"I understand…" Aisen spoke, his voice not loud, but enough to cut softly through the thickening veil of fog with each passing beat of the night.
He turned around, the usual trace of mockery gone from his eyes, replaced by a quiet gravity, like embers that had burned through many nights.
"But here, try putting your hand over your chest."
He said it, then demonstrated, one battle-worn hand, calloused from hundreds of fights, now resting lightly over his left chest, where something lay that could not be forged, mended, or replaced.
"Here…" Aisen said, blinking as if to clear away a faint mist lingering in his gaze. "…it will teach you what to do."
"No master knows more about feelings than the heart, Ren." His voice softened, sounding more like a confidant than a teacher.
No ornamentation, no moralizing, just a quiet truth learned, bit by bit, by those who had survived loss.
Aisen lowered his hand, his gaze drifting back toward the lake's surface.
"Let it guide you. If you're wrong, correct it. If you fall, stand up again. But never abandon it… even if you think doing so is the only way to survive."
Ren followed suit.
Silently, he placed his hand over his own chest. Beneath his fingertips, the faint beats pulsed on, a muted but persistent sound, as if reminding him that no matter how tangled his mind became, life continued quietly all the same.
Aisen looked at him, then spoke, slowly, as though reciting a memory that had become an inheritance:
"For us Elves… connection is the root of existence."
He lifted his head, eyes piercing through the fog, as if gazing upon a bygone era.
"I've told you before… Dark Elves and Forest Elves once lived like brothers. No borders, no distrust.
But then our gods vanished. No one knows where they went… Only that when that pillar of our hearts collapsed, the strands of connection began to fray, one by one."
Aisen paused, letting a few quiet moments pass, as if weighing the worth of each word that would follow.
"You know, Ren…"
"People may pass through each other's lives… but no one can live without leaving a trace."
"We exist within relationships. With the earth, which carries our steps. With the water and forest, which shelter and nourish us. With emotions, which make pain and love something more than an illusion."
He bowed his head slightly, his voice deepening like a whisper from an older generation.
"But above all… responsibility. Responsibility for what we choose. For those who have walked beside us. For ourselves, in our weakest moments."
Then he tilted his head toward Ren, his eyes quietly bright, like ancient stone.
"If we cast all of that aside, if we reject every bond until nothing remains but ourselves, are we still a being capable of love and sacrifice? Or just a hollow shell that survives out of habit?"
"A beating heart means you're alive…" Aisen tapped his chest once more. "But it doesn't mean you're truly living."
The air suddenly grew still.
The night wind retreated toward the deep forest, leaving the lake shrouded in a silence that seemed to hold its breath.
The moonlight, pale and cold, reflected in glimmers off the swords planted here and there, making them look like shadows left behind by vows long since broken.
Aisen said nothing more. He simply stood, stretching slowly, as if waking from a short rest.
"All right," he said, his tone returning to its usual ease, "We should head back."
Ren rose as well, brushing the dust from his clothes. But before he could take a step, Aisen turned toward him with a cryptic smile.
"Tomorrow, you'll have to come with me to pick flowers."
Ren raised an eyebrow, tilting his head. "Flowers?"
A brief hesitation. He squinted, unsure if he should ask further. "What are you… planning to do with flowers? Don't tell me you actually like them?"
Aisen chuckled, but there was no mockery in his eyes.
"No. Not for me."
His gaze drifted toward the lakeshore, where the swords still stood like silent markers of untold stories.
"They're for the ones who rest here."
His voice dropped so low it was nearly lost to the breeze.
"They had names, and dreams. But one day… all of it was swallowed by a war they never chose."
Ren followed Aisen's gaze. The swords, driven deep into the damp soil, stood like the full stops to lives no one had called by name.
"At the very least… I can still leave a single flower."
Aisen said softly, then turned to walk ahead. His footsteps on the dry earth sounded like a lone period on the page of an old book.
Ren lingered for a moment longer, looking quietly at the swords. And for the first time, he realized..not every farewell needed to be spoken aloud.
The wind stirred again, light as the earth's sigh.
But then, a troubling, and somewhat petty, thought crept into his mind, shattering the solemn, mournful air that the scene and Aisen's words had built.
"…Wait a second," Ren muttered, narrowing his eyes as if piecing something together.
He spun around and called out loudly, "Hold on, so… all that you just said was just to trick me into picking flowers with you, wasn't it?"
Aisen didn't stop walking, he merely lifted one hand in a lazy shrug, half-swallowed by the darkness.
"…Who knows?"
His voice echoed back, tinged with a faint mockery, as if that single offhand remark was enough to bury all the seriousness and sentiment of their earlier conversation.
Ren glared after him for a long while. Then he exhaled softly, unsure if it was out of frustration, resignation… or because he was suppressing a laugh.
"You cold-blooded freak…"
Still...whether it was flowers or something else entirely.. come morning, he knew he'd follow anyway. Not out of duty, but because of… something he couldn't yet name.
.....
The next day, like some unspoken promise neither of them cared to acknowledge, Ren was dragged out of sleep at dawn.
He was now on the third chapter of the quest chain titled [Flower Offering].
The premise sounded simple enough: collect rare blossoms from the Mistwood Forest, flowers said to carry a fragrance and beauty that could soothe the spirits of fallen Dark Elf warriors.
It sounded poetic. Beautiful. Noble.
At least… until Ren actually arrived at the collection point.
The scene before him shattered every delicate illusion.
A swarm of carnivorous flowers carnivorous in the most literal sense was crawling across the ground like a pack of ravenous beasts. Their blossoms yawned open to reveal rows of sickle-shaped teeth lurking behind dew-laden petals.
They hissed in wet, guttural tones, their vines lashing out like whips, dripping with venom and malice.
Ren instinctively backed away, sword flashing as he severed the slimy tendrils lunging for him.
"…You call this picking flowers?!" he barked, narrowly sidestepping a snap from a bloom the size of his head.
Aisen bent his knees, coiling like a spring, then swung his black blade in a sweeping arc of lethal grace, three flowers were sliced apart in a single blow.
Petals burst into a flurry of crimson pixels, scattering into the mist like blood mingling with fog.
"Well… calling it picking might've been oversimplifying things," Aisen said with a shrug and an apologetic smile, though his tone hinted he was expecting Ren's outrage.
Ren shot him a glare before turning back to the howling plants beyond the brush. "This is more like stealing flowers from monsters."
"Exactly." Aisen nodded, raising his sword in readiness for the next wave. "Oh, and make sure to only pick the ones that haven't tried to bite your head off yet."
Ren gritted his teeth. "I'm starting to think I should be suspicious of any quest with the word 'flower' in the title."
With Aisen there, the fight wasn't nearly as dangerous as Ren had first feared. In fact, it went disturbingly smoothly.
Aisen was a mowing machine, each stroke of his blade cleanly sending entire clusters of monsters back to digital dust.
Not only that, he was absurdly adaptable: cutting down surprise attacks from Ren's blind spots while deliberately creating openings for Ren to land strikes.
Ren barely had to do anything. Just move smartly, finish off the stragglers, and… leech the experience points.
Not that it was much.
The system divided XP by contribution, with a small bonus for landing the killing blow.
Given their massive level gap, Aisen got virtually nothing from these enemies. Even when the aggro shifted to Ren after Aisen's turn, the kills were worth only one or two XP each.
Only when Ren himself landed the finishing strike did the numbers climb, to about 30–33 XP. Still meager, but…
He was freeloading anyway.
"I think that's the last of them," Aisen said lightly, delivering a final slash that bisected the last carnivorous stalk. His tone was so casual, it was as if he'd just finished weeding his backyard.
Ren nodded and was about to sheath his sword when...
Shffft.
Something moved unnaturally beyond the distant undergrowth.
The fog swirled, then split apart, as though something massive was cutting a path through the forest, pushing the white haze aside.
From beneath the dense canopy, a colossal flower head emerged. Then its maw opened wide, revealing a ring of razor-sharp teeth, glistening with mucus.
Another carnivorous flower, this one towering over two meters high.
"…Boss?" Aisen squinted, a grin tugging at his lips. "Jackpot."
"You take the left, I'll take the right. Split it," he said in a single breath before darting forward.
Before Ren could react, Aisen had already become a black arrow slicing through the mist, aiming straight for the massive bloom.
In the blink of an eye, before Ren could even adjust his stance, Aisen reached it.
Shhk!
His blade carved a flawless line through the flower's core, pixels bursting in a spray of crimson shards that hung in the air like shattered blood.
Instantly, the boss's first HP bar dropped by nearly a quarter.
Ren's eyes went wide. "What the…?"
He knew plant-type monsters weren't known for high durability, but this was ridiculous.
And the part that chilled him more than anything?
Aisen hadn't even activated a skill yet.