Chapter 86: Chapter 85 - The 'Why' of PK
26 February 2024
Katalysis, 43rd Floor
POV: Rakuno
You know, straw makes for a surprisingly good enough mattress to lie on. Maybe the texture of the straw wasn't the same as it was in the real world, but of course, I was more than happy to use that detail of inconsistency to my advantage.
As long as I could still sleep without waking up feeling itchy or whatever, it's as good as a futon in my book. What choice did I even have, stuck in a room of metal walls and bars?
I stood in front of a pile of straw that was half my height, and was shaped like a bean bag. Turning around, I let my body tilt backwards and crash into it, feeling my weight sink into my improvised cushion.
With only straw around, I guess the only thing I could do was to make piles of them, not that I could do anything else that might alert those 2 guards watching me. They weren't even taking watching shifts with each other for some reason, even though Krieg's cell was right behind them.
Am I really that important for the Gladiorium?
Hearing new footsteps, I hurried to pick myself up, feeling a little annoyed for not being able to try having a nap right away. But I knew who was coming, and she wasn't someone I should really sleep on.
"Yo! You up yet, Witch?"
Tori's voice sailed into my ears before she even came in front of my cell.
The guards left their posts automatically, leaving from my sight as if it was none of their business. My hand thumbed onto the handle of my sheathed spare katana, as I faced Tori intently. In the cell behind her, Krieg was lying on the straw ground in the far corner of his cell, evidently taking a nap.
"What the hell do you want?" I couldn't help getting the nerves as I asked.
"Damn, can't you just relax? Your HP gauge's back to full!" Tori tried to lean onto one of the bars of my cell. "I'm just here to have a good time with you!"
My eyes squinted at her purpose for coming here. And they squinted a little harder.
".....That's sus."
Tori's legs almost collapsed at my reaction, but she gave a hearty giggle.
"Aren't you supposed to be the sus one? For wearing a big hat and calling yourself the Witch."
I blushed a little. "Can't I do whatever I want with myself?"
Tori gradually calmed down from her giggle fits. "Sure, sure.....I'll leave it at that. For now."
She then pulled a chair from somewhere out of sight from my cell and promptly sat on it.
"I'm serious about having a chat with you. Especially when I'm gonna chat about what your friends did to try to find you."
That got my hand covering my spare katana's handle. "What did you do to them?"
Tori leaned back and held her hands up. "Whoa, calm down! Let me just say that they're absolutely fine! Plus, you can confirm this for yourself, can't you?"
Confused at her claim, I struggled to see the point she was making about that. It was then that my eyes had shifted to the upper left corner of my vision, which had me feeling pretty sheepish.
The HP gauges of my party members were as green and full as mine. As I tried to shove away the fact about never thinking to check them earlier from my mind, I gave Tori a little chuckle.
"Oh, well.....I totally knew that....."
That totally wasn't gonna fool Tori, who rested her face on her hand, looking at me as if she had expected more from me. "Say that again without touching your weapon, please."
My hand gently left my spare katana's handle, as I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Anyway, please have a seat," Tori offered. "I do regret having forgotten to add chairs to the cells, so I'll apologize for that lapse of hospitality."
What a weird thing to say, considering that prisons don't need chairs, but I went over to my straw pile and scooped up as many straw as I could with my arms.
"It's alright," I said. "I'll make one."
Moulding the straw into something like a stool didn't take long anyway. In fact, it was that fast because of how straw was so easy to handle in this world.
Once the stool was done, I plopped myself onto it, and found myself sitting eye-to-eye with the Council leader, her face being seen between a pair of metal bars.
The easy parts to do were over. Now came the hard ones.
"What happened to them?" I asked in a hassle.
Tori leaned back onto her chair. "First off, would you like to listen to how hard I tried to keep them from coming here?"
I felt a slight urge to reach for my katana again. This woman sure doesn't hold back on her cockiness.
"No."
"Fantastic! Well, damn, they almost found the prison, I'll give that to them. I had to drag my sleeping ass out just to meet and.....um.....explain to them that the prison is out of bounds! The angry one was especially a pain in the ass!"
"The angry one?"
"I liked her though. She was the easiest to deal with. Played her good, I did."
It was easy to know which one she was talking about. There wasn't anyone else who'd recklessly throw herself into the fray just to save her comrades.
Without admitting that I'd gladly listen to her ranting instead, I leaned a little closely to the metal bars. "And what about the others?"
"They aren't even worth playing with. Such a shame," Tori's ranting kept going. "You've got the pacifist who's ruining my fun with the angry one, and the one who's the Vanguard.....well.....he's really as stubborn as they say."
It was like a switch had clicked within me, as my eyes lit up at the mention of Zena. "Is it about his spear? I mean, I just don't get it either! I've been nagging at him for that!"
"I know, right?" Tori leaned closer to the metal bars. "Maybe I should pester him about it too!"
"How about we force him to do it together?" I leaned closer.
"You got a deal! Threatening him sounds fun!" Tori stretched her hand past the metal bars with an excited smile.
I took it in reflex, and even shook on it, before realising that I had just gotten along with my captor.
"Ah....."
As I slowly slipped my hand away from Tori's, she kept her smile on her face, as she leaned back on her chair to relax.
"You know, if you weren't in this much trouble, I could have invited you into the Council."
I adjusted the pretty uneven seat of my straw stool. "Huh. You must be kidding."
"Katralis's a big city to manage," Tori didn't seem to mind my dry rejection to her proposal. "So the Council's always been short-handed. But, I've always been finding new people to join our cause."
She turned to me, and her smile bent into a slight frown. "The 'right' people, that is."
"Must be hard finding the right people," I commented sarcastically. "Seems to me that not every orange player can make the cut."
Tori's hand grasped onto a metal bar, as she pulled her face close to it. I thought she wanted to throw me another threat, but her eyes weren't emitting out terror like before.
"Listen here, Witch. Katralis is a city that I've built with my own 2 hands. I've seen through its whole history, even if it's just a few months old. It's a place that many orange players can call home, and I intend to make sure it stays that way."
She then pushed herself from the metal bar and leaned back onto her chair. The more I stared at her, the harder my fists had started to clench up.
From the moment that Tori had offered to have a chat with me, I had the urge to ask her a few burning questions. Those questions that could solve some of the mysteries that Zena was investigating himself.
I remembered the PK surge. And the origin of the material known as 'Paper'. I needed to solve those mysteries with the golden chance sitting right in front of me right now.
"Have you heard of the unbelievable number of PKs happening recently?" I asked. Tori leaned forward gently, not showing much of a reaction to the news.
"Nope. Not at all. Why would you care about such things? An orange player like you would have just joined in on the fun.....or maybe, you're a fake one, aren't you?"
I had almost cut my breath off at the mistake that I had made. Her eyes were getting scarier, narrowing into mine as my lips struggled to not give away anything more than I could have.
"Relax, Witch. I have already suspected you a long time ago." Tori giggled, feeling proud of herself.
"R-relax? How can I relax when YOU'RE the one who's seen through me....." I started to clamp my mouth, before realising that it was simply too late to do anything.
Tori watched my blunder as if she was watching TV on a couch. "You were never the type to be hard to see through, you know. I knew from the start that you had never willingingly hurt---much less killed---anyone just from looking at your face."
I fell silent, feeling disappointed at myself for having my cover blown before I even knew it was blown.
"How cute you were, trying to keep your cover," Tori continued. "But ever since you displayed such a strange power, I decided to go along with your already broken facade. And so here we are."
"Oh, and I can't forget your friends. They're probably green folks too, but they sure as hell look like they don't mind being orange players. Especially that Vanguard. In fact, he could even become an 'red player' if he wanted to.....assuming he's strong enough to be one."
I wasn't so sure about that, particularly because of how Meghan saw the orange cursor as. But she was the 'angry one', so I could understand how Tori thought of her. As for the 'red players'.....
It was common knowledge that 'red players' were players who'd PKed a lot more often than others. Of course, encountering even just one of them equals asking for a death wish, but if they were the cause of the PK surge, that would make sense.
"Are you a 'red player' too? Surely you enjoy the art of PKing from the Gladoriums." I injected sarcasm into my question.
Tori's smile grew worryingly wider. "Enjoy? Sure I do, while I torture my victim out in the open. But to do it often like a 'red player'? Nah. Like I said, if I'm gonna PK, I'm gonna do it in style. Plus, it's a deterrence against any threats in Katralis."
She leaned in closer to the metal bars again, this time in an attempt to whisper. In slight reluctance, I did the same on the other side if the metal bars, and lent an ear.
"These 'red players' you're talking about are those people who believe in a secret rumour going around recently."
"Why are you telling me such a thing?" I whispered back.
"You want an answer to the PK surge, don't you? Well, I do want you to understand why PKs happen in the first place as well. And believe it or not, it's actually so fucking simple, you might even want to try it out yourself."
Tori finished her sentence in an excited tone, which made me feel disgusted instead.
But I would soon understand the sheer simplicity of the matter. And I would feel the pieces of that puzzle clicking neatly into place as her whisper flowed ever so clearly into my ear.
"Ever wondered what happens after you PK? Surely not, since you're a green folk, but I want you to imagine that you fucking did it. So, what's next? You've got blood on your hands, and whatever stuff your victim had on them drops and you take it as your own."
"That's the first incentive to PKing. You get to take the victim's stuff without even forcing them to. Makes sense, right? Even players drop items when they're killed."
"Now, what if I told you that there's another incentive? That's the secret rumour. Rumour has it that PKing rewards EXP many times more than enemy mobs."
I pulled away from the metal bars instantly, as my gasp almost choked me. Tori slowly leaned back onto her chair, her hands wrapped behind her head, while flashing a smile that sent chills down my spine.
"That's the fucking thing, isn't it? It's the shortcut to gaining power." She continued. "Not that I can confirm it myself though. My level's too high to test that rumour out. But the fact of the matter is that, there are people who buy it. Add in their greed for power, and they'll do whatever it takes to level up as much as possible, even if their hands are stained to the reddest crimson."
I felt my fists shaking, not in fear, but with a fresh wave of indignation. It all made sense now, that the idea of PKing would be relevant at all. If the act of committing a PK made one much stronger in this world than the conventional methods of hunting enemy mobs, they might have resorted to do it, even if it meant shouldering the gulit and remorse of having killed their victims.
Even then, for the handful of 'red players', they wouldn't even have shred a tinge of sympathy for their victims. That alone could make me feel sick to the core.
I wanted to rant to Tori about it, about such 'red players' who could have taken refuge in Katalysis and benefitted from its hospitality, but a look at Tori herself stopped me from doing so.
She was an orange player herself, so why should she try to stop them from coming here? But still, Katalysis was the supporting factor of the PK surge, and there was no denying that.
"You finally understand, don't you?" Tori receded from the metal bars. "I'm sure you do. That's just how it is."
"To make you feel just a bit better, I don't condone any senseless killings in Katralis itself. Katralis is a city made by orange players, for the orange players. I fully intend to make sure that the orange players are well taken care of here, even if most of them don't have the habit of PKing. But for anywhere outside the boundaries of Katralis....."
She flashed her chilly smile again, a move that I despised her doing.
"It's just fucking free real estate."
The way she said that with an intense spark in her eyes was especially disturbing. I shuddered a bit in response, clearly understanding her stance on the PK surge.
"Well! Time's up! Gotta bail!" Tori shot straight up and shoved her chair out of view. "The chat's fun though! Would come again. Tomorrow sound fine to you?"
I remained seated on my straw mould. "Why are you asking me this, if you're going to decide it yourself anyway?"
Tori nodded in satisfaction. "I'm glad you're so quick on the uptake."
And I'm not so glad about her subtle ways to assert domainance on me, even though I would be trying to ignore them.
As the Council leader's footsteps faded away, I breathed a small sigh of relief, willed my legs to carry me to the straw bean bag at the corner of my cell, and dumped my body onto the surprisingly comfortable cushion.
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