Infinite Game - Start With SSS Rank Class

Chapter 243: The first crack

The courtyard vanished the same way it had appeared.

No sound. No light. Only fog rising from the gray stone floor, covering the ruined grandstands, covering the ash, covering the dried husks that the Zombie Angel’s tentacles had left behind. Then when that layer of fog dissolved, room 2705 was standing in its original position again, on the twenty-seventh floor, in the middle of a corridor familiar to the point of being boring.

As if nothing had ever happened.

As if a massive hand had just placed the chess piece back in its square, then brushed off and walked away.

Rover sat on the sofa, still watching the surveillance screen as it gradually transitioned into an empty frame. He didn’t stand. He didn’t say anything.

A moment later, System light rose before everyone.

[Ding! Special Trial has ended.]

[Room 2705: Held out until trial end.]

[Evaluation: Perfect.]

[Number of Survivors who participated in the attack: 168.]

[Number of Survivors still alive: 41.]

[Number of monsters eliminated: 1,204. Among them 1 individual of level <Fallen Angel>.]

[Basic reward: 1,250,000 Omni Points.]

[Bonus reward (Perfect Evaluation): 500,000 Omni Points; Free Attribute Points: 400; Epic Supply Crate x2.]

[New Title: Gatekeeper.]

Sunako’s mouth dropped open.

She looked at that text for about three seconds, then turned to look at Rover, then looked back at the notification panel, and finally sat down heavily on the carpet.

"One hundred sixty-eight..." she murmured. "And forty-one left."

No one answered her.

Because everyone in the room understood what that number meant.

In that courtyard, room 2705 hadn’t killed a single Survivor. Selina had only severed tentacles. Rilia had only blocked wings. Elith had only spread silk. Even the two towers at the end had aimed only at the opponent’s defense towers, not at people.

And yet one hundred twenty-seven people had died.

They died because they had dragged room 2705 into a trial they weren’t qualified to witness. They died because the monster they had helped summon didn’t know how to distinguish those who had invited it.

Rover looked at the number ’41’ for a very long time.

’I didn’t kill them.’

He thought that.

But right after, another thought surfaced from somewhere deep in him, cold and calm and clear enough to make him slightly uncomfortable.

’But if I had been weaker, perhaps they wouldn’t have died. They died because I’m strong.’

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them.

"Collect rewards."

[Ding! Rewards collected successfully.]

[Current Omni Points: 5,880,000.]

Nearly six million.

A number that just two rounds ago, Rover wouldn’t have dared imagine. With this many points, he could upgrade the room door two more levels, bring Thunder Dragon to a new tier, buy another Epic-rank defense tower blueprint, and still have enough left to continuously repair the door through an entire round.

He should have felt satisfied.

Should have.

Morie was the first to get to work.

She went straight to the control panel, pulled up the entire combat log, checked door durability, checked energy depletion of both towers, checked the moment the suppression field had been eroded away.

Selina cleaned her sword.

Elith sat in a corner, letting the small spiders crawl back up her shoulders, eyes half-closed, white silk slowly drawing back from the door crack.

Rilia leaned against the wall, wolf ears shifting slightly. The burn marks on her arms were healing under the [Garden of Eden] effect, new skin appearing white as fresh snow.

Nanami poured water.

Thunder Dragon lay curled under the coffee table, its tail occasionally tapping lightly against the floor.

And Monica sat at the sofa’s edge, the cursed doll cradled in her lap, smiling.

Rover looked at her.

She was still smiling.

It was a perfectly ordinary smile. Gentle, a little bashful, very Monica. Her hair was still slightly disheveled from the battle, her clothes still marked by a smear of ash. Her full chest rose and fell with steady breathing, proving heart and lungs were both working perfectly.

No wounds.

No blood.

And that was precisely the problem.

Because in that courtyard, Rover had seen it very clearly.

When a tentacle had swept sideways, Sunako was standing in the wrong position. Monica was the closest. She — the person so afraid of blood she trembled, who had once told him in the bath "I still feel very scared when I see blood" — had launched herself forward, wrapped her arms tightly around Sunako, and turned her back to take the blow.

The tooth-filled mouth at the tentacle’s tip had bitten into her.

Rover had seen that.

So why wasn’t there a single scratch on her back?

He stood up, walked over, and crouched down before her.

"Monica."

"Master?" She looked up, eyes curving.

Rover said nothing. His gaze dropped to the doll in her lap.

It was the cursed doll she had picked back up after the battle. A small porcelain doll in a black dress, hair braided on both sides, glass eyes vacant and empty.

On its porcelain face, stretching from the corner of the left eye down to the chin, there was a crack.

Very fine.

Fine as a thread of hair.

Rover reached out his hand. "Let me see it."

Monica obediently handed the doll over.

And in the moment her arm extended, Rover saw something.

Monica’s shadow on the floor wasn’t moving.

Her arm reached out. The shadow sat perfectly still, hands folded in its lap, head slightly bowed.

Half a beat behind.

Then half a beat later, the shadow extended its arm too.

In the living room, the air suddenly thickened.

Selina stopped cleaning her sword. Elith opened her eyes. Rilia straightened up. The small spiders on Elith’s shoulders all stopped moving simultaneously.

Only Monica noticed nothing at all. She was still smiling, both hands resting on her knees, waiting for Rover to return the doll.

Rover drew in a very slow breath.

"System. Open Monica’s information panel."

[Monica]

[Role: Tenant]

[Level: 3 | Rank: Epic]

[Loyalty: 100]

[Appearance: 94]

[Physique: 512 | Spirit: 604]

[Output: 9,800 points / day]

[Skill: Cursed Doll (B07) | Level: 04]

[Status: ██████████]

[Note: A portion of soul structure has been displaced into an alternate vessel. Vessel: Cursed Doll. Cannot be restored with Omni Points.]

Rover read the last line three times.

Then he said, his voice very calm: "Repair."

[Ding! Repair failed. Target is outside the authority of Omni-Mechanic.]

"Repair."

[Ding! Repair failed.]

"Repair."

[Ding! Repair failed.]

Every failure still deducted points.

Because his class couldn’t distinguish failure from waste. It only knew its owner had just given an order.

[Omni Points: 5,880,000 → 5,730,000.]

[Omni Points: 5,730,000 → 5,580,000.]

"Repair."

[Omni Points: 5,580,000 → 5,430,000.]

"Repair!"

"Rover."

A hand settled onto his shoulder.

Not gripping. Not pulling. Only resting there, warm and steady, in the same place she always put it.

Rover stopped.

He raised his head. Nanoe was standing behind him, her face as gentle as always, but her eyes were not.

"Four hundred fifty thousand points." She said softly. "You just burned four hundred fifty thousand points in ten seconds."

Rover looked down at the doll in his hand.

"I have nearly six million."

"I know."

"I could buy a Legendary tower."

"I know."

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he said, very quietly, as if speaking to himself rather than anyone else:

"I’m Omni-Mechanic. I can fix anything."

Nanoe didn’t answer.

Because they both knew, that sentence had just become a lie.

That night, Rover sat alone in the bathroom.

He didn’t soak in the tub. He just sat on the edge of it, elbows on knees, holding the porcelain doll, staring at the crack on its face.

Monica was still eating, still smiling, still sleeping, still producing nine thousand eight hundred Omni Points every day.

Only her shadow was half a beat behind.

And not a single Omni Point in the world could fix that.

Rover raised his head and looked into the large mirror hanging above the sink.

In the mirror, he was also raising his head to look at himself.

’System.’ He commanded silently. ’Open Mirror ability information panel.’

The familiar panel appeared.

Rover had opened it hundreds of times. He knew every line by heart.

But this time, the panel was longer.

[Ability: Mirror]

[Rank: SS -1]

[Level: 03]

[Description: Replicates the ability of a contacted target. Replication strength equals 50% of the original. Number of simultaneous replications depends on Spirit points.]

[Integrity: 97%]

[Cracks: 3]

[Note: Cracks cannot be healed. Cracks cannot be repaired. Cracks cannot be purchased back.]

Rover didn’t move.

For three full seconds, he didn’t move a single muscle.

Then he spoke aloud, his voice rough: "System. These two lines have never existed before."

The System was silent.

"Answer me."

Still silent.

Rover gritted his teeth, stood abruptly: "Answer me!"

And this time, the System answered.

But not in the tone he had heard for two hundred forty-three days.

[Ding! This information was not originally within your access rights.]

[Ding! The concealing layer has been removed.]

[Ding! Not by the System.]

Three lines of text stood still in the air.

Then dissolved like ash.

Rover stood motionless in the middle of the bathroom, clearly hearing the sound of water dripping from the faucet onto the tile floor. In that silence, he realized something he had never truly considered in over two hundred days.

The System wasn’t God.

The System was only a door.

And just now, someone had walked around behind that door, pulled down the curtain, and let him see something he wasn’t supposed to see.

He slowly turned his head toward the mirror.

In the mirror, he also turned his head.

Half a beat behind.

"Three cracks."

The voice came from within the mirror, gentle, low, carrying a strange damp quality like the sound of water flowing through pipes.

Rover didn’t step back.

He had been waiting for this.

In the mirror, his reflected shadow slowly tilted its head to one side, at an angle no real person’s neck could achieve. Its face was still Rover’s face. But beneath the skin, something was sliding back and forth, like hundreds of other faces were jostling to rise to the surface.

The Thousand-Faced Resentful Spirit.

"Three cracks." It repeated, and in its voice was an emotion Rover hadn’t expected.

Envy.

"Do you know how many cracks I have, Rover?"

Rover didn’t answer.

"You wouldn’t want to know." It laughed softly. "The answer would keep you awake, and you need to sleep. Your bed is very good. I once had one like it."

Rover tightened his grip on the doll.

"You removed the concealing layer."

"No." The Thousand-Faced Resentful Spirit said, and for the first time since Rover had encountered it, its voice held no trace of teasing. "Not me."

Rover frowned.

"I wanted you blind a little longer." It continued. "A person who can see their own cracks starts regretting. Someone who regrets doesn’t dare replicate. Someone who doesn’t dare replicate can’t grow. And I need you to grow."

"Why?"

"You know perfectly well why."

Rover looked straight into the eyes in the mirror. "I don’t."

"Then ask a different question." The Thousand-Faced Resentful Spirit pressed its palm against the glass, from the other side. Its fingers were longer than human fingers. "Ask me: why does an ability that’s only rank SS have an indicator that even rank SSS doesn’t possess?"

Rover was silent.

"Ask me: why does the System — the thing that has named every defense tower, every bed, every silver coin in your backpack — not dare tell you what Mirror truly is?"

The hand on the glass surface slowly clenched.

"And ask me this last question, Rover. The most important one."

It pressed close to the mirror’s surface, and in one moment, Rover clearly saw hundreds of faces surfacing beneath its skin — men, women, children, and things that had never been human.

"If it wasn’t me who removed the concealing layer..."

"...then who else is there, standing higher than the System, who wanted you to see?"

The mirror fogged over.

When the fog cleared, only Rover remained in the mirror, standing alone, face white, holding a porcelain doll with a crack running from the corner of the eye down to the chin.

Nanoe was waiting for him in bed.

She wasn’t asleep. She sat leaning against the headboard, legs drawn up, the thin silk sleeping clothes slipped off one shoulder, revealing the soft curve from her neck down to her shoulder. The room’s pale yellow light cast a layer of honey-gold across her skin.

Rover climbed onto the bed, lay down, and rested his head on her lap.

Nanoe didn’t ask right away.

She only threaded her fingers through his hair, slowly, one at a time, as if counting.

"You were in there for forty minutes." She finally said.

"I was bathing."

"You weren’t bathing. Your hair is dry."

Rover opened his eyes.

On the ceiling, the lamp cast a round ring of light. He looked at it for a long time.

’If I tell her, she’ll find a way. She always finds a way.’

’But if she finds a way, she’ll pay a price for it.’

’And I don’t know how large the price of this is.’

"I was just thinking about Monica." He said.

That was true.

It was also the first lie he had ever told Nanoe.

The hand in his hair paused for half a beat.

Only half a beat.

Then it continued moving, as gentle as before.

"Yes." Nanoe said softly. "Me too."

She didn’t ask further.

She couldn’t ask further.

Nanoe looked down at the face with closed eyes resting in her lap, and in her chest, something tightened very slowly.

She knew he was lying.

She had known from the third second.

But somewhere in her soul, the place where the System had engraved the words Tenant and the number 100, there was a thread — very thin, very strong. That thread didn’t stop her from thinking. It didn’t stop her from seeing. It simply made the question "what are you hiding from me" never quite complete its journey from chest to tongue.

She could advise him.

She could analyze things for him.

She could stand before him and say "this is foolish," and she had done exactly that dozens of times.

But when he said "I’m fine," for Nanoe, that was a door that had closed.

And she had no key.

’Then I’ll stand outside the door.’ Nanoe thought silently, fingers still moving through his hair, slowly, patiently. ’I’ll stand here until you open it yourself.’

’And when you do, I must have already prepared everything.’

She leaned down, lips resting against his forehead, slowly, for a long time, as if pressing a seal.

"Sleep, Rover."

On the nineteenth floor, in a cramped room full of surveillance screens, Rossie suddenly sat straight up.

On the complex-wide common chat, a message had just appeared.

It came from no name at all.

Where the account name should have been, there was only one symbol.

An open eye.

[????????: Room 2705.]

[????????: You have [Mirror].]

Three seconds later, the chat panel that had been scrolling along steadily suddenly froze.

Then it shattered.

Deep in the dead zone, on a gray stone path without a single lamp, a man in a tall top hat was sitting by a tea table.

Before him, the pocket watch with its lid open still lay motionless. Its hand had stopped at some unspecified moment long, long ago, so long that fog-dust had settled into a dull layer on the glass face.

He raised his teacup.

And right when the cup touched his lips, the watch on the table produced a sound.

Click.

The second hand moved forward one notch.

The white-gloved hand froze in mid-air.

Very slowly, the man set the teacup down without making a single sound. He looked at the pocket watch. The fog around his face — the thing that made every gaze slide away without retaining any feature — suddenly trembled, like a water surface struck by a thrown stone.

It was the first time in four hundred years it had trembled.

"...Who spoke its name aloud?"

His voice was still mild.

Still refined.

But the gray stone path beneath his feet, stretching hundreds of meters long, cracked apart simultaneously.