SMASH.

His neck twisted at the sudden force as the entire momentum of his body was turned against him.

His frantic eyes fluttered out of consciousness as the enormous blunt force to his cheek flew him against the wind.

And with a thud, the boy landed hopelessly in the mud…

Any hopes of his daring escape crushed hopelessly by his smashed and bloody lip.

“Ahh… So it’s like that, then…” The commentator eyed the situation, fascinated.

That sole commentator, a dazzlingly putrid white plastered against the crimson cult…

Irvelle was the one who dealt the final blow.

Blood dripped down, pooling around his face.

“-Hjck!” Cobalt, sharply inhaling, forced his battered hands against the mud to lift his face from asphyxiation by pool of blood.

No…

“That was quite beautiful, I must say…”

No!!!

As the cultists gathered around in recovery from Cobalt’s sudden dash for freedom, Irvelle turned away, mildly annoyed at his hair which had shifted slightly due to his short dash. But running his hands through them, he simply added…

“C’est la vie…”

“You liar!!!”

“Hmh?”

Turning back towards the defeated boy in blue, Irvelle watched him lift a beaten face off the black mud.

“Like hell that’s just life!!! You’re just a shitfaced liar!!! Burn in hell!!!”

Tearing his voice apart, Cobalt screamed his profanities at him. In just such a short night, the subtle game of chess that had occurred between the two had ended in a resounding victory for white.

Cobalt, masked by the darkness and coated in the black mud, felt the weight of his checkmate.

His eyes, now piercing their fury and resentment, howled at Irvelle with every last shred of their enraged resolve.

“Ah…” Irvelle pulled at his sleeve, viewing the pathetic boy with disdained amusement.

“I would be many things, yes… But I assure you, a liar not is myself.”

“!!!”

“I have not told a single lie to you - you see. Along your own judgment, you put your faith into me. This was simply a hunt—however, your brain, reveling from the safety I brought to you, consciously decided to trust me. I promised you adventure, did I not?” With sadistic pleasure, his grin twisted across his shadowed face.

“Y-you’re… Absolutely insane.”

“And your eyes, I assure you… Are truly beau… Perhaps, even… Like mine own eyes.”

“Like hell!!!” Cobalt spat his venom from the mud as crimson figures closed in on his immobilized body. “You’re absolutely twisted!!!”

But the harshness of Cobalt’s words would never truly reach Irvelle, who dismissively turned towards one of the cloaked figures.

“The hostilitiés between us… Does this alleviate that?

“Alleviate.”

“It does.”

“In fact it does.”

“Yes.”

Irvelle’s smirk returned with even more vigor.

“Nibiru.”

“He thanks you.”

“Thanks you kindly.”

Brushing his hair once more, his dazzlingly eccentric hand sprouted in the air. “Ah! Wonderful are the instincts of a hunter! Magnifique!”

Before him, footsteps led the shining man away from Cobalt.

Left in the mud… Covered in blood…

Was that his fate…?

Surrounded by the crimson…

The colors of cloaks obscured his vision.

From all angles, the bodies piled on, hiding the body of the man in white.

His feet turning, legs brazenly brushed by, leaving Cobalt far behind.

Those feet continued walking, until no longer in Cobalt’s field of vision…

Darkness fell onto his perception of the world as he couldn’t keep his mind awake.

Slipping further and further away, he watched the second world which had forsaken him fade away…

Is this really…

『All that’s left for me…?』

* * * * * * * *

I waste so much time on my own fantasies.

But even after all of that… 

He barely caught himself on bruised feet, slipping down the shelves he clung to miserably.

Is that really all that’s left for me in the end…?

The world was slowly killing him.

Dim lights in a vast seemingly endless space.

Peering up over the tops of shelves, he once again felt claustrophobic.

His eyes stung, wanting to melt out of their sockets.

When was the last time I slept…?

…

He posed the question for himself, but the longer he stood torn in the battle against his fuzzy mind, the farther away his answer seemed.

Hypotension brought him to his knees.

He had been walking around the shelves endlessly, picking book after book.

Looking behind him, a mess.

Looking ahead of him, a boundless maze with no exit.

He’d trapped himself in a labyrinth, but found he couldn’t keep pushing on.

No clue why I do this to myself, he thought, snatching a book off the shelf his sliding back was pressed against. Turning the pages, his back slid out from the rest of him, which rested on his knees. His bottom softly hit the floor.

Have I read this one?

Crestia Report, October of Year 4347.

Orders to pursue South received. Passing the sands of Alqamar has come with its own share of troubles, however. It appears the lost troops of GongGong have resorted to Guerilla warfare as they make their way south. Water is scarce. 

Casualties for this month: 12 men, 4 women.

“…”

Cobalt wordlessly turned the page.

Crestia Report, November of Year 4347.

Bastion in the region known as “Canopus” has been destroyed and looted. However, attempts to pursue their general whom they’ve nicknamed the “Kaiser” have proved fruitless. Enemies pursued with minimal losses. Storm clouds approaching from the west as we approach the land known as “Trifid”.

Casualties for this month: 2 men, 2 women.

In terms of the War, Cobalt knew about as much as there was to know.

That being, almost nothing.

Any video surveillance was destroyed. Over 90% of logs were lost. And as far as Cobalt knew…

There were no survivors.

Crestia Report, Dec  ber of Ye r 4347.

D vision lost. Front ine terminated. T e ene y has escaped. The War in the S uth almo t certainly lost. Do not att mpt to purs e. Repeat. Do no  attempt to pursue. If this letter re ches you, everyone in o r division is alre  y dead. The forc s were  ot human.

Re eat.

The forc s w re not human.

Casualties: 12,000 (est).

“...”

Cobalt sat in silence.

But as his thumb peeled the final page… 

His heartbeat shot up in his chest.

St y away f om the st rm.

St   a   ay fr      th  storm.

S  y away from the sto m.

S      w  y fro    th    to m.

Stay away from the storm.

Sprawled in dirty red handwriting, was one of the most disturbing things Cobalt had ever read.

The field reports from 12 years ago were… 

He reread the charred and smudged words written by dead men over in his mind.

Jesus Christ.

Was this the same rift he wanted to reopen?

Did he want to do this at all?

He slumped to the floor.

Just processing all the information was making his head run circles around himself, and now, just as usual, he was stressing himself out on whether or not he should even be doing any of this in the first place.

“You said that there’s nothing that can scare you anymore, yes? If you truly mean that, then show me, personally, what that apathy and defiance can achieve.”

Those words from the demon known to him as Mother.

“Don’t run away from what you’re afraid of. Run toward what you are not.”

Did the AI know something about himself Cobalt didn’t?

Or, more importantly…

Did they plan on killing him off if he failed?

The library’s dimly lit halls tossed and turned over in his mind. Slumping over the more his eyes wandered, he found himself laying down on the dirty floors of the endless labyrinths of lost information.

Is this sorta like betraying Bismuth?

Yeah. I guess it would be, huh?

His wandering eyes fell more and more drowsy.

So when we get there… What are we gonna bring?

He could feel the claustrophobic halls stretching farther and farther away from him.

Definitely some antibiotics… Penicillin… There are some others we could probably take daily…

Fading.

A wristwatch, too… 

Fading.

And…

Fading.

And…

In an instant, the spinning labyrinth of books disappeared under his eyelids, closing like a curtain…

* * * * * * * *

“Mnh,” a tired boy, who had slept on a pile of books, stretched himself across mountains of hard-cover and open pages.

Putting a hand down, he heard the crinkling of paper under his fingertips.

His eyes, still not open, attempted to adjust themselves to the lighting of the library which seemed so dim the night before.

Wait… Night?

It could be night, day, morning, or anything in between.

With no windows… Cobalt had no idea.

Damn stupid space elevator…

At least, that’s what Cobalt was told it was.

“—Uh—?”

His eyes noticed the paper he had used to prop himself up with.

I don’t remember this one…

This special page, belonging to no book, must have fallen out of one.

Something like that…

He rolled over onto his back, and slowly propped himself up against the shelves until he was in a sitting position.

His vision—

Calm down, I'm not standing or anything… Cool yourself…

He dismissively lectured his low blood pressure like it was a child.

As his eyes once again readjusted from the short blurriness, he lifted up the paper into the light.

The front of the document was covered in several different sentences, bullet-points, diagrams, instructions, graphs…

About as much information that could possibly fit on a single sheet of paper.

Pictures of the Rift used in his lab…

But what caught his eye wasn’t the diagrams, charts, graphs, nor steps.

What truly sparked a burst of cognizance in his spaced eyes, were the words on the back.

Handwritten with black marker, backwards from the other side, but appearing clear as day from the front, with light passing through it…

Read the words:

CHEAT CODE