Not long after, a middle-aged man in heavy armor, his beard in disarray, came stumbling over from the direction of Castle Morne.
“Irina!”
He shouted, his voice hoarse and warped from frantic running and emotion.
“Father!”
The moment Irina heard that familiar voice, it was as if life had been poured back into her. She shot to her feet and ran toward him without caring about anything else.
The two of them embraced tightly.
Loran quietly watched the scene without stepping forward to interrupt.
Kiro, meanwhile, looked utterly bored.
She hugged the greatsword that was absurdly mismatched with her height, glancing at the sky one moment and kicking at the stones on the ground with her toes the next.
After a long while, the father and daughter finally calmed down.
Then Edgar’s gaze fell on Loran and Kiro, who stood not far away.
He walked forward and first glanced at Kiro.
His gaze was complicated. There was gratitude, but also a trace of displeasure left behind by her rude words and actions when she delivered the letter.
[Name: Edgar]
[Identity: Lord of Castle Morne]
[Affection: +60 toward Kiro]
[Status: Grateful / Exhausted / Doubtful]
Sixty points.
After all, Kiro had completed the tasks of delivering the letter and slaying the Leonine Misbegotten. To Edgar, that was genuine help.
But her attitude also meant she could not earn this lord’s wholehearted trust.
Next, Edgar turned his gaze toward Loran.
He saw the coat draped over Irina’s shoulders.
Then he noticed the unreserved trust and dependence his daughter showed toward this young man.
He walked up to Loran and gave him a salute.
“Edgar, last lord of Castle Morne.”
His voice was heavy and hoarse.
“In the name of my family, I offer you all my respect. You protected her. That means you protected the last light of Castle Morne.”
[Edgar’s Affection toward Loran: +80]
[Status: Extreme Gratitude / Recognition / Entrustment]
[Irina’s Affection toward Loran: +60 → +80]
[Status: Grateful / Complete Trust / Admiration]
In Loran’s vision, two crimson [80] values lit up at the same time.
Edgar seemed to still have matters in the castle to handle.
After solemnly thanking the two of them once more, he left in a hurry with Irina.
The bridgehead returned to its usual silence, leaving only the setting sun stretching the shadows of the two of them long across the ground.
“Hey! Hey!”
Kiro’s hand waved back and forth in front of Loran’s eyes, breaking him out of his thoughts.
The girl who had just fought a hard battle, died three times, and was still bouncing with energy remained as lively as ever.
She tugged at Loran’s arm, muttering continuously.
“Let’s go! Let’s get the Frenzied Flame! The Frenzied Flame! What are you standing around for?”
Loran felt a little dizzy from being shaken.
He turned his head and looked at Kiro’s face, flushed red from excitement. Flames seemed to dance in those lilac-purple eyes of hers, as if she had already seen herself wrapped in the Frenzied Flame.
What an endlessly energetic single-celled creature.
Loran sighed inwardly.
From Limgrave to the Weeping Peninsula, they had gone through the Tree Sentinel, the duel, soloing the flying dragon, and then a full loop through the Waypoint Ruins and Castle Morne.
She was like a perpetual motion machine, always pulled forward by the next bit of fun, never knowing fatigue.
As for him, he had already reached his limit.
“I need to sleep first.”
Loran pulled free of Kiro’s hand and spoke tiredly.
“Sleep?”
Kiro’s voice instantly shot up eight degrees, as if she had heard something completely unreasonable.
“Sleep what? It’s not even dark yet! This is the golden time for adventuring! How can you have no drive at all?”
Loran was too tired to argue with her.
He walked straight to the Site of Grace at the bridgehead. He did not even bother taking off his coat before lying down fully clothed on the patch of grass warmed and dried by the light of grace.
The afterglow of the setting sun passed through his eyelids, turning into a warm orange-red haze.
The sound of the wind, the chirping of insects, and the distant tide gradually drifted away.
“Hey! You’re serious? Don’t play dead!”
Kiro’s voice seemed to come from very far away, carrying a hint of exasperation.
She seemed to kick Loran’s arm with her foot, but the force was soft and weak, more like pouting than anything else.
Loran did not move.
“...I seriously can’t with you.”
He heard Kiro mutter softly.
Then came a rustling sound.
A little while later, a shadow covered his face, blocking the glaring sunlight.
He did not open his eyes, but he could imagine what Kiro looked like.
She was probably crouching beside him with her knees hugged to her chest, pouting with an unhappy face, yet completely helpless to do anything.
Loran’s consciousness slowly sank into darkness.
His consciousness did not sleep peacefully in the darkness he had expected.
Instead, it fell into a boundless universe.
There was no up or down.
No left or right.
Only endless depth and sparse starlight in the distance.
He could not feel his body.
Only a cluster of floating thought remained.
Time lost all meaning here.
He might have floated for an instant.
Or he might have floated for hundreds of millions of years.
Then, those distant stars began to move.
They were no longer still points of light, but gathered into streams, like tens of millions of glowing creeks rushing toward the same center.
The streams of light intertwined, spiraled, and condensed.
Finally, before him, they wove themselves into a concrete human form.
It was a man in a plain shirt, with a round face, a pair of black-framed glasses, slightly thinning hair, and a faintly honest smile at the corner of his mouth.
This was a face Loran knew all too well.
He did not need any system prompt to recognize the other party’s identity.
Miyazaki ○taka.
Loran’s thoughts finally found something to anchor themselves to.
Countless questions, like a volcano suppressed for far too long, finally found an outlet at that moment.
“Why me?”
That was his first question.
The fluctuation of his consciousness directly transformed into a soundless inquiry, echoing through this sea of stars.
The man raised his head.
His honest smile did not change.
He did not speak, but his “answer” poured directly into Loran’s thoughts.
[Because the dice rolled an interesting result.]
“What about Kiro? Why is she here too?”
Loran’s thoughts continued to question him.
[Because a one-man show is always dull.]
“Is this world... real? Or is it just a program?”
This question had troubled Loran for a long time.
Irina’s fear.
Sellen’s expectation.
Those emotions, so real that they hurt, made it impossible for him to simply reduce them to a pile of cold data anymore.
The smile on the man’s face seemed to deepen slightly.
[Where is the boundary between truth and falsehood? When a dream has logic, when a program has emotion, when a character in a story begins to question whether they are only a line of code, is it still different from the “reality” you understand?]
That answer was the same as no answer at all.
“Then my system... that Galgame interface. Did you create it? Why does it take that form?”
Miyazaki ○taka only smiled without speaking.
Seeing that he had no intention of answering, Loran threw out his final question.
“Can I... can we go back?”
The instant that question was asked, the entire sea of stars trembled.
For the first time, the smile vanished from the man’s face.
Those eyes hidden behind his lenses seemed to pierce through endless time and space, staring directly into Loran’s essence.
[When the story ends, the book will naturally close.]
[But the question is, does the story of Elden Ring have an “ending”?]
[You become Elden Lord. And then?]
[You burn the Erdtree. And then?]
[You begin the Age of Stars. And then?]
[The end of one cycle is merely the beginning of another. Unless...]
[Someone can find a way to step outside the cycle itself.]
The man’s figure began to grow thin, dissolving once more into countless points of light and scattering into the sea of stars.
[Search for it, Tarnished with the highest Intelligence.]
[Search for the ending that belongs to none of the “endings.”]
The voice gradually disappeared.
The sea of stars, along with the man’s image, receded from Loran’s consciousness like an ebbing tide.
In its place came the cool morning breeze and the crisp chirping of birds.
Loran opened his eyes.
The sky was already bright.
Kiro was sitting not far beside him, hugging the greatsword she could not use.
Her head bobbed little by little as she slept soundly, a glistening thread of drool still hanging from the corner of her mouth.
Sunlight spilled across her silver-white hair, reflecting a soft halo.