[Chapter One, The Advent of the Knight]
A panel that, I assumed, could only be seen by me appeared atop, but I did not think much of it.
There was no mistaking it. How could it have taken me this long to realize?
It must be the irrationality and absurdity of it all.
The legacy my brother created and the novel I had written to continue his legacy.
One thing is for certain.
It was now reality.
My feet hopped from body to body so that I may approach the protagonist who stood atop a humongous rock of what had once been the gamemaster, gazing around what had been a great city and was now in ruins.
No, that was wrong. Eisenblad has always been corrupt.
Politicians and other higher government officials would ignore the poor get hungrier, and them richer.
This was its consequence. In fact, besides the ruined buildings, it was not as different from the past.
If my assumption served me right, this man in front of me with red hair and blue eyes clad in iron—
He was the protagonist of the very story that saved me, and eventually led to my ruin.
Dominion Knight of The Federation, Benedict Ian Leyendecker.
The thought of questioning him about the time in The Federation hostel did not even come to me.
That was how excited I was.
But there was one thing that was strange.
I could not remember the ending of the story.
Even worse. Did I even write it to its end?
I had even completely forgotten about Imperfect Knight at some point, so why, by the grace of the angels, was it thrown back at me in one gigantic stone?
As I leaped further then eventually climbing over boulders where sometimes my sweaty hands would slip, my thoughts were as erratic as a train.
I decided to recount the memories of my life that began from my brother's death.
There were too many missing gaps, too many plot holes in the story known as my life.
All I remember was, all of a sudden, having a laptop filled with notes and character sheets where I eventually wrote Imperfect Knight.
My brother was not the type to dabble in the arts. He was a jock!
Besides that, how was I sure it was my brother's, Leviathan Schneider's, work?
How did I know it was from my brother in the first place?
How did I end up receiving it?
The laptop had no signs of previous use. It was as though it came with the information of Imperfect Knight. No previous logged in accounts on the web. Not a hint at all.
It was not long when I reached the uppermost of the boulder.
As I grunted my way atop, my efforts were greeted by the tip of a sword right on the bridge of my nose.
With its gleam and sharpness in all its glory, a small trail of crimson dripped down in between my brows.
"Who sent you?"
"Ah…"
I raised my hand in submission, my eyes darting for a moment on the syringe gun on his belt.
Ever the skeptic, Benedict glared at me.
I was more interested in the fact that he felt my presence quickly, though.
"How strange," said I, with a grin I could not control. "You noticed me."
He does not respond to my remark, only lowering his blade, the rapier slicing half an inch deep down to my bridge.
"Who are you?"
"Just know that I'm not here to fight, old friend."
His brows furrowed.
I continued, "The round is over, so there is no need to. Not that it had a lot of fighting anyways."
My hands fall into my lap, brushing off any dust that might have accumulated from my climbing.
"Not for me," said Ben.
Ears perked up, I widened my eyes.
This bastard…
[You failed the round]
A mirrored interface appeared before him. He looked down at it.
I mentally unmirrored the screen.
[Your anomaly has been withdrawn]
My mouth agape, I realized that these were the three question marks that appeared in the first round's information.
He really was the same as how I wrote him.
A damned bastard, hand-held weapon supremacist that resented Word users.
But of course, he only hated them because he couldn't understand how to use a saying. He was a jock like my brother.
I'd be surprised if he began writing a book as well.
And the only reason he survived the first round was because he killed a behemoth. Had he not plummeted through the gamemaster's fat head, he surely wouldn't get away with a slap on the wrist.
The things that had occurred on the moon should have traumatized him.
I heard him mutter these words in a low fashion:
"At last…"
Despite the bitter thoughts I had of him, his words he had uttered had a sense of relief. The kind of relief you felt when embraced by a parental figure.
I was sure that feeling was unbeknownst to him, for that was something he never had.
For a moment, I imagined him as an infant and I, his father.
Would he not have grown into such a disgruntled and grumpy young adult of only nineteen?
My eyes examined his face that stared through the translucent screen.
Though he was only nineteen, there were fine lines under his eyes with discoloration and ghostly pale skin from stress.
I had kept what happened to him on the 100th floor vague, and the novel was first written more than a decade ago, so it should come as no surprise that I don't recall most of the plot.
But still…
As I had mentioned before, he was a knight, one that is conservative and refused to learn Word incantations.
That might be because he had difficulty with reading. In other words, he was dyslexic.
Runic letters and comprehension was needed when it came to Word and sayings that were both verbal and non-verbal.
So, why the hell did Ben have an anomaly?
Indeed, anomalies are unlike Word, for it is passive and does not need the user to be doing anything.
I was not sure if the world we were in now was the novel I claimed to be my own or my brother's true story.
I was not sure of anything at all, it seemed.