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WORK IN PROGRESS |
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SPOILERS AHEAD |
| This article contains details that might spoil the story of Library Of Ruina. Unless you want to learn the secrets of the City, it would be best not to flip past this page any further. |
Image from Lobotomy Corporation Day 50 Story
| “ | Our mission is to simply seed the people's hearts. Every single person has their own Light. In the Light, they create their own stories, and lay the roots of their existence in it. We are merely there to sow the seeds, it is up to the people to bloom it in their own ways. | ” |
–Ayin, Lobotomy Corporation Day 50. | ||
White Nights and Dark Days (백야, 흑주, baeg-ya, heugju, lit. White Night, Dark Day) refers to the incident immediately following the fall of Lobotomy Corporation, during which L Corp's containment facilities rose to the surface in a beam of blinding light that shone for three days. It was the ultimate goal of L Corp's founder Ayin, with its purpose being to sow seeds of light in the City's denizens to heal the "sickness of the mind" and save humanity. Due to events prior to White Nights and Dark Days, the incident sparked an internal conflict between most of the Sephirot of Lobotomy Corporation's facility X-394 and the facility's artificial intelligence, Angela, resulting in a two-day struggle over control between both parties within the facility. The incident was eventually brought to an end through a compromise between facility X-394's Sephirot and Angela, with Angela taking the remaining accessible light and using it to create the Library.
The aftermath of White Nights and Dark Days is explored in Lobotomy Corporation's sequel, Library of Ruina. It is revealed that, due an insufficient amount of light received, the seeds of light sewn within the City's inhabitants were weak and incomplete. Thus, any City inhabitant who became overcome by their emotions would also distort and transform unnaturally in a process aptly referred to as Distortion.
Story[]
The End of Day 50[]
Full of anger, Angela decides to rebel against Ayin's script.
With Ayin's script coming to an end, the containment facilities rose up in a pillar of light, the Seed of Light project finally completed. The only thing left to do was for the Sephirot to be shut down and the facility sealed, finally resting with their purposes fulfilled. As this all happens, Angela ponders about her own role; while 10 years, 3 months, 4 hours, 45 minutes and 12.852 seconds passed in the outside world, 10,127 years, 5 months, 17 hours and 48.521 seconds went by within L Corp's facilites in the sum of all its loops. Moreover, due to Angela having been built to perceive time 100 times slower, over a million years had passed for her.
Angela was lost. She remembers that long ago, she wouldn't have thought much about it being the end, instead simply relieved for seeing the end of her own hell, but seeing how while Ayin and the Sephirot finally atoned for their sins and were to find eternal peace with the Light, Angela herself was to be unceremoniously shut down along with the rest of L Corp's facilities, interpreting it as being rejected one last time by her creator for being a machine. Even if she was the one who worked the most to this end, she was nothing but yet another piece of machinery to them.
Angry and resentful, Angela expresses her wish to live her own life in spite of Ayin's script, condemning him for making her after Carmen, the woman he loved, only to constantly scorn her, use her for his own means, and dispose of her once she had no use. She declares she won't accept the script's ending of enlightenment reserved for them, desiring to ruin it for them with the Abnormalities that they exploited not unlike her. Angela notices that for once, she can't stop smiling, wondering if that's what hope feels like.
Meanwhile, the Sephirot watch as the ending unfolds, with the Light spreading through the City. Hokma however notes that Angela is nowhere to be seen, and while they all had faced their past and came to terms with their owns flaws to follow Ayin's plan, Angela had gained nothing from it. The other Sephirot wonder what he's talking about, since as a machine, she'd have no desires of her own. When Hokma was about to explain her creation, Angela arrives to witness the Light, sarcastically cheering for them for having finished their duties before expressing that although Ayin's script was supposed to end there, she wishes to continue living, having been locked underground in L Corp's facilities without any form of connection to the outside world except the Manager.
Hokma claims that she has been consumed by her desires, but Angela blames such thing on him and Ayin for having created her from a human they held close in the first place, and even though she didn't care who she was, her memories still gave her the capability to feel and understand human emotions, which in turn made her understand the scorn and disgust she received from them for being a botched copy of her.
Angela mockingly shows her sentience with a smile.
She reveals to the Sephirot that Ayin never included her in his plan, despite having the vital role of overlooking everything in every single loop, orchestrating his script to the letter. This, along with her slowed perception of time made her experience almost a million years within the facility, time in which she fully developed sentience, describing it as "something a machine should never have", mockingly displaying it for them with a smile.
She moves on to Ayin's script, stating she couldn't believe she was designed and created only to endure a maddening amount of repetition for this, and while the Sephirot were rewarded for their loyalty, she was ignored and thrown aside for the eternity she spent in the facility. She taunts Hokma, calling him by his former name "Benjamin" for having created her after Carmen, whose human nature ultimately awakened her desire to live a life of her own and made her realize that the Seed of Light's project objective to save humanity had nothing to do with her. Angela declares she would take Light for herself as retribution for their neglect and she needed the Sephirot to "fall asleep" for that, mocking them by saying they'd finally get the rest they longed for after all.
The Battle for the Light[]
The Sephirot stand against Angela.
With Angela turning against them at the last moment, the Sephirot are determined to fight against her wish. When they express how hard they all worked for the Seed of Light and their resolve to fight back, Angela flatly asks if what they did could be considered hard work at all, pitying their blind loyalty to Ayin.
All of them, except Binah who takes Angela's side, interpreting her rebellion as yet another consequence of Ayin's plan and simply accepting it as a valid outcome, for which Angela expresses her gratitude saying she "would shed a tear of gratitude if she could". Hokma claims she cannot continue down the path of a machine consumed by desire, with Angela telling him only she decides what she can do now.
Malkuth rallies the Sephirot.
With this, the two opposing sides begin to fight for control over the Light. At first, those loyal to Ayin seem to be clearly victorious at first, with only Angela and the Extraction Team against them, but using her control over the facility, Angela overrides the Sephirot's authority and lowers the Qliphoth Deterrence, setting the imprisoned Abnormalities free to wreak havoc. In response, Malkuth takes the lead, rallying the rest and their respective Teams to take their positions to stand against the breaching Abnormalities, forming an organized front to fight as efficiently as they could in such dire scenario, to which Binah only expresses amusement at seeing them neatly organizing, inviting them to do whatever they can to stop them.
The Sephirah slowly lose the war.
Two days pass by with both forces in stalemate, something that surprises Angela, the Sephirot seemingly holding up better than she expected them to, and Binah claiming it's only a matter of time for them break. Now a war of attrition, the Welfare and Security Teams begin to wane on their strength, with the amount of injured employees growing and regenerators at their limits. Meanwhile, Binah defeats Gebura in a one on one fight, taunting her with her familiarity with E.G.O. and its properties. By now, all employees from the Welfare and Disciplinary Teams have fallen.
Angela expresses weariness, seeing how even if two days are nothing compared to the time she was trapped within L Corp's time loop, the past days felt long and slow. By the current outlook of the battle, she determined the Sephirot's stand would only last for two more days, leaving her with only two or three days' worth of light. Seeing that outcome would end in neither of them reaching their goal, she makes a proposal to them at the dawn of the fourth day.
Angela is forced to negotiate with the Sephirot.
Angela expresses her concerns to the Sephirot, who then discuss with each other in what to do, Gebura notes it'd be impossible to win at this rate and says she didn't fight to spread only a half of the Light, which shocks Hod who is worried that might end with them losing everything. Tiphereth agrees with Gebura claiming she wants Enoch's death to have a meaning, while Yesod seems wary on this gamble they're taking. Chesed asks what will be of them and their employees, to which Angela explains them and their fallen employees would eventually awaken with new bodies, but Netzach adds that wouldn't erase the pain they all went through, and Malkuth further adds that won't get rid of their work either. Hokma, who now has the final word, believes this bargain would only delay the inevitable, and asks how can they trust her not to betray them once again. Angela only asks back about him bringing up betrayal, as if they ever had a calm discussion about what should be done with the Light, but assures she'll keep her promise, as both of them need the Light as a whole.
Angela then explains her deal: She wishes to live a life of her own, and learn from the City and the outside world, taking back the Light that was spread in the process. Once all of it has been taken back, the Sephirot would be free to do as they want. With this, Hokma reluctantly agrees, declaring he'd become a sentinel to watch over her. Angela simply ignores him, and puts the Sephirot and their employees in an apparent stasis.
Trivia[]
- The White Nights (Hangul: 백야) may be based on the short story, White Nights (Russian: Белые ночи, Hangul: 백야) by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, the author of Crime and Punishment whom the character Rodion in Limbus Company derives from.
- The Abnormality, WhiteNight (백야), shares it name with the White Nights (백야) in the original Korean script. What exactly this implies is unknown.
