002: Four Rings, One Cat

A flash grenade left her palm, tumbled once, and came back.

The pin clicked dry against the cylinder with every slam into her palm, the only sound she had made in the last ten minutes. Leticiel caught the metal without looking, her fingers closing over the familiar weight by habit as she continued to flow along the handrail.

The second-floor atrium stretched further than she had expected. It didn't follow the logic of the real world; instead of rising columns coated in the etched runes and dormant mana enhancements she was used to, the pillars here were smooth, thicker skeletons, and dust-coated. Yet, they remained impossibly tall, vanishing into the gloom with the same scale that made everything around her feel small.

Not that it had to follow any logic at all. She might be giving too much thought to a virtual world, it didn't have to make realistic logic when it could simply exist as something conceptually and visually sublime.

Much of the design was familiar, yet just as many details remained alien. On the ground floor, decorative trees had died upright in their garden plots, still showered by the faint rays of light leaking through three long fractures in the crystal dome. High above, the glass was being slowly colonized by vines, their dark silhouettes tracing the cracks until they deprived the central garden's podium of its rightful sunlight.

Spreading from the center to the curving sides of the atrium, various food stalls were grouped in blocks of four, separated only by a platform of lounging chairs, dried up potted plants, and cardboard standees of unfamiliar characters. It was the kind of place that held a certain beauty only once the people had left; she was certain that its only marvel, when alive, would have been its sheer, boring mundanity to everyone but her.

The grenade left her palm again, and she jerked her hand to catch it with a dry slap. Her other hand followed the curve of the railing, pathing towards the center, her bare feet stepping into the space where filtered light fell in pale patches across the floor.

Her eyes drifted past the lines of stores—through dozens of branded clothing outlets and displays of luxury gems and watches—to dining places managed by corporations unfamiliar to her. Tables and chairs lay displaced behind the glass she could barely see through. Yet, strangely, there was not a single smear of blood or a body in sight. She couldn't determine what had happened here, but the tattered banners hanging repeatedly from the rusted handrails suggested a festive celebration that had been abruptly cut short.

A series of muffled taps against the floor caught her ears. She snapped her head over her shoulder to find a flash of orange fur—Mochi. The cat picked up his pace to approach from behind, his shadow stretching long under the halo glowing above her head, his golden eyes tracking her every move until—

Thump.

A solid weight slammed onto the floor. A new glow of white shifted within a nearby sportswear store, illuminating the display stands by the window and casting the long shadows of mannequins dressed in Holpops and Drikeball gear. Their shadows crawled, spilling into the open space as the sound grew clearer—the heavy clack of hard soles meeting stone, accompanied by the grit of breaking glass scratching the surface in confident, steady strides.

Then, slowly, a figure with a halo emerged from between the aisles of clothes.

It was her original self. She came to a halt before a standing mirror by the entrance, testing her weight in a pair of newly acquired trekking boots. She gave a short jump, kicking her heels out to test their flexibility and grip. The high-cut leather tucked her camo cargo pants firmly into place as she spun, her hands flowing outward to catch her balance.

The mechanical arm of her OPHANIM shook quietly, its metallic clicks muffled by the rustle of her new jacket. A web of buckles and straps from the OPHANIM vest hugged her torso tightly; with a single shoulder pad anchored at the sleeve, it kept the oversized black garment from slipping. The jacket ran long enough to be a robe, flaring open to reveal the courier vest beneath, yet it held its fit perfectly as she finally stilled. She tugged her collar straight, giving her reflection a satisfied nod.

Then, she turned over her shoulder. The white halo of the OPHANIM shifted with her—a projection cast by a metallic, vortex-shaped ring at the tip of the mechanical arm. The brilliant glow caught the original's iris, reflecting it a faint ghostly white for a split second.

Their eyes met.

Pure teal met mismatched ones in a silent exchange only they could understand. Leticiel’s mismatched eyes began to throb, followed by a searing heat that turned her retinas into burning pools of tears behind her lids. The original stepped forward, forming a smile as she hummed a melodic and catchy tune.

Abruptly, the world beneath the clone's feet began to fray. The humming dissolved into a blistering echo that repeated forever yet never felt distant enough to disappear. The cold that had settled under her skin lifted. The weight of the flash grenade caught her palm one final time—then her grip stretched into space, her limbs twisting, fading from her body until her entire being lulled into that voice, into a darkness thicker than closed eyes. Still, her consciousness kept moving, surging forward, until her eyes snapped open into the body with the boots.

Leticiel blinked. The distant handrail where her clone had stood only moments ago held nothing now. Her gaze drifted, drawn to what had caught the clone's attention: the massive, yawning void of the atrium. It was no larger than the common hall of her academy, yet the abandoned mall carried a heavier emptiness—pale rays of light barely piercing the gloom, falling only on ghostly shapes frozen in a single moment of time. The lingering outline of a place once teeming with human activity. The kind of scenery she imagined only existed once the people were gone—ordinary lives made sublime purely by their absence.

Her smile pursed into a thin, forced line."Unfortunately," she murmured to the patches of light. "I didn't bring the camera. Oh, well."

She stepped forward, her new boots crunching over shattered glass as she navigated the open passage. Her gaze drifted to the wall on her right—there, slumped against the fallen head of a mannequin, was the familiar satchel she had left behind. She dusted it off, hearing the muffled slosh of her water jug, its sound dampened by the layers of towels and shirts she had faithfully borrowed from various shops to keep her medstim recovery kits and canned provisions secured.

Just as she slung the bag over her shoulder, a series of muffled tip-taps caught her ear.

The fat cat. The one who had almost turned her quest item into his extravagant breakfast. Greed was in the way he yowled and licked his lips; greed was in the way he snaked around her legs, purring and bunting at her shins, begging for food as if she actually had any to give.

Her eyes twitched. "No," she said, stepping away from the furry weight. "Go back to the settlement, Mochi. It's dangerous here."

She didn't want to waste another breath on the cat. She had assumed he would disappear once she left the quest area, yet here he remained, following wherever her feet landed, hovering like a persistent fly. Leticiel shifted, pressing a hand over the holster at her chest, then moving up to check the straps of her courier vest. She had a premonition as to why he stayed—likely the fact that she hadn't yet returned the quest item to the quest-giver: the anomalous, half-eaten pork bun still tucked somewhere in her pockets. She couldn't be certain.

Regardless, Leticiel looked up toward the third floor. A dim, yawning void where light barely touched anything but the rough outlines of stores and the same repeating shapes as the level beneath her. Walking blind into that darkness only to be killed by something ubseen was a risk she wasn't willing to take.

Still. She believed everything would be fine. A lilting melody found its way to her feet, cutting her steps into beating bubbles as she swayed. Even if she died here, there was always the opportunity of another life—she could return better prepared, find her own corpse, and loot it before resuming her search for whatever resources were still worth trading or use.

Before long, the thick plock of her trekking boots fell into rhythm with her hum. Unconsciously, her hand drifted to the familiar cylindrical weight of a flash grenade. She hooked a finger through the pin, twirling it idly as she walked. Leticiel retraced her steps toward the glass stairwell that had brought her up from the ground floor, remembering the passage that led higher.

She passed rows of fancy outerwear boutiques and high-end tech stores. Compared to the neighboring bookstores and eyewear shops, these had taken the worst of it—glass shattered, empty husks of laptop packaging and phone boxes toppled across the floor, every cabinet gutted. Not a single gadget remained. Not even a stray cable. Salvagers must have picked the place clean years ago, leaving behind nothing but trash and the fading prestige of the brands.

There was nothing worth finding on this floor except clothes and expired food; she had gathered that much from the player forums beforehand. Not that she had been hoping otherwise.

She moved on, passing store after store, until she paused at the clear glass pane of one and found her own reflection staring back. The floating halo glowed just behind her head, its brilliance swallowing her whole, reducing her face to a blurred silhouette cast in deep shadow. Only the loose strand of her short black ponytail, the metallic extension of the mechanical arm, and the sharp line of her shoulder catching enough light to hold their colors.

Then a cat stepped into the reflection—his stumpy, waddling gait swaying left and right in a jolly march. Leticiel sighed, turning to take in the sheer size of the furball. Much of his orange had already been swallowed by the fading light, but his amber eyes caught hers easily. It was clear to her that not a single thought was crossing his mind, nothing beyond the prospect of extracting food from a stranger.

Mochi looked as clueless as any animal had a right to be. Even as so much of civilization had collapsed into ruin around him, she found herself wondering, not for the first time, how a creature like him had managed to survive at all.

Her tongue pressed against roof of her mouth until—

Tock.

The sound vibrated through the chambers of her mouth, rattling her teeth before slamming into her chest—that familiar, violent pressure clamping around her heart, tugging at her entire being, dragging something heavy down into her gut. Her vision smeared. The reflection in the glass warped, the edges of her silhouette dissolving into waving blurs, rippling and fluctuating with the light until—

A sudden gust of air brushed her hair, jolting her out of the daze.

Before her stood a clone. It wore the same face, clad in the same gear from head to toe, the same white halo eclipsing its black hair—identical in every way, except for the mismatched eyes of teal and red, and the expression it wore: bored and nonchalant, watching her wheeze for air without a trace of sympathy.

She drew in a long-held breath, holding the duplicate's gaze until her eyes throbbed, until both pairs glowed faintly under the darkness. She breathed out. Without a word, the clone shifted on her feet, crossed to the cat, and picked him up by the scruff of his neck.

Leticiel snapped her tongue a second time. Then a third.

Each use of her ability sent her into that lurching sensitivity—her whole body becoming suddenly, overwhelmingly present. The cramping of her muscles from her neck lancing down her shoulder, the crawl of sweat at her back, the soft heated brush of her own breath against her upper lip. Her heartbeat throbbed loud inside her chest, aching against her ribs as if trying to slam itself through the cage for freedom. Her vision smeared at the edges, the stillness of the atrium bleeding into a wash of muted colors—until the pressure crested and broke into a sudden clarity.

The third time, something caught her from behind; a warm steadying hand at her shoulder. One of her clones. She wasn't certain which, but it didn't matter.

She blinked her way back. The reflections that had scattered moments ago reassembled into solid shapes in the glass, and she counted them: four Leticiels standing before the mirror, all wearing the same expression, identical down to the halo glowing behind each head. For a moment, four pairs of eyes gleamed faintly. Then one clone shifted, its arms already around Mochi; his legs dangling long and unbothered, his gaze matching theirs from the mirror as if he had simply decided he was part of the group.

She became aware of her own hand only when she looked down—fingers white around the pin of the flash grenade, slick with sweat. She exhaled, loosened her grip, and tucked it into the slip pocket of her courier vest. Around her, the clones had already begun to move, all except the one securing Mochi at its arm.

Both departing clones drew their Glock 19s, racking the slides in unison to chamber a round. Leticiel slotted in a beat behind, taking the middle as the two fanned out—one to each side, heads swiveling in a steady, cautious sweep. She couldn't help but think how fragile the formation looked. The halos above their heads didn't help—four glowing rings drifting through vast darkness, and open silence. In any virtual milsim worth its difficulty rating, she was certain they would have been dropped before clearing the first corner.

The clone carrying Mochi trailed farthest back, giving the group a longer tail. For someone concerned about dying and losing her carried inventory, she was playing considerably more carelessly than she liked to admit.

Not long after, the path ahead gave out. Much of the floor had collapsed entirely, dropping into a pile of debris somewhere in the dark below. What remained was a narrow ledge of broken cement and skeletal rebar jutting from the wall, and a single wooden plank bridging the gap into a coffee shop.

They crossed one by one. One foot on the wobbling plank, the next crunching onto broken glass. The café's storefront had shattered inward, the counter caved, stools and plastic advertisement posters scattered across the far side, leaving only a narrow passage to slip through. Shelves of bean hoppers and wine glasses, glass carafes and sealed jars of beans lined the back cabinets, untouched beneath a coat of dust. Strangely, nothing about the place screamed different from the cafes she knew in the real world, if anything, it reminded her how the real world feels having their doors weigh gravity to everyone but the right kind of guest, or something equally pretentious along those lines.

As the last clone cleared the plank, the group funneled through to the other side of the store, emerging onto the broken ledge with enough space for several to cross at once. They moved a few meters until the floor solidified back to its proper structure, fell back into fragile formation, and followed the path until the glass stairwell came into view.

A spiral staircase protruded from the side of the upper concourse like a structural column that had simply decided it was. Reaching it made Leticiel pause. The stairwell itself wasn't impassable, but the glass was a different matter from cement or metal, and without any structural ruin enhancements, the whole thing announced itself as a deathtrap with every step.

She had climbed it once before, and the nervousness hadn't died. It only grew worse standing at the foot of it again, the spiral curving upward around the glass-walled elevator shaft, offering nothing solid to trust.

Her clones had already moved ahead. Only the one carrying Mochi lingered, waiting just before her, their boots striking the crystal steps in unhurried taps that rang faintly through the glass and scattered the white glow of their halos into shifting light.

Leticiel swallowed. She half-wished the clone had hesitated, even for a moment—long enough to reason out another passage to the third floor. But she pushed the thought aside and fixed her eyes on the trekking boots ascending ahead of her. She took her first quiet step, then another, until momentum carried her forward.

Several white halos ghosted across the glass, repeating in mirrored smears of threadbare silhouettes as the spiral curved. Leticiel kept to the middle, not leaning into either wall, not looking down, not turning her head. She focused entirely on the climb, her breathing slow and steady as even as the steps wound upward. No sound reached her through the stagnant air but the soft, almost synchronized footfalls.

The third floor came without warning. Had the clones not come to a stop several steps before the flat glass ground, she would have missed it. Leticiel fumbled to a stop, then sharply exhaled, shaking her head as if trying to pull her focus back. The sweat beneath her layers had become apparent, the fabric clinging stickily to her skin as another slick drip slid behind her neck.

Her clones crouched, still and quiet against the wall, handguns pointed down and eyes scanning the surroundings. She was the only one breathing hard. Taking a low creep forward, she peered up the next flight toward the fourth floor, but straight ahead, the glass offered nothing but her own reflections.

Wide-eyed, she was certain the flights above would keep climbing—fourth floor, fifth, however many the structure had decided to stack. Just like the second. Leticiel shook her head, cutting the thought off before it finished.

Beyond the glass wall, the atrium opened into a vast dark. It stretched so far that the few stray patches of light seemed to dissolve before they could touch anything solid. She could make out the nearest handrails hugging the glass before they stretched and disappeared into the concourse. Further along, a massive pillar stood alone in the dark.

Strangely, no shops had been built into this side of the wall; just an artful gallery of splashed colors she couldn't fully make out from where she crouched, though the shapes were clear enough: festive smiling masks, cartoonish teddy bears, roses, tarot cards, striped tent-canvases, a sprawl of iconography that all pointed toward some kind of carnival theme.

Heading banners styled in flowing ribbons framed the top of the gallery, interrupted only by a floor map that stuck out plainly against the rest of the design—likely marking some event, alongside the usual internal directions of the mall.

The drumming behind her ears had gradually quieted. The total silence of the floor, pressing in all at once until it rang at her ears. It didn't make her want to stay in the deathtrap any longer.

"Let's move," she whispered. "Take position at that pillar, left of the stairwell. First clone on the front, second on our surroundings. Last one, keep our backs covered. Stay quiet—call it out if you spot movement, but don't engage unless it's a threat you can resolve without noise."

Leticiel drew a breath. "Go."

They broke in unison. Boots struck from glass to ceramic tile, shifting the hollow echoes into quick, muffled thuds. Fabric stretched and fluttered at the hem of her jacket, metal clinked faintly against metal, and the halos cast only so much light. Just enough to clear their footing, enough to mark where the others were without losing them to the dark.

Leticiel skidded into a slide first, and found the clone following the same. The group was already folding into position around the pillar, each body slotting into place without a word.

The two flanking clones peered around the curve of the pillar, one low, one high at the railing. The last had trailed furthest back and eased in behind the group with Mochi still tucked under her arm, his face pressed into the courier vest, making himself remarkably easy to carry.

Leticiel steadied her breath, back flat against the pillar. She listened. Waited. But nothing. Not a sound from the dark, not a word from her clones. She shifted her focus inward and gestured into the empty air with two fingers.

Several layers of a user interface materialized in holographic planes, fading into place along her line of sight. They came in simple grays, blacks, and whites, framed by sharp borders and shaped into small rhombus windows arranged along her horizon like an augmented reality shortcut taskbars—each one hosting a different simple icon.

She tapped the forum icon. With a single touch, it rotated and slid open into a holographic window, revealing the page she had left active. A massive wall of text hit her immediately—more black than white, with only the barest spacing and font variety keeping it legible.

[Baobao7]. Leticiel recognized the handle at the top of the thread, marked by a round panda icon to the left of the main header. It was the author of the sprawling compilation she had been picking through an hour ago, a dense thicket of notes and guidelines accumulated through collective player discussions and reports. Most of it she had only skimmed, trying to familiarize herself with the place and what she would be dealing with.

She scrolled up and down, trying to regain her train of thought and remembering how she had spent her time tracing links from summary bullets back to the source discussions. But as she scrolled, she caught a block of unfamiliar text; there were more words than she remembered. A quick glance at the main header confirmed it: the compilation had been updated only nine minutes ago.

She skimmed past several subheaders, her focus narrowing as her eyes jumped from one block of text to the next. Flickering her fingers, scrolling in silence until she found what she was looking for.

The Infinite (?) floors of the buried Mega Mall, and how to ascend.

Buried beneath several paragraphs of technical measurement and observed behaviors, she found a specific entry credited to a user named Hamchan.CH

A.R.C / The Oculus Forum / Threads / Buried Mega Mall [Megathread]: Northward of the Eastern Pier Ring of the Abandoned Mobile City

34.2 [Stairs (Level.Def)

Stairwells are randomly scattered throughout the mall, starting from the third floor. You need to find a new set of stairs to ascend to the next level. These stairs appear to reset and vanish every midnight and noon (12:00 AM–1:00 AM) and (12:00PM–1:00 PM), reappearing in a completely different spots.

"Be aware: Staying at the stairs during the vanishing window will provoke hostilities from creatures and anomalies. You will get hunted. There are no current theories on what happens if you manage to survive until the next hour mark." — observed and tested by [ Vee | #344]

"Be aware: it is preferred to explore the Buried Mega Mall between vanishing windows, otherwise your return trip will not be a smooth sail." — Note by [Herrkazt | #99]

[— Hamchan.CH | # 145 ]

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