The Land Of Shattered Memories

The entire realm was the product of the manifestation field influenced by the very thing that was guarding the 'Mother'. Or even possibly, the 'Mother' itself.

But now that the guardian was taken over by the horrific substances, the only way to gain back the control of the fight was to get out from the influenced vicinity.

Out to the core's subconscious field.

The gravityless void had finally acquired its pulling force to the abyss. Slowly and slowly, it was heightening, making it hard for Jack as he needed to balance himself on top of the travelling protruding limb from the black flesh portal.

Jack followed instructions from the friend within his head.

Right now, he traveled at the speed of a cheetah, sprinting on top of a perfect ever growing branch from the portal that was directed at the opposite side from the horrendous calamity.

The bullet-hell of tarnished souls didn't matter much to him as he realized that he could plow them out of the way using the glaive.

Now that he had a clear goal, there was nothing that could hamper his determination to survive.

[Estimated time until reaching the outside subconscious field at the current median of speed_

[Three minutes.]

[You're doing good, Jack. It's good that you have never skipped your legs day.]

"The only thing I would probably skip from now on is the chance to explore a suspiciously ancient cave that goes deep kilometers into this whole planet's core!"

The amount of the black flesh portals appeared within the frame increased exponentially. Likewise the numbers grew, they started to get more aggressive as they began to entangle and shift its direction unlike the one that Jack's ran on.

Eventually, some of them were having the velocity of a heat seeking missile that was faster than the one Jack trod.

"This is." Jack huffed and puffed whilst he tried to maintain his speed, slashing all of the incoming tarnished souls and seeking long limbs along the way. "Excruciatingly, disorienting!"

He pursued the edge of this realm and assaulted any kind of pursuers and hurdles.

[Thirty seconds.]

Jack ran and ran, he was barely able to open his eyes due to the fatigue. His mind was exhausted but his body kept moving.

The unrelenting wave of fleshy black limbs started to accommodate the majority of the vast void.

Time and space shifted. Although Jack was going in one direction, he felt like the whole void was bending and now he noticed that he was running up.

He fell to the void, only for his tentacle and glaive to latch onto another arising ever growing limb.

Shall the light be consumed, neither the daylight, would know.

There won't be any miracles or cheat that was able to save him. He noticed that Sephiroth had been saying something for a while but his consciousness was too weak to perceive it. Whether he was alive or dead, it was unknown to him.

All of this experience felt like he was playing roulette with a fully loaded gun. Despite the impossible odds, it seemed like Jack was strong-willed enough to change the direction of the barrel at the last second it was fired.

Of course, when a conscious living being encounters something harsh—something extremely uncomfortable and hopeless, there is nothing more relieving than ending it all right away with a trigger or a noose around their neck.

To finish the struggle, to avoid the truth, to avoid those imminent pain that was coming faster than the scream.

Jack might have this kind of experience close to his home. Maybe there was a reason for him to keep running on a small moving line with his veins roaring in blood every second he kept moving forward.

It was unpleasant, yet he still did it.

[Open your eyes if you perceive this, Jack.]

Jack yawned his senses. Vision opened, he was met with a familiar and depressing vast white that had been accompanying him for millions of years.

He was laid on its pure white ground. Baffled, he got up, slowly straightening his crumbling body.

The pain wasn't there. He looked at his hands. The webbing red veins were not visible anymore.

"What is this place?"

[Congratulations, Jack. You have entered the subconscious field of the realm's core_

[Joke aside, my current computation is null toward this kind of place. The firewall within this place is heavier than that of Akashic Record. If I guess it correctly, then I think this place will be the place where you will find the answer.]

"Hah," said Jack with a tired voice. Despite that, he tried his best to force an awkward smile. "Can I find the answer to the meaning of the universe?"

[You're one tough old man.]

As Jack darted his eyes around the white view, the uneasy yet nostalgic feeling of being isolated crept up to his spine.

He then heard a sound of arriving sand on his feet, he looked down and saw a sentence was inscribed in front of his damaged safety boots.

'Neither the dusts of the dust shall remain in thy memories.'

A sound of mild windy gale sweeped the sentence that he read. In an instant, the message was gone.

A twinkle could be heard. Jack then looked at the surroundings once again. The moment his view encountered the angle from before, numerous shards of floating glass manifested one by one within his frame.

"Sephiroth, analysis."

[I don't have the full information regarding these shards but from my hypothesis: These are the form of materialistic emotion that was fragmented, and lefted behind.]

"That is," Jack amusedly sneered. "A weird and cryptic comment from a super computer such as you."

[A solid and absolute truest information is different than anything that is omitted with the reconfiguration of description.]

Jack noticed that some of them had a straight line of shiny side, as if they were the edge indicator of a jigsaw puzzle.

He then tried to move the manifesting glass shards into one location. Slowly, he put the pieces to the position where they belong.

"This will take a while." Jack nervously chuckled. "I hope that there won't be any time limit in this kind of scenario, or it will be suck."