The reason it was said to be originally hers was because Ranni had once betrayed the Two Fingers and cast aside her identity as an Empyrean. If she were still a godlike being, then her so-called consort would by default be a king.
This ring had been prepared back when Ranni still bore that mantle. Later, when she awakened to her own principle, she refused to remain a puppet of the Greater Will. She abandoned her Empyrean identity and chose instead to tread an icy, solitary path toward the far edge of night.
That was why the ring was sealed away, inscribed with words of warning. She knew her chosen road would be one of darkness and loneliness. What she hadn't foreseen… was that someone like Arthur would appear. Someone bold enough to declare he would become her king.
Ranni had witnessed his deeds firsthand. From their first meeting, he had insisted on helping her. At their second encounter, even after hearing her vow of eternal solitude, his resolve never wavered. Soon after, he even delivered the Fingerslayer Blade into her hands.
It made her wonder—was all of this truly just coincidence, or was it fate's design?
Later, when she learned he had taken possession of her discarded body, she hadn't grown angry. During her time spent with him in her doll form, she had felt at ease, even happy. She had asked him about the matter of her body, and he hadn't hidden a thing—only promised that someday he would give her a surprise.
When Arthur slew the last of the Baleful Shadows for her, Ranni made her decision. She handed him the royal key that should have been forever abandoned. She decided… to give him a chance.
If this was fate's design, then the two of them would one day meet again beneath the Moonlight Altar. There, she would wait for his answer.
Arthur pocketed the ring and returned to the pool in Nokstella. From there, one could descend into one of the most revolting regions in the entire game—
The Lake of Rot.
The entire area was nothing but festering waters of Scarlet Rot. Stay submerged too long, and the rot would take hold, eating away at your health.
For Arthur, whose resistances were maxed, it should've been child's play.
That is, until he saw the lake in reality.
This time… it really was a lake. Vast and deep—not the knee-high puddle from the game.
The only way forward was to locate hidden mechanisms scattered beneath the waters. Triggering them would raise platforms where one could rest and cleanse away the rot's corrosion.
The worst part? He would have to swim.
A surge of visceral rejection washed over him. His aversion was so strong that, in less than half an hour, he had already reworked the Bubble-Head Charm. Instead of just covering the head and filtering air, he modified it into a full-body enchantment that shielded him completely from the water.
Even then, he hadn't accounted for the Death Frogs lurking below. For some unfathomable reason, creatures steeped in death were thriving in tandem with Scarlet Rot.
If it weren't necessary, Arthur would've skipped this entire map. But the path to the Moonlight Altar was blocked by Astel, and Astel dwelled at the far end of the Lake of Rot, in a cavern behind a waterfall.
Flying above was no option—the crimson mists hanging in the air obscured all sightlines. And most of the mechanisms were underwater anyway. To open the great door leading to Astel's palace, every single switch had to be triggered. Which meant slogging through the entire lake.
Two hours later, Arthur logged off with a blank expression.
"…Yeah. The rest of this area? I'll explore another time."
Two straight hours of nothing but searing red—without a speck of green in sight. It was pure mental damage.
From now on, he decided, two hours of Lake of Rot per day was his limit. Anything more was disrespectful to his own eyes.
Conveniently, his alchemy experiments had reached a critical point. Arthur entered the Zen Garden—a separate pocket of space he had cut off from the rest. From inside, one could see out, but no one outside could see in or enter.
At its center stood a cultivation pod straight out of a sci-fi movie. But the workbench nearby was cluttered with potion vials, runestones, and other magical tools. The clash of technology and sorcery gave the place a strange kind of beauty.
The pod itself was a product of magical alchemy. Using materials scavenged from a biological research facility, Arthur had combined them with alchemical techniques to construct this chamber.
Suspended within the nutrient fluid was the figure of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl. The fluid was brewed from Life Stones, an advanced form of the Life Stone, purer and more concentrated, sustaining the body within.
That body… was Ranni's.
Thanks to the Larval Tear of Rebirth, the restoration had been a complete success.
Arthur had realized something when attempting to reconstruct her form. Ranni had abandoned this body because the Two Fingers had tampered with it—whether through curses, restrictions, or blessings, it was compromised.
So he gambled everything on the single unused Larval Tear in his possession. At first, it did nothing. But when he infused a spark of vitality into her body using a Enhanced Philosopher's Stone, the Tear's power roared to life.
He hadn't expected it to be so absolute. The Tear's effect, said to erase all negative states of the bearer, had wiped her form utterly clean—obliterating death curses, the Greater Will's bindings, and every trace of divine meddling.
The problem was… her body had been left with only a thread of life. That thread became the seed upon which the Tear rebuilt her, effectively granting her a fresh rebirth.
When Arthur saw her charred corpse disintegrate into ash, only to coalesce into a tiny embryo… he was stunned.
What the hell? I asked for a wife, not a daughter! What am I supposed to do, pull Snape and find someone else to surrogate her?
Thankfully, he soon understood. The Tear's rebirth process scaled to the amount of vitality provided. He had only infused a spark—so she had been reconstructed as an embryo.
Thinking fast, he poured the full energy of the Enhanced Philosopher's Stone into her before the Tear's power faded.
Of course, he had first removed Radahn's soul-mark. Otherwise, with no soul inhabiting the vessel, her body might've been seized and reborn as Radahn himself.
The crystal's energy was enough to mature her body to about twelve years old before being exhausted. At that point, the Tear's effect ended, and her form stabilized—locked permanently at that age.
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