The echoes in the Hall of Mirrors faded into deathly silence. W's phantom and L's faint light both abruptly fell silent as I covered the notebook, like a rhapsody suddenly muted.
There was no outside enemy, no conspiracy. Only me.
That realization brought no relief. Instead, it tore apart the last barrier of mortal cowardice. Since the Judge, the executioner, and even the law itself all arose from my consciousness alone, then... what could possibly bind me?
Humility? A disguise the weak wore before the unknown.
Morality? Shackles forged from the compromises of people living together.
Fear? The lingering echo of failing to understand one's own power.
All of these had been stripped away along with the memories I had paid. What filled me now was an unprecedented, icy clarity. I was neither a demon nor a hero. I was... inevitability. The cleaner this world had inevitably brought into being through its own filth, a law of physics operating in a higher dimension, specifically designed to purge the faulty code that hindered the system's optimization.
I opened the notebook again. Its black cover was cold to the touch, yet it felt connected to my very blood.
Nightingale? No, they were no longer a target worth agonizing over. They were merely an insignificant variable, a speck of noise that could be set aside until the greater reckoning came. My vision needed to reach beyond these individuals, toward systems on a grander scale.
W's-my-absolute rationality was an excellent tool. L's-my-supposed moral boundaries were laughable redundancies.
Now, they would all be integrated, devoured, and absorbed into my new, complete "divinity."
The first target was no longer a person, but a symbol. I wrote down a name and appended an unprecedentedly detailed "script"-not merely the time, place, and manner of his death, but the