The silence in the cell stretched for an eternity.

Ishiki sat against the wall, trembling slightly... with his head buried in his hands. The smell of blood was stagnant in air. Ishiki raised his head and froze as he looked at the figure huddled in the other corner with crazed eyes.

The reason for the silence was simple. He had killed Carver, the man who had shared his bread with Ishiki, told him some stories about his life and his fears about gallows.

He sounded human in every way possible. Even more than some people he knew... but at the end he had ended his life.

To anyone passing by, he would look like he was sleeping. His chest didn't rise and fall, but in the flickering torchlight, shadows played tricks on the eye.

It was all for a simple test that he had actually done already before... it doesn't matter if it happened by coincidence.

But... none of that mattered. He shouldn't be feeling guilty about it right?

Last night before killing Carver Ishiki had asked the admins a few questions to lower his options and at the end he ended up with the information that the system would give him a notification even if he killed a human.

He would even receive a few data fragments. So... that made a lot of things clear. The first that the guard he had killed earlier was not categorized as human or a beast.

Than, he drove his blade through Carvers chest. The blade did not leave a single mark on the flesh and pierced his heart straight. Though he vomited a little blood after dying.

Ishiki once again didn't receive a single kill notification. And that made it clear.

They are all fake... they were not alive to begin with.

But with that... followed a myriad of questions.

'They aren't real,' Ishiki thought, the realization pressing down on him. 'But they act as if they are real. They bleed real red blood and they even cry real tears.'

It filled his head slowly... the insane questions.

If they weren't human, what were they? Corpses reanimated by something? Complex biological constructs created solely for this Scenario? Are they just dolls created by the system?

How were they capable of having emotions? They even had memories of their lives as they had actually lived them.

Ishiki frowned at his trail of thought... these people were indeed real and not at the same time.

The horror and absurdness of it made his stomach churn. And he immediately thought of the matters that mattered more right now...

The day before he was arrested... he had found that there was something wrong with what was happening in Aethelburg.

For the starters... he figured out that the players that were populating it and the numbers that the system showed were not matching.

From all the incidents he had suffered here... he reached a conclusion.

The players were unnaturally finding their family members after reaching Aethelburg. It was fishy from the start... and now he knew why.

They were not real people, they were something... uh he didn't know what they were yet.

'Even my Mom-' Ishiki felt a wave of despair drown him.

Clang.

The sound of the heavy gate of his cell screeching open tore through his thoughts.

Heavy boots struck stone. Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Prisoner 447!" The voice boomed from outside the cell, harsh and impatient. "Interrogation!"

'What?' Ishiki frowned deeply... it was midnight, most probably. But what interrogation? At this hour?

He was completely taken aback. Interrogations only happened two times a day, either in morning or evening and it was neither currently.

But assuming that it had something to do with the interrogation that happened in the evening and about the offers, it was plausible.

For a long moment, Ishiki didn't move. He just stared at Carver's unmoving form, wondering if the guards would notice and wondering if it even mattered.

They weren't real too after all. He only moved after one of the guards barked once again.

Ishiki crawled out of the cell and looked at the two persons standing in front of him. One was the usual brute—a mountain of muscle and bad attitude, smelling of stale ale and sweat. T

he other was a slender man with his face hidden behind a visored helm that looked slightly too large for his frame.

They began the walk. The large guard took the lead, grumbling under his breath about the dampness, while the slender guard fell in behind Ishiki.

The guard in the front yawned once and then complained. "What is up with captain. Why did he call for him so late?"

No one answered.

The brute stopped and looked behind at his partner with narrowed eyes. "What is wrong with you? I am talking to you... didn't the captain tell you why he needed him?"

The guard behind Ishiki didn't respond for some time... and then finally spoke. "I am new," His voice was muffled by the helm, but there was a strange, melodic quality to it that made Ishiki's ears prick up. "Just arrived."

The bulky guy was taken aback. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Schluck.

The sound was wet and sudden.

Ishiki stopped immediately and blinked a couple of times in confusion.

The burly guard stood frozen for a second, his eyes widening behind his visor. Then he slumped forward, revealing a slender, curved dagger buried to the hilt in the gap between his neck and shoulder armor. He hit the stone floor with a heavy crash that echoed through the silent prison.

Ishiki stared at the body, then at the remaining guard.

"What..." Ishiki took a step back, his chains rattling. "What did you do?"

The second guard didn't say anything, he simply reached up and unlatched his helmet. He pulled it off and tossed it aside, shaking out long... burgundy hair.

Ishiki's eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the man who gave him a smile.

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