Ishiki immediately sat up straight and hit his head once again.

"Ouch..."

"What happened?"

The question came from Carver, and it cut through Ishiki's confusion. He looked down to see his cellmate staring at him with an expression of genuine concern.

From the front cell, Henrick and Greaves had gone silent as well, listening.

"447?" Henrick called out. "You alright over there? Did you have a nightmare?"

Ishiki closed the System window with a mental flick, plunging the cell back into complete darkness. His heart was pounding and his hands were trembling slightly.

He took a few heavy breaths and steadied himself before speaking. "Its nothing... I just felt like there was some... insect on the ground."

"That didn't look like that at all though," Carver said slowly "Are you afraid of insects?"

Henrick and Greaves laughed from the other side.

"I am fine." Ishiki replied slowly and bit his lower lip. How could have he missed such a detail... this was it.

All the proof he needed and all the truth that was worth anything.

'Screw it... Screw It!'

On the day he was caught... when he was surrounded from both sides in an alley, he had gone ahead and killed an army soldier. But...

... He never got any Data Fragments from it, worse... the system didn't even consider it a kill.

Ishiki was quite certain that he had killed that guard and he died on the spot. There was no why he could have been saved.

Even the thought sent shivers down his spine. He knew it very well that if he killed someone, the system announced the kill with a notification and even rewarded him with Data Fragment and in rare cases, Vestiges.

For some reason it didn't when he killed the guard. There were only two options that steam from here.

First that the system does not give rewards on killing normal humans... and the second and the worse.

'He was not alive to begin with.'

As Ishiki said that line in his mind, he felt gloomy all of a sudden... misty-eyed even.

"Hey, 447!" Henrick's voice abruptly brought him back to present... he asked a question out of nowhere. "You've been awfully quiet over there. What about you?"

Ishiki's stomach clenched. "What about me?"

"You got any stories? Any conquests to share?" There was a leer in Henrick's voice that Ishiki could hear even without seeing his face. "Or are you too young for that sort of thing?"

"I'm eighteen," Ishiki said flatly.

"Eighteen and...?" Henrick pressed. "Come on, kid. Everyone's got at least one story. First kiss behind a tree with a neighbor girl or something like that?"

Carver sighed. "Leave him alone, Henrick."

"I'm just making conversation! We're all friends here, right? Might as well get to know each other. So, 447—you got a girl waiting for you topside? Someone special?"

Ishiki hesitated for a second, but the image that rose unbidden in his mind was of pink hair catching the light, and sharp ink eyes looking at him with coldness and concern at the same time.

He shook his head, what the hell was he thinking. He needed to go into his soul space and look for the answer to all this mess.

'And what am i thinking with that...' His eyes became distant suddenly. The answer... was right here in front of him.

Wasn't it?

It has always been... he was just trying to avoid it. They were not real.

None of the people here are real... They are what?

That was the main question now actually. What are all these people in Aethelburg?

Or if you look at its core... What is Aethelburg?

Ishiki found himself being haunted by these thoughts and still he thought of something else that made him smile even in desperation.

A princess of such wealth that she was so far beyond his reach it was almost laughable. Actually no, there was no wealth now and she was even his... friend.

If one can say that.

"There's... someone," he found himself saying because of his corruption, before he could stop the words. "But it's complicated."

"Ooh, complicated!" Henrick latched onto it immediately and then he looked at Carver "See I told you. Come on, tell us about her. What's she like?"

Ishiki leaned his head back against the cold stone, staring up at the darkness, which was just the back stone just above his head "She's... kind, maybe. But she sure is stronger than me and smarter too, probably."

"Pretty?" Greaves asked.

"Yeah," Ishiki admitted quietly. "Beautiful, actually. But that's not... it's not the main thing. She's just... I don't know how to explain that."

"So what's the problem?" Henrick pressed. "She sounds great. Why isn't she your girl? Don't you like her?"

"Because she's a princess," Ishiki said with a bitter laugh. "And I'm... I'm nobody. Well everyone's a nobody now... but still."

"Half of your words don't make any sense boy." Carver commented with narrowed eyes.

"You ever tell her how you feel?" Greaves asked quietly.

"No. And I won't. What's the point? Even if she..." He stopped, swallowing the thought.

What was he doing? Why was he talking about such things to some people who were not real?

Was she real? What if everyone here was not real? What if he was not real.

'Stop that-' Ishiki clutched his head and slumped back in a corner. Why was he thinking all this?

"What happened? Don't be sad now kid." Henrick said, though his tone suggested he found it more amusing than anything else. "Kid's in love with a princess he can't have. Like something out of a storybook. You ever at least think to kiss her?"

"No," Ishiki said shortly. "We're friends. That's all."

"Friends," Henrick repeated with a snort. "If you don't do anything you will be struck there forever, you realize that?"

"I realize it," Ishiki muttered without thinking. "I just... I'm fine with it. Better to have her as a friend than not have her at all."

He looked up again at Carver who was lying on the other side of the cell, his blue eyes burned with a murderous frenzy.

'Let's... let's try it.' He summoned the [Aether Blade].

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