Early autumn wind always turned colder after the rain.
Only the sunlight refused to surrender, stubbornly warm.
September 1, morning. Cycle 10. Player world.
Ethan didn’t have immediate errands, so he kept one eye on the global chat. Someone had been desperately looking for an official contact overnight, which usually meant a fresh System task had bitten someone.
He wasn’t the only one watching.
Plenty of players stayed in the channel, speculating and poking and demanding details.
Near noon, the desperate player finally posted again.
[CHAT]
Player: “Alright, I reached the officials. I’ll explain.
Good news and bad news.
Good news: Player 0776 is dead.
Bad news: he keeps leaking this thick gray-black sludge. It won’t stop. It corrodes everything.”
Ethan’s thoughts clicked.
Right. Player 0776.
If you died in the Endless Sea, your body died here, too. Two worlds, two bodies—one life.
And Player 0776 had been blessed by the Mother of Gargoyles. His corpse wouldn’t be clean even in death.
The chat exploded.
[CHAT]
Player: “What?! Player 0776 is dead?”
Player: “Who killed him—an official?”
Player: “Wait, didn’t you ask for the number in the middle of the night? That means he died in the Endless Sea, right?”
Player: “So there should’ve been a kill announcement. Did anyone see one?”
Player: “I didn’t. Who has time to stare at announcements?”
Player: “I did and I didn’t see anything.”
Player: “So he wasn’t killed by a player?”
Player: “Makes sense. A guy like that probably had a lot of enemies.”
Someone remembered something the officials had said earlier—about Player 0776 fleeing Storm Island by sea.
The channel latched onto it.
[CHAT]
Player: “Hold up. If Player 0776 escaped onto the sea… does that explain all the recent ship massacres?”
Player: “The kill-but-don’t-loot pirates?”
Player: “If it was him leveling up out there and someone finally put him down, that’d be amazing.”
Player: “Please let it be true. I’ve been living on edge.”
Player: “Same. Sailing is dangerous. Not sailing means no money. Life is brutal.”
Ethan read the speculation and did the math.
By timeline, the troll warriors had captured Player 0776 around September 15 at dusk. That didn’t rule out him causing trouble before that.
Ethan hadn’t asked what Player 0776 did at sea.
It hadn’t seemed important.
What was… amusing, in a bitter way, was that Ethan had just used the sea massacres to scare Xueyu, hinting that someone was harvesting souls to revive Cocoon.
And now the chat was offering Player 0776 as a convenient culprit.
If Xueyu could read the channel, Ethan’s bluff would’ve been shredded.
Good thing mermaids didn’t get a login.
The urgent player dragged everyone back to the real problem.
[CHAT]
Player: “Stop celebrating and think!
That sludge is eating through everything. I ruined my phone just finding him. Officials don’t know what it is yet.
Has anyone heard of something like this?”
Arguments broke out again until the official finally stepped in.
[CHAT]
Player 0097: “Everyone, calm down.
If you’ve been a player this long, you know how trigger tasks work: proximity.
If you’re near a task site or touch a clue, the System can tag you.
Our guidance is simple: if the task looks manageable, and you can keep yourself alive, doing it is worth it for the reward.
If a task triggers in the player world, contact us first so we can secure the area.”
Player 0097’s message settled the noise—mostly.
The task-holder kept pleading for ideas.
Ethan thought of what Delanna had told him.
A corpse blessed by the Mother of Gargoyles could only be handled by ancient mermaid methods.
The officials wouldn’t know that.
Neither would most players.
So Ethan offered a thread of help—without explaining too much.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “Moonlight collected by a silver mirror can purify it.”
The channel reacted instantly.
[CHAT]
Player: “It’s Player 0067!”
Player: “Try it! Right now!”
Player: “Thank you, boss!”
Player 0097 responded almost immediately.
[CHAT]
Player 0097: “What kind of silver mirror, specifically? Any with a supernatural aspect, or does it require a particular property?”
Ethan grimaced.
He didn’t actually know what kind of mirror would work. In the Endless Sea, he’d only watched others handle the situation.
He searched his memory for Delanna’s mirror and answered cautiously.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “Try one with divination properties.”
[CHAT]
Player 0097: “Understood. We’ll prepare.”
Someone pointed out the obvious.
[CHAT]
Player: “Uh… it’s daytime. No moonlight. Does that mean we just let it keep leaking until night?”
After a pause, the task-holder begged again.
[CHAT]
Player: “Player 0067—any ideas to contain it until the moon comes up? Please.”
Ethan offered the only thing he had.
[CHAT]
Player 0067: “A Dreamweaver’s spatial technique might help.”
That was as far as he could responsibly go.
He closed the chat.
He pulled out paper, an envelope, and the diviner’s letter-opener to run his own check.
…
“Not.”
“No.”
“Don’t know.”
The letter-opener had finally started speaking in something close to human language. Unfortunately, it was still infuriating.
Ethan tried to divine the sea massacres—whether they really were connected to Player 0776.
He stopped halfway through writing the question.
He didn’t know Player 0776’s in-game name.
Without a clear target, divination was pointless.
So he pivoted to Cocoon.
“Are the recent ship massacres connected to the Lava Lord Cocoon?”
Answer: “Don’t know.”
Ethan frowned.
Probably the letter-opener’s rank was too low to reach something that high.
He tried again, changing the question.
“Is the one slaughtering sailors at sea a Transcendent?”
Answer: “Yes.”
“Is the Transcendent a Hunter?”
Ethan asked because Player 0776 had been a Hunter.
Answer: “No.”
Ethan blinked.
Had the Mother of Gargoyles’ blessing altered Player 0776’s Class?
He changed the condition again.
“Does the murderer bear the Mother of Gargoyles’ blessing?”
Answer: “Don’t know.”
Ethan stared at the paper.
Even when it spoke plainly, this thing still raised blood pressure.
After several tries, a pattern became clear:
If the question touched strong Transcendents or truly secret matters, the tool simply couldn’t reach it.
Which made sense.
If a drop of blood bought perfect omniscience, the world would’ve ended long ago.
Ethan tried one last angle.
“Was the murderer captured by the souls of Anger-Sand Isle’s trolls?”
Answer: “No.”
That was decisive.
The sea massacres weren’t Player 0776.
Someone else was out there.
…
Life in the player world stayed calm—and passed quickly.
The “sludge corpse” crisis was resolved the night the moon rose. From the chat, Ethan learned the officials had gathered a large number of divination-capable silver mirrors to purify it.
They weren’t Delanna’s Mirror of Candor, of course. They had to brute-force the effect with quantity.
Afterward, players flooded the channel asking Ethan how he’d known.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have a perfectly safe explanation, and with the Mother of Gargoyles dead, it was unlikely anyone would face that exact situation again.
He closed the chat and let the questions die on their own.
Days rolled forward.
Xueyu stayed in Ethan’s apartment like she’d made a decision not to make a decision.
Ethan didn’t mention the divinity fragment.
Xueyu didn’t mention it either.
She couldn’t tell whether he’d been lying. Away from the Endless Sea, she had no connection to her people. She had to judge everything alone.
So she watched Ethan.
If he grew impatient and demanded the fragment again, then his earlier “indifference” had been an act.
If he stayed calm…
Maybe she really was the one in danger.
To fill the time, Xueyu cooked, washed dishes, accepted deliveries, and watched TV. She learned the player world through the screen.
She also became obsessed with technology. Ethan’s apartment turned into her lab. Every appliance was examined like a sacred artifact.
One afternoon, polluted city air rode in on the autumn breeze.
Ethan ran a finger along the windowsill.
Clean. No dust.
Xueyu had wiped it down.
He exhaled, tense.
She was waiting him out.
And time wasn’t on his side.
The calendar had flipped to September 10.
Cycle 10 was already more than halfway done.
Ethan had a bad feeling: if he didn’t break through soon, he’d lose the momentum he needed to face the Governor… and the Soul Devourer lurking behind the curtain.
And the System’s “fish Storm Island” task would remain a dead letter.
Either he stepped forward…
Or he lay down and accepted it.
The doorbell rang.
A delivery.
Ethan’s gaze sharpened.
An idea took shape.
He sat at his desk, took out pen and paper, and began sketching a complex sigil—an ancient angelic mark he’d learned beneath the temple, from the coffin used to seal Cocoon.
He worked carefully.
Sure enough, footsteps approached behind him.
Xueyu entered in new clothes and asked, bright and hopeful,
“Does this look good on me?”