After Stealing Hero's Mother, I Reincarnated in the Fantasy World!

The artificial rift in which their test took place had a vast forested area of tens of thousands of kilometers. In the first day that they spent in the continuous monster hunt, they didn't even come close to exploring even 1 percent of its entire area.

The rift recreated the perfect change of day and night and even had its own sun and moon. And it was not limited to that, as almost every detail here was elaborated and seemed indistinguishable from the real world. Moreover, there were hundreds of thousands of artificially created monsters and plants that needed to be energized from time to time.

And after all, this was only a D-ranked rift, above which were higher ranked rifts with even more complex structure and even stronger monsters.

One logical question arose from all this.

Where does the academy get the spare resources to create and maintain all this?

And while many students wrote it off to the power and wealth of their academy, Rain knew the exact answer.

This space was simply not created by them and they were not its true owners.

Contrary to the academy's words that the artificial rifts were the fruit of their revolutionary magic that they had created after hundreds of years of research, that was not the case. They only used some spatial magic to connect the rift space to the real world and open a passage into it.

This was the truth behind most artificial rifts.

The true masters of these spaces were a special kind of monster that possessed the innate attribute of space and incredible skill in controlling it. This allowed these monsters to effortlessly create huge elaborate worlds and maintain them just as easily.

The main value of these monsters was this ability, so the academy quickly figured out how to use them efficiently, and began catching them to use their space for their own needs. This allowed the academy to avoid wasting unnecessary resources and the students to train in the most realistic conditions possible.

As for the chance that the students might have stumbled upon the true owner of the place while mopping up the rift?

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It was impossible!

The way to it was protected by a large array with several spatial anomalies, and to reach it you had to perfectly pass through hundreds of interferences without making a single mistake. Even one wrong turn would not allow you to reach the right place.

It was a win-win!

Of course, the academy just didn't take into account the existence of a hero who 'accidentally' gets through everything on the first try...

Or a villain who saw that future and could take advantage of it…

°°°°

When a sudden attack came upon Aelorian, appearing literally out of nowhere, Rain realized that they had already entered the territory of the master of this rift.

Immediately after the sudden attack, the surroundings became quiet again and, were it not for the lingering shock in Aelorian's eyes, it might have seemed as if nothing had happened.

She continued to stare at the cleanly cut trees and rocks, realizing that it could have been her in their place right now.

Sure, the bracelet each test participant received, in addition to being able to view their points and their location, had a feature that saved them from dying and instead threw them out of the rift. However, the pain from the injury still remained and Aelorian didn't want to experience what it felt like to be chopped in half.

Not to mention that as soon as the bracelet activated and threw the student out of the rift, he or she would receive an automatic fail for the test. And there was no way Aelorian wanted to fail her first test and go to the bottom of the academy, embarrassing herself and all the elves.

With these thoughts, Aelorian shifted her gaze to Rain.

Even she, who was perfectly oriented in the forest, was unable to sense the monster's attack in time. It was only thanks to Rain's quick reaction that she was able to avoid an unfortunate outcome.

However, once the initial shock of the sudden attack passed and she thought about who had attacked them, her view changed drastically.

Was it a dangerous monster?

Wrong!

Now in Alorian's eyes it was a walking pile of points!

With a hint of greed in her eyes, she stared at the spot the monster had recently attacked.

She didn't realize that she was now looking at this monster with the same gaze that Rain sometimes threw at her...

'Why does her look seem so familiar to me?'

Rain thought about it for a while before brushing it off. He was glad anyway at how quickly she'd recovered and regained her spirit.

'As expected of a heroine personally chosen by the World's Will.'

Rain wasn't really upset when the monster disappeared right after the sudden attack, because he knew that this attack was just a warning to them. And if they went further, the rift master would have no choice but to attack them again, which Rain wasn't worried about.

The only reason why the last attack was almost successful was because they had let their guard down, having gotten used to defeating weak monsters in this forest. Even Rain didn't know that they had already entered this place, so he wasn't prepared. However, now they were both on alert, so sudden attacks would no longer work, and the rift master would have to confront them in the open.

With these thoughts, Rain continued forward, and Aelorian followed without hesitation.

Her thinking was simple. If there really was such a special and strong monster here, the reward for it had to be enormous. And rather than running through the forests all day long and killing weak monsters, it was better to target bigger prey. Especially, it would allow them to test their skills in a more suitable battle.

This time, knowing their goal they accelerated even more, moving in the right direction. Gradually, the air around them became more and more electrified.

While Aelorian was too excited about her upcoming encounter with a serious opponent, Rain turned his attention to his bracelet.

It was no longer working. Neither the number of their points, nor their position in the rankings, not even their location was displayed on the bracelet anymore.

All of these functions, as well as the bracelet itself, were linked to this rift, and now that they were getting closer and closer to its core, those functions were starting to fail.

'It's likely that even the automatic death saving function is no longer working now.'

Rain had already expected something like this, so he wasn't particularly surprised, and concentrated on moving forward.

After a while, the system's voice echoed in his head.

[Spatial anomaly detected.]

Rain turned sharply in the direction the system was pointing and half a minute later they reached the right place. They stopped, noticing that a meter in front of them, space was distorting and inexplicably twisting.

From what he saw of the hero's future, Rain knew that this was what they were looking for - a shortcut to the heart of the rift and its true master.

Rain looked at the elf girl beside him and, not noticing no hesitation in her gaze, pulled her against him.

Sensing her breasts pressed against his chest, Aelorian weakly tried to pull away. Feeling her weak resistance, Rain pointed to the distorting space in front of them.

"You can sense the spatial fluctuations from here, right? The closer we are to each other, the less chance we have of being forcibly separated after entering there."

After hesitating a bit, Aelorian lowered her head in embarrassment and hugged him back, pulling him close to her and whispering faintly.

"Thank you for saving me last time."

Enjoying the minty scent emanating from her, Rain stepped confidently into the wavering space before him.

***

Thanks for reading, everyone.