They moved him to better quarters—which meant a room with an actual bed instead of compressed hay, and a window that showed more than just ominous trees. Still locked, still guarded, but the upgrade from "prisoner" to "guest we don't trust" was notable.
"Progress," Ren told the new bio-luminescent fruit thing, which pulsed sympathetically. "From death row to house arrest. At this rate, I'll have actual freedom by the heat death of the universe."
A knock interrupted his conversation with the glowing produce. Elanil entered without waiting for permission, because apparently knocking was just a courtesy notification that invasion was imminent.
She'd changed from armor to training clothes—form-fitting leather and cloth that left arms bare and everything else suggested. Ren's brain helpfully short-circuited.
Remember: she wants you dead. Very dead. Creatively dead. Stop noticing how the leather— STOP NOTICING THINGS.
"Get up," she commanded. "Princess Mayfell wants you educated. Since I drew the shortest straw, I'm your instructor."
"Instructor in what?"
Her smile promised pain. "Not dying. Though I make no guarantees about success."
She led him through corridors carved from living wood, past guards who watched him like he might spontaneously combust (fair concern, given recent events), to an open platform high in what he was starting to understand was a truly massive tree.
The training ground sprawled beneath stars he didn't recognize. Two moons hung overhead—one silver-white and almost familiar, the other smaller and blood-red. The light they cast made shadows dance in directions that hurt to track.
"First lesson," Elanil said, producing practice swords from a rack. "Everything here wants to kill you. The forest, the creatures, the very air in some places. You survived the mist through luck or cosmic joke. That won't save you from a shadow wolf's teeth or a void orchid's kiss."
She tossed him a sword. He caught it, barely, the weight unfamiliar in hands more used to game controllers.
"I've never—"
She moved. No telegraph, no warning, just sudden motion that his eyes couldn't track. The flat of her blade caught him across the ribs, sending him sprawling. Pain bloomed like old friends reuniting.
"First lesson interrupted," she said, standing over him with that same predatory smile. "Combat doesn't wait for you to be ready."
Dark Souls tutorial boss energy. Wonderful.
He rolled aside as her sword came down where his head had been. Pure instinct, thousands of hours of dodge-rolling in games translated to clumsy real movement. He came up swinging wildly, practice sword meeting empty air as she danced away.
"Better. You have instincts under all that self-pity."
"Thanks?" He circled warily, trying to read her stance. "Any other backhanded compliments, or can we skip to the part where you beat me unconscious?"
"That comes later. For now—" She lunged, a testing thrust he barely deflected. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you."
"Because Mayfell said not to?"
"Try again." Another strike, this one leaving his arm numb from the impact.
"Because I'm the last human and possibly cosmically significant?"
"Boring." She swept his legs, but he'd seen that coming—rolled with the fall and came up guarding. "Once more."
The moonlight caught her face as she paused, and for a moment he saw past the warrior to something else. Someone carrying weights that shouldn't rest on shoulders that young. Beautiful and dangerous and deeply, fundamentally sad.
"Because you're curious," he said quietly. "You hate what humans did, but you want to know who we were. What we were really like, beyond the stories of destruction."
Her sword stopped an inch from his throat.
"Don't presume to know me, human."
"Ren. My name is Ren. And I'm not presuming—I'm recognizing. I see that look in the mirror every morning. Disappointed in yourself for wanting to understand the thing you're supposed to hate."
They stood frozen, moonlight and steel between them. Then Elanil stepped back, lowering her sword.
"You talk too much."
"Coping mechanism. I have several. Want to hear about my tendency to deflect emotional sincerity with poorly timed humor?"
Despite herself, her lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but the ghost of one.
"Save it for tomorrow's beating." She turned away, then paused. "You're right, by the way. I am curious. Damn you for noticing."
She left him there under foreign stars, practice sword loose in his grip and the memory of almost-smile burning brighter than the moons.
Progress with the murder elf. Rating: 6/10, would risk death again.
Back in his room, the bio-luminescent fruit pulsed in what might have been approval.
"Yeah," Ren told it, collapsing on the marginally better bed. "I think she likes me too. In a 'might only maim instead of kill' kind of way."
Tomorrow would bring more questions, more training, more navigating the minefield of being the last human in a world that had good reasons to hate his kind. But tonight, he'd survived. Made progress. Maybe even made something approaching a friend.
His shoulder ached where the arrow had been. His ribs hurt from Elanil's teaching methods. His entire existence was impossible and probably doomed.
But for the first time since the purple mist took everything, Ren felt something that might have been hope.
Dangerous feeling. Hope leads to trying, trying leads to failing, failing leads to—
He cut off that thought spiral. Tomorrow's disappointments could wait.
Tonight, he was alive.
For a NEET from Tokyo, that was enough.