The Rise Of A Porter

BACK IN THE DOMAIN OF [GUIDE BETWEEN THE WORLDS]

Arnold kept throwing the spears he made using his elemental abilities in what seemed like arbitrary directions but whenever he threw a spear, they clashed against something and these clashes were followed by a noise as if something broke. ​​

It wasn't like everytime Arnold threw a spear it met its target, since the room was pitch black and he had to actually force his hearing ability to the point that he was able to recognise even the faintest sounds. This exceptional hearing wasn't a resultant of one of his abilities or subclasses, but it was the result of the mental training he had been going through for the past year.

Thanks to this hearing ability he was able to deduce the fact that the arrows that were being shot at him, were shot by some type of 'machinery' and not some kind of being, as one, he always heard a weird clicking sound right before an arrow was shot towards him and two, the arrows were shot at him in regular intervals.

In retaliation he kept throwing the spears one after another and soon the numbers of arrows that were shot towards him, reduced. What little strength he had, also paid an important role in the destruction of the arrow shooting machines, because without his strength, no matter how much force he'd put into throwing the spears, he would not have been able to destroy the those machines in a single throw.

With the decrease in the threat of arrows, He could finally start concentrating on figuring the identity of his unknown enemy.

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Time remaining before the trial ends : 04:53 minutes.

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'Almost half of the time is gone. I have to figure something out!' Arnold thought and he mindlessly stared in the dark room.

"I would've commended you on successfully wasting two-thirds of your time by destroying the useless artillery inside the room which had nothing to do with your trial." The voice taunted Arnold. "Ah... you've always been like this... always."

Arnold felt a strange after hearing what the voice said. All the while that he had been throwing spears left and right, the voice had never spoken once, but know when he was trying to concentrate once again on the task at hand, the voice suddenly reappeared to distract him from doing so.

'Is this thing somehow linked to my mind or something?'

Just as Arnold thought about it, the voice gasped like a thief who had been caught red-handed. Arnold could almost 'visualise' the owner of the voice panicking, he was definitely a step closer to solving this mystery. He was about to blurt something out when another notification appeared on Arnold's interface.

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Rules of this scenario have been altered by the [GUIDE BETWEEN THE WORLDS] :

You only have one chance to guess the identity of the enemy. If your guess is wrong you'll automatically fail the trial, even if there was time remaining.

Be careful while making your choice.

___

'Dammit!' Arnold didn't know whether he should curse his fate or not. Initially he thought that since he had some time left he'd make some calculated guesses from the information he had obtained till now and hopefully he'll be able to solve this 'puzzle' and end the scenario, but he took too much time to come with this idea, and now the rules had been changed.

He. Was. Pissed.

But even after that, he couldn't allow his anger to take over him. Anger won't do him any good in this situation either way, instead it would make his mind hazy and he wouldn't be able to make a rational decision which could potentially lead him to a difficult path.

With some effort, Arnold was finally able to calm himself and thought about what he had to do next.

'All I need is a couple of more clues or something.'

But the more he thought about it, noisier the voice got. The voice started blurting out about anything and everything that Arnold found hurtful, but instead of triggering him, the words spoken by the voice, had a totally different effect on Arnold because it helped him narrow down the choices he initially had.

As Arnold never spoke freely about the things that triggered or angered him, only a mind reader would be able to know these things. After this, Arnold was pretty sure that it was the case and was about to make his choice when the voice said something that even Arnold himself had forgotten about...

"YOU'RE JUST A PATHETIC WEAKLING WHO COULDN'T EVEN PROVE HIS COUSIN WRONG!" The voice bellowed, "HE USED TO TOUCH YOUR SISTER IN INAPPROPRIATE PLACES! YOU KNEW ABOUT IT AND STILL DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP HIM!"

At that moment Arnold went silent. It was indeed true that he once saw his 'cousin', his uncle's son, do weird things with his sister but his sister wasn't the only victim as he did similar stuff with other girls who were in the family as well, but unlike what the voice was saying, Arnold didn't ignored this incident and did try to help his sister and the others by informing his parents about it.

His mom and dad believed him because he had never lied to them before. They were furious at their uncle and his son, who was 12 at that time. His dad went to confront him. Arnold had already talked about this to his cousins and the others, who assured him that when the time came they'll definitely support him.

But they didn't. For some reason, no one said a word against their cousin.

But his uncle started belittling Arnold and his father, even when Nicole tried to explain what the cousin in question used to do her, no one believed her and everyone blamed Arnold for 'Corrupting' Nicole's innocent mind with teaching her vulgar things.

Even when no one believed what Arnold was saying, his father stood by his side and cut all contact with his family. Arnold's father even divided their family business. Everyone thought he had gone mad but it was this gesture that made Arnold love his father even more...

But it was all long ago, that Arnold himself had forgotten about it all as he had been seven years old back then.

But Arnold became furious when he remembered how useless he had been in the past but before he could let the anger consume him, a realisation hit him. No one knew about this incident... not even Nathaniel or Nicholas were the world's most experienced mind readers, who had often looked into his mind, in order to help him with his 'issues'.

It was due to the reason that Arnold himself had forgotten about that incident, thus no one got to know about it, even after looking through his mind.

But if even mind readers weren't able to know about this incident, how could someone else know about it? Moreover the voice seemed to be personally attached to this subject as well, could it be that...

"...you're me?" Arnold mumbled.

The moment Arnold uttered those words a familiar notification popped up in front of his eyes.