[Round 0 - Main]
[Kill a living being to join the rounds. The rest will die.]
Time left before the first round:
[12:17:44]
"Wrong," said Junhan, leaning on the door frame. "This is the 8th floor of the tower."
The sound of defeat rang from her laptop inside the room. She wailed at the sound of it.
I slowly walked back inside with deliberating steps, ruminating the reality I was in right now.
Why was the 8th floor of The Federation an exact copy of the Eisenblad State Hospital?
The world right now isn't the world I once knew of, I understood that much.
But how come I felt like I was being targeted by some unknown entity?
No…that's just arrogant. I'm nothing.
I'm just a nurse.
Entering the room once again, I contemplated my existence as I sat on the bed.
"Schneider," came the voice of Junhan.
I looked up.
She twirled her four-wheeled chair to face me.
"I'm here to let you know about the current state of your world right now."
"Okay."
Though I thought I already understood most of it, I let her talk.
"I have to make a statement in a few hours so I'll make this quick. Press your chest, your heart."
I hesitated, but I did as she said.
The words people-pleaser echoed in my mind.
—————
User
↳ Reverie Vickroy Schneider
Attributes
↳ Nurse (Uncommon)
Sayings
↳
Anomaly
↳
Skills
↳ Strength Level 5
↳ Agility Level 3
↳ Endurance Level 6
↳ Word Level 7
—————
"There you go. Can you see it?"
"Huh," she said. "What do you mean? Others can't see your profile. Only yourself."
"But Harry…"
She brushed me off.
"There's no time, you fool. There are only so many more hours before the first round."
I bit my lip to stop myself from blurting out anything.
"Sayings," she said, shutting the laptop off. "Right. There are two types of sayings: verbal and non-verbal. Verbals are incantations. To put it simply, spells. You use your mouth. A saying must be popular enough before it can be considered an incantation.
"In other words, inside jokes or sayings you created on a whim will not work unless known and acknowledged by more than a hundred people. Only a hundred. Yes, it sounds little, but imagine a hundred naked men in your room in the middle of the night.
"The more common a saying, the more powerful and the more Word it takes up. Common sentences like 'I love you' are considered sayings but are more difficult to master. You must have a high level of Word to pull it off.
"Non-verbal is through written text on parchment, eggshell paper, a leaf, even. Any written text can be considered as a non-verbal saying. But, from our research, tapping in morse code can also be a non-verbal saying.
"Now, Word. Word is your battery, your mana to pull off a saying. You can increase it by leveling up using points. Anomalies are, well, an exclusive skill, to put it in simple terms."
She stopped to breathe, her breath loud and raggedy.
"Introvert?"
"Isn't it obvious?" said Junhan in between her inhales.
That was one thing we had in common.
During her breathing session that had turned into meditating, I asked her:
"How's Art?"
"Who?"
"The child I brought in."
"Ah, Archie."
"Right."
I was a little annoyed that Archie still kept his former nickname.
"Ludvig is helping him conduct a funeral for those who had died."
"Who?"
"Ah, right. Harry Ludvig Donovan is his full name. He has two first names."
"Right."
She took a swig of water.
"Lastly," she finally began, a deep inhale before starting, "It's still unsure where or when sayings became spells but our team is currently researching it. We are currently testing if we can create our own sayings by artificially spreading a sentence through flyers or something. It's still under work."
I nodded.
She fell flat on the table, groaning. "Urghhh…"
"Are you drunk?" I asked.
I had assumed her canteen was filled with water but could it have been alcohol?
"Drunk? I, the great lieutenant of the Knights d'Columbus?"
I only nodded.
As fellow introverts, I understood that sometimes we need a little liquid luck to even speak.
-
Junhan led me to where her statement was set.
I watched her as we parted ways, her platinum blonde hair that was more of a white glimmering under the noon sky.
While I was rather concerned for her, for she was drunk and all that, I was sure she could handle herself.
She tripped on the stairs of the open-air stage and was offered help but she stood up groggily anyway by herself.
Right.
Once in a while, I would think that she wasn't actually blind and it's things like these that remind me of her disability.
"Sir!" came the voice of Art.
I felt the touch of Johnny's hand on my shoulder. I turned to face him.
"Reve, old man."
I winced. "I'm only twenty-seven…"
From a short distance, I saw a stupid face waving at me so I looked away. Said idiotic man stood next to me.
There had been a crowd formed in front of the open-air (not technically, "open-air" since it was on the 2nd floor of the tower) stage. Murmurs and chatter rumbled throughout the crowds.
Art stood close to me.
Junhan, who seemed like a different person now, stood in front of a podium.
A powerful gesture from her such as the closing of a fist made everyone silence themselves.
Silent.
Then, she spoke.
"The rounds—scenarios in our world—will be unpredictable."
Her voice boomed with every syllable. No microphone needed.
"It won't be surprising if we woke up as we did a month ago and awoke in a different world or era
"One of our comrades, the arch knight of Knights d'Columbus, Dominion Knight Ben Leyendecker, is known for being one of the first people to set foot on the moon.
"Due to the conflict of the rounds, our atmosphere had frozen solid. Though it is not obvious from here."
She took a deep breath as the audience gasped.
"In other words, the astronauts of Lucifer-180 are stuck on the moon."
A dejected sound reverberated across the audience.
"How we know that, well, we managed to connect with NASA to help contact the astronauts.
"Luckily, by the time we contacted, the rounds had yet to commence. In fact, it was just today.
"It was eight fifty-nine a.m. when we contacted him.
"The rounds began at nine a.m.
"We only had one minute to share information with our knight.
"All signals were destroyed. By who, we do not know."
"We know," whispered the man with a stupid face beside me, his grin just as stupid. "I won't tell you, though."
Junhan gave a long sigh that could be heard from the back where Art, Johnny, and I were at.
"Was it enough?" her voice bellowed with her face down. She repeated: "Was it enough?"
The crowds filled the tower floor. People looked down from house windows, everyone halted to listen.
The audience leaned in further in curiosity.
She swung her head up to look amongst her people.
"He told us this:
"There is no such a thing as a moon."