The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Each name was followed by a specific order, so Ravian did not need the entity to tell him that a genuine act of communication had occurred each time.

Mirai first sent Garrick to the Western Gate to receive two carriages after the mirage informed her of their arrival, assigned Bran, who bore a scar, to inspect the horses pulling the guests’ carriages, and ordered Elena to oversee preparations for the midday banquet. Kaiden went to the dining hall, while Sylvan received a list of supplies missing from the storeroom. Talia was given the keys to twelve rooms in the North Wing, after which Mirai asked old Aldric to match them against the register in her possession.

Everything happened so quickly that even Ravian was surprised by the ease with which she handled matters, as though she were accustomed to it.

Finally, Mirai turned to Ravian, drawing his attention to her.

”Rayan, I have been informed that the correspondence office is at the end of the western corridor. Six letters are awaiting replies, and three invoices must be reviewed before noon. Send me a copy of the final account, and your work for the day will be done,” Mirai said almost mechanically, without hesitation.

The meaning was clear to him, and their first communication was registered.

Ravian looked at her for a moment longer, then nodded.

”I will.”

His answer made the interaction two-way, although that changed nothing about the rule. What mattered was that Mirai had communicated with him and he with her; as for who would be the last to communicate with whom by nightfall, that was still far from settled.

Ravian glanced at the large window beside them in the hall.

’It is still far too early.’

He then looked at each of the other eight in turn. They were already moving away quickly, having confirmed that Ravian was the last person to communicate with Mirai, which allowed them to relax a little.

Ravian smiled at their obvious intention to use him as a guinea pig.

He did not truly mind.

His turn to make a move had not yet come.

’This will be fun.’

Ravian then turned to carry out the task he had been assigned, even though the killer could not be forced to do anything.

Still, he preferred to mingle with them and become one of them before making any move.

They headed to their assigned duties under the watchful eyes of the guests and Head Servant Mirai.

Ravian made no attempt to summon his aura in front of them. He waited until he had entered the western corridor and no other participants were present, then directed his will toward the Aura Core that had formed during his ascension to the Walker rank.

Nothing responded.

He tried to reach the mana circles granted to him by the Sovereign Pride Path and sensed them far away, behind a barrier he could not breach. His ascension was complete and his power was still there, but the Soul Mirage had separated his current form from it as thoroughly as a hand from a weapon locked behind thick glass.

He called upon Sovereign Pride in his mind.

A faint sense of its presence surfaced, then vanished before any window could form; it seemed as though Sovereign Pride itself had dimmed its own presence.

Even Void Traverse, the ability he had acquired, was no more than a name he knew but could not touch.

Yet his thoughts remained sharp.

When he activated Absolute Focus, no trace radiated from him, no energy stirred, and nothing in his surroundings changed; everything he did not need merely receded to the edges of his awareness, sharpening his ability to notice details and connect them.

’If it considers this a power, then either it cannot block it, or it never knew about it in the first place.’

’Or it simply does not consider it a power, since it neither makes a person stronger nor gives them any clear advantage in the situations we will face here.’

Ravian did not test the limit any further.

He found the correspondence office at the end of the corridor. It was a spacious room with two windows overlooking a square courtyard, and shelves covered three of its walls. Letters sealed with the crests of noble houses Ravian did not recognize were piled across the desk, beside a ledger filled with numbers.

Ravian looked away from the ledger, then looked back.

The numbers had changed.

’What a truly irritating ability...’

The mirage had irritated Ravian more than anything else since he arrived.

It was not the game itself, the Soul Mirage Network, or even the killer role—which was absurdly difficult to win with—but the mirage’s ability to tamper with his senses and common sense so effortlessly.

’I only hope I do not have to face that unknown entity at some point,’ Ravian thought as he inspected the room.

He then sat at the desk and read the first letter lying on its surface.

A woman named Lady Aurelia was requesting that dinner be moved an hour earlier because her husband had been killed in the duel that would take place tomorrow.

Ravian stopped at that sentence.

’What??’ Ravian’s brain stopped working for a moment, so he reread it one last time.

It still said the same thing.

He wrote a brief reply confirming the change of time anyway, then folded the paper and sealed it with black wax. The moment he placed it inside the correspondence box, a hand emerged through a narrow slit in the wall and took it.

He saw no body behind the hand, and only a few seconds passed before the letter seemed to have reached its recipient; a small bell chimed, then a fresh sheet emerged from another slit bearing the same woman’s signature once again.

The palace could transmit writing between almost any two points—or rather, the mirage could.

That was only logical in a place made entirely of mirage.

Ravian memorized the positions of the two slits, then resumed his work without allowing himself to dwell on the matter for too long, lest he lose his mind. Knowing how it worked did not mean he had a safe plan for using it... did it?

Over the next two hours, he discovered that the invoices were not fake in any simple sense. The palace possessed a fully integrated internal economy, a register of storerooms, servants’ wages, and daily consumption records for food, candles, and coal. Every figure could be traced to a room, and every room was linked to someone responsible for it.

In other words, their jobs were not mere decoration.

The entity had created a network that forced them to move, interact, and hand things over, then made the final communication within that network a condition for killing.

Time passed so quickly that Ravian barely noticed it.

As noon approached, he heard footsteps nearing the office, followed by a light knock.

Aldric entered carrying a thick ledger.

He stopped at the threshold and asked, ”May I?”

The question was directed at Ravian, so communication occurred before he could even answer.

”Come in,” Ravian said, regarding Aldric with curiosity.

The old man placed the ledger on the table but did not slide it directly toward him, leaving a clear distance between them.

”Mirai asked me to reconcile the key records with the repair invoices. I need the final page once you are finished with it.”

’Key records? Is that even a thing?’ Ravian was finding it difficult to deal with this damned accounting job.

”It is in the correspondence box. I will bring it with me shortly, before noon,” Ravian said.

Strangely, Ravian had memories of certain things he had never known or even heard of before, such as that correspondence box. He had simply found them in his mind and concluded that this, too, was the mirage’s doing.

Just another part of the scenario.

However, the old man did not seem to like his answer.

”I would prefer to take it myself,” Aldric replied.

Aldric was cautious enough to understand that handing over the document might create another instance of communication between them even if they did not speak, yet he could not refuse every document because his entire job depended on them.

Ravian studied him for a moment, and a plan occurred to him... a plan that truly seemed good.

”Then come and take it in the presence of two of the others,” Ravian said, waving one hand irritably.

Aldric’s eyes grew still for a moment at Ravian’s response, then he nodded.

”A reasonable suggestion.”

He left, leaving the ledger on the table.

It was not long before Ravian heard a faint sound coming from a brass fixture mounted beside the shelf. He approached it and discovered that it was a hollow tube whose other end lay somewhere else entirely.

’Now what is this?’ Ravian wondered as he peered through the tube.

”Correspondence office?” came the voice of a woman he did not recognize.

He did not answer immediately, then realized that the voice did not belong to any of the female participants.

That meant she was not a participant, so speaking with her would not change which participant counted as the last person he had communicated with; the rule applied only to participants, exactly as stated in the killer role’s rules, which had settled fully into his mind the moment he received the role.

”Yes,” Ravian replied in the refined tone of a noble.

”The East Wing is requesting a copy of the guest list,” said the woman, who appeared to be one of the palace’s mirage servants.

Her voice cut off, followed by a brief chime from the tube.

Ravian tapped the surface of the brass tube with one finger and listened to the echo through Absolute Focus.

The tube did not lead solely to the room from which the woman had just spoken; it branched into several routes behind the wall and carried sound from distant parts of the palace.

He raised his gaze to the network of brass tubes disappearing between the ceiling and the ornate wooden paneling, then activated Absolute Focus for a few seconds, separating the echo into its individual layers.

’At least four routes,’ Ravian realized after a few seconds of examination.

One connected to the adjoining room from which the woman had just spoken, a second rose to the second floor, a third seemed to descend toward the palace’s main hall, and a fourth also went downward before branching even farther.

Evernight Palace was not merely a collection of rooms and corridors.

It was an enormous machine that operated in a strange and complex yet fully integrated manner, built for communication and transport.

And for the killer, those were the only weapons the Nightmare World allowed.

’This could be useful later,’ Ravian thought, tapping the edge of the brass tube with one finger.