Though it was an unsettling sleep, I never woke up once at all.
Even when my eyes were closed, I could see the screen in front of me.
[The next round shall commence in:]
[23:43:12]
The fact I’ve been asleep for this long and not have woken up even once made me more uncomfortable.
The second round was about to start and I had yet to prepare or test my new anomaly.
It felt like I was inside of an enclosed space, inside a void of nil.
Quiet.
But, mostly, intolerable.
The timer of the next round’s ticked.
[The next round shall commence in:]
[23:42:34]
[23:42:32]
[23:42:30]
[23:42:29]
The ticking of the timer usually could not be heard.
But, in the nothingness, it was the only sound.
The ticking stopped, and before I knew it, I was in a different place from before.
The nothingness dispersed.
Before me was the milky way.
"In space, almost nothing was real.
"That is because, once you become an astronaut, things will happen that even you yourself won’t believe."
That line was from Imperfections of a Knight.
Why did it appear in my head in a moment like this?
I noticed that I could move now, unlike before where I was hovering in a sea of zilch.
The milky way was meant to be more than twenty thousand light years away.
And space was not meant to be tangible.
Despite that, I walked as if there was a hard surface or a floor.
Walking.
And some more walking.
From where I stood, I was nearer to the milky way while the earth was a slight ball.
For moments, I continued walking, driven by no reason at all.
Someone was at one end. They stood in front of a wormhole.
A wormhole, according to the books I read, could possibly be the closest thing to time travel.
Time moved slowly there.
It was a man who stood near it.
A familiar knight.
"Ben."
But once he turned around, I could see that it was not him. It was anyone but him.
He had red eyes.
And I was certain he had blue.
"...no. You’re not Ben," I uttered, bewildered. "Who are you?"
I’ve seen this red-eyed Benedict before during the first round.
The scene shifted into a room that was unfamiliar to me.
It looked to be a large apartment, one that only the wealthy could afford.
At that point, the red-eyed Ben sat on the bed.
I realized that the place we were now in was actually tangible, and sat on the floor in front of a coffee table.
Red-eyed Ben conjured some tea from thin air and placed it in front of me.
"Have some," said his unusual voice that sounded like the actual Ben, but not quite.
There was a difference in their accents.
I didn’t take the tea.
"What is this place?"
He began to think, putting his fingers to his chin as he feigned being in thought.
"How come you aren’t responding right away?"
Could it be that this ghostly double of Ben was not even aware of what this place was?
"I was thinking," he began, as if he was mimicking the accent of Ben, his voice and everything fabricated, "if I should tell you that this is the 100th floor of a certain tower."
"Huh?"
From what I know, the 100th floor of The Federation tower didn’t look like this.
Or, could it be that this counterpart of Ben has the ability to control it as he wills?
He smirked, his teeth as sharp as cat’s.
"You’re in a state of reverie.
"Other than that, I’ll tell you this, you damn rascal.
"You, the author of this novel, will survive."
—The Narrator is staring deep into Reverie’s eyes.
"But, in return, you will never be the same person."
-
—Reverie has awakened below a strange ceiling.
The words of the red-eyed Ben lingered even as I awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling, completely not noticing the comeback of the Narrator.
You will never be the same person.
I did not know what that implied, nor was I in a hurry to decipher it.
Furthermore, if it was not a lie, this red-eyed Ben was residing on the 100th floor.
I remembered small descriptions from Imperfect Knight.
It had a fifty meter tall ceiling and was adorned in a rotund space and all around it were shelves. It was called the Commonplace Archives.
Each wall had arrays of books, even the ceiling.
Some shelves crossed the others through the circular formation and it turned.
It was a mind-bending thing to see, the way the circular formation turned for each book you wished to see. One would always get lost in a place like that.
With its thousands of meters height, The Federation tower’s 100th floor could not be seen if the sightseer was on the ground or from below.
You could, however, see it in space. Though, the earth’s planet was too miniscule for me to spot at the time.
What I was not aware of was the book that brought the actual Ben in Earth-73.
I never reached or have written that part in the novel.
I regretted it slightly.
Now that the world that was once fiction had come alive, I had no choice but to finish Imperfect Knight.
But how?
The cell towers were crushed by some dinosaur-sized behemoth, and I didn’t have the laptop anymore.
I sold it long ago.
-
Inside a laboratory, there was Oliver Snape sitting in front of a laptop.
Behind him was an operating table where Reverie Schneider was stuck in his own reverie, still, and strapped on, wearing a straitjacket.
What a stupid name, thought Oliver, scrolling further.
Who had named him?
He mused a thought.
It would be hilarious if he ended up being a fictitious character and was named by the author.
It would mean that there are higher beings that were stupid.
He scrolled through the notes left behind the previous owner. The room was soundless besides the once in a while clicking of a mouse.
"The owner of this laptop also has a funny name..." he muttered to himself, nibbling on his fingernail as one of his legs sat on the chair.
The notes that were cited and signed by the name of Leviathan Schneider.