Chapter 398: The Breakout [Part 1]
Northern watched the entire scenery slowly transition. It was as if he was passing through the shattered part of space into another space that was almost equally desolate.
Only this one seemed a bit organized, although it emanated terror in its grotesque designs.
As he flew skyward, black rocks shot out like icicles dripping from the bowels of a cavernous expanse.
They merged to form a coagulation of some sort, spreading far and wide across the sky.
Northern didn't even think there was a way further-upwards.
So he turned and continued to fly straight, hoping to see how far the rock expanse went.
He continued to fly for a while until the entire light surrounding him started to dim.
He was slowly leaving the areas illuminated by the yellowish hue of that hollow sky and going toward somewhere else.
Somewhere he had no idea of.
"I thought I had seen the best of rifts with the last one I was in. But this, this is on a different level yet again," Northern thought aloud.
He shook his head in dismay and felt his whole body shiver from the creeping fear of the unknown.
Far in front, he began to make out something in the darkness: massive pitch-black shackles stretched across the expanse, from the sky downward into the rocks above.
The area that the shackles went into was the only place Northern had seen so far that was not filled with sharp-edged rocks.
The Aerisyles landed on the chain and began to run forward on a side of the shackles. Despite the weight of the monster's movement, the chain did not tremble or shake.
It was still and steady until it reached the point where the rock it fused into.
Northern jumped down from the monster and touched the rock. It felt a bit scaly to his palm;
he almost felt like it wasn't really a rock, but just looked like one from afar.
"Now that I look at it, it does look like a wall of ground granite," he thought.
He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them, his pupils dividing into two. Immediately, another scene played out before Northern's vision.
Unlike before, it was not in black and white. The wall of granite appeared to be a wall of fog instead.
And inside that wall of fog, Northern could observe millions of ligatures intertwining with each other.
"Each ligature has an interaction with the others. This has to be the most complicated one I have seen," he muttered.
But the most important thing was that Northern had discovered there was something else beyond this wall.
"Whoever created this wall did one hell of a job. Now, what are they trying to hide?"
Northern didn't think it would be anything interesting, considering the colossal chain.
But there was only one way forward to closing a rift. And he was currently following that way. Keenly, he began to inspect every aspect of the wall, but not with his naked eyes.
"A complicated and intertwining ligature like this one is bound to leave a loophole..." Northern stopped his hand along a surface of the wall and smiled.
"There it is."
He folded his fist, the gauntlet of his armor shining, as he pulled back for a powerful punch.
His fist drove forward, blurring as it blasted into the surface. The entire granite wall trembled.
Northern dislodged his hand and peeked into the hole he had managed to create.
"Oh, it's quite different from what I imagined. What's with the whiteness?"
Northern withdrew his eyes from the hole and closed them.
"Teleport."
He disappeared and reappeared beyond the wall.
The brightness of the place was incredibly blinding, and he had to close his eyes for a couple of seconds.
Not to mention the magnitude of the space width. It was so wide that he felt like a little ant in the white expanse.
Several corners glowed with a golden hue. However, from those corners protruded black shackles, contrasting with what this place was.
Four chains, each stretching from opposite corners to meet at the center of the room.
And in the center, they each held the four edges of a cubic prism.
Northern's eyes widened as he looked at the prism.
"There's someone inside."
Subconsciously using Speed Burst, he shot across the white space-his feet barely touching the ground-and stopped in front of the prism.
The figure inside the prism was on his knees, bent over with his back, both arms stretched backward and bound by a golden wrist strap.
His hair was white, and his ivory skin was as smooth as a porcelain jar.
Around the prism, several rune words flowed like projections.
As Northern attempted to back away, he suddenly felt something inside him resonating. It
was a subtle vibration, but it felt like something was trying to break out.
His danger sense screamed out loud, the hairs on his skin rose, and Northern knew at that point that running away was not an option.
As he jumped away, however, a red light streaked out of his body and flowed into the figure in
the prism.
Northern felt two things happen at once. First was the loss of a soul summon.
Second was that the white room trembled, and one of the shackles began to tremble tremendously and eventually shattered at the point that was connected to the prism.
But luckily, the prism was still intact. Three other shackles still held strong.
But the loss of a soul summon was very traumatizing.
"Who...who was it?" Northern questioned within himself, earnestly searching.
Subtly, he was able to find something amiss; Pangu had reverted to his usual form.
"Koll..." Northern mumbled.
The strongest of his soul summons was gone. Northern frowned.
A voice at that moment resounded in the white expanse.
"You know, I set this entire stage for you... I'm glad you didn't disappoint me."
A small boy with a smug grin smearing his face walked towards Northern from the other side
of the prism.