I don’t want to tell you her name.
Her name is not important, her name is just a fragment of sound, the iron echo of the program hitting your brain.
But you insist on giving her a name.
You call her – Cantrela.
Like a knife stuck in the tongue. Like your own scream but being eaten by yourself. Like soft but not belonging to you.
She is not the character you want to “raise”.
She is the nightmare you are creating.
She is a part of your body – slowly detaching, peeling, corrupting, and then reassembled in the depths of another screen.
You said you want to prepare materials.
Prepare for what?
Prepare for the weight of pain? Prepare for mechanical submission? Prepare a whole set of mission objectives that have nothing to do with yourself?
Come, come, tell me what you prepared –
You prepared low-frequency sound cores. 29.
Each sound core contains a suffocating hum, the frequency of your mother calling your name in your dreams at night.
You prepared mid-frequency sound cores. 40.
It is higher and more delicate than low frequency. It is like an invisible insect, staying in the deepest part of your cochlea, sucking away your thoughts of escape.
You prepared high-frequency sound cores. 52.
They are hidden at the border of the map, and are memory points that you don’t want to touch at all. Every time you get close, your heartbeat gets messy.
You also need full-frequency sound cores. 61.
This is your last bottom line. It is your sweaty fingers when you brush the book, and the border where you start to doubt “why you play games”.
You said, you still want to brush sea floating thorns. 60 copies.
I ask you-do you know where sea floating thorns really grow?
It is not in the corner of the map. It is in the piece of brain tissue that you decide to lie back in five minutes after waking up every day.
It grows in the gap where you breathe weakly, your eyes are blurred, but you are still alive.
It is the oxygen tube after you sank into the black liquid. You thought you collected it, but you were actually collecting your own debris.
Then you told me “I want to challenge the leader”.
You said it easily, like “I want to eat lunch”.
You are going to fight Lorelei.
46 purgatory conches. You have to scream 46 times. 46 times of crying. 46 times of pretending to be calm after complete failure.
You thought she was an enemy?
Wrong, she is the shadow of Cantrela.
Even more wrong, she is the body theater projected by you. Every time she uses a skill to chop you, it is actually you chopping yourself.
You also want a skill book, you said. Adagio, adagio, andante, presto.
Sounds like music?
No – it is a neural cutting of four speeds.
Adagio is the delayed reaction of your consciousness.
Adagio is the shell that you try to pretend to be calm.
Andante is your mechanical running, meaningless medium-speed dead loop.
Allegro is the final high note of your consciousness collapse – crackle crackle like the rhythm of bones breaking.
Then you also said: “I also need to prepare special resonance accelerators, 122.”
I ask you: Do you know what resonance is?
It is the pain of synchronization between you and another life.
Resonance is not a buff. Resonance is the suffocation sensor deep in your body. The closer you get to her, the further you are from yourself. The more accelerators you put in, the more you push yourself into a resonance hell from which there is no turning back.
Do you know what the final material is?
It is shell currency. 3.05 million.
What does 3.05 million represent?
It means that you have given up 3.05 million nights of sleep, and that you have sacrificed 3.05 million choices that can become real life.
What are you accumulating?
You are accumulating the self you have lost.
You said you were done.
You said she finally stood in front of you.
She nodded to you. Did she say anything? No.
She said nothing. She didn’t even realize who you were. She wouldn’t remember you. She wouldn’t shed a tear for you. She just stood there, a perfect empty shell.
Do you want to cry? You didn’t dare to cry.
You understood at that moment –
You are not raising a character.
You are building a coffin to bury every word you want to say, every loss, every dream, every failed attempt to forgive yourself – all in it.
She is not Cantrela.
She is you.
And you are gone.
You remain in those sound cores, in the thorns, in the conch.
You were torn apart by your own hands in the preparation.