Ren clenched his jaw, shoulders trembling slightly. Emotions that had lain dormant now surged like restrained lava.
A hidden current of ancient anger ignited within him, as fresh and furious as if it had erupted only yesterday.
He didn't shout, didn't raise his voice...but each word cutting the space between them was like a blade.
"What... makes you think I would cooperate with you... again?"
Ren lifted his head and met Copper's gaze. His blue eyes were ice-cold now, bereft of any youthful hope in justice or forgiveness.
"After what you did to me..."
Copper paused. His features flickered briefly...but only fleetingly. He regained his composure: a calm weariness suggesting he'd heard this accusation many times before.
"It seems I was mistaken," Copper began slowly, his voice softer, almost an admission. "You've changed. Things I couldn't see before... now I can see clearly."
Ren remained silent, waiting for an explanation that might still his inner turmoil.
"I'm not trustworthy." Copper continued, as if pronouncing his own guilt.
"But if you were in my place... would you have done differently? Faced with the sole choice of survival in a world turned into an endless nightmare... Would you fight for those who never cared for you? Or choose the path I took?"
His voice was calm but precise, a scalpel carving through the air.
"I didn't force you to join the dungeon attack," he said, looking down. "It wasn't part of my plan. My target was Tarek and his rotten lackeys. They deserved to die. You know that."
A crack appeared in his composure. Copper's eyes narrowed as he spoke the name Tarek...as though it carried a wound time couldn't heal.
"You understand as I do," he whispered. "We're alike. Both products of that decaying world outside. And those bastards... turned us into what we are."
Ren didn't argue. He just breathed harder. His anger had subsided into a dense smoke clouding his mind.
"I know very well what Tarek did," Copper's voice cracked. "I know how many lives were destroyed by his cruel real‑world games. You think I don't remember? Every night I sleep... I see their faces."
A heavy silence fell.
"You... weren't meant to be in my plan," Copper's voice dropped. "Your involvement... or rather, being dragged in... was never intended. I'm sorry."
Ren still didn't reply. He stared at the young man beside him.
They stood in the deep basement darkness, light from above long gone, leaving only cold radiance from damp stone walls.
Shadows of the past... and of what's yet to come... lurked in every breath, every step.
"More than anything... don't you want to know the truth?" Copper broke the silence with an indirect question, as if asking himself. "To know... another way of seeing this world."
Then he fell silent.
Ren paused.
He had never prepared for this. Not because he'd never wondered....but every time he asked, it triggered a terrifying haze.
Like a door locked before the idea of it even formed. A repeating dream with no beginning, no end. Like this world.
He looked up at Copper.
Copper remained still, one hand resting lightly on his sheathed blade, his gaze veiled behind lowered lashes as if contemplating an abyss.
No polished confidence, no half‑smile of easy charm that Ren once knew.
"About this world?" Ren's voice was low, hoarse, fearful of shattering something fragile in the space between them. His heart pounded harder.
But Copper remained silent.
His words reverberated like a stone dropped on frozen water, cracking deeply in the hush.
"Why did you stop?" Ren pressed on, this time earnest. "If you're going to speak... then say it all."
Copper waited a moment before lifting his head. His eyes were unnervingly clear, calm to the point of suspicion.
"Because there are things..." he said, enunciating each word like wind brushing against an unsheathed sword."...only when you see them with your own eyes... are enough to make you believe."
A cold gust swept through the stone corridor behind them. Ren involuntarily shivered, not from the wind, but from the chill seeping into his chest, as though what Copper was about to reveal... wasn't a secret, but a long‑dormant catastrophe.
Copper offered a slight smile.
Not the smile of one who knows a secret, not mocking or ridiculing...but the smile of one who has stared into the abyss, and wonders whether another dares to look too.
"Do you ever wonder..." he whispered, "...why we actually die when killed here?"
"Isn't it… the NerveGear burns the user's brain when their in-game character dies?" Ren muttered, his eyes still fixed on the figure standing opposite him under the dim, fading light of the dungeon.
His voice wasn't loud, but in a place with no other sounds, each word dropped like a stone into still water.
Copper didn't respond immediately.
Only a smile. Vague. Tense at the corners of his mouth, like he'd just heard a fairy tale from a child who didn't understand that fire could kill.
Then, in a moment where the shadows nearly swallowed that smile, he spoke, calmly, gently, like a forbidden incantation.
"Do you truly believe that...?"
Ren narrowed his eyes slightly.
"You believe that, just because of an announcement... just because a device strapped to our heads, pressed against our brains, can supposedly kill us with electronic pulses… that all of us are really facing true death...that.. that's the only truth?"
Copper took a step closer. His breath dissolved into the faint cold mist between them.
"Think again, Ren. A device like that...a bomb so dangerous, was allowed to silently bypass layers of medical checks, safety regulations, ethical boards, and the global media?"
"Why wasn't there a single official news report challenging it? No warnings? No doctors stepping up? Ten thousand units sold... and people just accepted it?"
Ren said nothing. He had wondered about that. But never long enough to dig deeper.
Copper tilted his head, a faint glint in his eyes beneath the darkness."Or maybe... someone wanted us to believe it."
"A threat... disguised as a rule. A story crafted beforehand... and we walked into it like sheep, afraid of an invisible electric fence."
His voice dropped, almost a whisper:"This world, Ren... wasn't made for us to play."
"It was made... for us to believe."
Silence returned, like all sound had been swallowed by some murky void deep within the dungeon.
Ren stared at him. In that moment, he couldn't tell if he was looking at a living person, or something else. Someone who had once died, or someone never truly born in the real world.
"Then…" Ren finally spoke, "What are you saying?"
Copper didn't answer right away. He only turned, his back melding into the dark, his voice drifting like mist:
"Some deaths are real. Some are fake. But the worst kind of death..."
"...is the one where you don't know when it happened."
Ren froze.
A chill ran down his spine.
He had never thought that deeply. Or more accurately… he had chosen not to.
Because once you started questioning things like that, there was no limit to the doubt. And once those doors opened, nothing remained "normal."
"Isn't it… because Kayaba manipulated everything?" Ren asked. His voice grew softer, as if he couldn't fully believe his own words anymore.
Copper merely let out a quiet laugh. Not mocking. Not loud. Just a breath with sound...like he'd waited a long time for that question.
"Yes," he said slowly, each word dissolving into the dark. "That's the answer... everyone wants to believe. Kayaba Akihiko. The genius. The creator. The madman wearing a god's crown..."
He looked up at the murky stone ceiling, as if Kayaba's shadow lingered somewhere above.
"...a lone man who created the greatest nightmare of our time. What a story that is." Copper curled his lip slightly...but it wasn't a smile.
Then his gaze lowered, settling into the shadow sweeping beneath his feet.
"But what if I told you... Kayaba couldn't have created this alone?"
Ren stiffened. His chest tightened. His throat dried to the point he couldn't form words.
One second. Then two. No one said a thing. But that silence… was more terrifying than any answer.
Ren searched Copper's eyes, hoping to find a smirk, a sign that he was joking. But there was nothing. Only emptiness… still as the surface of water after it had swallowed a stone.
Copper smiled...truly smiled this time. Soft. Cold. And needing no explanation.
Because…
That was the answer.
And also the most chilling threat of all: Everything runs deeper than you dare imagine.
"Then... what about death?" Ren asked, voice catching. "Are you saying... it's all fake?"
Copper tilted his head slightly, the light casting shadows over half his face, painting a mask that looked half real, half illusion.
"No," he said without hesitation. "Death is real."
Then he smiled again, a smile thin as spider silk.
"But the definition of real... isn't something everyone understands the same way."
Ren furrowed his brow.
Copper continued, voice dropping as if peeling back a forbidden truth:
"There were people who tried. Not a few. They bet everything on the theory that 'this was just Kayaba's trick'... they let themselves die to test it... and then vanished forever, as if they never existed."
"Others... realized they didn't have the courage to follow through."
A brief silence passed, then for the first time in their entire conversation, Copper looked directly at Ren...and his voice softened, almost... gentle:
"So I'll say this, only once: treasure your life."
"Not because death is terrifying. But because there are things... far worse than death."
He turned and walked into the dense darkness waiting ahead. His footsteps echoed, unhurried, without hesitation.
Just before disappearing completely, Copper stopped and left behind a final sentence—whether invitation or final warning was unclear:
"You can turn back... or come with me."