The Novel's Sidekick



The simultaneous gravity shifts were not good for their head. They have shifted to different gravitational staircases dozens of times in the last five minutes. Even though Oscar mentioned they were separate from their physical body, that didn’t change the fact that Noyar was feeling dizzy. It's safe to say that others shared the same sentiments.

Oscar himself was feeling that way at first, too, but he was holding himself better with each moment.

“Think you don’t have a head,” Oscar said. “That will make it better. All you're feeling is highly psychological. You don't have a physical body to feel physical pain here, but your mind was not used to having a no physical body, so it was mimicking all of these physical and physiological feelings.”

Huh, sounds easy to say, but would she do that exactly? This place doesn’t make sense. It's like a twisted and lonesome form of some nightmare that you would never want to trap into.

"Think of a way to work around it."

Noyar took Oscar's advice, but she had no clue how to work around it. As he said it, her body was too familiar with having a physical form.

“Alright,” Oscar opened his mouth once again, taking a look at the beast chasing after them. “It would take a couple more minutes for the beast to reach us.”

“And how far away are we from a place with zero gravity?”

“We’re just halfway there,” Oscar sighed.

“Alright then, let’s move faster, shall we?” Noyar shouted as she saw the beast leapt from one gravitational shift to another.

It was learning from them, though they could only shift from one gravitational pull to another only when the staircases were divided into more staircases. Only Jon amongst them could do shifting without chasing the staircase on foot, and that too, using his dominion of gravity, but with just leaping, the beast was shifting from one gravitational plane to another.

It could have done that before, but it was only learning that now. However, it was not so accurate with its jumps, as it fell on a different staircase than it intended, pulled by that staircase's gravity.

But the most terrifying thing of all was that it wouldn’t take it long to figure that out. It would eventually reach them in its relentless pursuit. Two minutes later, Oscar said it.

“Whatever you do, don’t engage in meaningless combat with it,” Oscar said. “The success of us reaching there would mostly depend on you, Jon. Push it back with your dominion when it tries to jump into our staircase.”

Jon nodded warily, stealing a glance at the beast—traversing through different gravitational planes. He really couldn’t do it after all the exhaustion he had been through, but it might be possible to do it working with the other gravitational pull in the surroundings.

The horrifyingly pissed Winterheart Reindeer was about to reach them in two minutes, more or less. They were running 270 degrees to its staircase now. It would take two leapt for it to reach their staircase.

“Jon, prepare yourself,” Noyar shouted.

The broad-shouldered knight stood by on the way, amassing all his power to push at the right moment. The beast was successful on its first leap. It raced to take the second one, roaring at them. Jon had enough time to prepare, but Noyar couldn’t help but feel chills in the anticipation.

The beast leapt from their right to traverse the gravitational pull. Jon shouted, raising his arms and lurching them forward, forcing them to fail in the leap. He did it right when the beast was free of the gravitational pull of the staircase it was in. So Jon forced it back three or four more staircases away before it was pulled by another staircase.

“That will buy a dozen seconds,” Oscar shouted from ahead. “Let’s go.”

He was ahead of everyone. Behind him was Yeriel, followed by Noyar, and lastly, it was Jon, who was running slower. They traverse another staircase shortly, and then another. Now they were finally on the right angle. Unfortunately, the dozen seconds passed, and the beast was on the trail again.

Jon backed away to do his thing again, but this time it didn’t go as it was planned. The beast roared, leaping at the sight of Jon. An outrageous amount of spiritual aura outburst of the beast, flinging away Jon half a dozen staircases away.

“Oh, Crap!”

“Jon!” Noyar shouted and was about to engage the beast, forgetting everything Oscar said about not doing.

She encountered the attack of the beast as it rammed its head into her chest violently, throwing her away. She would have flung away only a couple of staircases, as the excruciating pain consumed her. This was the first time she took an attack head-on.

The beast’s next target was Yeriel, who stopped running, while Oscar did the same a dozen metres ahead of them.

Yeriel and the Winterheart Reindeer battled under their outrageous spiritual pressure, while Oscar sprinted towards the conflict. The amount of spiritual energy here was different. It was a lot less they could control than the physical realm, not to mention none of them was that familiar with this place. Luckily, Oscar didn’t plan on using spiritual energy or aura.

He raised the Punisher and shot at the conflict, ignoring the spiritual pressure. Without a single ounce of fear, he thrust the sword into its neck as the beast cried as much in agony as in rage.

The beast weakened, but Oscar wasn’t done yet. He rammed his knees into its lower body while withdrawing the sword and thrusting again. He continued it half a dozen times before the long, elongated antlers penetrated through his chest.

“Oscar!” Yeriel, who was silent the whole time, shouted, rushing in a mad dash towards the conflict.

Noyar was staring at the scene in terror, too far away to be any good.

However, the assault taker didn’t seem to share any of their sentiment. Oscar’s eyes narrowed, and a smug smile appeared on his lips as he locked eyes with the beast, who was struggling in pain.

“Told you,” he said, ramming a fist at the monster as crimson flames lit out his arms, “There’s no Christmas for you.”

Oscar rammed a couple more punches and knees before throwing the beast off the staircase.

_ _ _

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