'…What an odd place this is, though it reminds me a bit of Babel's Grand Cinema.' Says Danielo in his mind, while scratching his head in perplexion.
As he was discovering the place by sight, his eyes caught an open door behind the lackluster curtains. He slowly heads towards it, the door had a sign pinned on it: "Backstage".
The moment Danielo entered the room, the lights automatically got switched on. However, it wasn't an electricity lamp that got lit, it was a fire lamp! To Danielo's amaze, it is the first time ever he sees fire!
He approaches carefully. "…Woah! What in doom's world is this!?" He asks.
Danielo extends his hand in a spontaneous attempt to closely examinate what he's seeing, but quickly feels the upgrading heat with every centimeter towards the fire. "Aah! That's hot… I don't think I can get a hold of it…" He says as he grabs his hand.
He looks sideways to the room, it's state is incredibly messy and dirty. "There are just so many items here that I have never seen before. Man! This game only makes me feel truly ignorant.
What am I supposed to do here? I'm an actor not a cleaner!!" Danielo expresses himself in frustration.
He goes out of the room, back to the stage where it's less dirty and more open. Berniari finally decides to re-check the items he collected back in the mansion, they were only two simple items.
Danielo manifests them in reality, the first item was a large thick book, and the second was just a normal pen. But again, these are all objects never beheld by him, nor probably all the players, which means he must read their description and discover their utility if available.
Danielo. "This thing is quite heavy, the material from which these thin paper looking things are made is weird, their touch is smooth though… and they're all blank and empty!".
Talking about the pages!
The description of this item was as the following: "A script notebook, made of 300 pages, divided into 3 parts, each part for one chapter of your hand-written play."
Danielo's silent and deep look captured perfectly what was going through his mind.
….
…
..
*Realm: Aedificium, Region: Apertio*
Levon has just started his new challenge "Objectivity vs Subjectivity". He's been transported into Kardia, the white infinite chamber.
Levon's instant reaction was visible discomfort, not long ago that he was laying here on the verge of death. But he brushes it off, as he has a new objective to reach.
The watch displays him a message, an introduction to what his challenge is revolved on.
"Objectivity vs Subjectivity, an essential challenge for your quest to complete your cultivation phase. Composed of 3 sub challenges, you must successfully pass 2 out of the 3 to receive 2% of Truth, as well as 5 moving bullets.
At the end of every sub challenge, a question must be correctly answered."
'…The formula of this challenge is rather unique, besides that it clearly holds more value than the past challenges I've taken. 2% of truth in addition to 3 moving bullets… This can only mean that its' level of difficulty must be also high!
But I don't see it mentioning the consequences of failing the challenge…Ah, I recall reading something about this in the game's rules list.' Levon quickly pulls it out and reads it. '…Yeah as I thought, failing quest challenges comes with no consequences. I imagine things would've been way tougher if they also took away something…
Back to the challenge!" he orders the watch.
"So this is all the information given, it leaves much room to speculation… But I have nothing to lose now, let's get going!" Levon clicks on Accept!
Instantly, something other than extreme whiteness appeared in Kardia. Which made Levon take notice of it rather quickly, a huge number 6 in black was drawn in front of where he was standing! Levon's eyebrows showed his confusion and surprise, wondering what this is supposed to mean.
Suddenly, the watch sets forth a question!
· What is the number displayed?
Levon's offended sense of intelligence stopped him from answering quickly, before ironically responding in his mind. 'What type of silly question this is? And there I thought this must be a high-level difficulty challenge!'
With a smirk in his face, he nonchalantly answers out loud. "Six"
But offcourse, that was not going to be it for this sub-challenge, the number started moving!!
Levon notices its quick movement, before it settled down again. "Hmm! It got flipped upside down!" He realizes, while also noticing that the previous question did not disappear…
'It's a 9 this time, the question is probably the same since it didn't disappear…' Graham thinks in his mind, and without further thought...
"N… No!"
He stops in his tracks immediately! And resumes thinking.
"No! This isn't a nine, a 6 does not equate 9 in any mathematical format… This is only a visual trick!
I was almost fooled by it! Of course it's a trick, the challenge can't be this simple and easy. Once it was written as 6, it's numeric value shall remain forever as that.'
"..Six!" Levon gives his final answer.
And right away, the watch displays another message:
*Congratulations, you have passed the 1st sub-challenge successfully*
*Click here to move to the 2nd sub-challenge*
Levon does not take pride or joy in any of that, and quickly moves to the second sub-challenge.
This time, there was almost nothing white in what his eyes saw! In less than a blink of an eye, Levon finds himself in a setting completely different and unfamiliar!
The clear sky and sun light!! The natural land of clay and rock!! The large landscape and free of pollution air!! The weirdly clothed humans!!
"…Wh..Where the fuck am I!!?
I…I'm right in the middle of all of this!! They're certainly looking at me!!!!" Levon starts to halt uncontrollably.
"I can't breathe normally…I need to get away from here immediately!! " Levon starts running at an incredible speed to avoid all eyes and crowd. He isn't sure which is an alien in here, him or the rest, but that's irrelevant! Now, he only wants to escape the unwanted eyes and attention.
But all along, no one actually saw him, or even felt his existence! It was but the shock and the nature of his personality that made him imagine being seen. Only when he went right through a man standing that he realized something isn't normal!
He slows down a bit, then stops, and looks around him.
"…Just now, I went through him, physically!"
To be even more sure, Levon gets back and runs right through another person, this time a woman.
Same result!
"…I went right through her, without feeling anything or inflicting any damage!" Now, Levon is sure they are not aware of his existence, this made him reflect on his previous meltdown in shame. "Fuck!! That feeling again… my head almost started aching..."
He gets his breathing rate back to normal and shakes off his anxiety.
'…This can only mean two things, either they're 3D visuals that are unreal, even in terms of the game itself, or that it is me who's just a virtual presence, an invisible abstract entity!"
Finally, Graham has the chance to look at the scene thoroughly… He finds himself asking. "Just…Where in doom's world am I?".