{Mmmh. No… Stop…! I can’t… die now… but I… don’t…}

Noel: “…Want to kill you all…”

He dreams of the day he underwent his graduation mission. That day, that wretched day when fragment sacrificed twenty – three thousand lives for the sake of turning Noel into its host. For the sake of placing Noel on his first step down the Origin Path and preparing him for something surely to be involved with sinister forces.

After all, what else could you call the act of forcing someone to enter as a game participant, but mass – slaughtering thousands of innocent lives for the mere sake of ‘preparing’ that very same ‘player’ to barely withstand the forced fusion it conducted?

Unlike Rise, Noel constantly mulled over that day. He may have come to terms with its end result, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t regret the decisions he made. Every action he took undergoes intense scrutiny in his head during his down time. His dreams always show him a fragment of his past – a bloody scene he caused during his ‘missions’. Some are mild, where he only had a small role to play, while others mere people he directly finished off. As he grew older, even smaller missions began to weigh heavily on his consciousness. Of course, the worst dreams that he continues to have, are always his ‘graduation mission’ where he successfully killed Professor Molodov Watts, though at a heavy cost…

And his 10th birthday mission: the very moment Noel shot his mission target - a father wrapped up in the criminal underworld, dead, before the single parent’s only daughter.

Today was one of those days where he had a dream such as as these. A dream that focused on the ghosts, wailing and screaming for him to spare them, to curse and blame him for their painful demise – and threatening to kill him, but barely making leeway at harming him. Furthermore, a bevy of manipulated humans came forward, clearly against their will. The mass of victims spoke, and as they did so, hatred began to overlap with even greater hatred. Words equating a shrill requiem sounded akin to a large chorus of despair, forming resonance with the vengeful ghosts’ regretful lamentation.

He desperately tried to clear his name, attempting to reveal the singular eye that ‘fragment’ portrayed in front of them all. He attempted to reveal that it was all a plot between that evil Professor who took years kidnapping them all, and the fragment he was talking about, at the moment. Naturally though, their sea of plaints drowned out his single voice.

And as they drew ever closer to their target… despite his warnings to them all to forgo such actions, to ‘stay away from him’…

Their bodies began to disappear in fits of ululation. To his dismay, nobody heeded his advice.

His forehead pounded. His mind ached.

And then, Noel’s personal vision went black.

When he next opened his eyes; the little ‘nightmare’ his awareness was trapped in, already vanished.

He found himself within the confines of a bright room, filled to the brim with a strange tension. He moved up, shifting his laid – back and resting position a bit, so he sat upright instead. His poor eyes had been closed for too long, so they weren’t quite adjusted to the light just yet – causing him to squint at the slightest raise of his eyelids. As he exchanged visionary recognition of his surroundings in favor of audible recognition, Noel focused on his sharpened sense of hearing for help. The sounds of heavy and faint breathing mixed together… it seems the boy isn’t alone here.

{From what I can gather… there are at least 4 … no, wait! 5. 5 people are with me. 4 seem to be huddled together in an area Northeast of my bed, and the other… is adjacent to me? Like, directly across from me, but a little ways back. Nobody is in arms reach, at the very least.

Based on their frequency of breathing I can assume that those four seem are probably … scared? They’re nervous, or something along those lines. The other person in the room is breathing normally. As if nothing in this room can upset or bother him even the slightest – which is a big difference from those other 4. What a stark contrast in tension levels those sides of the room give off. Hmm.}

Finally, Noel’s vision settled in. As little bits of light passed through both of his squinting eyes; time allowed each pupil to adjust accordingly. This granted Noel the chance to slowly but surely, lift the soft and protective layers of skin away from his irises – granting him visionary recognition at last.

And what he saw, was a familiar wild – haired child resting soundly across from him, on top of a fluffy, white – wait no. The bed he rested upon actually seemed to be rock hard and cheap. Though, he couldn’t actually tell without touching it. He only knew, that a similar bed was underneath him. And it wasn’t soft by any means!

In the left – most side rested an empty bed with freshly laid out blankets. It looked like somebody just departed or something.

And close to the door, at the Northeastern side of the room, 3 female adults and one male dressed in all white, except for light blue gloves and a matching colored face mask. They seemed to be eyeballing him. Did he do something wrong?

He received his answer very shortly after eavesdropping with his better than average hearing.

Wuce: “Shh! Stop… speaking so loud! What if he hears you?!”

Georgia: “Right. Because he definitely has bionic hearing or some such. He, a NON – COMBATANT STUDENT, is going o have incredibly heightened super – hearing. Get a grip Wuce!”

Winney: “But… you ladies heard him too, right? All I asked was if he wanted anything to eat for breakfast. I wasn’t even expecting a reply, just testing my luck with him stirring so much, and trying to keep the mood brighter for all of us that are stuck here… but then he… he said he wanted to kill us!”

Ava: “That’s not quite what he said. I believe his EXACT words were,

‘…Want to kill you all…’. He didn’t use an ‘I’ so he didn’t-”

Georgia: “What the heck’s the difference?! He practically threatened us! the ‘I’ was probably sounded out but not spoken because he was still… oh I don’t know… ASLEEP!”

Wuce: “Ladies, please… keep your voices down, or else -”

Ava and Georgia: “Shut up, Wuce!”

Wuce: “…I’m only trying to help warn you that he’s currently looking right at us.”

Ava: “…Georgia, you go and look after him. Check on the progress of his healing wounds. Make sure to ask if he’s feeling alright too.”

Georgia: “Wha- No! I don’t want him to kill me! YOU go, since you don’t believe he threatened us!”

Ava: “I don’t want to. I’ve lived a long time, and I plan on living longer. And I never said he was safe, I just think he didn’t intentionally threaten us, is all. Think about it. He was just badly injured by villains. He most likely only dreamt about the incident, or something…

...probably.

Georgia: “Then you go!”

Ava: “NO! Wuce, you go…!”

Wuce: “Wha- No, never! Did you forget that he was a victim of the Malierano family’s experiments?? He mioght really want to kill us!”

{What the heck are they talking about? I’m a victim of what…? Moreover, I … did I actually threaten them in my sleep? How odd. It must’ve happened when I was trying to stop those people from disintegrating… Ah!}

Suddenly, memories came flooding back to him, memories of how his fight began, against One, the fierce mercenary. And painful memories about its conclusion.

Noel: “I… *Clenches fist* I lost… I put up such a pathetic showing, and I couldn’t even get the job done. How freaking pathetic this is…”

Winney: “*Whispers* I’ll just go.

Hey, little boy~ Welcome back. Are you feeling any better? Does your body still hurt anywhere? If it does, don’t hesitate to let me know. Okay? *Wink*”

Noel: “Ah, hello! Thank you for taking care of me! I’m a lot better thanks to your care! I’m perfectly fine now, I was just… well, I had a bad dream about those people just now, and I ended up repeating the words they said to Rise and me. That they wanted to kill us all, but he said the word ‘you’ instead of ‘us’. I thank you kind folks from the bottom of my heart, for caring for me.”

Tension seemed to dissipate at once with his sound words. Of course, that’s right. He was just almost murdered by bloodthirsty mercenaries! Naturally, the horrible threats they spouted would’ve gotten ingrained into his mind, and manifested as a dream- er, nightmare!

The four calmed down with that apparent revelation – but the origin of their worries, a germinating seed of resentment was beginning to bud.

Winney: “The others are going to grab your teacher. I’ll be back with breakfast. Okay? Heehee~ Give me a few minutes to make something!”

.

…

.

Noel: “…This embarrassment… I can’t ever forgive myself for this…!

*Clenches fist tightly*

Next time I see him…

.

that man…

.

that murderer…!

…

No. First, I need to grow stronger… this power that ‘thing’ gave to me… it’s not enough! It wasn’t enough back there!!

Just you wait…

.

.

.

Whatever your name was…! By the next time we meet, I’ll have FAR surpassed my previous self.

And when that moment comes, no matter how many tricks and traps you employ for your protection that day…

I’ll finish what I started in the forest!!!”

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