The Novel's Sidekick

Q: How to survive in the Rift of Disorder?

A: With the Rift of Disorder being an Astral Space, first, one should ignore many of the natural laws, like gravity, illumination, and physical or spiritual bodies. The natural order of things doesn’t work according to the natural order. Anyone without a fundamental understanding of Astral space will have a troublesome time adjusting to it at first.

The biggest danger in the Rift of Disorder is not losing your life, but getting lost. As you’re not physically present there, you won’t need to eat, breathe, sleep, nor time is an issue. To survive in a place like this and get out of there with an intact and working brain, you need to make sure you didn’t get lost in there.

Now, here’s a beginner guide on what to look for. . . .

Note: The confirmation on the guide is questionable, but I heard from a few who were with him in a rift of disorder and how he miraculously played inside it as if it was his own backyard. This also provides evidence to the truthfulness of these notes.

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"Whatever you do, absolutely, don't wander off alone until I get--" Oscar's voice was cut off as they dived into the water.

Noyar was the first to get into the rift together with Jon. With a gravitational push, Jon broke the ice on the surface of the pool to dive into the cold water. As Oscar had told them, they have to go through the water until they find a halo of light, which came quite deep into the water, about a hundred metres deep.

Noyar had been to rift before, a couple of times to be specific, she could call them experiences, but she couldn’t call herself experienced with just that. Jon pushed through the forcefield, Noyar in his embrace as they entered the rift space.

It was as if they were diving from one viscous medium to another freer medium.

Both of them fell on their butt on a cold floor, devoid of water, air or any other element as far as they could find. Well, the spiritual energy here was so pure that it lets them suck it all in, closing their eyes. But their delight didn’t last long, as a sudden chill consumed them the moment they looked around the space.

“What is the actual . . . ?” Jon’s voice trailed off.

Stairs. Too many freaking staircases. It started with dozens of them on the floor as they divided into hundreds and thousands, twisting, turning and coiling around the floor to make one giant wobbly piece. They went in all directions and one direction--if that makes sense. Wherever they went, Noyar felt like their direction was the same.

Fine wooden staircases joined together, some divided into more staircases. Upside-down, sideways, zigzag, all kinds of patterns played on the stairs, making the climb seem almost impossible. Noyar hadn’t started the climb, and yet she already felt sick looking at them.

That’s what they see. That’s not all, it appears, that they were hanging upside-down from the floor, or roof. Noyar felt like vomiting while Jon tried to skid around playing with his dominion of gravity as if trying to discern the scope of gravity here.

“This place is wobbly,” he said as his legs lifted off from the upside-down floor. “Gravity is also--”

Jon’s voice was cut off at the next moment, as his body went backwards to fall on the stairs on the right. It might have been possible to do that with his Dominion of Gravity, but the way he struggled made Noyar seem like that’s not the case.

“Jon,” she called, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Jon said, standing up. “The Gravity. Its . . .”

He didn’t find the words to describe it. Oh, by the way right now, he was standing to her 90% angle on the right, totally on a different scope of gravity.

“Wait, let me come back first.” Jon turned his dominion on and pushed backwards to move forward. He went to his left and fell on a different staircase, which seemed to be running on a different point of gravity as well. He did it a couple of times more to struggle his way back to the floor where Noyar was standing, or hanging, from his point of view.

As Jon hovered on the space forward, the gravity of the floor pulled him towards it, while the other floor’s gravity tuned weaker and so was his push as he fell on his butt. Again.

“Chaos,” Noyar muttered. That’s what Oscar told them, and she felt it now.

“That was exactly the word to describe it,” Jon said as Noyar helped him out. “Each of these staircases likely runs on a different point of gravity. So there were hundreds and thousands of staircases leading with different gravity, who knew where they should lead.”

“How in the world is this possible?” Noyar muttered as her eyes glowed in blue. She had turned on her dominion of Seer to do a further inspection of space.

“Well, I’m not a magus,” Jon said, “perhaps your partner could answer that. Man, this could be a paradise to train Dominion of Gravity.” Jon seemed a bit regretful about the notion of training in a place like this.

Noyar ignored his signs of disgruntlement and inspected the space with her dominion eyes. Even though these lots of stairs seemed to be made of fine wood at first, Noyar found out they were fake. Strong patterns of flow opened her eyes as she looked attentively. All the stairs were glowing with too much spiritual pattern, making her head spin the more she got to examine them.

It was like thousands of threads divided into thousands more and those divided into thousands more and intertwined to create these magnum staircases. However, getting nothing more, she had to stop her inspection, no matter how fascinating it came to her eyes. Then the realisation hit her.

“Noyar, our clothes,” Jon shouted. “They were not wet.”

Noyar raised an eyebrow and found that to be true, but she had other things to be worried about now. “What’re they doing?” she grumbled, looking around. “It's over a minute and only the two of us here.”

Jon groaned at the realisation. The surroundings were so daunting and out of the natural scope that he forgot about time. However, now that they think about it, one minute was too much time. They and even the beast should have been here now, even with all the trouble.

Could it be something unforeseen situation have occurred? That came to Noyar’s head first. She knew that some first have a different time flow to Shrankor, but still she couldn’t ignore the possibility.

“We need to get to them,” Noyar said.

“Yeah, but how?”

That’s the question here. She couldn’t find the forcefield wall that they went through to get inside. There were just too many things wrong here. It was as if she couldn’t understand the gravity of their problem here.

Noyar tuned on her Seer eyes again and inspected to find a way out. However, she found something else without even looking. As her eyes were about to be darted off the inspection, they paused on the figure of Jon. No, it had nothing to do with how his injuries seemed to have been healed or how handsome he looked, but the output of his flow pattern she got from him.

Like the staircases, Jon was giving too much spiritual flow pattern than usual. It was as if the veil over her eyes had been lifted, and she awakened the True Sight--which was acclaimed as one of the highest order abilities of wizards.

However, Noyar knew that was not right. She never practised any high arts, she was content with all the knight spiritual breathing scripture. So that could only mean that this rift space has changed her eyes or their body. Perhaps both.

“Noyar,” Jon called, getting the odd look from her. “Is something wrong?”

Noyar closed her eyes forcefully, though the blue halo still lingered for several seconds over her closed eyelids. After calming down, her power of dominion, she opened her eyes, feeling a bit dizzy in the head.

“It seemed we can’t trust our Dominion here,” she said and sat down.

Each moment they passed, they were becoming more restless. Noyar was biting her lips to make them bloody while Jon proceeded to look for a way out. Naturally, he didn't go further than where he couldn't see Noyar on the floor, but that much was lacking to figure out anything that he hadn't already.

Well, with all that travelling, he became somewhat familiar with how to work his dominion of gravity.

'My dominion might guide us here, that's what Oscar said.' Noyar was thinking too hard about that and trying with her dominion eyes to find anything that could provide a way, but so far all she got was a headache.

Jon dropped on his butt for the fourth time. He stood up immediately, but didn't go forward to scout more.

"Noyar," Jon said, "I don't think we can wait here further. The--"

"Shh." Noyar silenced him and opened her dominion eyes at the floor, finding a wobbling structure of pattern there. Something was not right there. She had examined that before, it was not like that before, but now it was as if the string were untangling to open . . . a portal?

Two figures came out of the wobbling portal and fell just like them on their butt.

"Phew!" Sighed in relief one redhead young man. "Did you guys wait for long?"

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