11. Wonderland (18)
11. Wonderland (18)
The worship of a Demon God was called a "faith" because it fulfilled the requirements of a religion. One of the most prominent of these was the promise of an afterlife.
A Demon God offered their followers a world beyond death.
The Demon Gods who dwelled in the Abyss each built sovereign domains within it, every one unique in size and character.
Wonderland was the domain governed by Kirkeus. When magicians, acrobats, and clowns died, their souls gathered here as a matter of course.
The place was special even to him, a longtime TTT fan.
Players could encounter allies and enemies from TT1 and TT2 here.
Whatever end they had met, they all cooperated with the player to defeat Wonderstein. The final battle, in which every one of them took part, was an experience no fan who had followed the Tril Trillo series for years could afford to miss.
The final stage boasted a quality and sheer volume befitting the conclusion of the Tril Trillo trilogy. The fan community often said that this last stage alone was enough to earn TT3 the title of a masterpiece.
Wonderstein agreed.
This place was the terminus of TTT, the vessel that held its essence.
Even his search for his companions slipped his mind as he stared, dazed, at the vista unfolding before him.
A colossal circus tent thousands of meters high, built from tens of thousands of stacked structures.
Streets that pulsed with every color imaginable.
And from every direction, buoyant music and laughter.
He had never seen Wonderland at peace before. In the main series, Wonderstein's invasion had already set the place ablaze with smoke and carnage everywhere.
Maybe he was too overwhelmed by the scenery.
He forgot that his own limbs were far from intact.
"Wha—?"
Clatter.
He stepped through the doorway, lost his footing, and pitched forward.
His arms and legs were still as stiff as sticks of wood.
Just how badly had he been hurt to end up in this condition?
He pushed himself up off the ground and looked down at his arm. The moment he confirmed what he was seeing, his expression went rigid.
"What... is this?"
Something else entirely hung where his arm should have been.
Tentacles or thorns would have shocked him less. Those were the sort of things you might expect to find attached to Wonderstein's body.
But this thing was technically an arm, only the construction was absurdly crude.
If someone had lashed three or four twigs together with rubber bands and dangled a cotton-stuffed glove from the end, it would look exactly like this.
What unnerved him was that it unmistakably functioned as his arm.
When he tried to move it, the stick-like thing shifted with a dry, grating sound. Through the palm of the glove, he felt the unmistakable sensation of pressing against the ground.
A key piece of Wonderland's lore surfaced in his mind.
No way.
He scrambled to his feet. In the process, he confirmed that his legs were also made of wooden sticks.
He turned back toward the building he had emerged from. Its glass window reflected his figure.
"This form is...?"
A frayed straw hat and threadbare clothes.
A face stitched together from patches of rags.
Arms and legs cobbled from bundles of sticks.
Standing there was a Scarecrow.
***
Not long after TT2 was released, a series of videos stirred up the Tril Trillo community. They had been uploaded by an anonymous user, and they drew attention with controls so precise they might have been mistaken for macros, and creative play that even a non-gamer could enjoy.
People called the anonymous user the "Torch Dancer."
The reason was simple. After every seemingly impossible super-play, he made his character hold a torch and perform the "dance" emote.
An employee of an internet broadcasting agency tracked him down at his home, hoping to sign him as an exclusive creator for the company.
The moment she faced him, a favorite profanity of hers leapt to mind.
She had met plenty of sullen shut-ins with zero social skills in this line of work. When the secretive user insisted she come to his house in person, memories of past unpleasant experiences surfaced, and she had muttered that curse under her breath.
In this case, however, the word turned out to be less an insult and more a dispassionate description. The instant she saw him, she felt ashamed for ever having used it as a slur.
"Surprised, aren't you?"
"J-just a little."
The conversation began awkwardly.
But she was a professional sales agent. She quickly found topics he warmed to and steered the conversation smoothly.
They talked mostly about games.
Which releases this year had impressed him, which had disappointed, which genres he especially loved.
The Torch Dancer grew animated and showed her how he operated his computer. The screen flicked from window to window as his pupils moved. She kept letting out exclamations of admiration at his dynamic vision and reaction speed, which rivaled a pro gamer's. Pleased, the Torch Dancer eagerly demonstrated everything else his computer setup allowed.
But the moment the conversation turned properly toward broadcasting, his spirits sank.
"Can someone like me really be a streamer?"
She couldn't fault him for low self-esteem. He had reason enough.
But offering comfort here would be a negative as a sales agent. She needed to build him up.
She spent hours persuading him.
Her persistence wasn't fueled solely by his skill. His disability had news value. Simply starting a broadcast would bring him worldwide attention overnight.
She was frank about that too. His body was compromised, but he wasn't a fool. He would know what kind of attention awaited him if he stepped into the public eye.
"Thank you. For not hiding it or skirting around it. I thought the same thing."
Fortunately, the Torch Dancer respected her candor.
He agreed to sign with her company, though he didn't accept every part of their proposal.
"I'd like to keep my face hidden."
He told her about his past.
She understood his circumstances. It was an incident she had seen covered on the news.
"All right. Then we'll reveal the state of your body, Mr. Dancer, but mask your appearance. We can overlay a virtual avatar. Have you given any thought to a character?"
The Torch Dancer answered without a moment's hesitation.
"A Scarecrow."
***
Wonderstein stared at his reflection in the window.
This was unmistakably the avatar he had used when he streamed.
When Kirkeus's followers arrived in Wonderland, their spirits assumed a unique form. The roles they had played on stage in life, the makeup and costumes they had worn, their particular crafts — all were reflected in the shape they took.
The mask an actor wears upon the stage.
A persona.
That was definitely the name.
A Scarecrow, of all things.
A hypothesis he had once entertained surfaced in his mind.
If his activities as a streamer could be considered a kind of performance, then the Status Window was an Inspira granted to him for that performance.
Extending that line of thought, this Scarecrow form was his persona.
He looked behind him.
He didn't know how it had happened, but this was definitely Wonderland.
The next thing to determine was the whereabouts of the rest of his group.
He brought up his Status Window.
The system, too, now recognized him as someone other than Wonderstein.
Name: Torch Dancer
Age: 27
Occupation: Streamer
Traits
: [Persona: Scarecrow]
He tried the Sound Room to contact the troupe members, but no one connected. Not Ella, Reina, or Maya — nor any of the other members back at the villa.
The Member Quests gave no response, either.
He noticed that the window reflecting his image was growing fainter. And not just the window. The entire building melted away like a mirage.
He checked the area where it had stood, just in case, but there was no sign of anyone else.
Where was everybody?
That was when he heard a crowd approaching behind him.
They shouted the instant they spotted him.
"Found him!"
"An intruder!"
They looked as though they had stepped out of a Halloween festival. Figures in masks and gaudy costumes surrounded him and leveled their weapons.
The Scarecrow tried to tense up, but it wasn't easy. The weapons in their hands were simply too ridiculous.
They were aiming rubber balls, yo-yos, ribbon wands, trumpets, and the like at him.
The atmosphere seemed poised for a fight, but their wariness crumbled almost at once.
"Hold on, hold on, stop!"
"What the— it's just a persona?"
"A persona? Look at that, it really is."
After confirming the Scarecrow's appearance, they lowered their... weapons. They approached him, who was standing there awkwardly, with open goodwill.
"Hey, you startled us. Why are you sneaking around out here?"
"Yeah. We thought some living people had broken in again."
At their words, the Scarecrow did his best not to look too rattled as he asked,
"Living people came in here?"
"Huh? You didn't know? It's been chaos for the last few days."
They suddenly regarded him with suspicious eyes.
A few even gripped their weapons again.
"Mind if I ask your registration number?"
At the question, the Scarecrow reviewed his knowledge of the game and pieced together an excuse.
"Well, I... haven't received an Inspira."
"Huh. A resident from the northern lower tier, then."
"No. The northern lower tier is off-limits. I live in the eastern lower tier."
His ready answer dissolved the guards' suspicion entirely.
"Sorry. For suspecting you."
"Things have gotten rough lately, that's all."
"What brings you all the way out to the outskirts?"
The Scarecrow came up with another plausible reply.
"I'm trying to bring my family over. I've been out of touch with the street news for a while because of it."
The guards made sounds of sympathy.
"Ah, that won't be easy. Trying to draw family into Wonderland without an Inspira is like trying to pluck a star from the sky."
"We can hardly tell you to give up. But from now on, steer clear of places near where the light came down."
They decided to escort the Scarecrow to the entrance of the Circus Citadel. Loitering around here and running into some trigger-happy patrol members could get him attacked on sight.
"By the way, what did you mean when you said living people came in?"
At his question, they told him what had happened a few days ago.
A flash of light had shot down from the sky and a group of living people had appeared.
From their descriptions of the arrivals' appearances, the Scarecrow knew they were the people he was looking for.
"We arrested a few, but some got away."
"They claim they're acrobats, but who knows."
"The Voodoo Cult's methods keep getting trickier by the day."
"Oh, come to think of it — what's your name?"
The sudden question caught the Scarecrow off guard. The name Frank Wonderstein nearly escaped his lips.
But he couldn't speak that name lightly here.
Instead, he borrowed from the title of a play he had been in as a child.
"Call me Oz."