Chapter 942: Guessing Game with Consequences [Bonus 8]
’Where’s the one who waved at me earlier?’
With that question in mind, Rishia spun around, scanning all twelve Arthurs, meeting their eyes one by one without speaking.
They all smiled and waved at her as she did so, and just as she reached the fifth one, one of them spoke.
"You guys were mad at me waving earlier, but now you’re doing the same thing?"
Rishia immediately turned toward the one who had spoken, studying him in silence for a moment before pointing at him.
"You."
"Huh?"
He blinked in surprise, then the realisation that she chose him hit him, and he exhaled softly.
"Come on, Rishia. You should have thought about this more carefully," he said, rising from his seat and moving the chair aside before continuing in a regretful tone.
"Now I have to attack you."
The instant he spoke, he vanished, and Rishia leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding the punch that slammed into the ground where she’d been moments earlier.
"Ah, we forgot to tell her about the penalty!" one of the Arthurs within the mirror walls shouted.
At this, the one who had just attacked Rishia froze, unclenching his fist and dispersing the destructive energy that had been gathering around it.
"To think we all forgot about that. Sorry, Rishia," he said, raising his hands in surrender.
Rishia, who had now summoned her bow and nocked an arrow, didn’t lower her guard, but he didn’t seem to mind as he continued speaking.
"If you choose the wrong one, the one you picked is going to attack you. And you’ll have to keep dodging their attacks while figuring out which one is the main timeline version.
If you’re unlucky and keep guessing wrong, you might end up with 11 of me attacking you by the time you’re done."
Just as he said that, one of the Arthurs in the mirror walls snorted and spoke.
"She can’t beat one of us. How’s she gonna survive against 11 of us?"
A few of them laughed at that, while Rishia’s brow twitched slightly.
Noticing this, another Arthur pointed at her and said, "Ah! Miss Pedigree is pissed!"
The other Arthurs continued laughing, and Rishia barely resisted the urge to release her arrow.
"Um, are we supposed to taunt her while she’s trying to figure out which one of us is from the main timeline?" one of the Arthurs asked.
"I don’t think we’re supposed to, but it’s fun," another replied.
"Yeah, it’s fun, so let’s do that," a third said, then looked toward Rishia and called out.
"Hey, Rishia! You do realize this whole tower is based on roguelike games, so if you fail here, we both go back to Floor 1, which means we’ll have to fight the Cosmic Horrors and that Demon Asura again, and go through Trap Hell again. Better not fail."
"I’ll have a much higher chance of not failing if you’d kindly shut the fuck up," Rishia snapped back.
For a moment, all the Arthurs were silent, then one muttered, "Oh wow, we made Rishia curse."
"We should note down this day."
"Too bad we can’t tell the date in here."
While those in the mirror walls were talking among themselves, the one now in the middle of the hall, who had punched the ground where Rishia had been moments ago, spoke to her, "Since we didn’t tell you about the penalty earlier, I won’t attack you again until you make another choice, but if your choice is wrong, I’ll join the other one to attack you at the same time, so choose wisely.
Oh, and don’t point if you’re not sure, because pointing counts as choosing."
Just as he said that, one of the Arthurs in the wall shouted at him, "Dude, you’re giving her too many hints! You should’ve at least let her point at one of us and realise that pointing counts as choosing."
"Yeah, like, dude, you’ve been giving her so many hints from the start," another said, narrowing his eyes in displeasure.
"You’re also the one who revealed our existence to her earlier. Do you have a crush on her or something?"
When he said this, the Arthur in the centre of the hall looked at him with an incredulous expression. "Dude, are you missing some screws in your head or something? Why would you even think to ask that? I’m on team Nicole for life."
The moment he said that, one of the Arthurs immediately burst out laughing. "Ha, I remember a time when I thought that too."
That statement made the other eleven Arthurs turn towards him and ask in unison, """What the hell do you mean by that?"""
"Exactly what you think," he replied, an impish grin spreading across his face.
Seeing this, Rishia silently marked his position, deciding he was definitely NOT the real one.
At the same time, the one in the centre of the hall hissed, then shifted his gaze from that one toward Rishia as he continued speaking.
"Leaving that idiot aside, Rishia, honestly, figuring out which one of us is from your timeline is going to be very simple. Just look at the underlying informa—"
He abruptly went silent, and though his mouth moved, Rishia couldn’t hear a single word.
After a few moments, he seemed to realise it, stopping mid-sentence before shrugging with a defeated expression and putting his hands into his pockets.
Seeing this, the other Arthurs immediately started talking.
"Ah, he got muted."
"I knew he was going to get muted! He was really saying too much."
"He basically spilt the answer for her."
The words from the different Arthurs made Rishia instantly realise that this particular version of Arthur had been about to give her a hint that would have made identifying the main timeline Arthur far easier.
The tower had automatically silenced him, so he couldn’t give that hint.
Just then, another Arthur said, "Hey, Rishia, just so you know, all the alternate versions of me are connected to the universe right now, so relative to you, the cosmic energy they have at their disposal is effectively infinite.
So if you pick the wrong one and think you can just wear them down in a battle of attrition, that’s not going to work. Just letting you know."
Rishia didn’t respond. She simply kept her gaze fixed on the one who had been muted while trying to give her a hint.
He noticed her looking, smiled, and silently waved at her. Then he raised his hands in surrender, showing he couldn’t say anything again.
From the start, he had been the version of Arthur who helped her the most, and that clearly wasn’t allowed, which was why he had been muted.
She thought about the words he had been trying to say and realised he had been telling her to look at the underlying information.
With her Clairveil eyes, Rishia could perceive a portion of the underlying information of reality, the ’truths’ that dragon eyes were said to reveal.
She could sense some of the interactions between ambient universal laws in the structure of reality and how those laws responded differently to each individual.
From that hint, she guessed that the difference between the Arthurs lay there. That was the distinction that allowed her to separate the alternate timeline Arthurs from the real one.
The problem, of course, was knowing exactly what that difference looked like. How was she supposed to recognise it?
It had to be a difference tied to time and space, so she studied all the Arthurs silently, trying to see if any of them caused the ambient laws of space and time to behave differently.
After a moment, she pointed at one of them and asked, "You?"
That one appeared subtly different in her vision, but when he realised she had pointed at him, he smiled, then got up and summoned his weapon.
That was enough for Rishia to know her choice was wrong, and she immediately dodged as a slash and a punch tore through the space she had been occupying only a split second before.
"And she misses again!" one of the Arthurs shouted into a microphone he conjured from thin air, while the others chuckled at this commentator-like action.
The second Arthur, the one with the sword, silently twirled it around his fingers before gripping it and pointing it at her.
"You know, it’s funny how the main timeline Arthur is clearly laughing at you along with all the other alternate versions."
While he spoke, the muted Arthur, coating his fists with destructive energy, silently held up a finger, pointed at Rishia, then pointed at himself.
He repeated this gesture before immediately dashing toward her with his fist pulled back.
Rishia instantly summoned her bow and loosed several arrows that curved through the air, exploding into a greater rain of arrows that attacked him from every angle, trying to stop him from closing the distance.
She wanted to focus on the hint about underlying information, but the sword-wielding Arthur and the fist-striking Arthur both broke through her arrow rain, forcing her to split her focus between defending herself and analysing the difference she was supposed to detect.
The one with the sword unleashed several powerful slashes of silver energy, while the bare-handed one lunged toward the direction she had dodged to, aiming punches at her the moment her feet landed.
She turned her bow on him and fired arrows at his incoming fists, then disappeared into her shadow, reappearing from the shadow of the sword-wielding Arthur.
Her hands became claws, and she slashed at his back, but he spun quickly enough to block with the flat of his blade. She followed with a tail swipe to his stomach, sending him flying toward the wall.
The bare-handed one jumped at her from the side immediately after, and she met his punch with one of her own. Their fists collided hard enough to crater the ground beneath them, and the resultant shockwave hurled both of them backwards.
Rishia’s feet scraped across the floor as her back crashed into one of the mirrored walls. She shifted to the side just in time to avoid a fist coated in destructive energy that smashed into the spot that had been behind her, shattering the glass and scattering shards throughout the hall.
The Arthur in that section shouted at the one who had broken the glass, but he paid no attention, turned, and rushed at Rishia again, while the sword wielder swung his blade and released several Extinction Slashes from her other side.
In the instant before their attacks reached her, Rishia narrowed her eyes and pointed at the one whose section of the wall had just been destroyed.
When she did, he turned toward her, laughed, and shouted, "Third time was NOT the charm!" before summoning his spear and throwing it at her with all his strength.
