Demian

he doesn’t need to turn and see what has happened to it. there are predictable outcomes to every decision made in this world: the lion will roll forward upon landing, headfirst, before coming to a halt as it slinks back into the brush, camouflaged in its habitat resplendent. demian will take one step forward in response, wrangling away from the system’s fight to his hold. with its eyes trained on him, it will circle the proximity of at least five meters, maximum ten, and within an interval of three to five seconds of buffer for a hypothetical player to reorient themselves within, it will signa

it charges, pounces; the leap made with its hind legs powerful kick dirt off the ground and presses down golden stalks horizontal. demian watches it, feels time slow at the tips of his fingers. cardinal outlines the shine reflected in his eyes as the sun, radiant, hidden behind the shadow of the predator peeks through to greet him: the white light curves in his limbal. he drops his shoulder, blade arm set to the side as the nemean threat exposes its underbelly, its weakness. he knows, on instinct, how to best strike had the system not imposed rules upon itself. as grids take over his peri

their scene returns to a regular speed. the lions’ pride crashes to the ground. it roars at the provocation, found pinned to the ground, and picks itself up as the woman jumps back from her close proximity to him, the grip of her sword held up high, its tip facing downwards. her silhouette from his angle is undefinable, blocked out by most of the inorganic material her sword is firstly forged from. she shifts through the brush, sinking back into its obscurity, and rounds their challenger with careful footsteps. their mark trains in on her. here is their diversion, then: the man move

Demian | L32 | HP: 740/740 | EN: 92/92 | DMG: 19 | MIT: 204 | ACC: 7 | AA | F-SPIRIT | EVA: 5 | BH:37 suddenly, he strikes. through the exposed eye of the man, the world steeps in monochrome. hatched lines trace every nook, every cranny, over hills and valleys of the underbrush. on his fingertips, they trace the ground beneath them just as well. the sun burns white in his vision, and he sees the world in slow motion: there is a lion before them, of the nemean variety. beyond their pouncing predator, he sees traces of the others of its pack: lionesses, adolesce

DAY OF FLOOR TWENTY NINE FLOOR BOSS FIGHT, TWENTY SIX MINUTES BEFORE FLOOR BOSS COMBAT WAS INITIATED. demian scanned his messages beyond solving day’s ciphers. bistro had left him a message prior as well, and he simply hadn’t responded. he chose to continue that trend as he drifted around, familiarizing himself with his newfound location. cardinal had chosen to place him atop the lighthouse. the same one he had shuddered over thinking about the man in the cage, and the same one he left with night only several weeks ago. but the dates were now different, and so must’ve been his object

demian eyed his uptime. “that’s not funny,” he scowled, tracking the spawn points of the great flood. there was no reason to target bistro upon her entrance to the twenty-ninth, so he figured, and that was what annoyed him the most from the ordeal. for he had deduced the radius of which their enemies had spawned from, and hence drawn the conclusion of an area of effect. this wasn’t a warning. this was the game trying to kill her by overwhelm, and this was demian’s way of fighting against the change in the rulebook. because the last time something this severe had gone wrong, the world

Demian | L30. | HP: 600/600 | EN: 93/93 | DMG: 19 | ACC: 4 | EVA: 3 | MIT: 36 | BH: 30 | LD: 1 | AA DAY OF FLOOR TWENTY NINE FLOOR BOSS FIGHT, THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE FLOOR BOSS COMBAT WAS INITIATED. demian woke up with a terrible start. it must’ve been late. the sky was of a dark pitch, and he hadn’t packed up his food cart for the day yet. something registered in him. demian had never once passed out. it took him a moment to realize that where he had been positioned, he’d been slumped against the glass walls of a

unfortunately, he wasn’t. "enough," demian replied, still. he was liken to play the scenario by ear, and had thought of his compadre the same. there was time to regurgitate the details on the way there, he decided, if need be. "though my lot is about two players in particular. if there were more — well. i'm not entirely responsible to be accountable for them." his eyes flicked over to ikeno. "we should still be helping them, however." demian hadn’t missed a beat. he kept close to the player, two faune unremarkable that joined the tide of others easing into the gardens

thread closing. NIGHT + 6764 xp | (470 * 16 * 0.7) + 1500 + 2514 col | (xp * 0.15) + 1500 DEMIAN + 2487 xp | (470 * 3 * 0.7) + 1500 + 1900 col | 1500 + 400

“why does it rhyme?” night queried aloud. demian but rolled the answer in place, jiggling at the padlock and hoping it would give. it wouldn’t. given the lack of their final number, all he had to do was run through the digits from 1 to 9 until it would give way. the entire time, night had murmured the riddle under her breath. twice, and he had made it to ‘4’. no luck. on ‘5’ — “i’ve got it.” demian moved aside, handing her the lock as she drew in close. he hadn’t seen her answer, but he must’ve been close, he figured, if night had taken only seconds to get the hatch open. the wo

“so about earlier…” he had stopped. then, he kept climbing. “what about earlier?” “the man — er, creature, we fought. what do you think that was?” bile filled his mouth. the grip around his neck tightened. “does it matter? … it’s just an enemy.” “cardinal has done many things in creating its enemies,” night said, and demian could feel her glare upon his figure, “but none, so far, like that.” “what’s so different about it then?” “it swapped me,” she continued. “my consciousness, to where it was.” demian stopped again. “no enemy’s ever done that

he gave her no reply after that. perhaps the one he was working on – which seemed like a prose – would prove to be of more help. he checked off the letters as he guessed at the probability of each word that could appear within the fields. and at the end — “ah…!” he turned his head to the side. towards night, what he saw was a puzzle completed, the empty gaps scratched in with a makeshift number, and the result was… “demian,” she started, the expression on her face deadpanned, “i don’t think this is a picture.” “so it isn’t,” he conceded. and yet he jotted down her results o

“a nonogram,” he stated, pulling himself away from his instructional guesses. he had in mind to have a duplicate of the puzzle, undone, stored in his memory just in case his theory for tackling it would fail, but beyond that, he looked over to night’s puzzle. the expression on her face told him she had no idea completely what they were trying to achieve. “the numbers on both the rows and columns indicate filled spaces that exist in the corresponding tiles. it’s usually a picture of some sort.” he hadn’t checked the other pages of the sketchbook, but it made sense that other examples appea