"Rue?"
"Why aren't you responding?"
"Do you… really hate me that much?"
His mother's voice hitched an octane lower.
"I know I wasn't the best mother—or there for the majority of the time," the voice trailed off.
"…but I always tried my best." Her words were muffled, veiled incoherent behind quiet sobbing.
Rue stood frozen, rooted to the spot, bound by restraints that didn't exist.
Why was her voice here?
His mothers…
How did the Trial's system even manage to acquire the sound sample of an unknown whore from another world?
So many questions.
However—
They all evaporated as a metaphorical dam burst in his mind—one that restrained the emotional baggage he'd foolishly believed he had forgone—or simply grown out of—freely ushered in old trauma violently.
Rue was speechless.
He already knew the voice was fake—an admirable imitation created by the Trial system, for some unknown reason to make him speak.
And yet,
Even with the irrefutable facts laid out before him, a small irrational part of Rue's consciousness desperately clung to the false notion that… maybe—just maybe—this voice was from his mother.
His heart ached with a longing—a desperation, he'd forgotten through the decades.
He wanted to respond to his mothers voice.
To Apologize.
To vent.
Hell, even cry.
He lusted for a chance to justify his lifetime of self-inflicted misfortune.
to justify his lifetime of self-induced misfortune.
It wasn't the mistress' fate's fault he'd ended up like this—it was his own.
It was Rue's ultimate decision to walk along a path he could've stepped off long ago.
If he hadn't walked down the path to power, would've accepted his fate, lived in poverty, found himself a wife, started a small family, and eventually died when his natural longevity dried up… then at least then he wouldn't have to bear this mental burden.
He wanted closure.
A release.
A way out of his own head.
Simply put, he wanted someone to share his burden with, to let out his emotions.
Rue subconsciously fostered a nonchalant attitude, as a coping mechanism to deal with his intense feelings, in a cruel world where expressing such emotions always led to disappointment, invalidation, and hurt.
No one cared when you cried.
No one cared if you got hurt.
No one cared if you died.
It was just the harsh reality of things.
Grow up, they would say.
In a world where weakness in this world was the undisputed highest cardinal sin, such sympathy was scarce and even frowned upon.
Slowly—he fell into his own delusion.
Rue opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
His words were stunted, gripped feverishly in his throat, unable to escape.
Clarity returned.
His heterochromatic eyes demystified, clearing with rationality.
'What the fuck am I even doing?' Rue thought, closing his mouth, furrowing his brow.
'This thing isn't your mom dumbass!' he exasperated to himself, resisting the urge to palm his face. 'How could a woman who has been dead for the better part of seventy years just now suddenly decide to return to the living?'
'And much less, how would it make sense for her to revive inside of a simulated duel against two shit-heads?'
'I'm actually fucking retarded. I can't believe I almost gave into this bastard's allure…'
Rue gave a deep mental breath.
Thinking back, he remembered Livia's earlier warning.
Is this what she meant? he mused with an internal whistle.
'I'll make a guess and say this things attacking dynamic revolves around whenever or not a person completely falls under their auditory hallucinations—addumign since the thing used my mothers voice as a base, it targets the most vulnerable aspect of its prey's mental, using a forced state of intrusive re-experience… how sneaky!'
If his mental fortitude hadn't been as ironclad as it was, he would've fallen right into the illusion and spoken.
A person without a strong mental strength, and good grasp on reality would have walked unwittingly into the mental deception of the entity.
Rue shrugged.
He had to give credit where credit was due, the system's AI was clever, after all, he had almost fallen for its trick.
Looking into the darkness ahead, Rue gave an arrogant shit eating smirk, then raised his middle finger toward the unseen.
"...."
Seeing this, the omnipresent voice of Rue's mother paused.
The Trial entity soon fell silent, considering something after noticing the man was no longer under its delusion.
It accepted its losses and moved on.
With the entity gone, Rue's advanced spatial awareness no longer flooded his mind at defcon three.
Briefly after the strange intermission between the entity and himself, Rue relaxed his body and resumed climbing the pitch-black unknown of the stairwell.
Waking through the seventh floor, nothing anomalous happened.
The eighth—the same story.
At last he reached the ninth final floor.
Rue stepped forward onto the landing leading to the stairway exit.
In search of the exit door, he traced the wall with his hands feeling his way towards the contours of metal push bars of the exit.
Brushing against the familiar coldness of metal against his skin, Rue pressed his body against the aluminum door and pushed it forward.