Kiro jolted from being shouted at, and the rest of her words got stuck in her throat.
She stared at Loran in astonishment, not understanding why he had suddenly become so furious.
She had no time to dwell on it.
An almost tangible chill wrapped around them from every direction.
The light inside the church seemed to dim in an instant. The glow of grace was compressed into a thin line and no longer flickered. The air grew thin, and every breath felt as if it were drawing heat out of their lungs.
Every muscle in Loran’s body tensed under that pressure.
The UI interface in his vision still showed no change.
Whether it was Melina’s affection or her status bar, neither moved in the slightest.
And yet, he could feel a tangible killing intent.
Unconcealed.
Pure to the extreme.
This was not an emotion.
It was a “decision.”
Like deciding to crush an ant or stomp out a flame.
At some point, the existence named Melina had already made the decision to “eliminate” them.
Kiro felt it too.
The grin and dissatisfaction on her face had long since vanished.
She instinctively took half a step back, moving behind Loran. Her body bent slightly, and she tightened her grip on her dagger.
She stared fixedly at Melina, not daring to relax in the slightest.
Kiro finally shut her mouth.
The church was deathly silent.
Only the breathing of the three of them could be heard clearly.
That killing intent made Loran feel the vast gap in strength between himself and Melina.
The chill of being watched by a beast did not lie.
Apologizing, begging, attacking...
None of it would mean anything.
Then...
His gaze locked firmly onto his own system interface.
Beneath his personal status bar, the title that had not drawn his attention in a long time lay there quietly.
[Title: Good Person]
[Effect: When performing “friendly” actions toward targets whose Affection is below 0, such as apologizing, giving gifts, or offering praise, there is a 5% chance of triggering the “We’re Not Compatible” event, forcibly interrupting the current interaction and causing the target to flee.]
An... unconventional survival skill.
A five percent chance.
But he had no other choice.
[Confession]
Loran heard his own trembling voice speak.
“Melina... I like you...”
[“Confession” action detected.]
[Target Affection: -10. Below 0.]
[Judging effect of “Good Person” title...]
[Judging...]
[Judgment result: Success.]
[Special Event Triggered: We’re Not Compatible.]
Time seemed to stop at that moment.
The brutal killing intent emanating from Melina vanished without a trace.
She froze in place.
Like a robot whose power had suddenly been cut.
Then—
“We... aren’t compatible.”
After saying that, she did not look at Loran or Kiro again.
She transformed into a cluster of blue motes and disappeared.
Inside the church, that suffocating pressure vanished all at once.
Loran and Kiro both let out a breath at the same time.
“Wh-what... was that just now?”
Kiro’s voice broke the deathly silence that followed their survival, carrying an unconscious tremor.
Loran slowly exhaled.
“Because you talk too much.”
He said it without looking back, his voice hoarse.
“That’s not what I’m asking!”
Kiro was enraged by his completely irrelevant answer, and her fear was instantly thrown to the back of her mind.
“I’m asking about that! That random confession! What is wrong with you? Confessing to that pervert Varré was already bad enough, and now you’re confessing to Melina too... Are you addicted to confessing? Are you going to confess to Radagon next?”
Her barrage of questions came like a rapid-fire cannon, making Loran’s temple start throbbing again.
He turned around and looked at Kiro’s face, which was practically covered in the words, “Are you an idiot?”
A deep sense of helplessness welled up in his heart.
How was he supposed to explain this to her?
Tell her that he had a system capable of turning the world into a Galgame?
Tell her that he had just gambled with his life and forcibly interrupted Melina’s “execution procedure” with a skill that only had a 5% success rate?
She would not believe it.
She would only think his brain really had broken.
“Don’t worry about it.”
In the end, Loran could only squeeze those three words out through his teeth.
He raised a hand and rubbed between his brows, then waved tiredly.
“Anyway, both of us are still alive. That’s enough.”
“Still alive?”
Kiro seemed to hear an even funnier joke.
She let out a scoff, crossed her arms, and paced around Loran.
“I’m saying, Loran, aren’t you taking this place way too seriously? This is a game, understand? A game!”
“So what if she killed us? We’d just go back to the last Site of Grace, right? If our runes drop, we can just farm them again. It’s not like we lose experience. At most, we’d have to run a few extra steps. Was it really worth getting scared that badly?”
She stopped in front of Loran, reached out, and poked his chest with one finger. Her tone was full of disdain.
“Just to avoid dying once, you went and did something so... so gross like confessing. Was that worth it?”
Loran quietly looked at her.
Kiro became somewhat guilty under his stare.
Her “it’s just a game” theory was perfectly self-consistent in her own world, but when Loran looked at her like this, that righteous confidence somehow began to dissolve.
“...Wh-why are you looking at me like that? Am I wrong?”
Her voice unconsciously lowered.
That arrogant momentum faded, revealing a hint of unease.
“What exactly is wrong?”
She asked again, her force weakening even further.
Loran finally looked away.
He turned toward the patch of land outside the church entrance, lit by the morning sun, and slowly spoke.
“Do you remember when we first met Sellen at Waypoint Ruins?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
Kiro did not understand why he was suddenly bringing this up.
“In the game, when Sellen first meets the player, she says, ‘Oh? Tarnished, are you?’ Then she asks what business you have. But when she saw me, what did she say?”
Kiro froze.
She thought back to that moment.
Sellen...
Back then, Sellen had seemed especially excited and said a whole bunch of things to Loran that Kiro had not understood.
Something about “potential,” “a vast sea,” and “the secrets of the stars.”
“She... she seemed to really appreciate you?”
Kiro answered tentatively.
“Not just appreciate me.”
Loran shook his head.
“She ‘recognized’ me. She treated me as one of her own kind. Because to her, my Intelligence stat was an abnormal value.”
He continued.
“And Varré. In the game, he only tempts the player into killing people, then gives you the ticket to Mohgwyn Palace. But what did he do to me? He got... scared off by me. That was also a scene that never existed in the game.”
“The most important one is Irina.”
Loran’s voice grew heavy.
“According to the ‘game’ script, she should already be dead by now. But she survived. Because I stayed there.”
Kiro said nothing.
Her 9-Intelligence brain was operating at full power, trying to piece together all the fragmented information.
“This place...”
Loran reached his conclusion.
“Strictly speaking, it is another world wearing the skin of Elden Ring. It has the game’s worldbuilding, the game’s NPCs, and the game’s power system, but its internal logic has already become completely different from the ‘game’ we know.”
“The NPCs have autonomous behavior logic we cannot predict. The story can deviate because of our choices. Most importantly...”
He turned around and looked at Kiro again, speaking each word clearly.
“Neither of us knows how many chances we actually have to revive. Or rather, what ‘death’ really means for us here.”
“In the game, death is just the screen going black before you return to a Site of Grace. But what about here? Did you not feel Melina’s killing intent just now? That was not the look a boss gives you in a game. It was... the way a predator looks at prey.”
“If I hadn’t stopped her just now, are you really certain that we would have woken up in this church safe and sound, just like in the game?”
Kiro fell completely silent.