Not One Of Them

Allen was of the mind to finish this thing right now. But he soon received the transcript and video of the interrogation that the team had done to all three of them who stayed in the game all this time.

Hakam first, Darakhshandy, who was the fast one, and Mohsin, who had the most defense skills.

Allen could feel the power of those names….they were going to do some amazing things.

Allen went through all the data, and he did not really understand. He went through it twice more and his eyebrows raised a little. He put aside going into the game for now and called his uncle Sam, and also some of the other team members.

Sam was quick to respond, and he assured him he will get there in a few tens of minutes.

When they got there, Allen asked different people to recount their experiences, including Sam and Hakam. Allen was more sure of what he was thinking after listening to Sam, particularly Hakam's account.

Sam saw that Allen still was not opening his mouth after making this kind of a show out of the matter. He sat down. Allen looked at him and Sufyan said, "An old man can't stand for so long"

Allen smiled, seeing the "old man," joking. He said, "Actually I don't think the creatures would be behind this."

He then explained, but he frequently lost most of them midway hence, he instead expressed things as points.

First, he had to see that everyone was on the same page. He started with what others also knew about the matter.

1)This was a type of whisper, he called those thoughts that were on the opposite end, whispers.

Then

One point that showed that it may not be the creatures was.

2)It was non-stop and attacked different people simultaneously. Although the creatures were strong, there was no indicator that they had two minds or the capability to multitask so well at the same time. There was a possibility that multiple of the same type of species was involved, so he left the possibility open for now.

Another point that supported this argument was:

3)These whispers were too alike in their nature, although different at the same time. 3 different people had 3 different lives until now. Hence, 3 different issues that they were facing. The thing exploited whatever it could from each of them.

4)These whispers were too similar to the thoughts that were already present in the thoughts of the people when the creatures didn't come. Those creatures were a new enemy. They could never understand the issues of humans so well in so a limited amount of time.

Actually, Sam countered him here that the creatures, although not fully versed in their combat level, were still quite familiar with things, their transport, and their other building structures.

Allen still made that point by saying they may know matters by basic spying and surveillance, as they do now. But they could not gather the nature and weakness of human physiology, which is a deep and vast subject.

This thing was too familiar with physic, and hence he said it has a lot of knowledge about it.

This was the point that made him rule out the second point. There could be different creatures of the same kind, with the ability to interfere, but they could never have the same level of technique of trying to whisper. There should have been differences in capability and the tone and many other things that could not be similar between two different creatures.

Allen concluded with a point about that.

Whatever it was,

it was capable of

1)being present with multiple people at the same time

2)high level of experience in human psychology

3)too similar to cases present already in the human world. Where a person with depression is most notably affected by this. With thoughts of being a useless person.. or someone with nothing and just a waste of human beings. Cases where one negative thought leads to another and spirals out of control. From what they knew about this until now, the only case where this applied to them right now was when they lost their hp. The effect was more when it was a sudden strike as compared to the condition of just the hp being zero; they knew from Allen's experience with it. But in both cases, there was some effect.

To be honest, when asked what he thought was behind this. He responded,

"I don't know."

One of the present asked,

"Do you think the system is behind this as we already use technology in the world anyway all the time?"

Allen said "I don't know"

One of them asked,

"Maybe it is just some people behind this, who they are collaborating with the creatures? Or maybe even operating solo considering the creatures were also affected"

Allen said "I don't know"

Everyone was quite stuck at what Allen was then trying to say; it was not the creature, nor the people, nor the system, or game, then who it could be. There was no suspect left on the list. They could not be the ones to do it, could they?

One of them gulped and then asked,

"Do you think the people present were in that place?"

Sam was visibly calm, but he had narrowed his eyes slightly. He trusted the ability of his....well, his neighbor. Now his military subordinate. He was ready to investigate the matter now that things had narrowed to this by him. It was a solid reason to pursue the case.

Seeing Allen silent, the others got tense. And the environment became heated. The room was ready to erupt at any moment.

Allen got out of his stupor and said "No, I don't think so. That is imaginable, but I think it is just a stretch to include that as a cause here. It was too much of a timely attack that it couldn't have been done by a single person...It could not even have been by multiple people here as first there was no such free movement available to most of the people here most of the time. And second, I don't see any motive. We selected too randomly the people here and the game staff couldn't do much about the game, anyway."

Others thought' Brother, if you are just thinking, just say so. Why make things hard on us'

After that, Allen tried to ask more questions while also being asked questions, but they reached no more in-depth than that.

The thing they ended up deciding was that they should try to avoid any situation in which they go into the game solo and other things they should not let their hp fall to zero. And should it be close to zero, they should immediately message outside so that they can be forced to log out.

Allen would not let the 24-hour deadline quest escape him. So he just took Tim and Yushin and went i.to the game, after telling Sam of course.

Sam just agreed to let them go in.

Allen and others entered and they choose to respawn at a common location they know of instead of appearing where they had left the game. Soon, something came to take the three of them and they had arrived at the arena. They had left the other two as watchers in the audience section. While they then took Allen to the arena waiting room. The best fight had not yet started.

Allen thought 'At least tell me who am I fighting against…"

The system secretly sent a notification.

'The system would like to fight with you. Do you accept it?'

Allen looked at what this thing had gotten into and it was a type of robotic body. Allen shook his head and said, "Rejected"

The system got away disappointed and then said to him '' There are no other options though. The match also needs to end in 24 hours. Oops...now it is 19 hours. The leader can't be accepted without approval from the people. You will need to have a match with someone so that they at least don't kick you outright."

Allen said, "I can select anyone?" still thinking this may be the plan behind it making him fight. It just wanted to fight itself.

The system said` "If the audience can accept it. Sure"

Allen looked at the audience and looked for a particular person. After finding the person he had met before when he came to the arena, the one that had put him aside. He pointed and said, "I would like to have a match with him then"

The system said okay and promptly got him in the ring...they probably didn't even ask him once. The man actually still had a bag of popcorns as he reached the stage. It seems he still was not realizing the situation. The system, however, announced that the fight was going to start in 2 minutes. The man hurriedly picked up his bearings while the other audience members....well, they were riled up alright.

Actually, the man had initially looked quite confused....but after some time, getting into the rhythm with the audience again; he became visibly excited again.

Almen didn't want to call them a bunch of excited lunatics, but well…

By the way...Allen saw that his level was lvl 9, the last one from leveling up his skills. The opponent had unknown levels before but he had 9 levels, so that was a relief at least.

Allen asked the system for further clarification and it said that the fight would not be good, considering that most of the opponent's skill needed a sufficient level to be used correctly.

When Allen asked how the levels affected things. It said things that you already know, like speed and strength.

Allen saw this brother getting all excited about who needed to be level 9 just to show off his skills.

Allen said, "Let's do it fast"