Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes.

Chapter 359, Section 106: Different Endings
Ludu read through the entire long recollection from William's perspective, experiencing the various emotions surging within William's heart.

Many of the emotions she felt were ones she had never experienced before, indescribable, neither wonderful nor repulsive; in short, she felt both uncomfortable and curious.

It gave the little girl a huge shock.

It turns out that there are such complex feelings in the world besides liking, disliking, being happy, being sad, and being hungry.

Is this the world of adults?
Aside from the emotions, the overall plot development was pretty much as she had expected.

Matthew's situation is quite similar to that of the London Ripper and the plantation owner Hugo; all of them were lured into madness by so-called treasures containing the seven deadly sins and went on a killing spree.
To everyone's surprise, Mattis was Matthew, and the knight on the ship was William.

Unfortunately, the previous memory fragments never showed William's appearance; they mostly showed close-ups of Matthew.

In this way, when players see that "Madis" looks younger than Matthew, they will subconsciously assume that the Madis they are controlling is the other party's son, and take this as a clue given by the game.

However, in hindsight, the game actually provided relevant hints all along.

Whether it's the conversations in the fishing village or the sword engraved with Matthew's name.

The most direct and obvious thing to do was to tell her that Madis was the local name for Matthew.

Mattis = Matthew.

But at that time, Ludu didn't think about it at all, and basically no players would think that way either.

All the clues on the surface seemed to support her initial deduction, but now that things have reversed, it all makes sense. Perhaps this is just the game's twisted humor.

Ludu became more cautious and careful with the game content.

This flashback sequence is quite long, and there's absolutely no interaction required; it's purely a cutscene.

After the screen shattered, everything returned to Mattis's, or rather Matthew's, perspective, and it seemed that only a few seconds had passed.

The sea became turbulent, a blizzard arrived, and the gale-force winds whipped the ship, which was tilting downwards, with ice and snow lashing against it.

Around the hull, golden fish continued to leap and dart like flying fish, their arcs forming a golden rainbow.

Two options appeared before me.

William, you no longer need my affirmation.

Give me the sacred object.

This is an easy question, isn't it?

Ludu glanced at the status bar.

[Hunger level: 100/∞] (Soaring)
[Sanity Value: 50/200] (Decrease)
Without any hesitation, I chose the first option.

“William, my son, you no longer need my approval. After I married, I have long since lost the right to wear the white robe.”

"You have always been my hope and my pride."

Having regained his memories, Matthew swayed precariously, his mind struggling against the ever-growing hunger, tears mingling with snowmelt wetting his face.

He regained his memories, but felt that it would have been better if he hadn't.

But if he really couldn't find it, he wouldn't be able to give William an answer.

Many things in life are like this: you can't have it all; you have to lose something to gain something.

William, leaning against him, made no sound, as if he had fallen into a deep sleep.

Matthew looked at the wound that had penetrated his plate armor, but not a drop of blood had seeped out.

He moved with extreme gentleness, slowly crouching down and placing William on the deck.

Then he reached out and carefully peeled away William's visor, bit by bit.

Matthew's breathing suddenly stopped.

Beneath the mask, there was neither the serene nor the pained expression one might have imagined.

No flesh and blood.

No facial features.

There was only a yellowed skull, weathered and mottled by time.

Those hollow, black eye sockets stared silently at the gray, snow-covered sky.

"."

Matthew stared blankly into space.

Holding William's plate-armored body, with one hand gripping the golden trident, until the ship tilted, seawater flooded the deck, and a large number of golden fish jumped from the sea into the ship, surging around them and forming a whirlpool.

[Sanity Value: 1/200] (Locked)

"Ancestor, we have done our best to fulfill the vows you made."

Matthew stared at the endless sea fog, muttering to himself, gripping the trident in his hand even tighter.

The massive ship finally let out a mournful cry of despair, breaking in two, and seawater carrying ice shards instantly submerged everything on the deck.

Matthew held William's skeleton in his arms, gripping the golden trident, offering no resistance as the vortex swallowed them whole.

The ship sank little by little into the dark abyss, stirring up a golden whirlpool in which golden fish swirled endlessly.

A few minutes later.

The whirlpool finally subsided completely.

The golden fish and the boat vanished without a trace, and the sea returned to its usual tranquility, as if nothing had ever happened.

The moonlight, the mist, and the snow remain the same.

The sea swallowed everything.

The screen gradually darkens.

Player "Luciole Dubois" has completed "The Lonely Boat on the Ice Sea". The game will close tomorrow and scores will be tallied.

[You have successfully completed "Lone Boat on the Ice Sea" and received the reward "Golden Fish Badge (creates a sanity barrier based on your own range and mental strength, granting immunity to a certain degree of mental attacks and slowly increasing your sanity. Can be activated actively or passively.)"]

Lu Du was lost in thought for a long time before belatedly realizing what had happened.

"Passed the level?" She blinked and looked at the prompt again carefully.

"So I'm the first one to clear the game?"

According to other chosen ones, "The Lone Boat on the Ice Sea" is a unique reward game with no ending or evaluation; only the first player to complete it receives the game's unique, fixed reward.

So now that she's received the reward, doesn't that mean she was the first to clear the level?

She cared more about the title of first place than the reward.

"Haha! As expected of me!!"

Late at night, Ludu, who was sleeping in bed, suddenly jumped up, excitedly stood barefoot on the floor, put her hands on her hips, and was extremely proud of herself.

She couldn't help but jump up and down a few times, her joy beyond words.

This means she beat all the players in the world (only a dozen) and got the sole reward! That's just so cool!
However, this feeling didn't last long and was quickly overshadowed by the lingering effects of the game.

The final scene shows Matthew holding his son William's skeleton, clutching the golden trident that brought all the disaster, silently sinking into the icy sea with the ghost ship.

That indescribable father-son relationship, the tragedy of being consumed by desire, and the final sigh filled with weariness and emptiness.
She had personally experienced all these emotions from the first-person perspective, and after leaving the game, they all mixed together into a complex and bittersweet feeling that slowly permeated her joy.

In fact, even if Matthew hadn't been tempted by the trident and fallen into depravity, they probably still wouldn't have been able to escape that icy sea.

Her hands, which had been on her hips, slowly fell to her sides.

The smile on her face gradually disappeared, replaced by a silence that was incongruous with her age, tinged with a sense of bewilderment and sadness.

She silently climbed back into bed, burrowed into the thick quilt, and stared blankly at the group photo on the table with her big eyes, which had adjusted to the darkness.

Inside the old wooden frame is a family photo.

In the photo, the young parents are all smiles. The father is awkwardly holding his baby daughter, while the mother leans gently on his shoulder. The grandmother stands to the side, beaming with joy. Her smile is so warm that it seems to dispel all gloom.

Her parents died when she was very young, so she has no memory of the situation at the time, and naturally, she has no recollection of her feelings at that time.

The warmth in the photos, to her, is more like a beautiful but distant fairy tale, lacking a real, tangible feeling.

In the game, through Matthew and William's perspectives, she genuinely experienced the emotions of losing her father, mother, and son.

The heart-wrenching pain, the heaviness, the despair, the deep-seated sorrow—the impact was immense for a child who had never truly experienced life and death.

She pressed her lips tightly together, her nose stung, and her eyes uncontrollably reddened and became moist.

The warm liquid swelled and swirled uncontrollably inside, blurring the view into a shimmering expanse of water.

She strained to open her eyes wide and stubbornly tilted her head back to prevent the water droplets from falling.

"I can't cry, I can't cry. I am the chosen one, how can the chosen one cry over a game?" she told herself sternly.

Outside the door, there were soft, familiar footsteps.

It's Grandma; she always appears when I need her most.

The door was gently pushed open a crack, and Grandma, wearing a thick, old wool cardigan, quietly walked in.

She didn't turn on the light, but by the dim moonlight from the window, she immediately saw the little bulge on the bed, wrapped up in a ball and trembling slightly.

Grandma sighed silently, her eyes filled with heartache. She moved a small chair over and sat down on the edge of the bed. She reached out to stroke Ludu's face, but then stopped, perhaps feeling that her hand was a little cold. Instead, she touched Ludu's hair instead.

"Had a nightmare? My little firefly."

“Mmm.” Lu Du answered with half his face buried in the blanket, using a nasal tone, not daring to be too loud, afraid that he would cry.

Grandma didn't ask any more questions. She simply took out a thin, worn-out sketchbook from her cardigan pocket.

It was a children's picture book adapted from "The Insect World." The paper was yellowed and brittle, but it was very well preserved.

She opened the picture book, and by the moonlight streaming in from the window, she began to tell the story that Ludu had heard countless times and could even recite by heart in her slow and peaceful voice:
"In a faraway forest lived a very, very small firefly. The light she emitted was also very faint, unlike other fireflies that could shine like a small lamp."

She was always quiet and shy. The other insects, like the scarab beetle who always boasted about how shiny its wings were, or the crickets that chirped all day long, didn't really pay attention to this little firefly.

They felt that her faint light was utterly insignificant.

Therefore, the little firefly often felt a little lonely. Especially on moonless nights, she felt as if she were about to disappear into the darkness.

Ludu closed her eyes and listened quietly. She had indeed heard this story far too many times; she knew every single detail that followed:
Fireflies discover that although their light is small, it can illuminate what they want to illuminate. For example, it can light the way home for a lost ant, help a butterfly with a broken wing find the flower stamen to heal its wounds, and even guide a lost dewdrop to the roots of a grass that thirsts for water.

She knew this was a story about discovering one's strengths and helping those in need.

She preferred the wonderful animations broadcast on television to this story.

However, whenever she hears this story and listens to her grandmother's gentle narration, she can quickly clear her mind, stop thinking about anything messy, and peacefully drift off to sleep.

She was asleep. In the player lobby, Oshima waited for a long time but Ludu didn't appear. He kept glancing at the seat where Ludu would log in. He wanted to ask her something.

Actually, he had also completed the game, just two hours after Ludu. The reason he was anxious was that he wanted to ask Ludu if their endings were the same.

Because the Madis he manipulated ultimately failed to defeat William!
So spicy!

Therefore, Oshima was unaware that Mattis was actually Matthew, and still believed that he was controlling William.

Even so, the game did not show a failure screen, but rather a screen that should be considered an ending.

The knight who had defeated Matthias showed no joy. He remained silent for a long time, and finally, with his trident, he guided the ship to sink unnaturally, eventually disappearing above the horizon.

Then, the scene suddenly dips, following the sinking ship, as if through some kind of montage editing. When the scene becomes clear and stable again, the ship has vanished, and the scene has switched to a deep, dark seabed.

There, a huge, irregularly shaped, milky-white block of ice stands quietly on the seabed.

The scene slowly zooms in, penetrating the pale ice crystals. With the help of a faint light from who-knows-where, one can barely make out that it is the knight's plate armor and two-handed sword inside.

But the golden trident that caused all the disasters has disappeared without a trace.

Just as Oshima was concentrating intently on trying to see the details inside the ice,

A blurry, enormous black shadow swept across the screen, too fast to discern what creature it was. Then, the screen abruptly went black, and the game ended.

After analyzing the situation, he felt that it was probably because he hadn't collected all the mementos he had left behind, and some were missing.

However, coincidentally, Takii told me that the recent anomaly in the Baltic Sea was related to a mysterious ice floe.

Perhaps by sheer chance, he triggered the actual ending.

(End of this chapter)