Chapter 91: Pursuit of Madness (II)
"System,"
He called once more, but all that he got in return was silence.
That confirmed it: The system couldn’t dream with him into the Otherworld.
’Or it isn’t bound to my soul.’
White mused.
If this was his soul body and the system had indeed fused with his soul, then it should be here with him, but it wasn’t.
Still, that wasn’t why he was here. He had come here to find an Otherworlder and fuse with one.
They had to be somewhere, right, but...where?
With no particular sense of direction, White took a step forward and began walking, but surprise and confusion filled him when he noticed himself sinking deeper with every step forward as if he were going down a staircase.
Taking five more steps forward with hands raised, he was able to confirm it as his hand sank deeper and deeper.
He paused, then took steps backwards.
Speechless, he watched himself rising higher and higher into the air as if climbing up a staircase.
That made no sense, as he was simply in the darkness with no footing or anything.
But then another thought hit him.
If there was no footing at all, which there wasn’t obviously, looking down at his feet.
Then, how come he was standing, and both his feet were at the same balanced height?
Shaking his head from the unreasonable thoughts, he tried to note what the facts were.
"Stepping forward here means going down, and stepping backwards will carry me up."
"I guess if I want to go forward, I should step up instead."
He concluded, raising his legs to carry himself up, but nothing happened.
His legs dropped back down, revealing one thing.
"There’s only an up and down direction in the Otherworld. You can’t go front or back."
Recognizing that, he turned his gaze down.
There was still nothing, just the same darkness, and looking up, it was the same thing...almost.
The upper part of this darkness actually didn’t feel fully the same.
FLICKER!
He felt a flicker, and he turned to his chest.
The white light that was where his heart was flickered, lower and higher, as White turned his neck up.
’There’s something up there...’
He mused to himself, his legs shifting backward, but in return, White began rising into the darkness instead.
He kept stepping back, the light in his heart growing brighter with each step.
With renewed vigor that he was getting closer to something, he continued stepping backwards, moving up higher and higher and higher, but eventually, he paused.
"This is wrong."
He mused to himself with narrowed eyes, turning to look at his chest.
It was this white light, the fact that it had flickered that had made him decide to go up.
But he had been going up for so long yet all he found was the same darkness, and suspicious enough, the light didn’t brighten higher and higher.
Instead it brightened then settled to a normal brightness, before brightened again as White climbed then settling into a normal brightness.
To White it seemed that he was getting close but the truth was the light was resetting itself, creating an illusion of growth when there was none.
He raised his clawed hand to his chest, grabbing at that light,
CRAAACK!
The sound of faint cracking reached his ears before his hands phased through the light.
The sound instantly made White freeze, and he snapped his neck downwards.
Someone or something was deceiving him.
Immediately White ran forward, his body moving downward.
He continued running as fast as he can and soon, he noticed the light in his chest brightening again.
His hand immediately reached forward and folded his claw inside.
CRACK!
Once more, the sound of something cracking echoed out before his hand phased through the white flame.
Something was trying to deceive him by influencing the light in his heart, to make him go up. That could only mean one thing:
"It’s down!"
White concluded for sure this time, continuing his forward racing.
Even when the light insisted to brighten and deceive him, he cracked it apart or simply ignored it continuing forward and in doing so moving downwards.
Eventually after a time he couldn’t count.
He found something that wasn’t darkness.
It was a portal.
A massive portal that continuously spun about 70 meters beneath his feet.
He could see it because it was made up of three colors.
Darkness at its outer edge, taking the majority of it, crimson closer to its middle, and then, a ball of white at the center.
The sight of that color couldn’t help but make White turn to look at his own soul body as well.
It was the exact same color as the portal beneath him.
Without wasting another second, he stepped forward, his body sinking into the white of the portal until he disappeared completely.
The world darkened at first, his consciousness waning, but he regained control and opened his eyes.
What he saw next made his soul freeze.
It was a world of chains.
Massive pitch-black chains inscribed with crimson runes stretched as far as the eyes could see, hundreds of times bigger than White himself.
Compared to then, he was like mere dust.
They stretched taut in every direction his eyes turned, and as he focused, he saw them all drawn into the deeper darkness beyond.
FLICKER!
A glow of white light flickered, and White turned to his chest.
Right now, the white where his heart ought to be was burning incredibly brightly.
His hand reached for it to crack away the illusion, but it phased through it instead.
"It’s real."
He mused, turning his gaze into the distance.
There was something in that place where the chains were coalesced.
He stepped forward and found that the rules had changed as he indeed moved forward instead of upward.
He continued, moving deeper toward the source of the chain...until a word echoed through his soul, and he froze.
"Go away."
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