Ascension: Online

It took a long time for Hina-nee to settle down, but she finally did after a good half hour of gentle counseling done by yours truly. Really, despite her being older than me, she could act like a little girl sometimes — not that it was a bad thing. I found it cute.

We were now sitting in a restaurant, grabbing lunch before heading out for the third reality rift. Though… we had a somewhat unexpected newcomer here with us.

"So? Why are you here too?" I asked the girl sitting across from Hina-nee and I.

"Hehe, I'm yours now, so naturally I'm going to follow you wherever you go~" she replied happily as she munched on a chiken drumstick.

"… This is troublesome. Can we kick her out?" Furuwa glanced at her seatmate in disdain.

"What, from the game?" I scoffed. "Thanks to Aisa, even if we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to."

"Aisa? She's the one who got me stuck in here?" Nadeshiko looked up and smirked like a devil. "Where is she, I wonder?"

"Don't even think about it," I immediately cut in. "She's not here right now, but if you dare to lay a single finger on her, I'll kill you repeatedly until even infinite respawns won't do shit."

"My, so protective~" she giggled. "I'm jealous… Master, show me some love too…"

"Call me 'Master' one more time and you'll face the same punishment."

"Mm… then, how about senpai~?"

"We're the same age."

"Hm, daddy~?"

"… Are you kidding me right now?"

Furuwa, unable to watch any longer, sighed and cut in. "Look, stop flirting. It's getting on my nerves. As for what you should call him, just use what you used before - 'Kaze-kun.'"

"No!" Hina-nee interrupted, clutching my arm tightly. "Kaze-kun is my nickname for him, no one else is allowed to call him that!"

"Just call me Kaze," I said at last. "Furuwa does the same thing anyway."

"Okay~ Kaze it is. I'll only call you Master when we're alone at night, doing naughty-naughty things~"

"Stay away from my Kaze-kun!" Hina-nee took out a cross and held it up in front of her.

"W-Where did you get that?" I frowned in shock.

"That's not important! Kaze-kun, this girl is a devil!"

"R-Right, relax… I just remembered something," I calmed Hina-nee down, who was still on edge. "Nadeshiko, you may be of some use to me after all."

"Hm~? What is it, Master~? I am willing to do anything and everything for you, as long as you let me kill you after~"

"You can try, but just know it will be a three on one fight," I snickered. "I don't fight fair, doesn't matter if you're a cute girl or not."

"Yes, yes… just tell me what I need to do already~" she played with her hair as she chomped down on her eighth drumstick.

"After we finish eating, I'll be taking you to a place. I'll explain the details later."

"Mkay~"

Not wanting anyone eavesdropping to hear and learn about reality rifts, I decided to just leave the conversation at that.

*****

We finished eating soon after. After I paid, the four of us immediately headed out to the east side of the city, where we would find the reality rift should we keep heading in that direction.

"So, where are you taking me?" Nadeshiko asked once we got past the city gates, hands on the back of her head. "Are you going to tie me up somewhere? Kinky~"

"You won't be so carefree once you you get there," I muttered.

Around an hour later, we arrived at our destination. Close to it, anyway. This rift was the furthest from Qilian out of the three, so it took us a while to get here. It was stationed in the middle of a forest, isolated from any civilization nearby.

"Okay… any closer and we'll enter the rift," I said, exiting out of my System. "Luckily, this one is in a forest… otherwise, someone may have found out about it already."

"Yeah… we took care of the other two before anyone found out about them though, luckily," Hina-nee sighed.

"Well, even if they did find out about them, it's not like we would know," Furuwa remarked. "Hopefully they just treat it as some sort of hallucination."

"Uh, hello~? Is someone going to explain this to me?" Nadeshiko blinked a few times at me.

I sighed. "Just follow me. Oh, and take out your weapon."

She tilted her head. "Why?"

"Stop asking so many questions and just do as I say."

"Mkay~" she smiled happily and took out her scythe using her System.

Daringly, I took a step forward, the others following.

Immediately, a familiar yet still unbearable pressure weighed down on all of us, forcing us to kneel.

[Multiple hostile intruders detected. Status: Calamitous. Extinction protocol activated.]

The Creator replica began his speech once more as the world turned black and white, space distorted and sounds muffled.

[Artificial intelligence activated. Welcome, intruders, to a reality rift. I am the Creator, founder of all of creation. A god, if you will. Do not think of this place as a mere hole in the endless annals of space-time. Within this rift lies both the power to save the world, and to end it. Which path will you take? Will you even be able to obtain the power at all?]

"… End the world? Sounds fun!" Nadeshiko cried, eyes sparkling even though she was stuck in a kneeling position.

The rest of us shot her disgusted looks.

[With great power comes great risks. You will have 24 hours to locate the core of this rift and make your escape. Once the allotted time is over, this reality rift will implode. You and all memories of you will be forever lost in the dark corners of space and time.]

Nadeshiko's excitement stopped.

"Memories…"

She looked down and fell silent, a rarity for her. She seemed to be genuinely thinking about something, possibly related to her past.

[Are you ready, challengers? The timer begins three seconds. Three… two… one…]

"Here we go again," Furuwa sighed.

[You now face divine judgement — may it extend eternally.]

*****

The pressure from us was lifted, and we stood back up again, stretching our muscles.

"Ugh… no matter how many times we do this, I'm never going to get used to that overwhelming pressure and irritating voice of the Creator," Furuwa muttered in frustration.

"Well, at least this is the last one," Hina-nee smiled. She appeared to be fine now. "After we get this done, Aisa should be able to come back…"

"…" Nadeshiko was quiet, for whatever reason. I had expected her to be asking me questions right about now, but she still seemed to be contemplating something.

I decided to just leave her be for now. "Let's head to the core, then decide what to do from there."

"I'm hoping it's another small one…" Hina-nee prayed.

Several minutes of walking later, we could see the core in the distance. Just as Hina-nee had hoped, this was a small one.

That said… I wonder if the size of the cores were of importance… I would have to ask Aisa about this when she came back.

"Might as well start explaining now," I muttered, then turned to our fourth party member. "Nadeshiko."

She seemed lost in thought, as if she didn't hear my words.

"Nadeshiko!" I repeated in a louder tone this time.

She snapped back to reality, then blinked a few times. My eyes widened as I saw what was in her eyes:

Tears.

She quickly wiped them away and looked back at me.

"What is it?"

"You… were you crying just now?"

"Hm~? Crying? What's that?"

"I saw tears in your-"

"Tears? What are those?"

"…" Clearly, she wasn't going to answer my questions. This was just her way of saying 'I don't want to talk about it'.

I sighed. If she didn't want to open up, I wasn't going to pry.

"Anyway… I'll be explaining your job now, so listen closely," I said, clearing my throat. "In a few minutes, I will be assigning each of us a direction to go in, you included. Whichever direction you are given, just keep walking in a straight line in that direction. Don't make any detours, and try to remain as on track as possible. Systems are disabled here, so don't rely on setting a waypoint on your map."

"That reminds me… are skills usable here?" Furuwa asked, raising her hand.

Hina-nee tested it out, then shook her head. "Apparently not. Only Kaze-kun can, it seems, due to his special situation."

"What special situation?" Nadeshiko tilted her head curiously.

"I'll explain after we finish doing this. You're in the same boat as us now anyway," I muttered. "In any case, you got the instructions so far?"

She nodded, so I continued.

"Good. Now, after walking for a while, you'll eventually come across this black rotating tetrahedron hovering in mid-air. It's not too small and it's also glowing a bright pale green, so you shouldn't miss it unless you've gone way off course. Once you find it, just wrap your hand around it and hold it there until it disappears."

"Heads up, the process hurts a bit," Furuwa warned. "I don't like you, but since we're working together, I figured I'd at least tell you that much."

It hurt a lot more than just a bit, but she was already being quite generous, telling Nadshiko this. The accuracy of the information was a different matter.

"After the tetrahedron disappears, just return to where we are right now — this is called the core, both our starting point and our ending point." I concluded. "That's all for now. Understand?"

Nadeshiko nodded. "So, basically, I have to walk somewhere, grab something, then come back, right?"

"That… sounds surprisingly accurate," I noted. "It'll be more complicated than that, but not by much, honestly."

"Alright, so, same plan?" Hina-nee asked me, to which I nodded.

Then, after placing a shadow replica of myself a short distance away, I prepared to launch myself into the air to get directly above the core and see the paths.

"Here we go…"

'Blink.'