Kairo paused for a second, his hands hovering over the stone control terminal. The rhythmic hum of the subterranean room moving through the deep earth filled the silence. He looked down at his silk sleeves, then turned his gaze toward his golden-eyed friend.
"Leonhart..." Kairo asked, his voice dropping into a rare, uncharacteristically quiet tone. "What are we even doing here? Right now, in this macro-game... I don't know why, but don't you think our entire adventure so far is incredibly weird?"
Leonhart blinked, tilting his head. "Why, Kairo? Why is it weird?"
"Aren't you curious about the Forbidden Land?" Kairo murmured, his bright eyes staring past the monitors as if looking at something far away.
Leonhart let out a sharp, uneasy breath. "Curiosity kills a person, Kairo. You want to go to that place—the Forbidden Forest. That's exactly what my father used to warn me about back at the estate. He told me it's a graveyard. But Kairo... you're not the only one who's curious. Like, tell me the truth... how were we even able to survive crossing into this land in the first place?"
"Hmm..." Kairo sighed, tapping his fingers against the stone. "But we shouldn't push our luck that much, you know? I wonder what kind of scary monsters it actually has. I wonder what there is left to fear out there. Since I am structurally immortal... I don't technically have to fear death. I just wonder what secrets lie deep within that forest."
Leonhart's jaw dropped slightly. "Immortal?"
"Yeah," Kairo said, his face entirely blank. "If I wasn't, I would have died the exact millisecond I stepped into this world. That's what my gut feeling tells me. But it just didn't happen. What is wrong with me? I think those dreams I keep having are nothing but compiled lies. But I'm genuinely curious... if I go to that Forbidden Forest, will I finally find a way to go back home?"
Leonhart's face fell, his golden eyes instantly clouded with a deep, unmistakable sadness. He looked away, his fists clenching within his crimson robes. "Don't say that... I don't want you to go back, Kairo." He bit his lip, his voice cracking slightly. "I know it would be good for you, but damn it... can't I come with you? No, it's too risky. I would just be a—ahhh."
Leonhart shook his head, forcing a weak smile. "Sorry, Kairo. I wish you luck, truly. But you have to be careful. If you share this specific plan with anyone else in this realm, they won't let you leave. They'll lock you down until you completely stop thinking about that land. But seriously, Kairo... you are completely insane. How are you not afraid of those creepy monsters? Even I couldn't handle the thought of them." As he spoke, Leonhart's face turned stark pale, his warrior instincts shivering at the sheer memory of the border horrors.
Kairo watched him, his expression unreadable. Deep inside his own mind, a dark, fleeting thought crossed his calculations: Who knows... maybe I am the real monster here.
He flashed a quick, sharp smirk. "Just kidding."
"Back to the topic," Kairo said, snapping his fingers as his eyes locked onto the central security monitors.
On the glowing mud screens displaying the crowded Grand Drama Hall, the illusion was already spiraling into physical chaos.
The inner palace guards, panicking at the sudden appearance of fifty Kairos and fifty Leonharts, drew their heavy halberds and charged the stage. In the absolute frenzy, a frail, elderly high-court noble accidentally tripped over his robes, stumbling straight forward and crashing directly into one of Kairo's advanced mud clones.
The moment the old man's skin made contact with the clone's high-tier emerald mana grid, a violent reaction occurred.
The old man's wrinkled skin instantly tightened. The gray hair on his head turned a rich, glossy black, and his hunched back snapped perfectly straight as the residual life-force variables stored in Kairo's system-reward buffer surged into his cellular matrix.
"No way..." the old man gasped, looking down at his smooth, unblemished hands in absolute, wild ecstasy. "I can live even longer! My youth has returned!"
Seeing the literal miracle manifest on stage, another ancient merchant pushed past the guards, screaming as he desperately reached out and touched Kairo's clone. The exact same catalyst triggered—his failing organs rejuvenated instantly, and he turned completely young right before the eyes of the thousands of spectating nobles.
The entire Drama Hall erupted into absolute madness.
The clone of Kairo raised his hands, his voice echoing with an absolute, dominating resonance through the amphitheater. "O people of the court! Seraphina, the daughter of your King, didn't grant you enough power! She kept the source code for herself! But I have systematically absorbed her essence! Those who will rise up and destroy the King... I will grant them unlimited lifespan and greater power!"
The crowd hesitated, their deep fear of the King's absolute authority warring with their intense greed. They didn't instantly accept the terrifying offer Kairo had laid out.
Suddenly, an elite vanguard soldier lunged onto the stage, his heavy steel broadsword coming down in a blinding arc. With a sickening crunch, he cleanly decapitated one of the Leonhart clones.
Because the advanced clones were now deeply tethered to the network, the feedback loop snapped back. In the subterranean bunker, Kairo suddenly clutched his chest, letting out a sharp, agonized groan as a phantom wave of pain shot through his central nervous system.
But back on the stage, the system's compensation loop activated instantly.
The vanguard soldier who had delivered the killing blow violently froze. His armor plates began to snap and buckle as his muscle fibers expanded exponentially. He screamed as his stature shot upward, his bones lengthening until he stood at a towering 8'5" feet tall—a colossal, terrifying giant with muscles carved like absolute marble sculptures, his raw physical power multiplying by five times.
Down in the subterranean bunker, Kairo wiped a cold sweat from his brow, his dark smirk cutting through his pain as his eyes flashed with brilliant malice. "Let the fun begin."
On the monitors, the remaining ninety-nine clones suddenly turned on their heels, running away from the stage and bursting out into the city streets, intentionally leading the crowd into a chase. But the damage to their psychology was already absolute. Every single noble, merchant, and soldier in the Drama Hall had fallen precisely into the trap Kairo had designed.
"Look at them, Leonhart," Kairo said, leaning against the moving terminal as the bunker continued its steady descent toward the castle bedrock. "They were originally summoned to that Drama Hall by royal decree to mourn the deaths of both princess daughters, and to systematically hunt us down the moment the tracking grid located us."
"But you just rewrote their entire directive," Leonhart stated, staring in absolute awe at the screen.
Right on cue, a royal commander roared through the palace amplification arrays, his voice echoing across the entire capital district. "BY ORDER OF THE KING! WHOEVER KILLS THESE INTENSIVELY BLESSED KIDS WILL BE GRANTED HALF OF THE KINGDOM'S TREASURE AND TOTAL IMMUNITY! DESTROY THEM!"
The simulation had collapsed into a total civil frenzy. The very soldiers who were supposed to protect the empire's peace were now wildly chasing the handsome clones through the streets, their weapons drawn, their eyes bloodshot with the mad desire to turn into giants and reclaim their youth.
The siege of the Land of Lust had officially turned into a self-consuming slaughter.
"This land isn't truly a Land of Lust by tactical definition," Kairo muttered, his teeth gritting as a violent tremor shook his fingers. "It's a land of pure, unadulterated desire. I haven't seen the entire macro-view of this continent yet, so who knows what else is rotting out there... but the baseline is the same."
On the reflective clay monitors, the layout was pure poetry and pure horror. Ninety-nine advanced clones of Kairo and Leonhart were tearing through the capital city at terminal velocity. They moved with a fluid, professional parkour style—leaping over stone balconies, vaulting off wooden rooftops, sliding through residential windows, and executing high-speed evasion tactics. Whenever an aggressive noble or bloodthirsty knight cornered a unit, the clone would counter with lethal precision, driving earthen spikes through their armor to maintain the line.
Leonhart watched the screens from the center of the subterranean terminal, his fists trembling slightly. "Woah, Kairo... you're not technically killing innocent people. You're eliminating targets purely within the legal parameters of self-defense. The system can't log any sins against your account for this."
"Yeah, Leonhart," Kairo rasped, his face growing paler by the second. "But my processing units are hitting their limit. I need you to deploy to the auxiliary sector right now. I've constructed a high-speed branch tunnel. The high generals of the inner palace are mobilizing, and my solo mud clones don't have the raw physical attack stats to break through their heavy defensive arrays. I need your sword."
Leonhart looked at Kairo, then down at his luxurious crimson robes. A fierce, brilliant smile split his face, his golden eyes burning with absolute loyalty. "Understood, Prince of Harmony. I, Leonhart, son of the Duke, will gladly charge into the fire for the sake of your blueprint."
With a decisive leap, Leonhart vaulted into the newly opened fast-transit capsule Kairo had engineered out of the bedrock, the stone pod sealing and shooting through the mantle like a railgun.
The moment Leonhart departed, Kairo's knees buckled. He collapsed against the primary control pillar, coughing up another thick stream of dark blood.
The pain was becoming an absolute, crushing reality. Because his advanced clones were deeply synchronized with his central nervous system to allow fluid movement, the feedback loop was brutal. Out in the streets, desperate crowds were hacking, stabbing, and casting localized combustion spells at his constructs. Even though the clones were made of dense earth, every single blade edge that pierced a clone's chest sent a phantoms-wave of agonizing physical trauma straight into Kairo's actual body in the bunker.
He screamed into the empty room, his voice echoing off the stone panels as he violently tried to suppress the sensory overload.
Yet, he didn't pull back the illusion. He channeled his remaining focus, maintaining the grand deception. On the surface, the mad nobility saw the clones granting youth and giant stat-buffs to anyone who managed to draw blood. The spark of greed had completely blinded their logical faculties. Even though they knew the city was tearing itself apart, the civilians and lesser knights systematically destroyed their own infrastructure, desperate to kill a clone, secure the bounty, and ascend to the high aristocracy.
Meanwhile, Leonhart's transit pod hadn't even reached its final destination when the young warrior decided the speed wasn't matching his adrenaline. He looked through the optic viewport at an active Kairo clone running parallel to the tunnel wall.
"Kairo! I'm not just going to sit in this box and rest!" Leonhart shouted, his voice channeling through the mana vents. "I'm going to run it! My physical travel speed on foot is faster than this mechanical drift!"
The mud face of the clone running outside the pod shifted, letting out a faint, amused crackle. "If you say so. I will run beside you and guide your trajectory straight to the target coordinates."
BOOM.
Leonhart kicked the stone hatch open, hitting the rocky floorboards of the cavern at a full sprint. His silk robes whipped around his legs as he ran like a wild beast through the subterranean darkness, the handsome Kairo clone leaping effortlessly across the jagged rocks right beside him to keep the pacing perfect.
Back inside the core bunker, Kairo was still screaming in agony, his fingers clawing at the stone floor. He was a professional tag player, a master of spatial parkour back in his old world, meaning his clones were nearly impossible to catch cleanly. But the sheer volume of the chaos meant he was feeling ninety-nine variations of burning, piercing, and crushing pain all at once.