"Hey Aefia!"
"Huh?" I looked back to Cedric waving his arms in the air from quite the distance away. It was already midnight by now, and we were getting more and more drained of energy. Turns out, Puppet and Cindy just did a surface inspection of where the dungeons are and the direct location was going to be something we humans had to handle. It really ticked me off, but Cedric said that it was fine.
Anyways, I turned to face him two tree lines away, with an excited expression on his complexion. "Did you find it?" I asked while walking over to his place. There, right on a tree, was a rupture pressed directly onto the tree bark. I lifted my fingers to touch it, just to make sure it was real.
"I don't know much about dungeons. But this is all I could find that was strange. Also, I can feel a huge amount of magic energy shooting out of this tear." He added while watching me unsheath Spectrum and sent it right towards the gap, lifting the blade above my head and placing my feet on the bark to steady myself.
As it stabbed into the other dimension, I found it hard to break the remaining of the glass-like surface and immediately started twisting the blade instead. Eventually, the crack got wide enough and the surface crumbled completely. But still, it wasn't wide enough even for a person to get in.
I discovered this not so long ago, that these types of dungoen and distortions in reality were caused by some wrong steps in the experiment that is ongoing by the competition owner. The fact that the errors between attempts of trying to flip the spacetime fabric can cause such a thing to happen to this world, is truly horrifying to know. I imagined that if this planet is having to suffer this, of course Earth must have undergone this same process too.
But not only that, there must me many more worlds that are suffering this same fate all thanks to one person's intervention into 'society'. When I first arrived to this world, Ms. Avry told me that this world, is just a fantasy world like many others. So if I am correct, no wonder there are so many dungeon-related novels with intense violence.
I couldn't tell just how many out there know about this, but in my perceptions, there must be millions, if not, at least half a billion. Regardless, it was still hard to believe that unlike Earth, where this happened at least once every single year, this world is previlaged to get it onces in a hundred years. And I think this century is the Great Catastrophe for this world.
Back on Earth, one day worth of the catastrophe would require the government to dispatch the entire country's millitary. Not only that, for every year, a new country will be taken hostage for those dungoen burst to happen. Even low privelaged countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, they were never free from this. And those three were the few first ones to have been attacked within five years of the disaster being declared world-class.
Although some karens were... A bit too complaining about this unsolvable situation, they were the first ones to get wiped out because of their stupidity. They thought those fracture in realities were some prank a kid pulled on them and hit the beasts with... A non-stick frying pan. And if you thought those karens were like my greasy-faces aunts... Well you are right.
At least those people got wiped out, so why not my handful of relatives? Or else I won't have thought about this competition in the first place. Anyways, thanks to the karens, I managed to learn how to fight those beasts althought I never got skills in doing it. And the people at the military were the reason I learnt about the energy transfer. It also mattered for stamina and stuff like that, maybe even weapons.
The clearing would end up taking months or even an year worth, until the next yearly catastrophe would wash it all up again. In the midst, the most richest countries did nothing then just count their stacks. After that, damages were going to take even more trouble and cost. It was only thanks to a few novel and graphic comic fanatics who joined to help exterminate the beast horde later on. That actually caused me to pick up books and stories. I loved ones with more gore so I could learn battle techniques.
Although I had never told anyone about this, but I had always wished to be into one of those teams myself. Anyways, I was still shocked after I had come here, that the participants were dumb enough to not understand and stop being fooled. But I won't lie since I was also one of them, and was fooled around, even puppeted.
Finally, returning to the situation I was currently in, I looked with disappointment at the half broken dungeon opening. "Well this toughness does show just how much energy I need to defeat those beasts inside. I am glad you decided to come over. However, I am also afraid for your safety." I let out a sigh while looking at Cedric's direction.
"Ah! Don't worry about me! Even if I am new to all this dungoen and stuff, I am still very much interested into knowing more about it!" He answered while beaming. He didn't seem to care for the possible death scenarios he would need to face sooner or later.
If I recall correctly, in the novel I read, he was supposed to have been the one to introduce Nada to dungoens. And in this timeline, I was the one introducing him to one.
In the novel, precisely the time that Nada has entered her fourth year of staying in this world, she had met Cedric and a month later, she started going into dungoens. Back then, some other runaway participants happened to have returned Cedric to the palace, but there wasn't enough explanation on who. But it definetly wasn't I. However, up to now, I have been paying little heed to the novel and its contents. I may have actually forgotten it besides for the few characters that were a threat to Nada, as I was one of them in the future.
Actually, my character received the least attention. She was seen as a villain who betrayed her cousin after having explained the entire family bloodline tree. She was astonished and felt like I was helping her, however, she didn't know what she was about to get into doing. So I tried to stop her. And ended up killed by her own hands.
The details on the novel, was that she felt peaceful when she got rid of me. And it still gives me chills to think that the novel's Nada was someone so kind to me once in a lifetime. The reason for the peacefulness, was because she had always hated 'her' for the amount of ruthless sacrifices at that Aefia made to just survive instead of dying.
In the novel, Aefia had always been loathed for her murderous nature and her geniousity which helped her to easily navigate her problems. However, she only did that to protect her family member. That's because, since I am her, I know what I feel about what situations. Even at the last moment when Aefia tried to prevent Nada from entering the battlefield, she had sacrificed her freedom and became a slave for the Torture Cell. To keep Nada from a destined death.
At the end, Nada didn't make it, and died. Thus, giving the book it's title.
And the ending was a bit shocking, because Aefia never hated Nada even when she died with a sword piercing through her heart all the way to her liver. She had smiled with blood pooling from the sides of her mouth and still said, "Please be safe and return alive... Nada."
However, Nada clicked her tongue and moved away with her bloodied sword without even a second glance. Aefia only believed that the harsh reality that Nada had to go through was due to the sudden changes, but when I read Nada's perspective, I was rather left paranoid of the Nada who was with me.
The last words from Nada to the novel Aefia, went like this...
"I have always resented you for your confidence and power. That you could navigate such depths of battle with not even a twitch, and when you could have taught me, you never did. What you did rather than that, is that you are still blocking me from solving all my problems and returning back to Earth. How shameless of you."
After that, I started to distance my twelve-year-old self from Nada a bit. I may have been alone during break times, but I used to let out a sigh of relief when I would recall the moments from the novel. From then, I diverted my attention from my daily life to getting realistic goals like taking care of my biological brother. Shortly after I had become fully submerged into my idealistic ideas, Nada came scammering back to me for attention. That was because... I was earning my own money and running someone's entire life at that age itself.
Since I was young, I forgave, but because I knew everything of her nasty reality, I decided maybe I would maintain my guard and still try to change her. That was until I met her again at the competition, when my entire world turned to collapse. I thought, maybe she still had a possibility of becoming like her novel version—the Nada with the cold gaze as she glared down at the dying novel Aefia and clicked her tongue.
When she started wielding a dagger... I became even more scared. When I saw too much of a similarity between her and the novel Nada, I started to replay the scenes that the novel Nada had done to the novel Aefia. Surprisingly enough, the results worked and I became the novel Nada to her. Our roles swapped right there—right the point where the novel Nada should have been, at that instant, I took her place instead. However, from there, their interactions stopped until Aefia met Nada again at her final hour of the final battle of the novel.
However, now that I know about the novel Aefia, I have come to think of myself in a different perspective and started to sacrifice for my own results. This actually happened to change the direction of the novel and the story to my liking, although I have no idea what I am to face and what I was to look after. Because my interactions to Nada was the bare minumimum, I decided to live my life the way I have wanted to. Trying to find joy while doing what I might be good at. At least like this, I am not dying so easily.
And thinking back to Cedric's situation in the story, he actually didn't have a backstory. So that was why I had to ask him to tell me about what he had suffered so I could get rid of this Mides family threat right now.
As I devoured myself into my thoughts, I continued to stab continuously at the dungoen passageway. I started to scrunch my face unknowingly due to the amount of times that I was recalling my death in the novel, and I couldn't help but feel pitiful towards myself back then. That I was so stupid enough to sacrifice for someone who not only abandoned my advice, but killed me and then went ahead to die herself.
"Hold on Aefia. You can stop there." Cedric spoke while stopping my hands in front of me, where the blade happened to point towards myself. He didn't seem frantic at first, but he slowly looked to be confused due to my situation. I looked at him with doubt since I was inside my mindless world of thoughts. Then, I glanced towards the dungoen entrance.
"Oh... That is huge..." I muttered to myself as I looked at the entire tree bark that was glowing the turquoise colour of the dungoen entrance. "Sorry..." I spoke while sheathing back Spectrum at my side. "I was lost in my thoughts."
"What happened though?" He asked with a friendly concern, which he always put on when I seemed to be hiding something or when he thought something was dangerous for me.
"Nothing... I was just thinking about myself." I honestly replied while popping a smile onto my face.
He exchanged a glance between the tree and me, and then blurted out the following.
"If you are worried about your strength—"
"No. That's not it." I cut him off immediately. "It's just that... Do I look like a person who ever lived a life sacrificing for the others?" I asked in return.
Cedric took a moment of pause to think. "But aren't you still sacrificing for other people?"
"Huh?! Wait not like that! Like... Do you think I ever lived a life where I was betrayed by someone who I had sacrificed even my freedom for? Only to end up being hated by the same person?"
"Why? Did something like that ever happen?" He asked me with the concern he always put up for me.
"No, but just asking." I clarified. Although it did happen to Aefia in another dimension.
"Then I guess the answer would be if you are talking about yourself many years apart. But I don't think you are that easy to kill. You are definitely someone who would step away right when the threat seems to be at your next footstep, so no. You are literally quite the opposite. And the fact about hate, I know that you hate them before they show signs of hating you." He answered while smiling.
With his response, I let out a sigh of relief. "Then I am moving in the right direction." I blurted out to myself and looked at the dungoen.
"Oh, and! Since the beasts fear cobra venom, you should carry this vile securely around you. Just pop the lid open and shut every five minutes until the faint scent dissapears." I added while holding a dusted vile of the venom, that I had luckily located from my first other-worldly dungoen.
Hearing this, Cedric looked at me with furrowed eyebrows as if in confusion.
"I have two bottle, don't worry about me. I have one for myself. And in case you get attacked, pour the venom around you on the floor and look for a way to escape immediately." I added short while later.