“You psycho! You bastard! I’m gonna kill you!”
Kiro’s voice had gone hoarse with rage. Still cursing, she scrambled up from the ground in a flailing mess.
[Affinity: -150]
[Status: Fury / Humiliation / Sense of Betrayal / Killing Intent]
The blood-red number and status panel made one thing perfectly clear.
There was no talking this out anymore.
Loran, however, showed no intention of backing down. He simply looked at her calmly.
“Now,” he repeated, “I think we can finally discuss what ‘fair’ means.”
“Fair? Fuck your fair!”
Kiro kicked a nearby stone hard enough to send it skidding away.
“The horse is yours, so you get to decide everything, is that it? Fine! You win! You shady bastard! If you’ve got the guts, just leave me here right now and let the wolves eat me!”
She had started playing dirty.
It was one of the few weapons she had. Retreat in order to advance. Throw herself into a self-destructive position and use it to guilt-trip the other person.
But Loran wasn’t buying it.
“No. You’re wrong.”
Loran shook his head.
“Torrent isn’t my private property. From now on, he’s our shared resource.”
Kiro froze, clearly not understanding what he meant.
“We’re both going to need him on the road,” Loran continued. “So his riding rights shouldn’t be decided by me alone. And they definitely shouldn’t be decided by you alone either.”
He looked at her.
“We need a rule.”
The anger on Kiro’s face slowly faded. She straightened her back, as if refusing to lose in terms of momentum.
“What rule?” she asked warily.
“Simple,” Loran said.
“A duel.”
“Every time we need to decide who gets to ride, we hold a duel beside a Site of Grace,” Loran explained. “No Crimson Flasks. No Cerulean Flasks. We fight until one side’s HP hits zero. Winner gets riding rights for the next stretch. Loser walks.”
He paused.
“How’s that? Fair enough?”
The air fell silent.
Kiro did not answer right away.
PvP.
That word seemed to awaken something primal deep inside her soul.
Fighting other people was fun.
Not because she wanted victory itself, but because she loved the process—the tension of dancing on a knife’s edge, the mind game of predicting the other person’s moves, the rush every time a roll barely slipped past an attack, and most of all, the pleasure of playing someone in the palm of her hand and watching them rage helplessly.
Using riding rights as PvP stakes?
That…
That was way too fucking fun.
The humiliation of being thrown off the horse, the exhaustion of walking, and even the question of whether this was actually fair—all of it became completely irrelevant in the face of the fun that was about to begin.
Loran silently watched the changes on her face.
Rage.
Confusion.
Wariness.
Realization.
And finally—
Excitement.
The glaring [-150] above her head began climbing at a speed he had never seen before.
[Affinity: -150 → -80]
The number finally stopped at [-80].
A seventy-point jump in barely a dozen seconds.
That proved Loran’s gamble had paid off.
Against someone like Kiro, reasoning with her, doing her favors, or even apologizing had almost no effect.
Only one language could reach her.
Fun.
“Hah… hahaha…”
Kiro suddenly began laughing under her breath.
At first, the laugh was short and suppressed. Then it grew louder and louder, until it turned into completely unrestrained laughter.
“You’ve got some nerve, Loran! I seriously underestimated you!”
“Fine! Let’s do it! Duel!”
She agreed immediately. In fact, she was so impatient that she pulled the dagger from her waist on the spot.
“What are we waiting for? First round starts now! Right here!”
“Not yet.”
Loran jumped down from Torrent’s back. The spectral steed immediately dissolved into blue motes of light and vanished.
“We need to find a Site of Grace first and restore our status before we begin.”
“Tch. What a pain.”
Kiro clicked her tongue, but she still accepted that the rule made sense and put her weapon away.
As she followed Loran toward the nearest Site of Grace in his memory, Agheel Lake North, she kept running her mouth.
“I’m telling you, you’re digging your own grave. Back when I played Dark Souls III PvP, they called me an unofficial member of the Lothric Undead Legion! My parries were godlike. I specialized in catching idiots who used heavy weapons.”
She waved her arms around, already lost in the glory of her own past.
“You’re about ten years too early to PvP with me.”
Loran did not answer.
He simply kept walking.
At the Agheel Lake North Site of Grace, the duel began.
With 99 Intelligence, Loran naturally chose to kite Kiro with Glintstone Pebble.
One blue Glintstone Pebble after another flew toward Kiro like scattered drops of rain.
They were not fast.
Their trajectories were so simple they were almost laughable.
So simple, in fact, that every single shot missed her with perfect accuracy, striking the ground in front of her and kicking up tiny sprays of dirt.
“What the fuck are you even aiming at?! Aim at me! Are you useless or what?!”
Kiro’s yelling echoed across the open belly of Agheel Lake.
She darted left and right, trying to close the distance.
Unfortunately, her pitiful Intelligence stat was clearly not enough for her to grasp the essence of kiting.
Every movement she made was shapeless.
There was no plan.
No rhythm.
Just pure instinct and reckless charging.
[Affinity: -80 → -85]
[Status: Humiliated Rage / Taunting / Craving Melee]
Of course, Loran could have taken the fight slightly more seriously and defeated her with accurate casts.
But he didn’t.
He deliberately slowed his casting speed. From time to time, he even made a few low-level mistakes on purpose, letting Kiro see hope within reach again and again—
Only to snatch it away again and again.
“AAAAAH! I’M DONE! MAGES ARE BULLSHIT!”
Kiro’s roars grew louder and louder.
And more and more…
Desperate.
She had completely lost patience. Tactics and strategy were gone. All she wanted now was to get close to Loran as quickly as possible and carve him up with the dagger in her hand.
[Affinity: -85 → -90]
[Status: On the Verge of Collapse / Losing Rationality / Craving an Outlet]
“If you’ve got the guts, stop running! Fight me properly, blade to blade!”
“As you wish,” Loran said softly.
He suddenly stopped casting, put away his staff, and stood still, quietly waiting for Kiro to approach.
That gesture completely ignited Kiro’s fury.
She charged at him with all her strength.
Loran did not dodge.
Only when Kiro was about to reach him did he shift slightly to the side.
Thud!
Kiro’s body slammed hard into the ground behind him, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Loran had used the terrain to subtly guide the direction of her charge.
The belly of Agheel Lake was uneven, covered in pits, bumps, and slopes of all sizes. During their chase, the two of them had unknowingly moved close to a slanted stretch of ground.
And Kiro, who had completely lost her head, had not noticed the change beneath her feet at all.
All of her attention had been fixed on Loran.
All she could think about was tearing him apart as quickly as possible.
And so—
She ran straight into it.
With all that momentum behind her, she lost control of her body completely and rolled down the slope like an out-of-control bowling ball.
Loran stood at the top of the slope, looking down at the miserable figure struggling in the mud.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“Game over,” he said softly.
At the bottom of the slope, Kiro finally stopped rolling.
Her head spun.
Her whole body ached.
Even her consciousness had gone a little blurry.
She struggled up from the muddy water.
Before she could steady herself, the space above her suddenly darkened.
A massive shadow fell over her.
She raised her head with difficulty.
A huge dragon was slowly descending in front of her, its wings beating the air.
Flying Dragon Agheel.
At that moment, it was staring at this uninvited guest with a pair of golden, flame-lit eyes, as though faintly amused.
“…Fuck.”
Those were Kiro’s last words.