Chapter 244: The name of the mirror
Chapter 244: THE NAME OF THE MIRROR
The apartment building’s shared chat had three hundred and ninety-three accounts on the first day.
This morning, it had two hundred and seventy-four.
And all two hundred and seventy-four of those accounts were talking at once.
[Damon: What is Mirror?]
[Nhi: A skill? No one’s ever heard of it.]
[Anonymous: Room 2705 doesn’t have a skill. He just has that item-upgrade class. Random. He said so himself.]
[Damon: Random my ass. Have you seen that dragon tower?]
[Anonymous: So he got lucky with a big hit. I upgraded my door twelve times and got nothing but garbage.]
[Anonymous: Who sent that message? I don’t see an ID.]
[Nhi: There’s no ID. I swear. I took a screenshot, where the name should be there’s just an eye.]
[Hudson: I’ve seen that symbol. On the silver coin. What’s on the front of your silver coins?]
[Damon: ...An eye.]
[Anonymous: Son of a bitch.]
[Anonymous: SON OF A BITCH.]
[Rossie: Silence. All of you. Stop typing that word.]
[Damon: Which word? Mirror?]
[Rossie: DON’T TYPE IT.]
But it was already too late.
Within four minutes, that name appeared two hundred and eleven times in the shared chat.
And all across the dead zone, in the fog, in the hallways with no people, in the rooms that had been abandoned since before this apartment building existed, there were things that had never lifted their heads that suddenly lifted their heads.
________________________________________
Otrix was walking through the fog when he stopped.
He stopped so abruptly that the old armor on his body let out a long metallic screech.
The fog in front of him had always parted on its own.
Now it did not part.
It stood still, dense, pressing right up against the glass of his helmet’s visor, and within that fog, Otrix heard a very small sound. Like thousands of mouths all whispering a single word together.
A word with two syllables.
Otrix clenched his hand into a fist.
He had lived in this dead zone longer than any Lamp-Bearer. He had seen Livia when she was young. He had seen Leng Yan cast off her Survivor identity. He had placed [Mirror] on Rover’s betting table, a stake that even he himself knew was insane, a stake that had made John’s jaw drop open with a curse.
But he had placed it in silence.
Because it was the only condition.
Because that name was not a name.
It was a bell.
"Impossible..." Otrix said, his voice thick and hoarse behind the helmet. "No one knows. Except me, Livia, Leng Yan. And..."
He stopped.
The fog in front of him slowly spread apart, revealing a circular clearing.
In the middle of that clearing, on the hard, gray-white ground, there was a footprint.
Not the leather boot-print of the Arbiter.
Not the bare footprint of Leng Yan.
It was the footprint of a pair of war boots, large, thick-soled, pressed so deep into the ground that it cracked the very stone, and around it, the earth had been drained so dry it had turned the white of ash.
Otrix looked at that footprint for a long time.
Then, for the first time in more than two hundred years, he took a step back.
"...So you’ve gotten out?"
________________________________________
By the tea table, the Arbiter rose to his feet.
He was in no hurry at all. He refastened a button on his coat, adjusted his gloves, picked up his silver-headed cane.
But the stone-paved path around him was still continuing to crack, line by line spreading out like a spiderweb, and the flameless lampposts on either side of the road broke and folded down one by one, hitting the ground, shattering into dust.
He did not look at them.
He looked at his pocket watch.
The second hand had ticked forward two notches.
"Four hundred years." He said quietly, his voice still as mild as though commenting on the weather. "Four hundred years I’ve kept this hand from moving."
He lifted the watch, snapped the lid shut.
Click.
"And some child types six letters into a chat window."
Behind him, the fog coiled up into a wall dozens of meters high. Inside that wall, something was moving. Very slowly. Very large. It had no fixed shape, only patches of darkness rising up and sinking back down, and now and then, in the middle of those patches of darkness, something round and wet opened.
An eye.
The pupil flat, diamond-shaped.
The Arbiter turned around, facing the wall of fog.
He raised the silver-headed cane and tapped it lightly once against the cracked stone.
Clang.
The wall of fog stopped.
The enormous eye looked at him.
The Arbiter tilted his head, and beneath the fog veiling his face, his voice rang out, gentle to the point of being chilling.
"It’s not your turn yet."
"Go back."
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Then the wall of fog slowly lowered, coiled up, withdrew toward the horizon like an enormous beast reluctantly crawling back into its den.
The Arbiter stood still until it had completely disappeared.
Then he turned his head, looking toward the apartment building far away in the fog, where there was a room numbered 2705.
"I did not remove the veil." He said, as though answering a question no one had asked. "Nor did I speak its name."
He was silent for a moment.
Then, very slowly, the corner of his mouth, hidden beneath the fog, curved up.
But this time, that smile was not satisfied.
It was tired.
"...So you found your way out too. Adriel."
________________________________________
Inside Room 2705, no one panicked.
That was what Sunako found strangest of all.
She stood in the middle of the living room, holding the chat panel, her eyes wide as she watched the text scrolling endlessly, her heart pounding like a war drum. Meanwhile Selina still sat on the sofa sharpening her sword. Elith still fed her spiders. Rilia still leaned against the wall, eyes closed. Nanami still poured tea.
And Rover was standing in front of the control panel, both hands braced on the edge of the table, silently reading.
Morie stood beside him, her fingers sweeping quickly across the screen.
"The message has no ID." She said. "The System registered it as valid, but the source can’t be traced. Which means the sender either stands outside the chat system, or above it."
"What time did it appear?"
"Three fourteen in the morning."
Rover closed his eyes.
Three fourteen in the morning.
The exact moment he had been standing in the bathroom, looking into a mirror, and the System had told him the veil had been removed, not by the System.
The same moment.
The same hand.
’That one removed the veil so I would see the crack. Then immediately, he spoke its name in front of three hundred people.’
’He doesn’t want to kill me.’
’He wants me to be seen.’
Rover opened his eyes.
"Nanoe."
"I’m here."
She had been standing behind him for some time, arms folded across her chest, her gaze calm.
"How long do we have?" Rover asked.
Nanoe didn’t need to think.
"There is no ’how long’."
She turned, sweeping her gaze around the entire living room.
Selina. Morie. Elith. Rilia. Monica. Nanami. Sunako.
"I’ll say it one last time, so everyone remembers." Her voice was still gentle, but every word fell very clearly. "In this entire apartment building, there is not a single Survivor who knows of the existence of Omni Points."
Sunako blinked.
"They don’t know Rover can buy upgrades." Nanoe went on. "They believe upgrades are random. That doors, beds, defense towers all evolve on their own according to the number of rounds played, and whoever is lucky gets good gear. That’s what Rover told them from the first round. And in two hundred and forty-three days, no one has doubted it."
Rover folded his arms, leaned back against the edge of the table.
That was right.
It was his oldest lie, and also his most useful lie.
Because if three hundred Survivors found out that there was a kind of resource that could be exchanged directly for power, that monster corpses were money, that sleep was money, that the person lying beside you on the bed was also money, then Room 2705 would have had its door broken down in the very first month.
Not because they were stronger than him.
But because greed doesn’t need to be stronger than anyone. It only needs to be numerous.
"Elith’s spider silk is random." Nanoe said. "The Thunder Dragon is random. The suppression field is random. Rover is the luckiest man in this building, that’s all."
Selina laughed softly, chin propped on her hand.
"A lucky man who wiped out a hundred and sixty-eight Survivors."
"Right." Nanoe nodded. "And they still believe it, because believing that is more comfortable."
She turned back to look at Rover.
"Now someone has just thrown out the word [Mirror]. That’s the one thing in this room that can’t be explained by luck."
At that very moment, out in the twenty-seventh floor hallway, footsteps rang out.
A great many footsteps.
________________________________________
Rover opened the door.
Not cracking it open a sliver. He pushed both panels wide, standing up straight in the middle of the doorway, hands in his pockets.
Out in the hallway, more than thirty people were standing.
At the front was a tall man, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing light charcoal-colored armor, a short spear in his hand. On his chest was a badge in the shape of an anvil.
Hudson.
A Level 6 Survivor.
The second strongest person in this entire apartment building, and the only one who had never stepped out of his own room throughout all four rounds of the game.
Until today.
Hudson looked Rover up and down, his gaze lingering for a long time on his face, as though searching for something.
"You’re younger than I thought." Hudson said.
"You’re older than I thought."
A few people behind Hudson stiffened.
Hudson, on the other hand, burst out laughing, a short, dry laugh.
"I didn’t come here to fight."