Chapter 1241 - Taming the Old World - Perspective - 3

"No," Luna finally whispered, her voice trembling. "That cannot be true."

"Luna..."

"I absolutely refuse to accept it!" She shook her head with an almost childlike, stubborn conviction. "Someone that incredibly tiny and unconditionally sweet simply cannot be inherently evil. There has to be a catastrophic error in the data! Someone, somewhere along the line, completely missed the point!"

Ren did not know exactly how to formulate a response, primarily because a significant sector of his own logical brain was desperately clinging to that exact same stubborn hypothesis.

"Whether the data is flawed or entirely accurate is completely irrelevant," Larissa cut in, wielding her trademark, surgical practicality to slice straight through the emotional static. "Ren has already established a secure protocol to analyze the threat, and his solution is entirely sufficient: he denies the beast absolute administrative access to his mind, and if Mooshito ever explicitly requests the potion, we have our answer. Absolutely everything else is just background noise."

She locked her analytical gaze onto Ren. "And because ultimately, the beast is already permanently fused to your soul. You cannot surgically extract it even if you desperately wanted to. Therefore, dedicating excess processing power to paranoia is highly inefficient, right? You simply do not consume the potion, you absolutely never give it to any other beast, and the threat is neutralized."

It was, Ren had to logically concede, the absolute most sensible way to process the crisis. It was remarkably cold, yet flawlessly pragmatic.

And in a profound way, it was a massive relief. Larissa had seamlessly taken the weight Ren had been carrying entirely alone and efficiently compressed it down into one singular, manageable directive: do not touch the potion. Every single other variable was just irrelevant static.

The oppressive atmosphere in the massive chamber noticeably lifted after that heavy confession.

The three women had successfully extracted exactly what they wanted to unearth: forcing him to pause, delivering their unified reprimand regarding his self-sacrificing battlefield tactics, and uncovering the terrifying truth about Mooshito.

With those critical objectives achieved, they seamlessly pivoted back to their initial demand regarding the primordial dragon ether, though this time their approach carried a lighter, almost playful cadence rather than strict military insistence.

"Very well, perhaps fifty percent again is an overreach," Larissa conceded smoothly. "But twenty-five percent is viable. It remains well within our control limits. Furthermore, it inherently allows us to shoulder a significantly heavier load during the impending siege, ensuring you are not forced to execute every single big maneuver yourself, and preventing you from initiating yet another self-sacrifice."

"Twenty-five percent distributed across all three of you is..." Ren started, calculating the strain.

"It is entirely reasonable," Luna interrupted softly, gracefully perching herself on the gilded armrest of the throne right beside him. "We are willing to accept whatever parameters are necessary as long as it stops you from permanently turning into a walking statue."

"I am not a walking statue," Ren muttered defensively.

"You literally possess an arm constructed entirely of solid crystal," she pointed out without missing a beat.

"It is a highly functional appendage," he argued stubbornly. To prove his point, he articulated the transparent limb, moving the joints and wiggling the crystalline fingers in a stiff, bizarrely unnatural rhythm.

"Mayo would have extracted too much amusement from that specific finger articulation," Luna whispered, her eyes dancing with quiet mischief. She gently caught his crystallized hand, seamlessly intertwining her warm, soft fingers with his cold, jagged ones to halt the erratic movement.

Liora let out a sudden, uncharacteristic snort of laughter, and even the strict Larissa allowed a genuine half-smile to break across her stoic features. For a fleeting, miraculous moment within the echoing emptiness of the royal hall, the four of them completely stopped discussing warfare, agonizing sacrifices, and potentially treacherous fungal entities. They were simply four young people ruthlessly teasing each other, anchored around a boy sitting on a throne he did not want, guarded by three remarkable women absolutely determined to keep him in one piece.

Ren observed them closely, absorbing the rare warmth radiating through the room, and a profound realization clicked into place. This was the exact reprieve they had been desperately trying to force upon him all along.

It was never about forcing him to embrace the political weight of the throne; it was entirely about this...

And the truth struck him with the staggering force of an elephant-bull charge: he needed this intimacy more than he could mathematically quantify. He had endured consecutive weeks of brutal warfare, constantly operating on completely drained mana reserves, sacrificing his own flesh, relentlessly calculating apocalyptic countdowns and monitoring subterranean monsters desperately clawing at their cages.

Immersed in all that suffocating static, he hadn't permitted himself a single hour of pure stillness. A moment to simply exist alongside the people he loved most, completely stripped of any urgent world puzzles demanding a solution.

"Thank you," he murmured softly.

He meant it with every fiber of his being, and all three women instantly registered the raw, unshielded sincerity anchoring his tone.

"Not for the massive chair," he quickly clarified, offering a lopsided half-smile. "You can keep this piece of furniture safely archived for another century or double it and give it to someone else, like Julius and Arturo... I am thanking you for the rest of it. For constantly worrying about keeping my body alive. For physically forcing me to halt my mind for a minute. I honestly... I could not even calculate the last time I actually stopped to breathe."

Rather than remaining passively seated while they doted on him, he executed a maneuver that felt far more natural to his core programming.

He stood up from the expensive seat.

"If we are going to occupy this place for a while," he announced, stepping down onto the dais, "I am absolutely not going to be the only one anchored to this chair."

He reached out to the closer one and grasped Larissa's hand first, smoothly pulling her forward and gently forcing her down onto the throne. She immediately began to protest, visibly flustered and intensely uncomfortable with the sheer authority the seat projected, but Ren offered her zero avenues of retreat. He arranged her posture against the velvet backing with a highly exaggerated, theatrical flourish, bowing deeply like a loyal knight officially crowning a sovereign monarch.

"This is entirely ridiculous," Larissa muttered, though the tips of her ears instantly flared a brilliant crimson.

"All hail the Queen of Absolute Logic," Ren declared loudly to the empty hall. "Long may she govern through flawless deductions and pristine argumentation."

Next, he targeted Liora, who offered zero resistance and simply let him maneuver her onto the wide armrest while giggling brightly. Finally, he cornered Luna. She feigned a valiant struggle, playfully swatting at his hands, but ultimately ended up squished directly onto the throne alongside the other two. The three of them were now hilariously crammed into a seat explicitly engineered for a single occupant, constantly nudging shoulders, complaining about the lack of personal space, and laughing uncontrollably.

And for a suspended slice of time, that was absolutely everything that mattered.

They played.

Ren began generating increasingly absurd royal titles for them. He officially dubbed Luna the "Empress of Shadows and Unfiltered Savage Thoughts," a classification that earned him a loud, highly indignant squawk of protest. He appointed Liora as the "Warden of Spiritual Fire and Infinite Tolerance," and when she curiously inquired exactly why she required infinite patience, he simply leveled a deadpan stare at the other two women; absolutely no further explanation was necessary.

They actively took turns occupying the center cushion, ruthlessly stealing the seat from one another.

Larissa, who had initially been so utterly embarrassed by the display, eventually leaned into the role. She began issuing royal decrees with such a bone-dry, absolute solemnity that it was physically impossible to keep a straight face. She officially decreed that Ren was legally prohibited from crystallizing any additional segments of his already 'very hard' anatomy; she mandated that every single citizen in the kingdom, with a highly specific mandate targeting Mayo, must instantly cease referring to him as "Player Patinder"; and she formally codified that from this moment forward, any suicidal tactical maneuvers required the unanimous approval of a ruling council of three.

"I am assuming that very specific council consists entirely of you three," Ren noted dryly.

"Precisely," Larissa confirmed without a shred of hesitation. "You need to learn exactly how a functional monarchy operates."

Ren laughed. It was a genuine, chest-deep laugh that echoed freely for the first time in what felt like grueling months. And for a long, beautiful stretch of time within that cavernous space, the sovereign dragons ceased to exist. There was no creeping corruption, no apocalyptic timers, no intricate biological schematics. There were merely four young people treating a symbol of absolute authority like a mundane toy passed around a living room.

They lingered there for a significant while.

Perhaps slightly too long.

♢♢♢♢

Right at the peak of their laughter, the colossal double doors of the grand hall were forcefully pushed open.

The heavy groan of ancient hinges echoed powerfully across the empty expanse. The four of them instantly snapped their attention toward the threshold, the warm intimacy of the moment shattering upon the impact.

Standing in the doorway, starkly silhouetted against the bright golden light spilling in from the outer corridor, a lone figure stepped directly into the throne room.