Chapter 11: Have a nice... Status (5)

"Uhhh... Guys? Why are you looking at me like that?" Kai asked with nervous expression, as he was staring at everyone's shocked expression. He didn't get any responses though and decided to ask once again:

"Guys? What is going on? Why aren't you guys saying anything? I'm starting to get worried. Like, really, really worried."

"Kai... I want you to keep an open mind. Please keep an open mind and try not to be shocked." Vale answered, after taking a deep breath, as he was barely keeping his cool.

"Ok, now I'm really starting to get worried and your warning isn't making things any better Vale." Kai answered back, while also feeling nervous and a little bit sweaty.

"Well, here goes." After Vale said that, Marianna took out a small mirror and showed it in front of Kai. As was looking into the mirror, he could see his own reflection and it was at this point that he realized the reason why everyone was shocked. His nose was smaller, flatter and his nostrils were tiny and after staring at it for a few seconds, he started to examine it erratically, while exclaiming loudly:

"MY NOSE! WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED TO MY NOSE!? JUST WHAT HAPPENED TO IT!?"

"I don't know dude. As you were explaining, your nose started to shrink and within seconds, it turned into that. I thought you would have noticed that?" Vale explained anxiously, before sighing in exhaustion.

"Urgh... How do you I even fix this? I don't think even plastic surgery can fix this." Kai exclaimed, as he was examining his nose with a sad and nervous expression.

"I think plastic surgery is least of our problems right now. The problem is the reason for your nose changing like that." Jason spoke with a serious expression, with Mei standing nervously behind him.

"What do you mean?" Archibald asked with a calm and curious expression.

"Vale, you said that the status of your weapon showed your name, race, level and physical stats, right? And you Kai said that it showed your name, race, stats, including luck and affinities, but not levels?" Jason asked both of them, as he put on a thoughtful expression.

"Yeah." Both of them answered simultaneously, while Kai added:

"It also showed our abilities, spells and masteries as well."

"I don't care about those right now. The stat screen is the one I want you guys to focus on. I checked with my weapon's stats and mine were similar to Kai's, minus the affinities and one interesting thing I noticed, is that in the race part of the status screen. I want to ask you this to you two. Is your race same as mine?" Jason explained with a cold expression, as he stared at Vale and Kai.

"Yeah. It is, but what does that have to-" Vale answered, but before he could finish, he was interrupted by Jason:

"Kai? What about you?"

"M-Mine's human as well, but what does that-" Kai answered hesitantly, as he looked slightly away for a moment, but he was interrupted as well by Jason's cold question:

"When did I ever say it was human?"

At that moment, everyone went silent for a moment, before Jason continued:

"I only asked if we have the same race. I never asked what it was, since it should have been obvious. So why is that, Kai?"

"I'm not sure I'm following. Can you explain a bit?" Kai asked, as he feigned ignorance for now, although he had a good inkling of the direction this conversation was going to take.

"That transformation of your nose is not natural. I've seen injuries on noses, but nothing like a transformation of yours. Your answer didn't exactly convince me that you were human, to say the least." Jason answered calmly, before asking in a similar manner:

"So, are you going to tell me what your race is or not?"

Damn... I was afraid that you were going to ask the one question I was hoping to hear the least. Kai thought to himself, as he was staring at his broken interface of his race. He didn't know if he should say the whole truth, or confirm the bare minimum and leave them with that, since he had an inkling that whatever this race was hiding under the information noise, he knew that it definitely wasn't human and he had a feeling that the dream last night might give him a clue, at the very least. Not only that, but for some reason, he had been feeling a chill in his back, ever since the conversation about the races had started.

"It's human, probably. I'm not exactly sure myself, since it's not displaying properly, but my race is human." Kai decided to tell mostly the truth about the interface and nothing more.

"It's not displaying properly?" Jason asked with a confused expression.

"You know how when you try to open a non-text file that wasn't meant to be opened as a text document file, but do so anyways and it displays a bunch of weird symbols and stuff that don't make sense? It's pretty similar like that." Kai explained with a calm expression, before Jason nodded with a look of clarity, before answering with a sentence he did not expect:

"Oh... Now I get what you mean. I guess I wasn't the only one with information noise then."

"Information noise? What is that." Archibald asked this time, with a rather confused and curious expression.

"If I had to give an example, it's like trying to see a painting, but someone has scribbled over the entire thing, making the image nearly unrecognizable. Basically, it's just random gibberish that is covering the meaning of the message and in our case, it's pretty much just a bunch of random symbols that have completely overwritten part of, or the entire message." Jason explained calmly, before adding:

"So in Kai's case, his race is written in gibberish, of which could be the reason why his nose changed like that, or it could be same as ours and he probably ate something he shouldn't have and now is suffering from side effects. As for me, it's just my masteries that aren't displaying properly, which might be a problem."

"It is a pretty understandable concept then. Do the two of you have any of this... Information noise?" One of the two men who hadn't introduced themselves asked yet.

"Nothing from what I have seen, what about you Mei?" Vale answered without thinking much about it.

"I... I don't know..." Mei answered nervously, as she kept hiding behind Jason. As she had given her answer, Kai was rather surprised that she spoke this calmly, since she would either tremble, or be completely silent in the world of who-knows-where.

"Wait, you haven't summoned your weapon? Marianna asked with a surprised expression, as she looked at Mei.

"No. It doesn't make sense that I can just summon something out of thin air." Mei explained, although Kai and the others could tell that it was an obvious and flimsy excuse for her to not get involved into this mess. He figured that before long, she would summon her weapon, so he decided to wait and do one final combing through the information of his status screen, in case he missed something.

I guess I've checked from top to bottom and aside from the race being broken, and my plethora of abilities and styles, I don't see anything that could be important. Everything is standard stuff that I'm used to see and the Log tab could be useful to keep info on stuff that I might need. A rapier, a haliberd and a pair of gloves. If those are our weapons... No way... There's no way it could be that weapon, because if it is... Don't think about it, just don't think about it.

After Kai finished his own thoughts, he could see the argument is leaning towards Marianna and before long, Mei had given up in trying to weasel out of this. After that, she could only summon her weapon with a downtrodden expression and the moment her weapon appeared, Kai could only exclaim weakly, as he shook his head with a downtrodden expression as well:

"Oh, crapbaskets. It is a book in the end."