At the entrance of the rift, the three of them stood. The rift gate itself had long disappeared since they stepped through it.
Assaulted by the cold, emotionless wind of the strange realm, they shivered intermittently, their eyes lingering on the horizon that sprawled far before them.
If they wanted to... they couldn't even dare... going forward was out of the question. With the intermittent groundbreaking tremors and sky-ripping sounds that tore their way to them, no, they didn't even consider it.
Besides, Northern had instructed them not to. That instruction alone overwhelmed every other feeling and thought that they had.
Aster stared into the distance; compared to the other two cowering figures, he stood with a little bit of composed confidence, glaring at the ominous line of the horizon where the auspicious sounds rang from.
'Damn, I want to go...'
He clenched his fist.
He was itching for it so badly, itching to see Northern in action, to witness with his own mortal eyes what might the strange and mysterious Drifter embodied.
But he also knew what was waiting for him should he disobey. So far, he could not tell what would even happen.
A frown settled upon his face as he thought about it. Then he clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction and turned his face away from the horizon for once.
Just as he did, the rift shuddered; the sky suddenly looked as if armies riding chariots of light had found their way to the corrupted sky, purging it from within.
The landscape shook as if a mountain-sized abomination was about to tear out of the ground. But that was all about it.
Then behind them, the portal that had disappeared began to shimmer back to life, sparking with threads of lightning.
Eventually, a swirling mass like a whirlwind in a blue ocean emanated from the air and widened, once again recreating their way outside.
Aster stared with widened eyes, his eyeballs shaking.
'What? He is done? No, he can't be done.'
It had not even been an hour, no, thirty minutes!... since Northern ventured deeper into the rift, and yet the rift gate had reappeared.
The reappearance of the gate, of course, meant that the rift guardian had been defeated and the core had been destroyed.
Northern had prevailed. And that too... alone.
'I have never heard of this in my entire life.'
A Drifter... not even in the times of legend and heroes, when strong drifters existed. No one had singlehandedly cleared a rift. Not even a tier I, not to talk of tier V.
Aster was horribly gripped by the shock of realization. His entire body trembled, his eyes just kept shaking... it was almost as if his body's reaction to the situation was too much. Or was there something else to it?
The other two, slightly surprised but compared to Aster, they were like clueless children, only happy that their way out of the rift had come back. They would not be eaten by monsters.
Without warning, Northern landed before the three of them, analyzing them with a cold stare in his eyes.
Then he extended the bag in his hand forward to the two.
"Take. Those are the spoils."
"You even picked the cores? How did you get enough time to do all of that, in about twenty- five minutes?"
Northern's gaze lingered on the chatterbox for a couple of seconds, bland and unreadable. Then he made a dumb expression and shrugged.
"It was that long? Fuck me."
He walked into the rift and disappeared into the swirling whirlpool of essence.
Aster looked at the two of them-who were joyously holding the bag of cores.
They stared at him too, blank, and shrugged before walking into the rift.
Aster stayed for a few seconds, his sense of self forgotten, biting his fingers. The gate crackled, signaling its will to enter eternal slumber in the bosom of a certain person's soul. The crackle helped bring Aster to reality again, then he stepped out of the rift.
By the time he stepped out, the disaster had already begun.
"What? Not only did you come outside in just twenty-seven minutes after entering the rift, you were also able to kill all the monsters, including the Guardian! How's that possible?!" The rift official in charge shouted with lost composure.
The bag of cores was on the ground, opened; all the other officials could see it and were exchanging shocked glances with each other.
The instructor, directly from the academy, was just arriving at the scene, walking forward with a tensed look as he could see the commotion in front.
Reaching there, he asked:
"What is going on here?"
The rift official looked at him sternly as he explained, every word dripping with palpable respect.
"These students finished the rift in twenty-seven minutes. They also managed to kill off the rift guardian and had enough time to pick all the cores."
The instructor, his brown eyes settled calmly over the four of them. He shifted his gaze to the table and took Northern and his cohorts' profile papers.
As he read through, a small frown tugged at the edges of his brows.
"Students of the non-combative school? That's impossible," he muttered.
The instructor raised his head and looked at Northern.
"How exactly did you achieve this?"
"It's simple, I asked all three of them to pick the cores, while I alone focused on attacking the monsters."
His response caused the frown on the instructor's face to deepen. He shifted his eyes to the paper in his hands, studying Northern's own in particular.
Then his eyes widened as he saw some information that anyone would have missed.
"He's a Sage? At sixteen? This is inconceivable."
With staggering eyes, he looked at Northern.
"How are you a Sage at sixteen? Which nobility do you hail from?"
Northern shook his head, answering with an unimpressed and unbothered look in his eyes.
"I am from no noble family... grew up in the countryside. But I was one of the unlucky students that was forged by the hellish crucible of the dark continent. In fact, sir, I am the unluckiest of them all."