That was nothing short of shock, confusion and surprise. His lips parted, attempting to say something. But words could not quite describe everything that was going on in his mind right now, so he closed his mouth shut, deciding to not say much else.
"I hope you will be ready to accept the challenges thrown your way."
"Of course of course, don't worry about that."
His wave was fairly casual, even with everything going on in his head right now.
"[AUDIT] completed, [45131514119147] passed every round and shows no symptoms of [CORRUPTED DATA]."
Their voice echoed through the glass, which signaled the end of the test. As his body started to turn transparent, the three mods went back to discussing some details amongst themselves. Yet, he found that Number Three's eyes seemed to be always on him, even as his body was clearly getting teleported back to his zone.
He could not help but smirk, his own way of bidding goodbye to them.
.
Once his feet landed on the ground, he felt his emotions fully starting to form in longer, much more coherent sentences.
'Why is Irena banished?'
The most straightforward answer was that she was found out to have either helped or joined New Gaia and their cause, which would not be surprising if it were not for everything else that had happened during the tests. Not even he expected that his half truths would get past the system, since the last time he tried that for fun, he was heavily scolded by the moderators.
That did bring back that question he always had about those who were above the moderators.
"Let's say that they did know I was lying and let it happen anyways, what was their reasoning?"
He scratched his head, attempting to figure out answers that he had not a single clue about. But the mere fact that he now knew that those above would be willingly enough to stand by his side or shelter him a little was new.
"I wonder more and more about the one that was talking to me."
"... Are they really just trying to discover more about this 'game', or is there something else planned for all of us?"
He raised his head, staring at the black ceiling of his bedroom. Even if there was nothing going on, he still could not help that giggle that ended up coming out of him. He felt strange, so giddy all of the sudden despite knowing that everything until now should have been taken more seriously than this.
But he could not help it, not when it felt fun.
"This will be very, very fun."
'
'
'
"You..." Her voice trailed off, suddenly unsure of what to say.
How was she supposed to act? There was an almost exact replica of her standing right in front of her, just right after she was supposed to be banished by the system too. Now, she had an even less of an idea of where she was considering her surroundings just seemed like the very definition of void.
Excluding the person standing in front of her.
"I understand this all must be quite... Confusing to you." The stranger replied, looking away from her.
Irena sneered. "Yes, strange. Very much so."
The stranger's white eyes looked away, seemingly shining even within the void they were in. There were a lot of emotions that flashed through her face, but none that Irena could correctly discern until the very last one. It felt strange to her, to have some hints of concern coming from a replica.
"I'm looking for answers."
Her eyes narrowed. "So you were the one that talked to 'Sura through his system window."
"... And you were the one that asked me to join your organization too."
The stranger sighed, slowly letting out her breath. "Yes, both of those instances were my doing. But you must understand, I must do it through NPCs like you and Asura to reach the answers I seek."
"And what are those answers?"
At a closer look, Irena realized that her eyes were heavily scarred, making her wonder if the stranger could even see. Maybe they could, maybe they could not, there was no exact why for her to tell since they acted so much like a well-sighted person that their scars could be ignored.
"Would you believe what I'm about to tell you next?"
"I will make up my own judgment."
Her words next made Irena's eyes widen, as if she had just suddenly thrown her an expensive object and did not tell her that it was expensive. Irena was not sure how to process the information or even tried to search for any semblances of knowledge that she had up until this point.
That thought just had always been a possibility, but she did not know that she would have heard it from others.
"How can I even trust you?"
"Perhaps you would change your mind after you join us."
She raised an eyebrow at those words. "I'm sure you know that I'm —"
"I have a way of keeping your [DATA] and transferring you from a NPC to a player."
Before she could say anything, the stranger replied, "There are still many things I don't particularly understand myself, so I can't answer you right now."
"But I can reassure you that I'm not those that are above the moderators. In fact, much like all of you, I have no idea about how many are above the mods."
"But you can already do so much?"
"... There has been nothing left behind by the ones above the mods."
There was nothing else Irena could ask, now fully knowing the extent of the stranger's knowledge. Well... she did miss asking something.
"What should I call you?"
"Oracle."