Lloyd didn't particularly mind the idea of something happening between him and Sellen. In fact, he'd half-expected it ever since their first conversation, when their master-apprentice relationship was established.
After all, you know how it is—she was a souls-type witch, the kind you could recognize as one at a glance. Her forwardness from the very start had been so abrupt it even caught Lloyd off guard.
Other witch mentors, at least, would maintain some distance at first. It would take time before they'd show that softer, more vulnerable side of themselves.
Then came the classic back-and-forth—the kind where they clearly desired it, yet held themselves back for one reason or another, muttering things like "our identities don't match" or "how could I possibly like such a fool."
After that would come the inevitable shift. Maybe they'd say something along the lines of "Ah, so you are just a man after all," followed by one of several possible justifications depending on their personality: "This is just to maintain focus on research," or "Caring for a foolish apprentice is part of a teacher's duty," or even "Don't go imagining witches are particularly talented in that area."
Once things reached that point, the shy or more restrained witches would usually stay quiet afterward, pretending nothing had ever happened.
But give it a little time—usually during some joint research session—and they'd start finding fault with him again, accusing him of being distracted or careless. Then, under the guise of "punishment" or "academic experimentation," it would start up all over again. And when it became a routine? They'd stop even bothering with excuses...
The other type of witch, the more open ones, usually took a different approach. After the first time, they'd say something like, "You really are a fool, taking interest in a worn-out body like mine," then spend their time teasing him or pulling harmless pranks afterward.
Incidentally, while that second type might seem bolder and more confident, they were usually far less competent—and far less frequent.
But that wasn't the point right now.
The point was that while Lloyd didn't mind if something happened—and such a thing would even be beneficial under the circumstances—Sellen wasn't at that stage yet. She was still in the midst of that "inner struggle."
To be fair, Sellen knew full well that her connection with Lloyd had already grown deeply intertwined. Especially her core—Lloyd had stirred it countless times, reshaping it in the form of his soul's imprint. Even she herself had almost become the same.
But some things are like a thin piece of paper.
Piercing it is easy, but lifting your finger to actually do it—that takes time.
Sellen hadn't reached that point yet, and Lloyd had no intention of forcing her.
So for now, things stopped there.
What came next was simply advancing through the dungeon.
There wasn't much to say about that part.
The place was a maze filled with mechanical traps and monsters. Even though Lloyd's sheer strength was enough to destroy everything with minimal effort, he wasn't here to destroy—it was a repair mission. He couldn't use his overpowered abilities, and all the powerful weapons and relics he'd collected earlier were useless here.
If anything, this dungeon felt less like a fight and more like solving math problems—a set of formulas, patterns, and logical deductions to follow.
Formulaic map exploration.
Formulaic monster handling.
Formulaic puzzles and terrain manipulation.
That about summed it up.
The only real twist came in the second phase.
In addition to the usual monster upgrades, the dungeon began stacking a [Disorder] debuff on Lloyd.
Its effect was simple: it muddled his thoughts, making clear reasoning nearly impossible—a full-on "intelligence drain."
At first, Lloyd didn't think much of it.
He'd never been great at puzzles anyway. With Sellen taking the lead, he'd mostly been coasting along, helping her where he could. Losing a bit more brainpower just meant he'd be less help—it wouldn't affect their progress much.
And, for a while, he was right. Up until the third phase, nothing much changed.
So why up until the third phase?
Because once the third phase began, the Disorder effect ramped up so violently that Lloyd's mind turned to complete mush—or rather, it had always been a mess; the debuff just stirred it up and brought it to the surface.
Forget thinking—he could barely stand still. It was like he'd eaten thirty pounds of wild mushrooms from Yunnan. Even with his eyes closed, he saw warped, abstract visions. The ground felt like clouds under his feet, and the whole world seemed to waver and drift around him.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was that, even like this, he still had to keep up with Sellen—maybe not fighting, but at least keeping pace with the stage progression.
And as mentioned earlier, the order of this place was severely unstable. To keep Sellen from being affected, Lloyd had to keep infusing her with his essence, maintaining her presence against the chaos of the dungeon.
What he hadn't said earlier was that this "infusion" had a time limit. Each transfer lasted quite a while, but eventually it would fade, requiring renewal.
And when you combined that infusion process with Lloyd's current scrambled state...
Lloyd himself managed fine.
Sellen, however... well—
Let's just say her situation was difficult to describe.
Incidentally, the chaos grew so severe that Lloyd lost the ability to summon anyone else.
So he transferred that summoning authority to Sellen instead—and she summoned the Sellen Sphere.
Why the Sellen Sphere?
In short, after checking on its condition earlier, Lloyd hadn't forgotten the promise he'd made to her. Whenever he had time, he'd "inspect" and "modify" the Sellen Sphere—
and not just reshape it into his own image. Together, they'd been trying to turn it into something genuinely functional.
As for the results of those modifications...
It now had magic storage capacity, computation support, and an internal redesign—with its core transformed into a miniature Sellen.
Or, to put it more plainly: a Sellen-exclusive auxiliary computer, complete with a custom shell.
Its combat ability was mediocre, but in this kind of environment, it was perfect.
With the Sellen Sphere's assistance, Sellen's calculation power surged once more. Though progress through the dungeon was still slow due to the difficulty, they continued advancing steadily, with Sellen unraveling the chaos that plagued Lloyd.
Of course, she wasn't the only one working hard.
While Sellen was inside the dungeon—flushed, trembling, and struggling to solve equations as Lloyd "guided" her—outside, a certain golden-haired figure held Lloyd close, weaving something from threads of light.
Meanwhile, at another end of the dungeon, several witches were each working tirelessly in their own ways. Even in a separate dungeon, a certain white dragon sighed and reluctantly began working overtime.
And within Alice's library, the scholars and apprentices organizing the tomes all picked up their pace as well.
Establishing order was already troublesome—restructuring it from a tangled, chaotic mess was even worse.
It was a long and arduous process.
Though technically just a dungeon, this particular one felt unusually drawn out and exhausting for a multitude of reasons.
Fortunately, thanks to prior experience, Alice had become quite adept at peeling away timelines. So while it was unclear how much time had passed inside the dungeon, on the outside, less than a day had gone by.
As for what the two—or rather, the two plus the sphere—experienced during that time...
Only Sellen knew. Even Lloyd, his mind clouded by confusion, wasn't entirely aware.
Still, one thing was clear to everyone else: after emerging from the dungeon, Sellen's figure had become noticeably fuller, and she carried with her an inexplicable, lingering aura...
As for the final boss?
That wasn't Sellen's doing.
Although her power and adaptability to the dungeon had increased dramatically after all those days of effort, she still wasn't capable of challenging the final boss.
And how did they clear it in the end?
To put it simply, beyond the golden fog gate this time stood two witch sisters. One was a red-haired woman wielding a greatsword wreathed in fire; the other, a witch clad entirely in white—non-aggressive but able to cast powerful healing and support Miracles.
A warrior and a priest. Perfectly balanced, both formidable. No matter how one looked at it, victory seemed impossible.
Then...
Sellen pulled the nearly delirious Lloyd off herself and hurled him straight at them.
And then...
There was no "then."
After a chaotic, distorted battle that defied all logic, Lloyd somehow defeated both witches—
though, truthfully, they hadn't resisted much.
"The chaos here is too severe," explained the red-haired witch, Krag. "We can bend the rules a bit. It doesn't always have to end in a traditional victory... ow, gentler, please."
She winced slightly, then turned to Sellen and extended a hand.
"Care to join us?"
Sellen initially wanted to refuse. But then she glanced at Lloyd—his rare, vacant expression—and thought of all the "torment" he'd put her through along the way.
After a moment's hesitation, she clenched her teeth... and joined in.
Sellen did it too.jpg
After defeating the two—or rather, three—witches, the chaotic distortion finally subsided, and Lloyd gradually regained clarity.
However, due to the dungeon's special nature, even after clearing it, the underlying disorder wasn't fully resolved—barely a fraction of it had been corrected.
So, despite completing the dungeon, Lloyd didn't leave immediately. He stayed inside for many more days, until everyone involved was utterly spent, before finally emerging.
But even then, it wasn't over.
In the days that followed, Lloyd would return to that place repeatedly, joining others in restoring the remnants of chaos piece by piece.
It was a long-term endeavor—something that couldn't be completed overnight.
Still, the restoration process wasn't entirely dull.
Much like how long questlines sometimes reward players midway, the chaotic space held hidden treasures. Every time a section was stabilized, something valuable could be drawn from the restored order.
For example, during an earlier repair phase, Lloyd had retrieved a fragment of Ciaran. After leaving the dungeon, he immediately tossed it into the Abyss Dungeon—reuniting her with Artorias.
And aside from Ciaran, Lloyd had also recovered two Witch fragments. He'd animated them directly within that dungeon, and after a bit of... closeness, they decided to remain there, joining the other witches to help with the cleanup.
Rumor had it they were even planning to establish a "Witch's Home," a sanctuary for witches who'd been, well... "troubled" by a certain someone.
But that was a story for another time.
For now, after leaving the dungeon, Lloyd escorted Sellen back to the Academy, then took a brief journey across the Lands Between.
This time, however, he didn't explore new territories or delve into fresh dungeons. Instead, he revisited old places—observing how they'd changed since his departure and assessing the state of the world.
First was Limgrave.
As the starting region, its environment had always been relatively stable. The eerie scenery from before had been the result of Godrick's reckless grafting experiments. Now that he was gone and the wars had ended, the land had become calm and peaceful once more, rapidly recovering.
—Incidentally, grafting wasn't considered forbidden in the Lands Between, nor was it shunned by the populace. Godrick was despised simply because he was both incompetent and self-indulgent. Among nobles, proper grafting was seen as normal, neither disgraceful nor repulsive.
Upon learning this, Lloyd formed a plan for the region: once Mohg's medical industry was established, they could collaborate here to research grafting technology in depth—not the primitive kind, but something akin to prosthetics or exoskeletons.
Especially since the Lands Between abounded with restorative prayers, and the Golden Lineage was particularly skilled in healing arts, deeper research could lead to "lossless limb removal"—severing a limb and instantly regrowing a new one, then selling the old to be grafted onto others.
Morally questionable by modern standards, perhaps—but in a world like this, with entirely different material conditions, even such ideas counted as progress.
Next was Liurnia of the Lakes.
Much had already been said about it. With the Academy of Raya Lucaria located there, its influence had transformed the entire region's ecosystem.
By now, it wasn't just the academy. Even the Cuckoo Knights and the Albinaurics were carrying Duel Discs in their hands.
As for the previous wars, they had long since been dismantled under the Queen's careful orchestration. Along the way, she had dealt harsh lessons to a few factions that displeased her and, quite some time ago, completed the full unification of the region's powers.
The only remaining issue was that the Queen of the Full Moon no longer wished to rule. Though she had paved the way for Lloyd in many respects, he was now the Elden Lord and couldn't take on the role of regional ruler. Thus, the current plan was to have Ranni inherit the position—the dungeon Lloyd had given her earlier had, in fact, been preparation for this.
"Children must grow up eventually," said the Queen of the Full Moon. "The Dark Moon Princess cannot remain a princess forever. One day, she will be crowned Queen—the Dark Moon Queen, high above the heavens."
"Honestly," Lloyd replied, "you just don't want to deal with all this anymore, do you? Especially after creating so many new things—you've realized how messy it's all going to get and now you're trying to pass the responsibility along, aren't you?"
She was silent for a moment, then turned her head away without answering.
Next was Caelid.
Caelid's situation was far easier to summarize.
In one sentence—they were all playing Horse Girl.
Thanks to the Blessing of Abundance and the ashes of the Flying Dragons, Caelid—despite its disastrous beginnings—had recovered faster than almost anywhere else.
By now, aside from a slightly smaller population, everything else—cities, infrastructure, governance—was more or less complete. With peace restored and no wars to fight, the soldiers found themselves idle. So Radahn simply recruited them all into the Horse Girl Academy as trainers.
With the soldiers' addition, the academy expanded rapidly. And after Lloyd obtained the authority of the "Creator," he visited once more and integrated the existence of the Horse Girls into the natural cycle of life and death through special divine law.
In simpler terms, it meant he no longer had to manually reincarnate them. From now on, whenever people in the region had children, there was a small chance a Horse Girl would be born naturally—no special bloodline required.
"So we're really going all in on the Horse Girl thing, huh?"
A certain red-haired mare muttered under her breath—but she didn't actually object.
After all, this method neither disrupted the natural order of life and death nor hindered the Horse Girls' integration with humanity. It was an elegant solution to their existence. She might gripe about it, but she certainly didn't oppose it.
However, things didn't end there.
Because aside from the Horse Girls, Lloyd's intervention had also brought about another group of unique inhabitants—
the Flying Dragons.
Originally, the Flying Dragons had planned to simply coexist with the people of Caelid.
But with the appearance of the Horse Girls—and the earlier creation of those two dragon maidens—a new idea began spreading among the Flying Dragons: the thought of "taking human form."
Of course, Flying Dragons were not Ancient Dragons. They lacked the ability to shapeshift entirely—not even Greyoll could do it.
Naturally, when they realized they couldn't achieve it on their own, their gaze turned toward one particular person.
"I know you've already helped us so much," said Greyoll, looking rather embarrassed. "And I don't want to trouble you further, but the younger ones... truly wish for it..."
Horse Girls weren't enough, and now they wanted Dragon Girls too?
Lloyd sighed inwardly, then nodded.
"Fine. But since you're not part of the reincarnation system, I'll have to take a look first. If that doesn't work... we'll develop a Dragon Soul framework and see what we can create from that."
Hearing his agreement, Greyoll finally relaxed, nodding gratefully.
After that, Lloyd left Caelid.
And then—he arrived at the Volcano Manor.