Episode 122
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 122
From far away, the sweet sound of an orchestra played by the music students drifted over. The string section was so fast it was breathtaking, my heart pounding in my chest.
Finding the one who played with this world—the Player—had not been difficult. Cain stalked the monster walking down the empty hallway, its hair and eye color now a blur.
He fumbled with the cover of the notebook shoved in his pocket, his face tense as he replayed the memory.
「A corpse stabbed over twenty times, but the decisive cause of death was a blade piercing the left carotid artery.」
He raised his arm. And then, he struck.
Blood splattered. No, he thought it had splattered. The scissors, which had been perfectly embedded in the left carotid artery, clattered to the floor. Dark red blood, looking as if it had been artificially drawn, flickered in and out of existence.
Static, crackle… A sound like a broken machine echoed from the Player’s throat. The ever-quickening music assaulted his eardrums.
Soon, its form began to break down, pixel by pixel. The remnants cascaded to the floor like sand before melting away like water.
Cain stared blankly at the surreal sight. The first murderer in this world trembled uncontrollably.
All that remained in the dark space was the sound of his own ragged breathing. His head spun from hyperventilating, and a ringing filled his ears. He gasped, pressing a hand to his wildly beating heart.
What just happened? What have I done? As he gasped for breath, his sighs bordering on convulsions, he defined his actions with the cold words Elysia had written, and his mind cleared.
I committed murder. So what?
A bitter smile touched his lips. This wasn't a crime. It was righteous revenge, an act of rebellion. Soon, Cain began to chuckle, covering his mouth with his hand.
“This was the answer.”
Everyone dreams of salvation. Even I did. It took reaching this point for me to finally understand. Once I cleanly gave up on the woman I had yearned for, the one I sought for salvation through countless resets, everything became easy.
The man smiled slowly, looking down at the hand that had held the scissors. The sensation of piercing flesh was still vivid, yet not a single drop of blood stained his palm.
Staring blankly at the Player's final moments as it scattered into ash without leaving a corpse, he thought with bloodshot eyes.
The only one who can save me in this world is me. There is no such thing as a savior.
Soon, ‘they’ would notice. The ones who built this world, who twisted it to their whims to satisfy their greed—they would come to ‘fix’ it.
They would label him a defect and try to ‘repair’ him. A sneer escaped him. Repair? They meant enslave.
So he couldn't stop here. He had no intention of stopping.
Returning to the library's basement, he swept the books containing information about Players off the shelves, sending them crashing to the floor. The bone-dry pages rustled against each other, kicking up dust.
He struck a match and dropped it onto the loathsome records. Flames as red as his own eyes flared up, their tongues licking out to destroy the information.
His outwardly calm, expressionless face held a chilling ecstasy.
“So that no one can get in…”
He found every record related to ‘Login,’ tore them to shreds, burned them, and shoved the ashes into a corner. Having accessed the core of the System, there was nothing he couldn't destroy.
A dangerous smile spread across Cain's face as he trampled over everything: the Main Story that had plunged him into ennui by returning to the beginning after every ending, the Community where Players exchanged opinions, and all the rest.
From that day on, as if addicted, he devoured the records of <Panic in the City>.
「Quest 23: Empire of Crime
Died thirty times trying to clear this quest. Using the Ultimate Skill ‘Request for Support’ is a must. It has a cooldown, so timing is crucial, but…
This is a quest to annihilate one of the organizations distributing a drug called ‘Crea.’ In Nightmare, there are a ton of drug trafficking organizations, but the one you have to take down in this quest is small-scale, so it’s easier than other organization suppression quests.
First, to explain the distribution process of Crea…」
Hot steam rose from the bathtub, which was filled with fragrant water. Cain, leaning back in the water, stared at the blue notebook with a languid expression.
The Player was dead. Thanks to him sealing the entrance, no one else could enter this world. Yet he still felt a thirst.
The desire to touch what had been forbidden, the vengeful urge to ruin the world the Creators had molded to their whims—these filthy emotions merged and danced seductively.
He read about how to make the drug called ‘Crea,’ as described in the notebook.
「…Crea is a low-cost drug popular among artists because it induces hallucinations. Kinda weird that this fucked-up city even has art. Anyway, the side effects aren't that severe, so it's not a dangerous drug, but it's important to shut it down because people who try it often end up getting into the drug market for real.」
His rage toward those who had treated his life like a toy did not subside even after killing the Player.
He hated the Creators who had tried to control his life. Therefore, he wanted to destroy their creation, this world, as well.
He wanted it to rot from the roots, to collapse under the weight of its own stench. To do that, he had to create a chaos that ignored all the rules the System had established.
And so he did.
He provided the foundation for a woman who was begging on the streets, filled with a hatred for poverty. Alma, obsessed with wealth, was a great help in widely distributing the drugs.
People who had never been exposed to drugs became addicted to the hallucinations Crea provided and kept coming back for more.
Once the business was on track, he began distributing Voluet, which was even more addictive. He delighted in the news that more and more people were committing acts of violence while high on the drug.
At the same time, Cain obsessively checked that strange space in the library basement every day. The destruction was so perfect that checking it was almost pointless. He grew arrogant, certain that no one could ever enter this world again.
Two years passed.
Cain froze when he spotted ‘someone.’ He knew instinctively. That woman listening to Adrian Campbellton with an indifferent face was not of this world. He tasted blood between his clenched teeth.
“…I thought you’d run off to another club for sure, but to think you’d stay… You truly are a woman of your word…!”
“Get lost, you crazy bastard.”
Hearing the woman's grumbling voice, the man's red eyes wavered. How the hell did she get in? As he stared at her with a mixture of hatred and contempt, he noticed that, unlike the other Players, her form was perfectly clear.
Slowly, he walked toward her. When she answered his question about her name, he had to struggle to remain composed.
“Elysia Hemming.”
This woman… how?
Her cool, gray eyes glanced at him, then narrowed with caution. Those cold eyes… An intense shock, like a blow to the back of the head, shot through him from head to toe.
He didn't know her. He didn't know that her hair was light brown, that the nape of her neck was pale white beneath her short-cut hair, that she had a straight, high-bridged nose, or that her wary expression resembled a wolf's… He didn't know any of it.
But at the same time, he knew Elysia Hemming all too well. Her way of speaking, the words she often used, even what she had done in <Panic in the City>… It was the result of having greedily devoured the records she left behind.
Thump. His heart beat with a heavy thud. He could feel the worn cover of the notebook in his pocket. A loneliness he had long forgotten greedily reared its head. But he suppressed it with arrogance.
I know everything, but this woman knows nothing. In any case, she's just another disgusting outsider, a Player. She could never understand someone who has lived their entire life being controlled inside a game.
Therefore, she deserved to die. The only reason he didn't kill her was because she had, in a way, helped him.
He had only let her live out of a cheap sense of charity, a magnanimous gift.
That's how it was at first.
*
Cain looked down at his feet with an annoyed expression. He couldn't understand why his legs kept following that woman.
He knew better than anyone the extent to which the System had been destroyed. He knew there was almost nothing she could do, so he had intended to ignore her, to leave her be.
But Elysia Hemming was just too… grating for that. From the very first day, she was extraordinary, starting with the sight of her running laps on the field as if her life depended on it, for whatever reason she'd given Evan Sylvester.
Staring blankly through the window at Elysia's exhausted expression and flushed cheeks, he scowled and muttered.
“How unpleasant.”
He was debating whether to kill her. It wasn't the first or second time he'd bloodied his hands. His conscience was already stained; killing one more woman wouldn't make a noticeable difference.
She was grating. He wanted to plunge a knife into her carotid artery, right below her pale neck—the very location Elysia herself had so kindly taught him.
Because he hated her. No, to be precise… He nervously crumpled the cover of the notebook in his pocket.
More than the woman herself, he hated the part of him that kept seeking her understanding.
No one can understand me. The only one who can save me is me. I know that, so why the hell am I… again…
He irritably pulled out the notebook. He suddenly recalled Elysia's memos that he'd skipped over back then, uninterested.
Not the calm descriptions of <Panic in the City>'s gameplay, but the raw, indignation-filled emotions—information he had deemed useless since he never expected to meet her.
His hand froze as he was about to open it. A feeling that he shouldn't look, like something was pulling at the back of his neck, stopped him. The moment he read it, he felt he would revert to the weakling he once was.
Fear seized him. Kill her. Yes, killing her is the right thing to do. I never want to be dragged around by the leash of emotion like a slave again, suffocating…
And yet, there was an unbearable desire.