C165: Unchanging result across all iterations
“Golden Trader launched an assault on Danz?”
Arnold looked down at Davis's shivering, battered figure. The man lay collapsed against the moss-covered bark of the oak tree, his chest heaving as he breathed with frantic gasps.
Davis had appeared suddenly in this desolate back street.
The sun was slowly setting beyond the distant treeline, as the orange dusk slowly replaced the fading amber light. A freezing wind blew across the field nearby, carrying the scent of damp earth.
“You say that Danz could handle that trader.”
“Ye, Ya…, junior, that was my firm belief as well. Who could have foreseen such treachery!” Davis’s voice frayed with raw fury and despair as he explained the entire affair, detailing the addictive nature of the stimulants that had been used to control their minds.
'That spirit they invited me to drink yesterday?' Arnold thought, standing motionless as he waited for Davis to regain some composure, his mind calculating rapidly. 'I felt nothing but disgust at that thing.'
Inside his mind, Izzy rested her chin upon her hand, tapping her fingers rhythmically against the armrest.
She turned the problem over with contemplation.
'Is that the reason I found that substance so repulsive, while they found it delicious? What is the fundamental difference between us?'
She considered the question seriously.
'The distinctions between us are many. Firstly, Arnold is merely a vessel, animated by my power. Secondly, he is no Stagefarer, but an ordinary human. And thirdly...' Izzy's eyes twitched slightly. 'All of our vessels are connected directly to the portrait of Isidora, our main body, a Curse.'
'What was the true cause of that disgust?'
Arnold looked down at Davis, narrowing his eyes beneath the bandage. A wave of dark premonition rose within Izzy's mind.
"You come here, seeking my help. Does that imply..."
Davis bit his lower lip until it bled, his tattered and frayed body still trembling. A terrible look of extreme fury and sorrow contorted his features.
"He commanded me to rescue what men I could and to flee. I fear that he..."
His desperate aze drifted upward, his dirt-caked fingers clutching at the hem of Arnold's trousers.
“What course remains for us, junior? What... what are we to do? I, I do not know anymore..."
'Danz has died?' Izzy's pupils dilated in the theatre.
Izzy now had a better understanding of the whole picture of the event.
'No wonder... no wonder in all our previous iterations, there was no mention of Danz whatsoever! Because he had already died before the Rite commenced!'
'We never encountered the Trader in our past iterations, and thus we remained ignorant of Danz's fate. Victor was never attacked by the Inspectors, and so we never crossed paths with the Kind Neighbor.'
'How many secrets have my previous iterations failed to uncover?' At the thought, a cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck.
'But this is strange. Very strange.'
Something was wrong, her intuition warning her that a piece of the puzzle was still missing.
'Why did we forget about him?'
Just hours earlier, Davis had informed her that the Golden Trader would meet Danz today, and Davis himself had expressed the desire to return and assist his boss.
Had it been Izzy in her normal state of mind, she would have immediately used Arnold to follow Davis back to Danz's location.
Yet she had taken no such action.
'We have never once encountered that Trader in any of our previous iterations. And the moment we obtained the opportunity to do so, we failed to act. Why?'
In her thoughts, the Golden Trader had momentarily been relegated to a minor character, not worth her attention.
'We forgot about Lumber because of the forest's cognitive interference. Yet this time, we forgot about the Trader as well. This feels as though...'
As though something didn’t permit them to cross paths.
'We had momentarily consigned him to the lowest possible priority.'
Izzy immediately conjured a pristine white sheet of paper beside her seat, hurriedly writing on its surface.
[Be careful of the Golden Trader. They are your enemies!]
It was admittedly harsh to place all Golden Traders into the enemy category without discrimination, but for the present moment, she would err on the side of caution.
Once done, Izzy sighed, leaning back into the soft cushion of her velvet seat.
'It seems I am too late. Should I return to the barn?'
On one hand, if the Trader and Danz were still engaged in combat, she wished to observe their clash and meet this so-called Trader face to face.
However, that carried inherent risks. It would be alright if Danz won. but if he could win, there would have been no reason for him to command Davis to flee.
That meant Danz had already recognized his own defeat.
And if Izzy ventured back now, she might walk directly into their trap.
Izzy had to be extremely careful this moment forward.
Victor's ambush plan had already gone awry. Even after two iterations, those cycles had only taught her how to preserve her own life, never how to solve the underlying problem.
She had no way of knowing what was going to happen next.
Izzy returned to Arnold’s perspective.
Arnold looked down at Davis's collapsed form, his eyes narrowing as he spoke in a probing tone.
"Come to think of it, did they really allow you to walk away just like that?"
“?”
Davis froze. It seemed as if he had only just realized the problem.
“That’s indeed… odd?”
‘Right. It smells very much like a trap.’ Izzy's mind raced while she directed Arnold to assist the frail man to his feet, brushing the dust and grime from his tattered shoulders, all while continuing her inquiry.
“What about the enemy? What are their Paths and Stages?”
Davis looked at Arnold in surprise. He had not expected the junior, who usually seemed so indifferent, to suddenly become so caring and aggressively invested in Danz’s matter.
“The Trader? They consist of an Apprentice Stage Fighter of the Warrior Path and a Foundation Stage Dhampir of the Vampire Path. As for the Trader himself, I have heard… he walks the Trader Path.”
“Trader Path?” Izzy probed further. This was the first time she had encountered mention of such a Path.
"I am afraid... I know nothing of this Path, junior. Even Danz himself knew only the name. He had no notion whatsoever of what the man was truly capable of."
He looked at Arnold, who had fallen deep into thought again.
“What course of action ought we to pursue now, junior? Should we get revenge? Or conceal ourselves until this storm passes by?”
Izzy tapped her chin thoughtfully within her mindscape. Speaking of revenge was absurd under this circumstance.
‘I see. So Danz’s downfall must have been because he underestimated the Trader.’
Even Izzy herself had unconsciously relegated the Trader to the lowest tier of her concerns, and given Danz's arrogance, she doubted the man had fared any better in his calculations.
The Trader could control Danz’s men through the addictive stimulant they had consumed for nearly a decade. So fighting them directly was out of the question.
But running away was not an option either. They could not escape through the forest.
'If they really permitted Davis to flee, then I guess there is only one interpretation.'
Judging from their boldness, Izzy surmised that sooner or later, someone would be dispatched to pursue the fleeing survivors.
Since Davis was clever and possessed considerable powers of persuasion, by allowing him to escape, the Trader effectively allowed him to seek out potential allies, thereby enabling them to eliminate every loose end simultaneously.
If it was Izzy, she would do that. Surely.
'And in this particular instance, that prospective ally would be Arnold.'
Due to the Tear Drop's misunderstanding of Arnold's power, Davis had naturally sought out Arnold to seek help.
'I remember that Victor possessed some means of tracing our location through an unusual ability. Since one of them is a Dhampir in the Vampire path, I must keep in mind that they may likewise have a means to track fleeing men.’
‘In the worst-case scenario—’ Izzy’s eyes widened, she immediately spread Arnold's Field Vision outward in a wide radius, extending a full fifteen meters in every direction.
‘I don’t see any hostile presence.’ There were some strange individuals, for sure. But she didn’t see anyone worth her attention.
However, her intuition had a different idea.
A cold sense of foreboding prickled along the back of her neck.
‘There is no reason not to be so careful.’
"Do you desire vengeance?" Izzy projected her voice through Arnold's throat, posing the inquiry in a flat, emotionless tone that cut cleanly through the dusk air.
In Davis’s eyes, he saw a cold, calculating gaze filled with killing intent. He immediately straightened himself, offering a frantic nod of his head.
“Indeed, most assuredly! I will do anything, just—”
Arnold closed his eyes, cutting the man off mid-sentence.
“Then listen to my words carefully.” Arnold opened his eyes, his green gaze shining in the dusk. “Where do our men fare?”
“Our men…?” Davis widened his eyes, as if only now realizing something. "Junior, do you perhaps mean—"
‘Mean that someone is following us?’ Before Davis could finish his sentence, at that same moment, Arnold's green eyes fixed upon the thin man, and his lips curled into a deliberate smile.
“Senior.”
The smile sent a cold sensation crawling down Davis’s spine. Though the expression appeared uncanny on the bandaged face, Davis found himself unable to suppress the corner of his own mouth curling upward.
“Lead me to them,” Arnold added, his voice dropping. “They must surely be hiding somewhere very remote, right?”
“Most certainly! I will lead the way right away, junior!”
Davis nodded vigorously and clenched his dirt-stained fists tightly. He straightened his back, forced strength into his trembling legs, and led Arnold away.
Behind their departing silhouettes, the tangled canopy of the surrounding trees rustled softly in the biting wind as the last slivers of sunlight sank permanently below the horizon.
Ten minutes later, a thin figure with narrowed eyes strolled along the same desolate back street. He paused beside the moss-covered oak tree, bending down to retrieve a small, glinting silver card that had been accidentally left behind beneath the roots for some inexplicable reason.