Tutorial Rewrite 54 (Patreon)

After talking a little more to Moleman, I accidentally notice that over half of the conference has already passed on by, so after saying a hasty goodbye, I leave to try to find that girl. Her name was Virgil-something. I don’t really remember her name, but I can recall her face well enough, and that’s all I really need.

Let’s see, Virgil, Virgil… Sniff sniff sniff. Yup, I can smell her.

I crouch down to start running, but then Moleman gives me a weird look. O—okay. I stand back up. I guess I’ll just walk towards her.

The hallways are still pretty much stuffed with people, but, thankfully, they all part as I approach, though not without staring at me. Hm. Last time I remember being this harshly stared at by countless (human) strangers must have been at the courthouse. In the movies, you’ll usually see one or two people with a sign saying like The killer is innocent! but back then there was no one like that. Life really is too unfair, huh?

“Hey, kitty!” someone shouts. I ignore it. “Psspsspss, come on kitty, don’t you want a treat?” I glance back at him. He’s holding out a vial of something that looks very, very poisonous. I scowl at him and make to continue, but stop in my tracks completely when I hear what he says next. “Come on, I thought furries like you loved being submissive to a loving master~!” A few chuckles resound at his line.

I turn back to him. Ah. Alright. It’s like that, isn’t it?

I tense my legs. His neck isn’t armoured. His face is visible. He doesn’t even look like a warrior. His hair is short. Perfect. I just need to—

A girl jumps in between us, holding out her arms, her face set in a tight expression of determination. I blink at her. “It’s me you’re looking for, right? I’m—” I think she bit her tongue. After a second or so of recollecting herself, she continues. “We… we met before. And I ran away. I think, maybe, that we should redo our introduction. Okay?”

I furrow my brows. Hm. “Alright.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” my loathsome bully shouts from across the hallway. “I’m not done with that guy! The leaders may have pardoned him, but us challengers won’t forget!” A few cheers of solidary ring out across the hallway. Okay, but I literally haven’t done anything. What’s there to remember, huh? “Commies like you shouldn’t even be allowed in the server!”

…What the hell did you just—

“Come on, let’s go back to the lobby!” Virgil whisper-shouts at me, pushing me away from the guy, which is probably a good thing because otherwise I would’ve leapt across the room and torn up his face like a cocaine-fuelled chimpanzee. Still growling and scowling, she pushes me up the stairs and into the Hell Lobby room, all the way into one of the two chairs there. She sits down in the other one across from mine. “This place is safe,” she says. “I talked with a few guys who said that the lobby rooms are soundproof, and that people who aren’t in the difficulty can’t enter. It’s a safe room, of sorts.”

I look her up and down. “Why did you decide to stay in the lobby instead of going into the first floor with the others?”

She brings up both of her hands in a form of surrender. “Just—let’s take first things first, okay?” I raise my eyebrow at her in a silent question. Isn’t this the best place to start? Apparently not, because right as I have that thought, she extends her hand across the table. I stare at it. “I’m sorry for running away from you. I thought you were some sort of… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter though, because, well, as you said, it was rude of me. I’m sorry. Can we take it from the start again?”

My eyes widen a little. Slowly, hand trembling, I reach out across the table, and take hers in mine. It’s small. Smaller than mine. Soft. My palm is so sweaty in hers. Oh, God, this is horrible. Limply, I shake it up and down, three times, and then I dislodge. A bit of RED got stuck on her palm. She makes a face at it before wiping it off on the table.

“It’s, uh,” I say, “mostly my own, so it’s okay, yeah?”

She frowns. “What do you mean by mostly?” But before I can answer her, she shakes her head. “No, never mind, it isn’t… it isn’t important. What is important is that, well… is it okay to call me Virgil?”

“Why not your real name?”

Her frown deepens. Ah. I chose the wrong option in the dialogue tree. “It’s a long story, but… I just don’t like my name.” She chuckles weakly. “Maybe one day, I’ll tell you. It’s not like I’ll die anytime soon.”

“Virgil, huh…” I parrot. This works for me, actually. I kind of don’t want people to know my real name since they might actually recognise me, so her calling me by my username is alright. I told Moleman to do the same, even if it hurt to ask him to call me Kitty. I wanted him to call me Gentle or Night first, but he said people wouldn’t know who he was talking about, and everybody’s already calling me Kitty, so… Even though it hurts, I have no choice. “Then, I wouldn’t mind you calling me Kitty.” I actually would, but I’m not saying that.

Her face loses all emotion. “Is there really nothing else I can call you?” she deadpans.

I return the expression of complete emotional bereavement. “Your only other options are Prissy or Princess.”

She looks down at her lap. “I-, I see.”

I try to look down at her lap too to see if there’s anything of interest, but the table is in the way. Bummer.

“To answer your question,” she says after a while of silence, “I just… I was scared, I guess. When I saw the screen, I didn’t know what it was. I thought I was hallucinating from the—the… But I wasn’t. I tried to wave it away, and I accidentally pressed yes, and hell. When it asked me to pick a weapon I just grabbed a staff because that’s all I could lift. And when I got into the lobby, and there were a bunch of excited people, I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what to do or what to say, so when the floor opened and they went in, I just… didn’t follow. And then when I looked at the screen, I saw that they were all dead. But there was still someone else in the difficulty. I looked all over the lobby, but there wasn’t anyone there.”

I lean forward slightly.

“And—and then…” Her eyes mist up. “I was stuck in there. With all of the horrid white and the echoing silence. I couldn’t take it. I thought not eating would take it all away, but it just made a bunch of tolerances rise. Bashing my skull against the floor didn’t work either.” The edges of her lips dip down so hard that it forms creases that go all the way up to her eyes. Creases that her tears find themselves into. Every breath she takes trembles. “A-, and then, in the end, just now, when I saw the timer tick down, I thought, oh, Gods, I thought to myself, even if I would die from going into the floor, that would be better than this horrible white. Anything would be better.” Abruptly, her mouth twists up into a smile, a trembling one. “But then I came here. And there were people. And I saw you, and…”

I hold up my hand, stilling her. “Okay, I know what came after that, and also, I totally get that feeling about the white, had that myself, and there’s a very easy solution that I figured out, kind of unrelated, but if you just bleed yourself you can paint over all the white with your red, but that’s kind of beside the point, ‘cuz I need you to listen to me here.” I affix her in place with my gaze. “When the floor opens, you’re not gonna enter it.”

Her eyes widen, but I continue before she can protest.

“I know you hate the white, and I do too, but you absolutely need to keep being in the first-floor lobby. Otherwise, you won’t be able to guide future challengers. If you go and die, everybody who joins after you will also die. I know you want to die, but you can’t be selfish about this kind of stuff, because if you die, there won’t be anyone left to guide those who come next, which in turn means that you’re giving up on a life-saving responsibility.”

She sniffles once, but she’s stopped crying now. “You want me to be—hic—a guide?”

I nod sharply. “Yeah. Listen, floor one is hell, but I survived it, right? Personally, I don’t think anybody else is gonna survive it ‘cuz it was totally super hard, but if they want to attempt it, we need someone to be there to tell them how the stage works. That someone is you.”

“...Me…”

“Yes, you. I’d ask you if you’re cool with this but you kind of don’t have a choice, either you guide the future challengers and tell them that they maybe shouldn’t go kill themselves or you go kill yourself. Before you came here I’m sure you knew your answer, but back then you only had one option. So? What’ll it be?”

Her lip trembles and I think she’s going to cry again but then she raises her eyes from the table and there is enough determination in there to make me completely freeze in place.

“I’ll do it,” she says firmly. “I’ll guide them. So they don’t have to go limp like the executives did, and so I don’t have to do that, either.”

I feel a smile rise to my lips. “That’s great to hear, Virgil.”

She smiles back at me. “So, what’s the information I should be able to give?”

I tell her everything I know. Not just about the first floor and the beasts and the arrows, but also about the second floor, and about the system, and how to best paint the lobby in the fastest, most effective way. I explain what the forums are for and what should be known, and about this conference. She can’t take any notes, but with the focus she’s keeping here, I can honestly say that she won’t need it. Talking to her took up the last of the Conference's hectic hours.

And after I’ve told her everything I know, and the Conference is only a few minutes from closing, somehow, we ended up talking about completely different stuff. Innocuous stuff. Stuff completely unrelated to the tutorial and to the people in it and even to who we were before. Now, even though it doesn’t matter in the least, I know things about her. Her favourite colour is blue. Before this, she still had her hair pretty short. She only barely passed high school, and her parents were so proud of her.

It feels weird to know things about her. It feels weird that she knows things about me.

“So, circular motions, starting from the top of the pillars?”

“Yeah, if you can get help from the new challengers you can probably reach higher since you don’t have any spears to use as stilts, but all and all it should only take a few hours, but that depends on how effectively you do it.”

“And I don’t need to reapply it?”

I pause. “I’m actually not sure. I’ve moved from the lobbies before I could see how it developed, but yeah, you might need to reapply it every attempt or something.”

“Right.”

I glance at the time.

<Top—Status—Community>

<23:58:50

Day 90>

<The fourth attempt will begin in

00:00:01:10>

<The Day of Grand Conference

will end in 01:10>

I look back at her. She smiles meekly. “Not much time left now, huh?”

I nod. “When you go back, the next challengers will already be there. You’ll have twenty-four hours to explain it, so…”

“—I’ve got my work cut out for me, right?” Her smile turns mellow. “I’ll try to convince them to stay. But if they don’t…”

“If they want to die so badly, leave them to it,” I say. “That’s up to them. You’ve done what you could, leave the rest to them. If they don’t want to listen, then they’re the stupid ones.”

She nods.

Outside, cheering and applause are in full effect. Bach’s been holding some sort of ceremonial speech, but we didn’t go to listen to it. It didn’t really affect us anyways. If anyone messes with Virgil, I’ll take care of it. Simple as that.

<Top—Status—Community>

<23:59:47

Day 90>

<The fourth attempt will begin in

00:00:00:13>

<The Day of Grand Conference

will end in 00:13>

“This is it, then?” she says.

“Yeah,” I respond.

She turns to me, one last time. “It was nice meeting you, Kitty.”

I nod back at her. “Same to you, Virgil.”

<The Day of Grand Conference

will end in 00:00>

<The Day of Grand Conference

has ended.>

<Thank you for participating!

You will now be returned to your lobbies.>