The wind stopped blowing.
Even the distant hoofbeats of the Tree Sentinel’s patrol seemed to have been muted.
“Pfft—”
The first to break the dead silence was Kiro.
Her whole body went limp. She staggered back two steps, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other gripping tightly at her chest as she coughed violently. Her face flushed bright red.
The affection number above her head flickered like it had gone completely insane, wildly jumping between [-80] and [-99] before finally freezing at a glaring, blood-red:
[Affection: -100]
[Status: Cognitive Collapse / Pig Brain Overload / Physical Discomfort]
The other party involved—
Varré—
was performing a true act of petrification.
He didn’t step back.
Didn’t make any dramatic movement.
He simply stood there in silence, maintaining the same slightly expectant, subtly coaxing posture from before.
If Loran’s earlier decision had been a gamble on the unknown—
then Varré, at this moment—
was the unknown itself.
His system—
that closed logical loop built upon heretical doctrine, blood, and trauma—
had just suffered an unprecedented external attack.
Varré’s CPU—
had fried.
[Affection: +60 → ???]
[Status: Logic Interrupted / Domain Error / System Crash]
The three question marks flickered above Varré’s interface for more than ten full seconds.
Invisible streams of code rushed behind him, desperately attempting to assign a reasonable return value to this confession event—
something entirely outside the boundaries of the database.
Finally—
the corrupted mess symbolizing logic interruption faded.
Varré slowly turned his stiff neck.
Then—
he spoke.
“You…”
“You’re…”
“…a good person.”
Those five words drifted lightly through the lifeless air of Limgrave—
yet somehow landed heavier than the Tree Sentinel crashing down from above.
A chill shot straight through Loran’s skull.
Control of his body had returned the instant the confession ended—
but now he found himself frozen in place from an embarrassment so catastrophic it bordered on cosmic.
He would rather Varré simply draw a dagger and stab him—
than receive a nice guy rejection card from an interdimensional blood cultist.
And at the same moment—
the panel above Varré’s head finally completed its calculation.
[Affection: +60 → -250]
A horrifying negative number.
[Status: Cognitive Contamination / Protocol Conflict / Isolation]
Loran tried to understand the logic behind it.
-250 had long surpassed something as simple as dislike or hostility.
This was structural collapse.
Loran’s confession had bypassed every one of Varré’s defenses—
and directly struck at the core of his system.
Varré’s worldview was built upon trauma.
Upon blood.
Betrayal.
Pain.
Within that framework—
something like love fundamentally did not exist.
It belonged to the Golden Order.
To that false, hypocritical system.
And yet—
Loran had forcibly shoved this nonexistent thing into Varré’s logical loop—
with unwavering sincerity.
Thus—
a protocol conflict had occurred.
Varré’s system could not process this goodwill.
So instead—
it categorized it as something even more terrifying than hostility.
A higher-dimensional form of contamination.
Instinctively—
he judged Loran to be a threat that needed to be isolated.
And the “good person” card—
was the only response his collapsing heretical logic could produce.
A final desperate attempt—
to reject a feeling he neither understood nor could digest.
“But…” Varré continued awkwardly, voice stuttering like a malfunctioning machine trying to complete its final command.
“We’re not compatible.”
The moment he finished—
it was as though all his strength had been drained away.
He stopped looking at Loran.
Turned sharply—
and hurried toward the distance.
His retreating figure looked strangely panicked.
Almost pathetic.
As though something horrifying were chasing him.
He didn’t even make it very far before his body dissolved into a cloud of crimson mist—
vanishing entirely.
Only Loran remained.
And Kiro—
who had just barely recovered from pig-brain overload.
She looked toward the place where Varré had disappeared.
Then back at the motionless Loran.
Her expression was indescribably complicated.
Shock.
Disgust.
Absurdity.
And—
just a tiny trace—
of schadenfreude.
The number above her head had stopped dropping the moment Varré said:
You’re a good person.
Slowly—
it climbed back upward from [-100] to [-90].
Apparently—
watching Loran get rejected had brought a strangely therapeutic comfort to her collapsing mental state.
“Hah… hahaha…”
Kiro let out two dry laughs.
“You…”
“You seriously got rejected.”
“I’ve lived over twenty years,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief, “and this is genuinely the first time I’ve ever seen something like this.”
“Confessing to someone who practically radiates villain energy…”
Her brows furrowed.
“What exactly is wrong with your brain?”
“How do you even think?”
Loran didn’t answer.
He was still processing the consequences of his gamble.
Did he lose?
Judging by the result—
he had lost catastrophically.
The Varré route was basically ruined.
-250 Affection.
At that point—
if Varré didn’t immediately pull out a knife and turn him into minced meat next time they met—
that would already count as restraint.
And yet—
Loran couldn’t shake the feeling—
that he had touched something deeper.
That [Cognitive Contamination] status.
That absurd [-250] value.
And the rejection scene—
something that had never once existed in the game—
that he had forcibly dragged into existence through a confession.
It proved something.
This world—
or rather—
this galgame system—
had rules that could be tested.
NPCs—
could be broken.
The ability he gained from thirty-seven points of excess Intelligence—
wasn’t merely an affection meter.
It was a lever.
One capable of prying open the underlying laws of the world itself.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!”
Seeing him ignore her again, Kiro poked his arm irritably.
[Affection: -90 → -92]
“It’s nothing.”
Loran finally came back to himself.
He let out a long breath, his expression returning to calm.
“Just a failed sociology experiment.”
“A sociology experiment?”
Kiro’s brows shot up.
“Who the hell uses themselves as the test subject?”
“Do you have any idea how disgusting you looked just now?!”
“I know.”
Loran nodded.
His tone was completely sincere.
“Thanks for putting up with it.”
Kiro choked on the sudden apology.
All the sarcasm she had prepared got stuck in her throat.
[Affection: -92 → -90]
Loran ignored her reaction.
Instead—
he shifted his focus back toward the system interface.
Varré had run away.
But this confession event—
hadn’t been a total loss.
Below his personal status panel—
a new entry had appeared.
[Title: Good Person]