The rest of the night was a blur, I remember my weeping and the exhaustion that was making my body feel like it had been flattened under a truck. But right now, I’m feeling the complete opposite.
Into the starry void I fell, weightless and powerless, I couldn’t move but only could observe. And I saw the sky above me shatter like a pane of glass, but through that shattered illusion, what I saw was blood and corpses falling one by one to the same metallic arms that saved me from my ethereal torment a month ago, but this time it was different. I was an observer rather than being in it, and I only saw black silhouettes, but there were two things that stood out. An obscured voice shouting “Please, stop…STOP!” and the other was the glimpse I got of the one behind the killings. The killer hands moved forward, crouched down and looked straight at me, and what I saw was glowing red eyes leaving red streaks behind when it moved, which was coming out of a mask that was exuding an aura of fear and threat. The whole thing ended with a loud screech which booted me back out of whatever realm I was in.
The next thing I know is the streak of blur greeting my opening eyes at first, followed by an agonizing dry throat. My tongue was as dry as desert sand and I sat up while gripping my throat and flailing
“Wa…ter” were the first words that came out of my mouth
“Nii-chan, calm down” Meguru said while reaching for a jug of water
I grabbed it from her and emptied it without even taking a moment to take a breath.
While I was busy with that, Meguru had notified the others that I was up and the missing two of the Kanie family appears in my room
“Whoa Whoa Whoa, take it easy man, you have been out of it for a while, take it slow” said Jun in the hopes of easing me into a recovered state
“How long was I out?” I asked
“Do you really want to know?” replied Jun
I kept looking at him till he coughed up the answer
“One and a half days” he said as an answer
And all of a sudden, I felt as if my stomach was imploding. I gripped it and bent down to attempt to ease the pain
“Figured you would be deep into starvation, let's get you up and running. Mai, Meguru, get him downstairs”
The two twins approach me from either side of my bed and put their head under my arms and try to lift me out of bed.
“Alright easy there Nii-chan, we got you” said Mai from my left
If I was told a year ago that these two will be carrying my limp body somewhere, I would imagine it to be into a massive pothole somewhere, but today, it might’ve been one of those very rare occasions that they are actually being of help with no strings attached.
They slowly and carefully led me down the stairs and into the dining room and where Jun brought in a platter of food.
“I’ll give you this but on one condition. Eat slowly, or else you will throw it all back up”
“Yeah, sure” I replied lifelessly
He opened the top to reveal a warm bowl of stew and every fiber of my being was pushing me to devour the whole thing as soon as possible. But I restrained myself to uphold the condition. Spoonful after spoonful, I ate what was in front of me, and after what felt like an eternity, I remembered what food tasted like. It was enough to have tears stream down my eyes even after I cleaned my bowl fully.
“Here, hand it over” said Jun while extending his arm
I gave him my bowl and he filled it back up within seconds. I took my time to fill myself up while the Kanies were looking at me
I was second guessing every moment whether it was right for me to drop my guard. But right now, I had no energy to have my guard up and if they wanted to kill me, they might as well have when I had passed out.
“How are you feeling?” asked Jun
“Better than I had for the past few weeks, and this actually taste better than the charcoal you usually cook” I replied
“Considering you are back to being a wiseass; I would say you are alright”
I put my chopsticks down and clasp my hands together leaning forward.
“Hey, I just want to say; thanks for yesterday…or 2 days ago, anyways you know when I mean. I wouldn’t have made it out alive if it wasn’t for you three” I said while looking at Jun and then the duo of disaster
“Yeah well in a world where everyone is all over the place and everything is out to kill you or break you. You need all the people you can get” he said
I look at Jun unimpressed
“I’m just kidding, it’s good to have you back my good friend”
“Welcome back, Akio Onii-chan. We missed not having our crash test dummy”
“Oi Meguru, cut him a break for while will you” Mai whispers to her sister audibly
….Well that’s reassuring.
“It’s good to see you two again too” I replied reading my in-built anti-Kanie defenses.
“Alright you two, it’s your turn to do the chores, me and Akio have a lot to catch up on” said Jun, saving me from any potential death traps for the moment
After the whole exchange I was alarmed at the fact that I noticed my left arm had turned normal. I got up and tried reaching for my blade, but it wasn’t materializing.
“My weapons are gone” I said
“Oh, right, right, I forgot. It’s because you are not in the clan with us” answered Jun
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I inquired
“This is our registered clan base in Helios, the only ones that can use their weapons in here are members or anyone who has formed a party with one of the members”
“I’m guessing you haven’t had the time to figure out the full picture of what is going on, have you?” continued Jun
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting back down
“This place, it’s way more different than any of us remember, and it’s not all for the better, and it all started with Tadashi’s little stunt”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, trying to block out many specific details
“It was all a power play; you remember all he did?...Wait, that was a dumb question” said Jun
“First thing that Arctus wanted to do, was to stop a rebellion, had was thinking, it would’ve been very bad if all of the players united and planned to take on Tadashi and the Immortal 10 alone, and that brought me back to the CGI-”
Stolen story; please report.
“CGI? What CGI?” I asked
“Huh?, oh I see why you are confused, not the animation type of CGI. It’s what that day is being called by everyone. Short for The CyberGrounds Incident, anyways”
“The panic the announcement caused was massive. Everyone in Helios started to break down when that quick shock calms everyone down for that split second, and that is when Tadashi came in. His first objective was to establish order, and what better sets that in stone better than fear” Jun continued
Jun playing the recording brought back some very bad memories back, the one’s desperately were blocking out for the past month, but it stays stuck to me no matter how hard I struggle to shake it off. And Jun took note of that and paused the video
“Akio look, I know this is hard for you, but if you don’t want to see this-”
“It’s fine” I replied
“Okay…but if you want to take a break-”
“I said it’s fine, Jun” I repeated myself to drill my point into his head
He hesitantly hit play again
“Anyways, his first act…executing an unknown innocent, showing that he had no hesitation to kill, second-” he paused as even he was having a hard time to soften the blow, so he avoided saying it completely
“That…., established how brutal his regiment is willing to be” Jun continued
“But I thought that they wanted to stop a joint rebellion?” I inquired
“I was getting to that. By capturing the one who was the main opposing force at the time: You. And after the whole show of his Regimen, the whole public, the whole of Typhon, Spark, or player, was on your side. They wanted to help you”
“And then he placed the bounty on my head” I caught on
“Exactly. He made your temporary group of rebels turn on each other, and in that one move,”he clicked his fingers “Established the order of the whole world here, a world of chaos”
“I don’t follow, how does setting a world full of players after me set up how everything is right now?” I asked him
“Let me ask you a few questions first, what was the most expensive item you saw the first time you came into Typhon and how much did it cost” he asked me
“A weapon conditioning kit, which costed 300 Rels” I answered
“300 Rels, the amount which any player starts with. Back when we were playing in the original CG, a conditioning kit in Typhon was only 30 Rels. And how much was the bounty on your head worth?”
“50 thousand Rels. I don’t see where you are going with this” I answered his next question
“Of course you wouldn’t know, I’ll tell this to you as reference. A standard equipment and provision restocks for a clan of three people for a week of matches or quests costs 30 thousand Rels. Which you could get with a standard low rank gathering quest”
“So I’m worth less than a handful of plants. Aaand there goes my self-confidence?” I said
Jun groans “ No wonder you’re still living, even Satan doesn’t want your obnoxious ass down there in Hell…Anyways back on topic”
“Your bounty was smoke and mirrors. We hadn’t been to low rank cities in years, new players back then, don’t stick around in low rank cities long enough to notice it. But the costs of everything down here is extremely high. Food is expensive due to the poor light quality, and equipment prices are even steeper as it is extremely difficult to create FMFs down here as we are in the farthest layer of the Cybersphere. Your bounty wasn’t meant to make your life harder; it was meant to give people a small tap they needed to give in to their tendencies. Some groups caught on, and they gave up going after you much earlier and focused on grinding all the quests they can and forming clans. A few didn’t catch on at first but later did once they went to stock up on resources, but they kept pursuing you as they found themselves a new thrill in hunting bounties or the thrill of murder and lawlessness. Sparks, however, were desperate, they were too afraid to accept quests and even that small amount of money means a lot to them. And the higher you go in the ranks, the cheaper everything gets, but-”
“The harder the quests get” I completed the sentence for him
The puzzle pieces fell into place as I recalled the lore of this world
“Yeah. And then comes how the ranking system works” said Jun while opening up a window on the table we were on
“Bronze, Silver, Gold, Nova, SuperNova and Immortal. Six ranks with Immortal being the top 10 of the game. Rank points are obtained by the usual: World PvE quests and PvP, things we already knew. However, respawning is a unique feature only in Artifacter matches so people think it is the safer bet, but they can only go so far without getting hard stuck in Elo hell. And then comes World Quests, which currently serves as the main lifeline for most trapped here. There are a few clans formed that wants to keep the situation under control, to distribute points freely among the people who are too afraid to fight.” He continued
What he said made sense…mostly
“Looks like you have something on your mind” he said after noticing
“If they are to be believed, this whole thing is designed to stress test us. I find it hard to believe the whole system is smoothly sailing and they wouldn’t have already foreseen it” I replied
“I was leaving the worst news for last…the game mode which ranks people up when they are at the RP cap, is Battle Royale”
“So that means”
“It means two things….One, it’s a way to either indulge people to kill or to stand their ground in their current rank, which means they will not be leaving the cities of the lower layer” He said that, took a good look at me and read my impression
“I’m pretty sure you have figured out what number two is” Jun continued while sounding confident
And to prove his confidence right, I said what I deduced “And the other thing is that there will be no ranking up without thousands of deaths”
“Close but you are mostly correct, in bronze at least, only the top ten groups are considered winners and are chosen to ascend. But BRs are hundred team matches, getting top ten is not going to be an easy task and the number of qualifying teams decrease with ascending ranks” Jun filled in the gap that I had not filled in
Hundred teams of six per match, meaning that by the end, at least 500 people are going to be dead. I still remember what Sato said that day. You are protected from death in Artifacter, but not BR. If you die, it’s all over. Everything was still too surreal to me; I remember the days where I used to suffer a long day at school and a game of BR was the only thing that allowed me to let off some steam, but now, it has become my worst nightmare.
“One last thing, remember the other condition Sato implemented which could get us out of here without reaching Morpheus?”
“Cease any activity for two weeks of in-game time” I recalled
“Meaning no one in the world can trigger any sort of action, no eating, no drinking and no fighting. Considering how you could starve or dehydrate to death here, that is impossible. And if I had to guess, it’s actions here that are the powers that barrier out in the real world. A foolproof experiment with no chance of outside interferences,” said Jun
“I still don’t get why, why would anyone…how would anyone even have the conscience to do something like this. Testing the limits of human morality? This is nothing but mass murder. The thrill of murder and lawlessness you said, is that how you feel now?”
That visibility ticked off Jun, enough for him to get up from his seat, slam the table and lean towards me
“You think I had a choice? You think that I enjoy taking lives? Where we are right now, there is no such thing as right or wrong. I had to make my own baby sisters sully their hands in blood Akio, I made them take their first kills because I want them to escape this. Do you think we enjoyed it? Do you think that I would put them through that if I had any hope, even a sliver of hope, that we would make it out of this alive with clean hands. I still have my folks waiting outside for us, and if I escape without them, I wouldn’t be able to face them or myself….. You are one of the few friends that I would do anything in any way to help out, but if it ever comes to mean that I have to sacrifice you for my sisters, I won’t even hesitate to leave you behind”
“Then why didn’t you? You didn’t have to help me. Petty sum maybe, but I still was a bounty. Why did you save a guy who has nothing left after the only family he had left was murdered by his best friend. Yeah…I know bullshit when I hear it. I had what felt like an eternity to mourn Mom’s and Yuito’s death, I’m not looking for pity from anyone. You could’ve abandoned me as you knew that even talking to me could get you guys under everyone’s shit list. And if you really want to see those two out safe, you wouldn’t have taken the risk to approach me unless you wanted something specifically from me” I confronted him
“What I said about saving you because you were my friend was the god honest truth” he calmed down before continuing
“But you are right, it wasn’t the whole truth. I also want your help…to help us escape this”
“Listen. I might not sound like it, but I am really thankful for you guys ditching me out. But what can I do that others cannot? I have bounty hunters and NPCs after my head and I am far below an average player. You saw what Tadashi did to me, he put something in me that not only significantly slowed my healing, but I can feel pain like real life. I might be more agile, but I can feel every bone breaking if I fall from too high or have a bad landing”
“But you are still alive, you survived for almost a month even with people gunning for your head. What you know and what you are capable of is more than average…also why they were intimidated by the Absolute- ”
Knowing what he was going to say next, I didn’t let him finish
“Do not…finish…that sentence. ” I threatened Jun
Jun got the message loud and clear that that is a past that I don’t want to revisit anytime soon, as he carefully picked his next set of words as I got up from my chair and started pacing away from him
“I know what you went through, we were affected by that ourselves. But the point still stands that someone was threatened enough to falsely accuse you just to get rid of you. That is the person we need right now.” He said with a demanding demeanour
“Yeah but you know the difference between then and now? That was a game….This isn’t…..I used to be the IGL, an ‘In-Game Leader’. I do the same now, I’ll just be the face of a gang of killers. I used to be cautious around those two for their pranks. That day in that alley, after I saw they take lives without even hesitating….I was terrified of them” I said as calmly as I could
“You have known us for long enough to know that we don’t do anything unless it is absolutely necessary. Like I said before neither I nor they take any pleasure in ending someone’s life. Akio please, I am at the end of my wits right now. All I want right now is to see Mai and Meguru back home. I don’t care what happens to me. And right now, you are the only one I know who is still breathing that I could trust” Jun said with a sense of genuine desperation in his voice
I turned around to face him
“But what can I do? This place is different from what we knew. We might know things that many others don’t but that was behind a mouse and keyboard. I am standing here with you guys in a world that I once thought I lived in more than real life…. And once I get to live that fantasy, it ends up being a damn death game. I just can’t live with myself knowing that I took a life of someone that didn’t deserve it.” I said
“You have problems with killing, I understand that. But I can help you out with that”
“Listen, I am not going to cross that line. And don’t you dare make me”
Jun disengaged and got up from his seat, and he restarted after a brief pause “Out of everything Tadashi did that day, there is one thing that didn’t make any sense”
Jun looked back at me
“He gave you a chance to finish everything before it even began, he let you kill him, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. Lets just say that you have Tadashi dead to rights once again, what then?. At this rate it’s just going to be a repeat of last time, and unlike you, he doesn’t hesitate” He told me while slowing closing the distance
“I know!. It’s something I still haven’t figured out. But more than anything, I just want to know why, and then-” I trailed off since I didn’t know what to say next
“Look, I have an idea what you are going through right now. But there is this guy, basically the Sheriff of Helios, he is helping to ease people into their first kill.”
I tried to interrupt him, but he saw right through me
“Before you cut me off, do this for me as a favor for old times sake. Guys he sets up to be killed are some of the worst the world has shown so far.”
“Why are you so insistent on having me kill someone?” I inquired hoping for an answer
“Because I also thought exactly the way you did last month. And it ended up getting Misha killed”
That caught my attention
“What? You found the others?”
“It was only her, she spawned into Helios and we met up before the CGI. She’s the one who made this clan originally. But I couldn’t pull the trigger when I could’ve saved her” Jun said while pacing in the opposite direction
I locked my gaze at him and took a seat at the table again
“What happened?” I inquired
“A few days after we settled, we were in the city and…these guys tried to kidnap my sisters. Misha and I tried to fight them off…but the moment I knocked out the guy who was fighting me, she was on the ground with a guy trying to send a knife into her chest. I had him, all I had to do was pull the trigger. I froze, and the next thing I heard was Misha choking on her own blood. I didn’t sleep for days after that; I couldn’t stop blaming myself for her death and how I would’ve felt if it was Mai or Meguru instead.”
Misha Sakuragi, one of Zero’s best, both in-game and out. And to think that this world took out someone as tough as her in less than a month.
“Please man, I am asking you to do this not as a former teammate, but as friend. I know you have been through a lot since that day, and I can’t imagine how worse off you’ve had it in comparison to me. But I also went through my fair share and I don’t want you to go through the same thing I did. Look, this guy, he was a senpai of mine back in college who had been a detective for the Shibuya P.D for a few years. You have any doubts of who you would be killing, you just need to ask him, and he will give you the details''
“You guys do what you think is right, but I still have a lot of wrap my head around. I’ll sleep on the decision whether to help y’all or not. But just for old times sake, I’ll go meet this guy. But I won’t promise anything”
With Jun satisfied with my answer, we ended up breaking up for the night, I went back to bed as it was already late and had a lot to process…and right now, I can’t even imagine what the next day would hold in store for me.