-Previous Chapter-
--Encyclopaedia---
-Character Builder-
---Next Chapter----

-----------------------------

Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Eighty-Nine

Adam had expected to receive at least one announcement of a trap going off from Emelia’s arrival, but even as the Creaking Madam came into view ahead of him, there had been nothing.

His guard was up, and he was ready to teleport to the shadow of a distant cloud if necessary, but as he descended upon the airship from above, he saw that his visitor was standing exactly where she had arrived.

[It does not appear that she has moved at all.]

Emelia wore a red fuzzy sweater over a black sports bra that was partially visible, as well as black denim jeans and white sneakers. Her only visible relic was the interloper’s mantle that she’d used to travel here. She didn’t have any weapons.

Thanks to his true sight, Adam was able to verify that it wasn’t another imposter.

It’s really her…

She stood in the middle of the helm’s deck, and Adam landed five metres away on the railing behind the airship’s wheel. With a glance to the side, Adam activated a crawler arm to push the loot from his dead team down the steps and out of Emelia’s reach.

“The moment you move you’re going to die,” Adam told her.

“I know,” Emelia replied stoically.

Her voice slapped Adam in the chest like a bullet piercing through his lungs.

The way she looked at him made him feel light-headed, as if he was in a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

She remembers everything, he realised. It was the glint in her eyes that told him.

“You look so different from my memories,” Emelia said. “But it’s really you, isn’t it?”

Adam summoned two more crawler arms into the air above the helm.

“Why did she send you?” he asked.

Emelia looked wounded by his cold uncaring words.

“She gave me back all my memories of our past together,” she said. “She knew you would listen to me if I came alone.”

“I’m only listening because the moment you move you turn into a fine mist,” Adam replied, his focus on a nearby drifting piece of sand caught on the wind. The moment she was no longer invulnerable, the trap that her left foot touched would go off and obliterate her.

“You don’t believe that I remember?” Emelia asked.

“Oh, I believe you,” he replied. “But I know that she’s done more than just give you your memories back.”

The imperceptible shift in Emelia’s expression confirmed his suspicion.

“She’s been torturing you, hasn’t she?” he asked.

“She has. She was very angry with you, but because she couldn’t reach you, she took her anger out on those you hold dear. But she hasn’t brought any of us to her realm after stage six.”

“My patron is responsible for that,” Adam replied.

“I know. That’s why I was sent here. To warn you and ask you to forgive the Flayed Lady.”

“If you’re really the Emelia I knew, you would never ask me something like that.”

“I’m not the Emelia you knew, but I have all the memories of our time together. Even though they are brief, they allow me to stand here before you. What we shared still remains.”

“I don’t need your warnings,” Adam told her. “The moment you step forward, you will die, and I will make sure she cannot revive you again. It’s the only mercy anyone in this universe may receive.”

“And you’ll turn me into a flower?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“My flower will be a purple aster,” Emelia said. “It was my mother’s favourite flower. We planted it outside on our balcony after she died. I used to look at it every day and think of her.”

Adam remembered what Emelia had told him in the scale of remembrance’s visions. Her mother had died from cancer two weeks before her seventh birthday. In the same conversation, Adam had talked about his father’s amnesia. There was no telling if those same events had unfolded in this universe or not, but Chaos had hinted that Adam’s past was slightly different in this universe though.

“You need to go back to her, Adam,” Emelia said. “It’s the only way this will stop.”

“If the Flayed Lady is allowed to have her way, all of us will be trapped in an endless nightmare of torture. Unlike you, I’ve actually been her adherent. I’ve seen what she is like to someone who worships her well, and I’ve seen how she treats those who disappoint or betray her.”

“Are you willing to condemn this universe to such a fate? Even if you leave, it will not end.”

“It will,” Adam told her.

“Did your patron tell you that?” she asked.

Adam fired three more spiderwebs from his ring over the helm. He wanted to grab the bear traps scattered around her and throw out more phantom copies, but he didn’t want to get any closer to her.

“She told me that Chaos cannot be trusted,” Emelia continued. She hadn’t even flinched when the webs passed through her.

“None of them can be trusted,” Adam replied. “They’re all responsible for the Trials and our suffering. Only a fool believes they are on our side.”

“Chaos is lying to you.”

“I’m sure he is,” Adam replied.

He turned to look at Parvillo. His guide was staring at the red cube floating next to Emelia.

“If I destroy the ship, what will happen to her?” he asked.

[The airship will lose its viability as an arrival point, in which case her protections will fall and a new place will be chosen for visiting Players.]

Adam looked back at Emelia. “If you keep stalling, then I will destroy the ship and you will die.”

She looked hurt by the threat, but pressed on, “Chaos told you what you must do to beat the Flayed Lady, didn’t he?”

“Possibly,” Adam replied.

“Did he also tell you that you will die in the process?”

Adam shrugged. Since his slime body didn’t have anything to give his true feelings away, she couldn’t see how the revelation surprised him.

But I guess it makes sense. If Chaos wants me to use my body to combine cores into a Godstone, it’s unlikely that I’ll survive the ordeal.

“I have no desire to stay in this doomed universe,” Adam replied.

“Even if you leave, we will still be trapped here,” she said, her voice shaking from the emotions she was clearly trying to hold back.

“The universe will be collapsed,” Adam told her. “You will cease to exist. You won’t even remember we had this conversation.”

“Why don’t you care about us? About me?”

Adam lifted into the air. “You’re not the Emelia I know. Even if you have her memories, you clearly don’t understand me. I’ve done everything I could to save this universe and spare my friends and family. You want me to worship the one responsible for your suffering, because it will give you a reprieve for a moment, but your reward will be only more of the same.”

Emelia lowered her eyes. “She told me you would say that. She knows you so well.”

“She doesn’t know shit!”

“It’s too late to undo what she has done,” Emelia said, no longer trying to meet his eyes and just looking down at the trap next to her foot that would kill her. “Everyone you know has been cursed with memories that cannot be erased. What you lost will never be returned to you. Your scale of remembrance will be forever poisoned, and any who regains their memories of your shared past will have to live through the torture she inflicted on them. She will erase all of those memories if you return to her side and beg for forgiveness.”

“You’re lying.”

Emelia looked up at him again. “There’s only one way for you to find out.”

Then she took a step forward.

BANG!

The trap went off and removed everything from her feet to her neck. A second later, even her head was destroyed as one of the crawler arms descended upon her remains.

[Two traps triggered. 200 Points rewarded.]

Then nine people appeared on the airship’s deck.

[Nine Players have entered your dimension. I will spare you their names.]

All of them were moulded to look like the Emelia he had just killed, even wearing the same clothes as her. Thanks to his true sight, Adam could tell they were just random men and women he’d never met before. They all wore two stone bracers and the interloper’s mantle, and they lifted their arms in unison to point their relics at him.

“Thank you, Parvillo,” Adam said as he activated the crawler eye’s skill through his mirror mask, turning invisible and gaining immunity to physical damage, making it so that none of the invaders could target him.

Their movements removed the protections from them and set off all of Adam’s traps.

He didn’t let them get off easy though and activated his Euphoric Tinkerer skill, immediately filling the air with crawler arms, spiderwebs, and thrown molten hammers from his hammer pendant, while the players below blew up from bear traps going off and the previously-summoned arms pressing them flat against the helm’s deck. Adam didn’t let up, activating his aristocrat’s mirror mask again to copy the Ghost skill repeatedly to further multiply the flying projectiles.

By the time his invisibility wore off, the helm was a grisly mess, with the wooden deck so heavily damaged that it was only a matter of time before the floor gave in and collapsed.

“She’s wasting her puppets on me,” Adam muttered as he lowered himself down to survey the loot. “How many extra points did I get?”

[You triggered twenty-three traps and were rewarded 2,300 Points.]

My starting group was meant to kill me, and Emelia and her clones were meant to scare me.

I’m sure the Flayed Lady will try very hard to kill me again at the start of the next stage, possibly believing I have lost my cheat death power.

If she was playing dirty, she would have sent the other players in here one by one over the course of the next three days, forcing me to stay on my toes.

Maybe it’s a power-play?

She doesn’t know when Chaos is planning to make his move through me. Clearly. Otherwise, she would have made sure to properly kill me here. So, is she just drawing this out to unsettle me? Or to prove that whatever I do, I cannot win, and will eventually lose and give in.

She must know that when I die, she won’t be able to do what she did to this universe again. Chaos and Parvillo made sure of that.

But if Emelia was telling the truth…

If the Flayed Lady actually did corrupt everyone’s memory of me, then she probably believes she’s already won.

I should seek out the Tome Keeper after this stage and ask him about it.

The Flayed Lady can afford to wait for me to come back to her, if she is indeed the only one who can undo such memory corruption.

Adam frowned.

While he had no great desire to use the scale of remembrance to bring back the memories of his friends, he had promised Emelia, Kat, and Beck that he would try. Now, that didn’t seem like it would be possible.

If she succeeded, then all my memories with them are effectively gone, leaving me the only one who remembers. And even if I find a universe I want to stay in, I would never be able to give anyone the scale.

Adam let out a deep breath. He would verify the claim later. Right now, he had a lot of things he needed to do.

-----------------------------

-Previous Chapter-
--Encyclopaedia---
-Character Builder-
---Next Chapter----