Chapter 174: The world around

"So, are you ready?" Ever since the idea appeared in my mind for the very first time, I knew that getting this girl to travel along with me would be a bad one. Starting with the problem of sheer delay born from a lack of the girl's ability to move as rapidly as I could on my own, her appearance could easily scare scores of people. 

And I didn't wish for this kind of attention at all. 

"To leave everything I know and love just because someone was too conceited to admit that they were wrong? No, for that I'm not ready." Clearly dissatisfied with the outcome of the recent negotiations, the winged girl was quick to follow her words with the voiced-out dissatisfaction of hers. 

"I'm not the one fixated on obtaining the sacred core." Instantly putting the girl down, I shook my head before laughing her protest off. "In the end, if you are unsure about following me, you are free to stay behind." Shrugging my shoulders, I explained the situation to the girl. 

What others would take for empty words aimed at discouraging the girl, was what I actually believed in. For me, it made no difference whether the girl would tag along or not. While some would hardly be ready to give up on a local guide like the girl, I was pretty certain that even with a lot of distance between the main source of the conflict between those two human races, people would still find her figure and especially, her wings nothing less than hateful.

"Can you just shut up and go already? How long are you going to enjoy the fact that I have no other choice but to follow you right now?" Unable to use logic and triumph over me with it, the girl instantly switched the gears to put the emotional blame for the entire situation on me. 

"As I said," Turning my head towards the girl, I sent her a quick wink before moving my head back and disregarding all the girl's attempt at making me feel bad and guilty. "You are free to remain behind. It's your own wish that pushes you into following me, not something so silly as my words alone."

That was everything that I wanted to tell the girl. Disregarding her further attempts at putting me down, I fully focused on the type of transportation that I decided on when thinking about my next moves. And just like before, I imagined an ugly, wriggling worm in my hands at the same time as picturing a beautiful naked woman right below my feet. 

For a moment, the force of attraction and repulsion cancelled each other out, growing at the exact same rate. With my mind reaching the limits of what it could process, the girl's attempt at further destabilising my mind completely went around my skull only to disappear somewhere in the distance. 

Then, the stability of the two opposing forces suddenly came to an end. 

This time, it wasn't intentional. Or rather, given how far I was supposed to travel, both the repulsion and the attraction grew to the point where I was unable to properly control them. And once those forces reached the level when they started to slip out of my grasp, it didn't take long for the repulsion to grow at a slightly greater pace. 

After all, there was a reason why it was easier to feel the negative emotions over the positive ones. While that reason wasn't something I had any influence over, it was the essence of humanity to use one's own limitations in order to further one's own potential!

"Off we go!" Even though I didn't really care whether the girl would follow me or not, it was within our agreement to actually let her follow me. As such, I didn't really have a choice but to let those three words of warning off before surrendering to the disparity of the two forces myself.

Tang! 

As if the reality itself was forced to bend under my wishes, my entire body exploded in pain. Forced into a great acceleration at a single instant, I felt as if the change of momentum was enough to rip my body into a myriad of pieces. Due to how powerful the acceleration from my repulsion was, it felt as if the speed at which my upper body exploded into the skies was far greater than the speed that my lower body achieved, almost resulting in those two parts going a separate way. 

Thankfully, in the end, my flesh managed to hold. On the other hand, as soon as the initial outburst of torture was over, I forced my head to move a bit to the side, making my own eyes capable of seeing the girl's reaction to my sudden dash. 

And as unbelievable as it was, this winged girl turned into nothing but an insignificant dot far below my feet, unable to keep up with my explosive speed at all!

'I wonder if she will make it…' With this stray thought appearing in my mind, I was about to start guessing as I no longer wielded any influence over the direction or the speed at which I was travelling, a sudden outburst of pain travelled through my spine once again. 

But this time, there was no sudden change to my momentum to actually justify the outburst!

*Ping! The system managed to recover the base Interface function.* 

*Ping! Display the interface now. Accept/Refuse*

For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, a familiar feeling appeared in my mind. While the experience was full of that mechanic feeling that my system had to itself, it wasn't actually the basement system that changed my life. ANd I could claim so with quite a lot of confidence, due to how familiar this feeling was.

With my entire body flying at some incredible speed, just the air resistance was already enough to force my hands alongside my waist, making me unable to even check if the bracelet that I kept more like a momentum than an actual tool on my wrist actually lit up.

But even without this visual confirmation, that one thing was certain. The system created by the long lost civilisation from that apocalypse world of mine somehow managed to reboot!

'Accept!' So high in the air, there was absolutely nothing that I could do on my own. Outside of trying to see through the great distance to locate the winged girl that was supposed to follow me, I was forced to just wait until the course of my flight would get me sufficiently low above the surface so that my repulsion could be used once again to maintain my flight and change its vector to point above the surface rather than towards it. 

But now, the situation changed. 

With my vision exploding in familiar light, I could see a set of figures and numbers flying all over my vision, before everything turned calm and silent. After just this single moment, the rapidly changing numbers managed to calm down, replaced by just three figures slowly but steadily flashing in the corner of my sight. 

*Five hundred fifty*

*Two thousand, four hundred meters*

*Eighteen seconds.*

All of those numbers didn't just remain the same through my flight. While the first one continued to grow, the other two steadily decreased, as if falling towards the absolute zero. And with just a few seconds worth of thoughts, I was able to uncover the meaning of those three simple numbers.

'Speed, vertical height and the time until impact? Until crashland? Or maybe until I will once again be able to influence the trajectory of my flight?' I couldn't be sure of the meaning of the numbers, but after a momentary observation, they seemed to fit rather well. 

Either way, the only thing that mattered now, was that I was falling. And rather fast at that. If not for some insane height at which my body cut through the thin air, I would've long turned into a ballistic missile, laying waste to a random patch of land. 

Yet, despite how I already gave up on the girl, after a few whiles of lagging behind, her wings suddenly appeared in my view. Spreading them out as wide as she could, the girl's aura changed. Just the feat of appearing in my field of view, when I couldn't move my head at all, was worthy of praise. 

Most likely, this was the first moment when I felt some kind of respect towards this girl. 

After a moment of rest, the girl flapped her huge, white wings, instantly closing the distance between the two of them. Barely a few feet away, it appeared as if she shifted through space itself, shortening her path through it. 

I felt my eyebrow moving up. 

What if… If I actually try to learn this kind of feat? 

This was just a stray thought, but it froze my mind for a moment, allowing the girl to fully catch up to me. 

"Don't lag behind!" For the first time since she met me, the girl revealed somewhat of a smile on her face. And a triumphant one at that. But there was something deeper in it. This time though, I didn't dare to claim that I could notice it with just my empathy, without my witch abilities. 

There was an excitement, a longing for something grand and majestic, vibrantly shining within the girl's soul. And that strange feeling of this girl was what finally got me curious about the world around me.