>>723118498
>>723118879
There's a lot of things ERAM could be.
Could be just a whole new player in all this.
Could be FRIEND itself, just presenting differently.
Could be The Knight messing with Kris

Personally, I think the last one there is the most sensible. We know they're close, we know the Knight can clearly think more than it's letting on, and ERAM specifically said that there was something they BOTH had to do after the SWORD game stuff.
The whole thing could have been the Knight fucking with Kris and ultimately giving them a tool to help in the fake fight they were about to have. As to why they'd do that, again there's a lot of possiblities but I think the easiest is that they wanted to get the fight just far enough to get the Shadow Crystal to them. Like the whole thing with the secret super boss stuff is something they're hiding overall.

Anyone got any actual arguments as to why ERAM can't be The Knight/Dess? Like evidence for it to be someone else, but like evidence that it couldn't be her.

Points for it:
>We literally fight it in a virtual version of the Shelter where everyone assumes Dess is/went missing
>It's super personal with Kris as if it knows them deep down
>It apparently has been following/watching us this whole time since it can know about Weird Route and took the Shadow Mantle from Seam before we got there
>Said Mantle may literally belong to the Knight/Dess given Noelle's refusal to wear it cause she slowly says it's for someone taller
>It ends the fight saying "we both have work to do" which would lead to that next fight
>Giving the Mantle is basically a handicap so we'll be more incentivized to fight for real and get the Shadow Crystal from the Knight
>The Ribbick in the hall says it thought Kris already went by which could have been it mistaking The Knight for Kris' knight outfit like the NPC in Chapter 4 suggests (it's not Mini-Kris, that gets deleted the moment the controller is unplugged)
>The Knight has presumably been here the whole chapter going by Tenna's line about the deal being to distract the gang, so it had time to do this
>The boss files also refer to the fight as "Nightmare" (sprite is Shadow Mantle but supposedly there's other script files saying "nightmare_boss" and Toby is known for having wrote a song called Nightmare Knight

The only points I currently have seen against it are:
>It's too mean to Kris/uncaring towards Noelle - which could just be from Dess going mad from her time alone in the Dark
>It can't be Dess cause she's currently trapped in the code from the UNUSED dialogue - that could be meant for a flashback to how she wound up like this or that could be her SOUL while her body is the thing we see now

>>528293317
>>528293515
>>528293647
>>528296313
>>528297117
I feel like a lot of people misunderstand the shape here.
Those aren't ears or horns, they're a flared collar of the cape. The whole thing is literally a flat cape, seen from the front, with a mouth inside it.

Also, I really think ERAM really is just Dess/The Knight controlling the cape directly. Cause it's her cape. That's why Seam had it (he was her old doll) and why Noelle refuses to wear it while saying it's meant for someone taller.