Chapter 132: The Split Between Worlds And The Room!
Neve, or the original owner of his body, grinned as he tilted his head to look at Aldric.
The bear beastman took another step back, his entire body tense with fear and confusion.
Aldric was trying so hard to find something to defend himself with. He reached down and took the sharp horn weapon from the unconscious guard’s hand. The weapon felt heavy in his trembling grip.
Aldric held it up, but he did not move forward to attack. There was no way he could harm this person. So what if they seemed different? So what if they sounded different?
It was still Neve’s body. It was still the red panda he cared about.
He pressed his lips together, his hands shaking as he struggled with what to do. Finally, he opened his mouth and asked the question that was burning inside him.
"Who. Are. You?" Aldric asked, his voice shaking with each word.
Skarr looked at him with cold eyes.
"Me?" he asked. "I’m Skarr. That’s my name. That’s who I really am."
"No, you’re not," Aldric said firmly. "That’s Neve. That’s the person we all know. You’re in Neve’s body."
"No, I’m Skarr," he said, his voice becoming sharp and annoyed. "And I’m already getting pissed off about being called Neve. I don’t want anything to do with that name or certainly the marks around this body."
He looked down at the bond marks on his arms with disgust. The marks that connected Neve to his mates. The marks that showed he belonged to multiple people.
"Just how many mates does he have?" Skarr asked, his voice filled with revulsion.
"Give Neve back," Aldric said, holding the sharp weapon as his hand trembled with emotion.
He could not harm this person, but he could not let them keep Neve’s body either. There had to be another way.
Skarr looked at him and then looked back at Soren who was also confused about what was happening.
"Who is Skarr? Who is... Neve? What’s happening?" Soren asked, still wincing and turning on the floor, his body convulsing with pain.
Aldric did not want to answer Soren. He did not even want to pay any attention to him. But he wished he had the answer to Soren’s question himself.
Suddenly, Aldric remembered when Neve had told them all about himself. Neve had mentioned coming to this world and finding himself in this red panda’s body. Neve had explained the wrong soul isekai situation.
Aldric tensed up completely.
Maybe Skarr really was the original owner of the body. Just as Skarr had claimed. Maybe Skarr was the red panda beastman whose life Neve had taken over when he arrived in this world.
Aldric could understand that. He could comprehend the logic of it. But if Skarr had returned to possess his body, then where was Neve?
Where had Neve’s consciousness gone?
.
.
Neve was somewhere between life and death.
He was floating between universes and dimensions. He did not know where he was, but the space around him was filled with colors one second and just plain white the next second. The colors shifted and changed constantly like they were alive and breathing.
He could see the planets in space. He could see stars and galaxies swirling around him. And then suddenly, he was back to a space that was trying to suck him into a black hole. The sensation was terrifying and disorienting.
He did not know what had happened. The last thing he remembered was getting his hand almost bitten by Soren. His hand had been near Soren’s mouth and the leopard chief was preparing to mark him.
Neve folded his body and flinched as shivers shot down his spine.
"I wonder if that bastard succeeded in marking me," Neve thought to himself, his consciousness floating in the void. "What if he marked me? What if somehow, I’m dead because I was never supposed to be marked by someone that’s not my mate?"
He was confused but he kept floating. He kept drifting through the colorless space. And then, suddenly, he felt something familiar.
It was a pull. A connection to something.
Neve looked down and saw it. It was earth. His home planet. The place he had come from.
Suddenly, as if a finger snapped, Neve’s jaw dropped when he saw his school.
He could not believe he was here, as a floating ghost. As a consciousness without a body. The school looked exactly as he remembered it. The buildings were the same. The grounds were the same. Everything was frozen in time exactly as he had left it.
Another snap.
The scene changed to the zoo. He looked around at the familiar landscape and even found Rena standing by the lion enclosure. She was kneeling there on the ground, clasping her hands together in front of her chest.
She was praying.
Neve smiled, feeling a surge of emotion.
’Aww, did she feel bad that I died while saving her life?’ he thought to himself.
"Oh Neve, please get well soon," Rena prayed aloud, her voice filled with hope and desperation.
Neve froze.
Get well soon?
Those words did not make sense. Why would someone pray for someone to get well if they were dead? Why would Rena be asking for his recovery if he was gone?
"Get well soon?" Neve mumbled as realization began to dawn on him.
"No, no, no. Don’t tell me..."
Another snap and the scene changed again.
This time, Neve found himself floating in a hospital room. Everything was white and sterile and smelled like medicine. On the small board by the bed, he could see his name written in clear letters.
Neve’s name.
His name was on the hospital bed.
He floated closer to the bed, drawn by a force he could not explain. He needed to see what was there. He needed to know what was happening.
As he got closer, he could see the person lying on the bed.
It was him. It was really him.
He was staring at his own body. His human body. The body he had before he came to the beast world. The body that was pale and thin and covered in wires and tubes connected to machines.
His eyes were closed. His chest was rising and falling slowly with each breath. He was alive. He was breathing.
He was in a coma.
"It really is me," Neve whispered to himself, understanding crashing over him like a wave. "I... I wasn’t dead. I was... Alive?"