Chapter 55: Level Up [2]

Mikael’s ghostly grey lingered on Liren’s status as his gaze paused on the first line that showed her Rank.

[ Rank: Tier 6 (Low) → Tier 3 (Low) ]

’Tier 6?’

’Liren had been a Tier 6 spirit before the contract?’

In all his hours playing Eclipsed Realms, he had never managed to form a contract with a spirit above Tier 3.

In fact, he had never even encountered one above that rank during the contracting process.

The few times he had rolled out a Tier 3 Spirit during the contract ritual... things had ended up catastrophically for him.

His character had been ripped apart in seconds.... torn limb from limb before he could even process what was happening, let alone attempt to form a contract.

The memory of those deaths on the monitor screen from his previous life still haunted him.

He wondered how he had even found the courage to attempt Spirit Contract at all, knowing fully well what kind of gruesome fate could be waiting for him on the other side.

And why, of all things, the Spirit Contract had been the first thought to cross his mind the moment he realized that he was trapped inside the body of Mikael Morwell?

He was absurdly lucky that the Tier 6 spirit he’d encountered was Liren.

Lucky that he was somehow able to interact with her memories through her trial due to some unknown reasons he couldn’t think of, and he was able to pull her back from her half-maddened state.

If he hadn’t been able to do that.... if the spirit standing before him had been any other Tier 6, or if that unknown connection to the spirit’s memories had never manifested....

He didn’t even want to imagine what would have happened.

The image of his own body being ripped apart in that ancient forest was enough to make his stomach turn.

As he stared at Liren’s status again.

’But why did her rank decrease?’

In-game, contracted Spirits never lost their ranks like this.

The idea of a spirit’s rank dropping after forming a contract was completely foreign to him, which was never explained in the game.

"Liren, do you know anything about this? About why your rank decreased."

He asked her in a soft voice through their mental connection.

She had been quiet for a while now.

Not that she was ever particularly talkative....

Centuries of isolation in the Spirit World had worn away her ease with human language, leaving her at times struggling to express even her simplest thoughts.

Words came slowly to her, and sometimes she would even stop mid-sentence, frustrated by her own limitations.

But she still made an effort.

She tried to talk with him now and then, to bridge the gap between them with halting sentences and careful words.

It was one of the things he had come to appreciate about her, even if he didn’t say it out loud.

Tonight, though, she was unexpectedly silent.

He suspected she knew what he had been doing, that she had felt the weight in his chest when he went to see Thomas’s family.

The guilt that had been pressing down on him since the moment he watched Lina collapse to her knees when she clutched Thomas’s locket like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the World.

And instead of demanding his attention, and instead of asking about the thing he had promised her.

Liren had simply waited, giving him space to breathe and process things without adding to the burden he already carried.

He hadn’t expected that kind of consideration from her.

It stirred something warm in his chest, even through the lingering heaviness.

After a long pause, she said....

{....Yes. I think I have a vague idea about it.}

Liren’s voice drifted through their mental connection from the depths of his core.

Then.... dark smoke began to billow out of his chest as it spilled into the air in front of him.

It swirled and gathered slowly, taking the form of a beautiful woman with long white hair that cascaded down her shoulders like moonlight as her bluish-grey eyes stared back at him.

Her black dress flowed around her like liquid shadow, and her pale skin seemed to glow faintly in the dim light of the room.

Mikael watched her materialize, and his thoughts seemed to halt for a moment.

’Her beauty is really something.’

If Liren had been a character in Eclipsed Realms, she probably would have topped the popularity polls without much effort.

Before his transmigration, Archbishop Sophia Ellert had held the number one spot in the fan rankings for years.

Mostly due to her mature figure and the way the game’s art team had rendered her in every cutscene and promotional image.

The fanbase of guys between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five used to practically worship her as a goddess.

Fan art, forum threads, heated debates about which character was the best girl or waifu.

Sophia always came out on top.

If the developers had ever introduced someone like Liren, Mikael was pretty sure the rankings would have been turned on their heads.

Although Liren didn’t have the same overwhelming presence as Sophia, her frame was slimmer, and she didn’t carry herself with the same commanding confidence.

But she still had her own quiet charm.

The black dress hugged her figure in all the right places, and there was a soft elegance to her that made it hard for anyone to look away from her.

She wasn’t as voluptuous as the Archbishop, but she had decent curves of her own, and, combined with her ethereal white hair and bluish-grey eyes, she was striking in a way that felt almost unnatural.

"So... What do you think?" Mikael asked again.

She glanced away from him, and there seemed to be a minute of red rising in her pale cheeks that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not paying close attention.

"I think.... it might be because of my desire to stay with you.

"When we formed the contract, I was.... not in a good state of mind. And more than anything, I didn’t want to be alone again."

She paused and turned her bluish-grey gaze to meet Mikael.

"I wanted to remain by your side.

"I think the contract.... ’The World’s Will’ responded to that desire. It adjusted my power so that I could stay with you without overwhelming your core. If I had remained at Tier 6, you wouldn’t have been able to form a contract."

Mikael stared at her as the pieces slowly clicked into place.

"So ’The World’s Will’ adjusted your rank because you wanted to stay with me?"

She nodded and said....

"Yes, I think so."

He hadn’t known it was impossible to form a contract between a Tier 1 Awakener and a Tier 6 Spirit.

But the more he thought about it, the more of it made sense, as the power gap between the two ranks was enormous.

The essence core of Tier 1 Awakener wouldn’t have been able to handle such a heavy strain of containing a Tier 6 Spirit.

But the ’World’s Will’ actually lowering a Spirit’s Rank just because she desired it? Was something like that even possible?

He had never heard of anything like it -- not even in the fragmented memories he had inherited from the original Mikael, nor in the hundreds of hours he had spent playing the game and unraveling its lore.

He didn’t claim to know everything about this world just because he’d played the base version of the game.

This was real life now.... At least that’s what he would like to think it was, and there were bound to be differences in it.

Things the game had never shown and secrets it had never hinted at.

But still, moments like this fascinated him.

Discovering something new, something that didn’t fit neatly into what he thought he knew, reminded him just how vast and unknowable "Eclipsed Realm" really was.

Even after all those hours, he had never truly managed to unravel the game’s deeper lore.

It had always lingered just out of reach, full of gaps and contradictions and questions that had no clear answers.

And that had always bothered him.

If he really had to complete the game to find a way back to Earth, then part of him also wanted to understand this world completely before he left.

To know its history, its secrets, its hidden truths.

Maybe that was asking for too much.... but he couldn’t help it.

Some part of him would always want to peel back the layers and see what was underneath as a Gamer.

He sighed and pulled his thoughts back to Liren’s dropped rank.

The situation kind of worked in his favor.

If he had somehow managed to form a contract with Liren at her original Tier 6, he wouldn’t have been able to summon her for a very long time.

Not until he himself reached the Tier 6 Rank.

And it might take him years to do that.

Now, with her rank sitting at Tier 3, the gap was much smaller.

If he could push his essence stat up enough, he might actually be able to call on her in a real fight sooner than he had ever imagined.

He looked at her again, hovering in the air in front of him.

There was something in her expression.... it was like she was waiting for him to say something.

’Does she want me to praise her?’

"Thank you, Liren. For choosing to stay with me." Mikael said, choosing his words carefully.

She nodded, her expression looked perfectly neutral from the outside, but Mikael knew her well enough now to catch the subtle shift....

The faintest softening at the corners of her eyes and the nearly imperceptible lift in her expression that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

He could tell that she was happy with his answer.

’She’s.... kinda easy.’

He wisely kept that thought locked behind his lips and quietly focused on her status again.

****