"Hey… did Argo say they're launching the boss raid today?" Asuna's voice broke the silence, laced with quiet worry.
"Yeah. The two guilds left just a few minutes ago," Kirito replied, closing his message window with a face that showed neither surprise nor interest.
Asuna frowned. "Do they really think they can do it without you?"
Kirito shrugged slightly, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.
"But what if… what if it's not the same boss as in the beta test?" Asuna muttered, unease flickering behind her eyes.
"They don't need us," Kirito said flatly, his tone calm to the point of coldness. "Either way, my knowledge only covers the first ten floors. And honestly, I barely made it to the tenth before the beta ended."
He lifted his gaze, staring off as if to draw a line between past and present.
"The info I have only takes me so far. Beyond that, they have to stand on their own. The last floor boss was identical to the beta, so try not to worry too much."
Asuna bit her lip but found no words to refute him.
"This floor's boss…" Kirito continued slowly, his tone meant to reassure but sounding almost too pragmatic.
"In the beta, it was just a Hippogriff. The main danger was its wings, they could whip up sandstorms with a single powerful flap."
"Hey, he's awake." Kizmel's deep yet gentle voice cut through the tension between Kirito and Asuna.
Ren groaned softly, his heavy eyelids fluttering open. The cold stone ceiling came into focus above him, and with it came a dull ache spreading through every muscle in his body.
He drew in a deep breath and instinctively glanced toward his health bar.
Still over half full. Hard to believe, before blacking out, Ren was certain it had nearly hit the red.
He blinked several times, wondering if he was dreaming or if the system display was malfunctioning.
To be sure, Ren pinched his arm hard. The sharp sting made him hiss under his breath.
Kizmel, who had been sitting nearby, flinched slightly. Her long ears trembled, twitching almost instinctively.
That simple gesture somehow left her flustered; she quickly turned her head aside, pretending to study the stone wall instead.
For a fleeting moment, her violet eyes glimmered, with confusion, and something deeper.
But she said nothing, keeping silent while Ren wrestled with his doubts about his own body.
Kirito and Asuna both turned to him, relief and unspoken questions mingling in their eyes.
"Uh… you don't have to say anything," Ren murmured hoarsely, waving a hand. "Seeing you all here like this… I get the picture."
He pushed himself up, legs trembling slightly as pain pulsed through his body with each movement.
Still, he knew he could walk, at least well enough not to be bedridden.
Scanning the room, he exhaled quietly. The suffocating tension from the battle earlier was gone.
Kizmel and Asuna were both standing, their clothes only dusted with dirt and a few shallow cuts, proof that the fortress defenders had managed to push back the enemy.
Ren allowed himself a faint smile. It felt as if the world had shifted while he'd been unconscious.
His gaze settled on Kirito. On that familiar shoulder, the place where a certain sword used to rest, there was now nothing.
Instead, a crude, cheap-looking blade hung at his side, its unpolished steel dull and unremarkable.
Kirito caught Ren's look and hesitated. His hand tightened around the hilt of the makeshift weapon. "The Anneal Blade… broke while I was fighting their commander."
Ren stayed silent, only nodding slightly. For a brief moment, he saw in Kirito's eyes the same sense of loss and awkwardness he'd once felt himself, the feeling of losing something precious.
The air grew still until Kizmel's clear, resolute voice cut through it: "We can talk later. For now… heroes, the Viscount wishes to see you as soon as Ren wakes."
The Dark Elf knight straightened, one hand resting lightly on her sword's hilt, her eyes sharp yet kind.
She looked completely different from the fierce warrior she'd been in battle, now a bridge drawing them back toward their duty.
"Let's go," she said, nodding slightly. "I'll explain everything that happened along the way."
Ren took a deep breath and stepped forward. Though his body still ached, he knew he couldn't stop here. There were answers waiting ahead.
With the Viscount's arrival, the morale of Yofel Castle's defenders had reignited. A wave of invisible light swept through the battlefield, empowering the Dark Elf soldiers and filling the air with triumphant shouts.
Asuna recounted to Ren how, with a single sword skill, Lord Yofilis had annihilated the enemy ranks right at the castle gates.
It wasn't a battle, it was a judgment. Even the elite squad of the Forest Elves, five knights capable of chaining sword skills in perfect harmony, the same ones who had cornered Kizmel for so long, were cut down by the Viscount with one strike.
Meanwhile, Kirito had faced the enemy commander as he tried to flee.
The man wasn't particularly powerful for his rank, but his equipment was nearly perfect, making him hard to finish off quickly.
After a fierce exchange, the Anneal Blade, Kirito's pride, shattered. He could only watch as his opponent escaped aboard an intact warship, retreating from the battlefield.
They thought everything would end there, but Kirito and Asuna, driven by recklessness or resolve, took their own Tinel boat and gave chase.
It was Asuna, with her keen eyes, who first noticed something strange: the planks making up the ship's hull were unevenly joined, leaving wide gaps between them, and some pieces bore faint, charred marks.
As if the vessel had been patched together from the remains of a ship once consumed by fire, the burned edges scraped away, then reassembled into a hulking form.
A clumsy yet suspicious disguise. Sensing the weakness, they immediately fired arrows into the gaps and to their surprise, the enormous ship sank within moments.
The enemy commander, who had seemed to escape, was slain as well.
Asuna still sounded uncertain as she recalled, "It was strange… at first, I thought those burn marks came from passing through wrecks that were still burning. But the more I looked, the clearer it seemed, those marks were old, deep, scorched by a different fire entirely."
Ren frowned slightly. For an instant, his heart skipped a beat, a fleeting pang of guilt flashing within.
He turned away from their gaze, leaving behind a short, heavy silence, as though something unspoken hung between them.
Deep inside, Ren already knew what those charred planks truly were. A realization that had formed long ago, one he'd chosen to bury.
"Don't tell them… that those timbers used to be yours. Don't. Absolutely don't."
He repeated the thought to himself like a silent vow.
At last, they arrived before the Viscount's chamber doors.
The path there wasn't long, yet their steps grew slower, as if they could feel the weight of authority waiting at the end of the corridor.
The hallway had been tidied after the battle; new carpets were laid, and golden light spilled warmly from the lamps.
And yet, nothing could quite erase the traces of what had happened here.
Deep gashes still scarred the stone walls, remnants of sword skills unleashed in combat. The floor, though scrubbed clean, bore long scratches, like wounds not yet healed.
The air carried a faint metallic tang, mingling with the damp scent of the ancient fortress.
Ren paused briefly, his fingertips brushing one of the slashes on the wall. The cold seeped into his skin.
In his eyes flickered something fleeting, a mix of remembrance and a quiet, unshakable heaviness.
The great doors ahead loomed into view, solemn, imposing, like an exclamation mark at the end of a bloody epic.
When they stepped inside, the group was taken aback by how completely the office had changed.
The heavy curtains that once covered the windows were gone. Morning light poured through the glass panes, spilling across the stone floor and bathing every corner in gold.
Where the room had once been cloaked in gloom and suffocating silence, it now felt open. alive.
Asuna let out a small gasp of wonder, her eyes bright. Kirito, too, looked stunned, as if the very space they'd once entered had been reborn into something new.
Ren, however, stood still, expression unreadable. To him, this place had always been foreign, its transformation meant little.
His gaze fixed on a single figure: Viscount Yofilis.
The Viscount sat behind a long desk strewn with documents, pen still poised mid-sentence. He stopped writing, lifting his head to regard the group entering the room.
His eyes swept past Kirito, then Asuna, and lingered on Ren. Just a little longer than expected.
A silent moment passed, one that carried a weight Ren couldn't quite grasp, as if something unspoken flickered behind that gaze.
The Viscount gently set his pen down, folded the papers before him, and rose to his feet. His long cloak rippled faintly with each step as he approached.
"You have done well," he said, his voice deep and warm, yet carrying the authority of nobility. "Thanks to your courage and resilience, Yofel still stands today."
He stopped before them, letting his gaze rest once more on each face, and again, just a little longer on Ren.
"I offer you my most sincere gratitude."
The air in the room softened.
Asuna bowed her head slightly, emotion flickering across her features. Kirito scratched his cheek awkwardly, clearly unused to such formal praise.
Ren's face remained calm, yet somewhere within, a strange unease stirred, the feeling of receiving personal thanks from a Viscount himself.