"Ahhh, where the fuck am I?!"
Alden thought as his body continued falling endlessly through so kind of tunnel while his consciousness flickered in and out.
"What’s happening?"
He couldn’t understand any of it.
The last thing he rembered was seeing the silhouette of his mother sohow reversing the technique Jeremy had used and changing its target.
His body throbbed with overwhelming strength as his core overflowed with energy that spilled violently throughout his body, as though he could explode at any mont.
He could even see countless cracks spreading across his skin but he couldn’t bring himself to care about any of that because he still had no idea where the hell he was falling.
Is this so kind of teleportation tunnel?
His mind felt overloaded by the knowledge and mories he had absorbed from Jeremy but even then, he had never seen anything remotely similar to this.
"Alden!!!"
Suddenly, a voice echoed from sowhere above him.
With great difficulty, he twisted his body toward the sound only to see a blue-eyed girl falling toward him with just as much speed as his own descent.
Nyx.
Well... at least I am probably not in so hell designed to make suffer by falling endlessly.
Alden tried calming himself with useless jokes but along with Jeremy’s mories, Alden had also co to understand sothing else...
Sothing that confird a suspicion he had carried for a very long ti.
Nyx truly was from another world.
And that wasn’t all.
From those sa mories, he also realised that she was definitely connected to Ren, the sa Ren he had fought back when he claid the Sevenfold Ruins.
Still, Alden didn’t care about any of that right now and he sure as hell didn’t doubt her because of them because he hadn’t even fully comprehended most of the mories to conclude anything.
More importantly...
Nyx was still his friend.
And Judging by how she had thrown herself into danger without the slightest hesitation just to save him, he was certain her feelings toward him weren’t different either.
So he shouted toward her, hoping she at least understood what was happening.
"WHERE ARE WE, NYX?!"
He had to scream because the distance between them was still far too great for anything quieter to reach her.
"I DON’T KNOW! A PORTAL SWALLOWED YOU THE MONT JEREMY DIED, SO I JUST FOLLOWED YOU IN!"
Nyx shouted back.
Alden frowned slightly.
A portal?
Does this have sothing to do with my mother too?
But more importantly... if it does, then what exactly is she trying to achieve with all of this?
And how the fuck am I supposed to stop my body from exploding?
His thoughts spiralled without any answers.
He could barely move his body the way he wanted anymore but Nyx suddenly angled herself downward like an arrow, diving toward him at an even greater speed.
She closed the distance between them rapidly and soon enough, she was close enough to reach him as she stretched her hand toward Alden.
Alden also forced his barely responsive body to move, extending his own hand toward hers.
Closer.
Closer.
But just as their fingertips were inches away from touching, a violent force suddenly exploded between them.
A massive shockwave erupted outward, instantly repelling both of them away from each other with terrifying force.
Alden’s body spiralled violently upward toward the edge of the tunnel while Nyx was blasted even deeper into the abyss below.
The last thing Alden saw was Nyx being swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel before he was thrown out of it and then, his body slamd against hard concrete sowhere else entirely. The mont the impact struck him, his consciousness faded away imdiately.
When Alden opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a beautifully decorated garden. An elegant tea table sat at its centre while a gentle river flowed beside it, birds playing along its edges.
The sunlight was warm and the air was fresh while Mana filled the surroundings in imnse quantities and yet, sohow it all felt fake like a dream carefully crafted into reality.
He took a step forward toward the table but just then sothing soft poked at his cheek from the side accompanied by a gentle voice.
He turned around imdiately.
"You are finally here, my child."
A woman with bright green hair and sharp golden eyes stood there, tilting her head slightly. Her face looked far younger than when he had last seen but the warm smile she wore was exactly the sa as always.
"And before you ask anything, yes, this is an actual fragnt of myself that I left behind to guide you unlike the re recording you might have seen before."
She answered the question he hadn’t even spoken yet as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"You have grown so tall... and you look just like your father, you know."
She spoke excitedly, rising onto her toes as she asured his height with her hand before turning toward the table beside the river.
"I know, I know. This is the first proper eting we have had and you probably have countless questions for , my baby."
Her smile softened.
"But how about we sit down before we start? I have a lot of things I want to tell you too."
She didn’t even wait for his answer. With light steps, she walked toward the table before taking a seat and patting the chair beside her.
"Co now, what are you waiting for?"
Alden looked at her with nothing but confusion. Still, he walked forward. If he was finally getting answers, he didn’t care about anything else but instead of sitting beside her, he pulled out the chair opposite to her and sat down there.
His mother imdiately pouted, puffing her cheeks.
"No fair. Why are you being so cold toward , my baby? Co sit here. Why are you sitting so far away?" She protested.
But Alden had no intention of moving. Just because she acted warmly didn’t an he had forgotten how she left him behind in that hell.
He understood she probably had her reasons, she wanted to protect him, there were circumstances and the usual bullshit excuses but that didn’t an he wasn’t allowed to be angry.
However, his mother seed to have expected that reaction already as she didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.
With a casual wave of her finger through the air, Alden’s body instantly vanished from his seat and reappeared right beside her and before he could even react in shock, she turned toward him with a bright smile.
"Sooo, tell , my baby... Do you have any girlfriends yet?"
—
anwhile, back within the tunnel, Nyx’s body continued spiralling downward endlessly. Her mana and mind had already been pushed to their absolute limits.
She didn’t know how much ti had passed since Alden vanished from her sight and despite all this ti, she still hadn’t reached an end.
But sothing even stranger was happening.
Her body was growing younger and younger and at the sa ti, every trace of mana inside her body was disappearing rapidly.
She couldn’t understand what was happening to her or where she was falling but just as despair was beginning to creep in, a bright light suddenly entered her vision and she fell out of the tunnel and splashed into a shallow puddle of water.
"Where am I?"
The voice that left her mouth was that of a child as Nyx imdiately lowered her gaze toward her reflection in the puddle.
Her eyes widened in horror imdiately because the face staring back at her wasn’t the one she knew, it was still hers but from long ago or to be more prevalent from back when she was five years old.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, she couldn’t sense even the slightest trace of mana in the air. It was as if mana itself simply didn’t exist in this world.
Before she could even try to comprehend anything, a voice echoed within her mind with a soft ding as a system window appeared in front of her.
[YOU HAVE ENTERED ????????]
[A QUEST IS GENERATED]
[ET ???!!??????]
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