Swoosh!

A strong, bright light awakened me.

"Hmm."

Groaning slightly, I blinked a couple of times while looking around me.

'Where am I...?'

My mind was still quite groggy. My vision was hazy, and a constant ringing sound echoed inside my mind.

I was struggling to recall what had happened.

Thankfully, this memory lapse merely lasted a few seconds before everything became clear to me and I started to calm down.

'Right, I should be detained.'

I looked around me.

Indeed, it looked like I was in some sort of interrogation room. The concrete walls surrounded me from all sides as I sat on a metal table, my hands bound by handcuffs that were connected to it.

The overhead lights shone sharply from above as a dark glass I couldn't see through appeared on the sides of the room.

This situation...

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the chair.

'Not surprising.'

Clank!

Not long after, the metal door opposite me opened, and a series of steps echoed.

I kept my eyes closed while waiting for the steps to stop.

A tense silence followed, and I felt a powerful gaze settle on me. It pressed down through my closed eyelids, as if it were trying to pierce straight through me.

But I remained calm.

Calm until I heard a soft scraping sound, and I finally opened my eyes.

Krrr!

"Seth Thorne."

A deep voice reverberated a moment later.

Sitting on the chair opposite me was a man clad in a dark [BUA] uniform. He had a clean-shaven face, neatly parted hair, and glasses, his long fingers tapping softly against the metal table.

His gaze bore down on me with a powerful intensity, and under such a gaze, I felt my body begin to tense.

Clearly, there was something about his gaze that created this weird sense of oppression.

"...There's a lot that we need to talk about."

So he said...

"Do I need to start?"

"You do not."

The words flowed effortlessly from my mouth. Despite the strange sense of oppression emanating from his gaze, I felt completely unaffected in that moment.

When compared to what I had experienced...

Even he looked surprised, prompting his brows to furrow slightly, but I didn't give him the chance to say anything before speaking once more.

"You've all been fooled from the start."

"..."

The man didn't react; his gaze firmly locked onto me. I couldn't quite tell what he was thinking, but I didn't quite care as I continued to speak.

"The clues were there from the start. From the moment the gate started, there were clues everywhere. I'm sure that by now, most of you are aware of the fact that you've been tricked."

"....."

The silence was all the confirmation that I needed.

'So it looks like they're all aware of the fact that they've been fooled. This makes things a lot easier for me.'

"There were many eyewitnesses who were present back when I was at the Gate. You couldn't have imagined my surprise when I saw them all turn on me."

That was indeed a surprise.

Well, maybe not quite for 'me'.

"Of course, I later learned that their memories had been altered and that I had been made the enemy. That's not all; I've also come to learn that all the footage has been altered to make it seem like I was responsible for everything, but..."

I stopped, my eyes squinting as I stared at the interrogator in front of me.

"I'm certain that if you watch the footage once more and speak to the people about what happened, they'll give you a completely different account from what they gave previously. Isn't that right?"

"...."

Silence followed once more.

The silence once again spoke volumes to me.

'It looks like they've already done that. Good, it looks like they're quite efficient over here.'

From the moment I had accomplished my goal and had taken care of Dantalion, I knew that all the manipulation it had done would vanish. The truth behind what had truly happened within the Gate should've come out, and my name, which had previously been stained, should've been cleared.

To some extent, at least.

'He's probably here for other reasons.'

"You want to know why I did what I did? How I knew what I knew, and who... I was working for?"

This was the most obvious answer. It didn't take a genius to figure this out, and without holding back, I began to explain the situation to them.

"In truth, I was originally planning on conducting a stream on the abandoned factory."

Pausing, I looked at the interrogator.

His expression remained unchanged. I nodded once more.

He seemed aware of this, too.

"Of course, I'm well aware of the fact that you are aware of this. This isn't news I've been trying to hide; I made a large announcement on the internet. The plan was for me to leverage the hype around my game and situation to grow my following and generate more marketing for my game. But who would've thought that place was a hideout for a strange cult?"

There was nothing that I needed to hide from this point. Despite knowing that I was currently being monitored intensely for any possible lies, I didn't feel any pressure at all. In fact, the more I spoke, the smoother my words became.

Excluding some key details, I recounted the entire situation to them.

From the things that I had managed to figure out. The strange cult. The Twisted Man, and everything that I knew about the cult.

I was sure that they knew all about what I was telling them.

They just wanted to hear it from me.

They wanted to know what led up to the situation.

"...It was there that I learned about the demon known as Dantalion."

The tension within the room heightened at the mention of the demon, the interrogator's expression finally changing for the first time. I could even feel a shift from the one standing outside the window, but without paying them much attention, I continued speaking.

"He has a strange power. He seems able to read minds, alter faces, and alter reality to bend it to his will. It probably did everything it did to get rid of me because I knew too much. That was also the reason why I acted the way that I did during the Gate incident. The moment I managed to escape the place and planned on telling everyone about what I had found out, the Gate occurred, and I was swept into the situation. In the end, I knew that nobody was going to believe me even if I told them everything, and as such, I acted on my own."

Of course, that 'someone' wasn't actually me.

But they didn't need to know this, and as I looked at the expression of the interrogator in front of me, I was sure that what I had recounted was pretty much in line with what he had found out.

"Ah, right."

There was something else I forgot to mention.

"The Jester was one of the experiments. He was originally supposed to be the main vessel of the demon, but thankfully, he was able to free himself from its control and decided to work with me. The two of us were working together, and that's why I was targeted by the demon."

I stopped speaking then.

There was no need for me to speak any longer. Staring at the interrogator and seeing his troubled expression, I knew that he was very likely struggling to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't lying.

'...And that's because I'm not lying.'

Everything that I said was the truth.

Regardless of what he tried, the outcome wasn't going to change.

Leaning back, I basked in the silence as it stretched in all directions, my gaze locked firmly on the interrogator. As the moment dragged on, he finally raised his head, his eyes sharpening as his deep voice quietly reverberated through the room.

"You..."

My heart remained calm as the tension in the room heightened.

"From the moment you appeared, all kinds of things have been happening on Malovia Island. From the recent Gate incident to the Conductor Gate not long before that. There's also the situation surrounding your games, and the strange events that have occurred in the short span of time you've been active. I've only just listed a few, but there are quite a few more that I'm still sorting out."

Taking a brief pause, his eyes narrowed.

"...Who the hell are you, really?"

Hearing his question, I opened my mouth but stopped the moment I felt his gaze. I could tell that he had done his research and knew quite a lot about me.

It was also obvious that, despite the fact that I had passed his 'lie detection' test, he was still suspicious of me.

But in the end, none of that really mattered as I smiled.

"Isn't it obvious?"

I looked at the man in front of me.

"...I am the one who killed the Jester."

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