Memento of the Player

I kept pulling Mikan’s hand, urging her to follow me.

She resisted at first, but eventually gave in and walked quietly by my side.

I had no other choice. I needed to do this.

We walked west through Netherbyte City.
I had originally planned to keep searching for information to prepare for the dungeon, but I knew I had to take care of this first.

Our destination lay beyond the Archive Spire and Residential Zone.
A place called Memento of the Player.

It was a building that looked like a giant modern mausoleum.
Inside, it held hundreds of thousands of coffin-sized storage capsules, each marked with a unique number.

“Kyouze-san, why are we here? Isn’t this...” Mikan asked hesitantly.

I stayed silent and kept walking.

Eventually, we ran into an NPC who managed the facility.
I spoke with him briefly, then headed to a designated room.

We went up to the third floor, where rows of empty storage units lined the walls.

I began walking through them.
“Number 2345, 2346, 2347...” I read the labels aloud, pressing the activation buttons on each unit.

From my inventory, I pulled out several items.

“Kyouze-san... those belonged to them...” Mikan’s voice trembled.

I nodded.

One by one, I placed the remaining items that belonged to Lena, Richard, and Mia into the respective storage units.

The system confirmed ownership of the items and projected each of their avatars above the storage capsules.

Mikan began crying. Her guilt washed over her all over again.

“Now you can apologize to them,” I said quietly.

I clenched my fists.
I felt it too guilt. I couldn’t save them.

I didn’t think I’d care about strangers. So why does it hurt this much?

Was it... their smiles?

Their smiles made something in me ache.

I didn’t want to feel this again.
It hurt too much.

Beside me, Mikan kept apologizing through her tears, kneeling in front of the three.
She couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I quietly stepped out, giving her space.

As I stood outside the room, I whispered,
“This is all I can do for you now… Lena, Richard, Mia. Rest in peace.”

That’s all I could do.
Give them a place to be remembered as players, and as people.

Memento of the Player was a place to honor those who were no longer around.
It was built to store avatars of those who had retired or permanently logged out of the game.

You could also register an avatar of someone who had died in real life.

Even though this was a death game, it still had a trace of humanity left.

...

Mikan finally came out, eyes red and puffy.
She thanked me.

I didn’t ask why. I already knew.
There was more life in her eyes now.

“So, what are you going to do next?” she asked curiously.

“I’m preparing to enter the Abyss Dungeon,” I replied flatly.

“Then let me come with you! I know I’ll be helpful—”

“No. I’m not bringing anyone. I’m going solo.”

Her smile faded, and she lowered her head.
But this was the right thing to do.
I didn’t want to form another party. I didn’t want to make friends.

I didn’t want to feel this pain again.

And I didn’t want Mikan throwing her life away with reckless decisions.

“I’m leaving. Don’t follow me.”

“Wait!”

She grabbed the back of my jacket. I stopped and turned around.

“At least... let me help you prepare before you go into the dungeon!”

I was surprised by her words.
She didn’t sound sad or upset—she sounded excited.

And for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

“Do whatever you want.”

“Yay! So, where are we going first?”

I couldn’t understand how her mood bounced back this fast.

“Just follow me.”

“Ugh, why are you always so cold to me?”

...

I walked toward the Null Shrine again, but this time I went into the building next to it: Archive Spire.

It was where all the city’s data and records were stored and managed.

I was here to find any information related to recent events.
If I was lucky, maybe I could also get monster data from inside the dungeon.

Mikan followed, looking confused.
It seemed like all of this was a bit too complicated for her.

I started messing with one of the terminals, digging through the government’s secure records.

I could do this by bribing one of the NPCs I knew.
That particular NPC had a feature that allowed secret access, I’d found it during a hidden quest last year.

This place had unrestricted data access.
Thanks to it, I had once acquired maps for dungeon floors 1 through 5, along with overview reports for each floor.

That made me suspect the government of Netherbyte City knew the true origin of the Abyssal Core—the thing that created the Abyss Dungeon.

But for some reason, they’d sealed away that information.

Today, I was able to recover records of the current raid effort by the five major factions, from Floor 1 to Floor 5—before the game difficulty jumped to Nightmare.

The government had this data because they assigned an N-Sec agent to accompany the raid team.
It was standard procedure in the game. Probably their way of documenting everything.

I used it to my advantage.

What I found surprised me.
I quickly copied the data into my [SideLink], the communication and storage device that all players carried.

I also uploaded some data of my own into the archives here.

I hoped it would be useful someday.

Mikan didn’t say much.

She just watched some drama videos stored in the archive’s digital library, tears streaming down her face again.

Why was she watching that here?

Once I was done, I grabbed her and pulled her out of the room.

But something unexpected happened.

As we stepped outside, someone was waiting for us.

“Well, well... look who I found. You’re still as slippery as ever, aren’t you, Azure Reaper, Kyouze?”

It was a woman with long black hair, purple eyes, holding a long black smoke pipe, wearing a black futuristic military uniform with a headphone.

Her voice was cold.

I recognized her immediately.

“Eep! This is bad, Kyouze-san! She’s—”

“Major Lorelei Netherbyte. Mayor of Netherbyte City,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“So you still remember me. Even though you disappeared for six whole months. Hah... honestly, I thought you’d retired or died,” she said with a faint smile.

I asked her why someone as important as her was here.

She said she was the mayor, she controlled everything in this city. Of course she knew.

Damn it. That NPC must have leaked my info.

I tried to slip away, but then she called out:

“Azure Reaper!”

Mikan and I froze.

She turned around and looked at me seriously.

“Save the people of Netherbyte. Save the players of this game. And save Earth.”

We stood there, stunned.

“What...? How do you... how do you even know about Earth? You’re an NPC...”