"So what do you think? Do you have any guesses on what to do?" The girl questioned, looking a bit nonchalant towards Advait.
Advait, on the other hand, was more stunned than anything close to sanity, but after the momentary daze, all he could answer with was a disappointing frown, "No."
"I see, not unexpected," the girl sighed and finally introduced herself. "My name is Edith Marcia; what about you?
"Advait Sarneth"
"Unique" was all Edith said before turning her head away. "Tell me if you get any clue."
"... Sure." Advait nodded with a sigh and just watched as Edith, a girl with a mind way older than her looks, simply vanished somewhere between the giant walls of the falling city.
'A clue, huh...' Advait squinted his eyes. 'To light the moon, you must burn your truth... What kind of clue is that? If Edith has lived really that long, was decoding this clue not enough to escape this place, or perhaps she couldn't even decode it in the first place..'.
Advait just kept walking with his mind filled with conflicting questions, "Will more clues help?" He mumbled to himself and recalled the dead formless creature.
"Already dead..." Advait sighed, 'Maybe I can try killing it next time and get some clue myself, just like Edith, perhaps.' He nodded and took out his pocket watch.
00:32:56
"Still a lot of time left," he mumbled and jumped inside one of the buildings nearby with a flame torch in his hand. 'Perhaps I can find some clue here.' He nodded, and like that, started attempting to try to find clues inside the buildings, but all that was useless; if only Edith had told him that earlier instead of 13 hours later.
"You were searching through buildings?" She remarked as the next loop had begun with both her and Advait standing in front of each other with awkward faces.
"You think I didn't search them already?" Edith scoffed, and shaking her arms, she explained, "Don't waste time; I already searched every wall of this city. There are no clues there. Instead of physical labour, try some mental labour and think about decoding the clue I told you about."
'So she still hasn't decoded her clue, huh?' Advait was left in a bit of an awkward situation, but at the same time, he now held one more piece of useful information, but the mild sense of self-preservation didn't last long, as Edith's next words knocked directly inside his sense of unease.
"By the way, what are you losing in the loops?" Edith's sudden question stunned Advait; she saw the confused look and, with a finch, remarked, "Don't tell me you didn't realise?"
"Realise?" Advait frowned seeing that look in her eyes. "What?" he questioned.
"... With each loop, you lose something; it could be a minor part of your memory, some hairs or maybe some habit you have or such," Edith explained, and pointing at herself, she explained, "With each loop, I lose a part of my memory; what about you?"
"Me?" Advait mumbled with a frown, and he immediately started to analyse, but he couldn't really point at anything. "... I don't know," he mumbled.
"I see." Edith sighed, and finally both their eyes fell on the formless creature wriggling under unbearable gravity beside Edith and Advait once again in the new loop.
"Whatever, go ahead." Edith remarked. Advait nodded at the signal and picked up the brick and tossed it above the formless darkness; the moment the brick reached the zone affected by insane gravity pull, its fall accelerated dozens of times, and the next instant, the sound of crunching bones sounded clearly throughout the street.
Just like last time, the dark shadow and mist vanished, revealing the crushed animal skull, but... that was it.
"No clue?" Edith mumbled, visibly disappointed, before releasing a heavy sigh, "Maybe there is really just one clue, huh?"
With that she walked away, leaving Advait to stare blankly at the crushed skull. "... Or maybe it's because I didn't kill it alone," he remarked, "She mentioned things changed after the 250th loop for her, right? I wonder how long it will be for me."
He said that in quite the blank tone, Advait... As Edith had said, with each loop he too was losing something. Advait waited while trying to solve the first clue in hand.
"Don't save me," he requested Edith, and with a smile, he purposefully rushed over towards the formless being this time.
00:00:25
And died.
"... Sure." Edith just grumbled, and while squashing the formless creature once again, she left too.
00:00:21
Advait is dead.
00:00:39
Advait is dead.
00:00:13
Advait is dead.
00:00:49
Advait is dead.
"Doesn't he get tired?" Edith remarked with frown.
00:00:17
Dead again.
"Was I like that too?" she contemplated while watching Advait's endless attempts.
...
Advait is dead.
Dead
Dead
Dead
By now Edith had stopped paying attention over Advait's attempts, except for observing once or twice, "... He is growing."
After 47th loop.
"His eyes are adapting to smiling hollow's movements..." Edith mumbled as saw Advait actually be able to deflect an attack once.
"Hahahahaha!" the little achievement was worth a laughter, but as expected next instant, he was dead again.
Dead
Dead
Dead
Dead
10 times.
20 times
50 times
Dead
Dead
And dead again!
But something finally changed. On the 63rd loop, Advait, who hadn't even been able to follow the formless creature with his bare eyes, grabbed the skull hidden in the formless shadow, rushing to kill him yet again.
"Ohhhh!!!" Edith almost yelled in her celebration as she saw the new Advait; after dozens of deaths, his eyes capable of perceiving a whole different flow of time and senses capable of feeling even the smallest piece of dust on the ground beneath them, they finally opened completely.
"The Smiling Hollow..." Advait mumbled, looking at the formless creature's grin slowly vanish and replaced with an indescribable look of fear.
"I see why Edith calls you that," he remarked, and with his tight grasp on the skull, he smashed it over the ground beneath, crushing it completely. As expected, the dark mist and shadow around it vanished.
"Woohoo~" Edith seemed to share the joy in Advait's achievement, but the following moments left both of them disappointed yet again.
Even though the Smiling Hollow was dead, no clue emerged, like Edith had said from her experience.
"... You have to be kidding me." Advait mumbled, after all his struggles and deaths, to still remain trapped on the same stage as he was on the first day; how can that be anything bearable?
"Fuck!!!" Advait yelled out in frustration, smashing his fist over the glass wall around him. Edith also couldn't say much over the reaction, as she herself was extremely frustrated and disappointed just watching Advait's struggles fail.
"... It really is worse than hell," she mumbled, and as she was walking away, but in midst of that one of the names still imprinted in her memories escaped her mouth, "Reva will be so disappointed seeing all this bullshit..." As she was saying this, she started to walk away, but that name she uttered, she wasn't the only one who knew of it in this realm.
"Hey..." Advait's arms stretched out towards Edith; she sensed the unease and dodged his grasp almost instinctively.
"What the—?!" Edith squinted her eyes in annoyance and glared towards Advait, but the moment she saw the blank look of plain rage and insanity in Advait's eyes, she was washed away with cold sweats over her face.
"How do you know that name?" Advait questioned in quite the neutral tone but cold and lifeless at the same time.
"Reva?" Edith questioned, observing Advait's reaction; it was clear that he was familiar. "You know her?"
"Just answer me!" Advait, lost in rage, yelled aggressively and once again attempted to grab her, but Edith slipped away again.
But Advait didn't stop there; blinded in fury, he shouted, "Why do you know that name? You said you couldn't remember your past. Are you lying to me?"
His state of unsound mind was reasonable; it was a crashout of frustration from failures till now, but at the same time, Edith had her own share of frustration, no less than Advait, rather way beyond anything Advait could imagine...
"Stop talking to me like I'm a little girl!" Edith yelled out, "You are trapped in the same place! Why do you just pretend to be my superior!? Why does it matter what I remember and not?"
"Hah?!" Advait's face started to twitch, but before he could take one step forward, he was crushed to the ground under overwhelming gravity made by Edith's command.
No matter how much Advait wriggled, he couldn't stand up under that gravity. To vent his rage, all he could do was yell vicious words: "You want to know why I pretend to be better?!"
A smile which was not anything like Advait emerged over his face; it was the ugly side of his human side as he yelled out, "Because if I don't pretend, I'll turn into whatever YOU are becoming! You emotionless monster! No memories! No past! Do you even remember your own name by now?!"
"This fucker!" Edith's rage also started to grow more. "Enough of your bullshit. I'm done babysitting." She shouted with her arms raised high, ready to crush every fibre of Advait's body away from existence.
But Advait knew it too; survival instincts and the trigger of every shred of adrenaline inside his body. He forced his body to stand with sheer willpower. Edith saw that but couldn't believe it; for the first time in a long time, her own survival instincts kicked in as she increased the gravity of the affected area by over a thousand times, but by the time she reacted, Advait had already escaped the area affected by her gravity.
"Aaaaaghhhhh!!!" He screamed in pure pain and blankness of rage, all bones over his arm and shoulders, even the spine had cracked and shattered because of resisting gravity beyond his capabilities, but that wasn't enough to stop him, as in that blank state, with a shard of glass in his hand obtained from a broken window nearby, his arm slipped past Edith's throat.
And the body collapsed lifelessly on the ground.