Ominous Premonition

A cold wave washed over me as I struggled to comprehend what the strange man had just said.

"The System has alwa—" I mumbled before the man read my mind and interrupted me.

"—always existed, yada yada yada," the man droned, "that was the whole plan yes. Imagine what would happen if everybody knew the truth about our existence as we knew it was not what it seemed."

I could feel my mouth hanging open as I continued to listen to the man shatter my worldview almost as if it was nothing.

"I know there isn't a lot of light to see far, but this place," the man paused as he motioned to the area around us, "that Paradigm created this place basing it on the old world. The old civilisation."

He looked down at a block of a broken wall that he slowly lowered down to sit on. He sighed as he sat, almost as if he was exhausted.

"I've been stuck within the depths of Paradigm for so long," the man looked out to the darkness with a look of nostalgia, "I miss home."

I finally snapped out of my stunned silence and asked, "How long have you been stuck here?"

The man slowly emerged from his nostalgic thoughts and looked back at me.

"How long?" He paused as he gave the question serious thinking before ultimately, "Who knows? Time is strange here. Especially, if you're stuck in your own mind while Paradigm controls your physical body when it's your turn to play a role in the Tasks. In the middle of the silent emptiness, sometimes it feels like only yesterday that I travelled with my friends, adventuring."

The man looked at me again, "You have a part of one of them in you, you know?"

I instinctively looked down at my arm.

"Yeah, you know what I'm talking about," the man said as he nodded, "tell me, have you been experiencing a change in your emotions recently?"

I tried to pretend like I didn't know what he was talking about, but I could feel my emotions betraying my ruse.

"Your eyes betray you so easily. There's a lot of truth in them like they did to one of my oldest friends."

Another instance of the Warning Window popped up and the strange man once again doubled over in pain. He cried out in such agony, that I instinctively ran up to him and knelt beside the wall he sat on like he was someone I knew well.

"She's really not happy with me ruining everything," the man groaned, his voice strained by the pain.

"Who isn't?" I asked.

"Paradigm," he looked at me, "we don't have a lot of time left."

He held out his arm to me and ordered, "Give me your left hand."

I didn't question it for some reason. Before I could register it, my body responded automatically, and he grabbed onto my hand with both hands. One below, supporting my palm, and the other placed on top of the back of my hand. The weird texture of the man's slightly decomposed, leathery skin felt weird to me as I watched him close his eyes.

He started to mumble a chant under his breath and the swirling warmth in my arm shot out throughout my whole body and engulfed me in pain. I screamed at the invasion and wrenched my hand away from the stranger and as suddenly as it happened, my whole body went cold and silent.

I shuffled back away from the man and heaved myself up into a defensive stance as he apologised repeatedly to me.

"I'm so sorry," the man repeated, "I was simply trying to bring out my old friend before our time was up, but Paradigm has a tighter hold on his restraints than I originally thought."

"Your old friend?" I hoarsely asked, my throat dry and itching as I spoke, "Your friends with whatever is in me, making me turn into a monster?"

He didn't answer. His head just hung down, and the shadows hid his face.

"That's one way to look at it."

The swirling in my arm intensified. I could feel my anger start to spike, but I couldn't do anything about it.

"What's happening to me?" I yelled at him. I raised my arm and shook it in time to emphasise my question, "What is it doing to me?"

The intensity and the heat in my arm peaked and I struggled to breathe as I glared at the man. Kat's horrified expression after I blacked out with Nato in the first task haunted me.

"Am I turning into a monster?" I asked. My voice cracked and I could feel a deep sorrow come over me. It helped with the heat in my arm as my legs suddenly felt weak and I fell to my knees.

There was a short silence as I felt tears roll down my face. My arm still radiated its heat within me, but it was stewing for now.

"Not if you don't want to," the man said, piercing through the heavy silence.

I looked up at him, "what?"

"There was a plan," the stranger started, "I'm not sure how much I could say without the censorship, since it was from before, but there was a plan that involved a number of Vessels that would gather all the ██████— gather everything, but Paradigm had to be weakened first."

He gazed at me and scoffed, "But nobody — not even Paradigm — had predicted that someone like you would come along and have such a high integration rate with the Left Arm."

He chuckled to himself and muttered, "Well, almost nobody I guess."

"What does it mean?" I asked him. I wiped the tears off my face, and I stood back up.

"Somehow, you managed to break through Paradigm and communicated with..." he pointed to my arm, "him, the one imbued in the Left Arm. We hadn't expected anybody to be able to do that before Paradigm became to be."

"You're just speaking nonsense now," I growled, and he quickly looked back up at me apologetically.

"I'm sorry. Integration rate is the more Paradigm-technical way of saying how," The stranger struggled to think of the exact right words before he exclaimed, "Compatible! How compatible your soul is to the one imbued in the Left Arm."

He slapped his own forehead and chuckled, "Of course! Silly old me!

"I should have noticed it when I scanned you before and noted how hi— compatible you were with the Arm!"

The man frowned and stood as he started to pace whilst thinking out loud.

"But that shouldn't be powerful enough for you to break through to the Arm..."

He stopped pacing and asked, "How did you come to find the Arm?"

The question took me aback and I stuttered as I answered, "I- I received a Quest the System led me to where the Arm was."

"How strange, I would have thought that Paradigm would have wanted to avoid any remnants of the Old World to be discovered." The stranger mumbled.

"It was a glitched Quest!" I said as I remembered the original glitched Quest Window that appeared.

The man turned back to me, "What do you mean?"

"The Quest said that it was a Solo Dungeon, but when I searched up for information about Solo Dungeons, the System said that Solo Dungeons didn't exist," I explained, "it looked all weird as well. Some text looked odd."

"Like the Secret Quest?" the man said.

I nodded, "yeah, how did you know?"

He started to walk closer to me, and I instinctively stepped back and nearly tripped over a big rock.

"How long has Paradigm been glitching?" the man said in a serious tone. I could see the intensity in his eyes.

"Apparently, there had been stories about people seeing the odd-looking text, as well as information given by the System being wrong. But there was rarely any definitive proof of it happening."

"Until you got your glitched message?"

I nodded again.

"I showed it to Saizo, and he saw the glitched text." I continued to explain.

The man cursed and I stared in disbelief at the sounds that his mouth made. It was not Universal Paradigm Language, but I knew from how his body language that he just swore in what was most probably his primary language. A language of the Old World.

As the man continued to pace in his thoughts, I glanced back at Mirou's head. Still on the ground a few metres away from me and I grew curious.

"Why did you kill Mirou?" I asked, "And I assume you also killed the others?"

This brought back the man's attention.

I pointed at the severed head on the ground, "Why did you kill your own teammates?"

The man looked at the gruesome sight and exclaimed, "Oh yes! That's right, I had a job to do, but I got completely distracted!"

He turned and faced directly towards me, "It's to help you."

"Help me?" I asked in disbelief.

"You and your..." he pointed at the Arm, "and the degradation of Paradigm, not unlike what I've been able to do in this task, are all connected.

"While over the years, I haven't had the ability to control my physical body, I've had the privilege to watch. To watch and observe Paradigm and its many complex systems, and over the...recent past however long, I've noticed something changing in everything."

"Something changing?"

"I can't say for sure," the man said, "but I believe that somebody has been manipulating Paradigm, in a way that might completely destroy the world and the System as you know it."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't figure out how to respond to what the man had said.

"What's happened to you, however singular and minuscule, may have been the work of something nefarious, and I had to do something to help you out because I knew that I would not be able to continue to keep my promise to an old friend."

I looked at him in confusion, "what promise are you talking about?"

"All I knew, was that I needed to help you reach the third task as quickly as possible before whatever has been happening in the background changed everything. I need you to reach the true secret of the Tower before whatever is coming is here."

"True secret of the Tower?" I mumbled.

A Warning Window popped up in front of my face and the man screamed in pain and fell heavily to the rocky ground. I could hear bones crack as he landed, and he howled in even more pain at the impact.

"I'm the last member of the opposing team for the second task. All that needs to happen now is for you to kill me, and the task will end, and you will be brought to the final task!"

"Kill you?" I echoed again.

"Listen to me!" the man roared, "I don't know what's coming or when it will happen, but there isn't much time! You must kill me to bring this task to an end!"

I knelt beside him and grabbed my hunting dagger. He nodded approvingly as he clasped my hand tight. His leathery skin pressed against my knuckles.

"Promise me that you protect her as I have for all this time!" the man said as another Warning Window exploded into my vision, and he cried out in excruciating pain in response to the System's harsh will gaining back control.

"What are you talking about? Who?" I asked.

"Promise me!" he demanded louder, this time he grabbed hold of my jacket, near the collar and pulled to bring his face closer to mine.

"I promise! I promise!" I desperately agreed to his plea.

"Now deal the killing blow before she gains control over the whole scenario and forces me to fight you. I don't know if you'll be able to take me down if that were to happen!"

I yelled as he yelled and brought the dagger up above him before slamming it down on his chest over where his heart would be.

The stranger smiled kindly at me as he groaned in pain.

"That was a good hit," he complimented. His grip on my jacket loosened and he lowered his hand, "With this, you should be able to hit level 13. That's good. It's good. The higher your level the stronger you are. The more you're able to protect..."

I stayed silent as I pulled out the hunting dagger from his chest and placed it down on the ground next to me. I grabbed hold of the old man's hand and held onto it tight as he grew weaker and weaker. A part of me understood how odd it was to care for this zombified man, but there was a constant low heat that came from my arm that told me that I was doing the right thing.

"Protect her. Once you get to the third task, you'll know what to do to get to her." The man mumbled and I nodded in silent response.

"You remind me so much of him, you know?" the stranger's voice gradually got weaker and weaker as he continued to speak. "It's your eyes, I think."

I said nothing.

"If you ever speak to him, please say hello to him for me. Tell him I did my best to keep my promise."

As I could see the last remnants of life fade from his slightly decomposing eyes, I answered him.

"I will."

With that, the zombified man whose name I didn't fully get because of the System's interference died. I picked up my hunting dagger as I stood up and wiped the muck off the blade with a ragged piece of cloth that I found from the ground and sheathed it.

As I looked around, a Window popped up in front of me notifying me of the conclusion of the second task. It announced that the Party would now be transported to the location of the third task.

When I looked back down at the zombified body of the stranger, I saw that it, and the whole surroundings, had started to break off into dust and floated up and disappeared out of sight.

Everything slowly turned to nothing, and I was left in the void when I heard a chime in my ears and a bright blue Window popped up in front of me congratulating me on levelling up to level 13.