they were more than enough.
"So it's right around… that way." After crunching up the numbers and calculating a rough angle I should go at, I once again relied on my imperfect senses to direct myself roughly seventy degrees to my left before starting to run once again.
This time, I didn't rely on counting the flashes of light as I ran. Rather than that, I simply waited for the flashes to turn into a constant stream of light. And surely enough, in just a few more minutes worth of rushing forward, the pauses between the flashes continued to shorten at a visible rate, only for them to…
CRACK!
A powerful force struck me squarely in the face and chest. At the same time, the whiteness around me seemingly started to fall apart, revealing yet another vision of the kind that I saw back when the core first touched the altar in the northern cathedral.
And right in the middle of a simple room, a girl donning a light, long gown was sitting. Disregarding the nobility that was oozing out of every single pore of her skin, she was sitting cross-legged directly on the floor, disregarding the fact that someone just intruded on her personal space.
"Who are you?" While I knew that something was bound to happen, I didn't expect to find a fairly-like girl in almost see-through clothes deeply in a melancholic state!
But even after I called her out, there was no response.
"EXCUSE ME!" Even when I walked towards her only to stop right above the cloth of her white, see-through gown before shouting right in the back of her head… The girl didn't even budge, as if my presence was completely separated from what she could experience.
"Just what the hell is wrong with…" Just as I started to curse at my fate, my situation, and the girl alike, her head suddenly swung to the side, revealing tenderness I have never experienced in my entire life.
With just a single glance of her deep, sky-blue eyes, it felt as if my entire soul decided to abandon my body, just to go on and worship this girl's beauty for an eternity. Her fair skin reflected the same light that illuminated the room, making her look as if she was shining on her own. Her red, full lips decorating her face, her small nose with only its very tip slightly lifted…
At this point, I saw a beauty that managed not only to overshadow Ayda's adorableness but almost to make me completely forget about her in the first place!
"Just another illusion, huh…" After a moment that seemed like an eternity, the intensity of the girl's stare waned. In this single moment, her presence returned to normal, as if the godly element that enchanted her looks a moment before was too exhausted to keep its effects up.
"What do you mean by an illusion?" Hoping that my voice would still have some effect, I swallowed a gulp of saliva before moving to the front of the girl.
'Ugh…' Looking down at how exposed she was, I couldn't help but thank the god of my system for the fact I changed my perspective only now. If her face alone, when enchanted, was also capable of making me forget about Ayda, then I didn't even dare to think what would happen if the same effect would appear while her entire skin only pretended to be covered by the thin layer of muslin.
"What now!" Raising her head with a furious expression, the girl finally looked at my face properly. And at this moment I also realized that who I just met in this strange, whitish world, was no one else than the girl I saw being locked in that tower all the way back in my vision in the north!
"Hello." Staring down her blue eyes, I could see how rapidly the changes started to appear on the girl's face. From shock, through disbelief, past excitement, and worry. By the time she finally managed to calm herself down a bit, all her emotions simply made her too shocked to think rationally.
"Are you the man chosen for me?" Raising her chin while attempting to look at my face while still seated on the floor, the girl leaned forward, only making it harder not to adore her charms.
"I came here to reunite the family." Shaking the infatuation in this girl that was quickly taking over my senses I went for the extra mile and established a barrier on my emotions, turning my mood to complete apathy.
And in this apathy, I realized one thing.
If I was going to reunite the family, then I had to reunite this girl with… Right, that was the correct question. With who? With her father? Even if that man still walked on this planet, I highly doubted that it would be something the mission stipulated. On the other hand, the hardness of this mission was supposed to be drastic…
But there was also the other option. To reunite this girl with her mother.
"Who are you then?" As soon as the girl asked, for some reason, my hand appeared right above my thigh pocket. And as it fell down on the cloth my pants were made from, I realized that a strange type of heat was transmitted from my pocket to my hand.
"Oh, so this is what reuniting the family meant…" As my hand wavered over my pocket, the name of this particular side-mission continued to flash in greater and then lower intensity. Even though its flashes have long turned into a constant ray of light, the closer my hand got to my pocket, the brighter it became. "Either way. I'm here to reunite you with your mother."
Pulling out the sacred core from my pocket - without questioning how it moved from the pedestal in the tree I placed it on back to my possession - I presented it to the girl on an open palm.
"I guess, that is."