The cold, damp smell of dirt clogged Loran’s nose. His mouth was full of grit and the bitter taste of soil.
He realized something immediately—
This wasn’t a dream.
Then he saw the person standing in front of him.
White Mask Varré.
His brain stalled for a brief second before starting up again.
This is… Limgrave.
He recognized it instantly.
“A Tarnished without a maiden, are we?” White Mask tilted his head. “...Or at least, that’s how it should have been. Though, it seems your luck isn’t entirely hopeless.”
Loran remembered these lines.
This was the standard opening dialogue from the game. Next, Varré would mock the player for lacking guidance from a Finger Maiden and tell them they were doomed to wander alone and die forgotten—a deliberate slap in the face to establish the cruelty of the world.
But what Varré said next shattered everything Loran thought he knew about the script.
“Your Finger Maiden is over there.”
Varré lifted a hand and pointed toward the open plains nearby.
“She appears to have overestimated herself. Challenging the Tree Sentinel alone.” He paused, sounding faintly amused. “You may want to go check on her.”
Loran snapped his head in the direction he indicated.
Golden armor.
The Tree Sentinel.
Every beginner player’s nightmare.
And standing before that towering golden knight was a small figure, rolling and scrambling across the ground in complete disarray.
The figure wore a ragged witch’s robe. Her silver twin tails whipped wildly behind her like loose threads caught in a storm.
“Holy shit! Why does this thing lock on so damn hard?!”
The voice sounded familiar.
Loran paused.
Before waking up, he had been streaming Elden Ring with a VTuber named Kiro.
And that—
That was Kiro’s voice.
The golden knight’s attacks came again and again.
Kiro’s movements grew increasingly frantic.
Then she mistimed a dodge.
The Tree Sentinel’s warhorse leapt high into the air, its enormous body casting a massive shadow overhead as it crashed down toward her.
“I’m dead!”
Kiro only managed a short scream before the giant hoof swallowed her whole.
Boom.
A heavy impact shook the earth. Dust exploded into the air.
When it settled, only a crater remained.
And at its center—
A small cluster of golden particles, scattering like fragments of broken data.
Kiro had disappeared.
The Tree Sentinel turned its mount around, rested its halberd against its shoulder, and resumed its endless patrol.
As though it had merely swatted away an insect.
Loran stared blankly.
His mouth hung half-open.
Not a single word came out.
A few seconds later, nearby, a handful of golden motes suddenly gathered in midair, rapidly taking the shape of a person.
The light faded.
Kiro reappeared.
Bent over, hands braced against her knees, she gasped for breath. Her silver twin tails clung messily to her cheeks.
“...What... what the hell was that?”
She looked pale, still visibly shaken from surviving death.
Then she spotted Loran.
And White Mask standing beside him.
“You’re Loran?” she asked cautiously, uncertainty filling her voice. “How are you here too...?”
Varré turned toward her and offered an elegant bow.
“So, you must be this Tarnished’s Finger Maiden.”
“A pleasure to meet you, miss.”
“Your performance...” He smiled faintly beneath the white mask. “...was highly entertaining.”
Kiro clicked her tongue.
“Hey! Why are you spacing out? Get over here already!”
Her voice yanked Loran back to reality.
Kiro had already run over to a nearby Site of Grace.
“Level up! Seriously, level up!” she shouted. “How are you supposed to fight anything if you don’t? You wanna get slapped to death by that metal can too?”
“Level up?”
Loran frowned.
The term was painfully familiar.
But in this absurd reality, he found himself unable to connect such a purely game-like mechanic with his own body.
“What do you mean by level up?”
As he asked, he slowly walked toward the Grace.
Kiro looked thoroughly irritated by how out of it he seemed.
She marched over, grabbed him by the wrist, and dragged him along.
“God, you’re hopeless. Upgrading! What else would it mean?” she snapped.
Without waiting for permission, she shoved him down beside the Grace and pressed on his shoulder until he sat cross-legged.
“Sit. Touch the Grace. Focus. Think really hard.”
Loran instinctively followed her instructions.
The moment his fingertips brushed against the floating golden light, warmth surged through his arm and spread across his body.
Then—
A translucent interface unfolded before his eyes.
Or rather—
Inside his mind.
He knew it instantly.
The Elden Ring status menu.
Except this time, it wasn’t displayed on a cold monitor.
It was projected directly into his consciousness.
Every number, every stat, every line of text felt strangely understandable.
He scanned through the attributes.
Everything looked ordinary.
Then—
Something caught his eye.
A three-digit number.
[Intelligence: 136]
That number shouldn’t exist.
It made no sense.
And yet there it was.
Every other stat sat neatly at the standard 10.
Only Intelligence stood grotesquely out of place, shattering any illusion of balance.
“So? You see it now, right?”
Kiro’s voice sounded beside him, impatient but oddly eager.
Like someone desperate to prove she hadn’t been making things up.
She had clearly gone through this herself—
And desperately wanted someone else to share the burden of this absurd reality.
Instead of answering, Loran asked:
“What about yours?”
“What, mine...?”
Kiro’s gaze immediately drifted away.
She scratched awkwardly at her silver hair, fingers tangling through the strands.
“Ugh, fine...” she muttered, giving up halfway through pretending to act normal.
She looked back at him with an expression somewhere between embarrassment and self-mockery.
“Wretch start, okay?”
“Wretch?”
“Looks like one,” she corrected quickly.
Her expression turned even stranger.
Almost aggrieved.
“All my stats are ten, but... but...”
She stumbled over the words for a while, as if struggling to explain something deeply humiliating.
“My Intelligence... is nine.”
“...Nine?”
Loran frowned.
“How the hell should I know why?!” she exploded, instantly turning back around like an offended cat.
“My starting stats were just lower than everyone else’s! By one point! Why?! This is discrimination! It’s a system bug!”
Loran looked at her puffed-up expression.
At the indignation burning in those lilac-purple eyes.
And involuntarily thought of the absurd difference between 136 and 9.
“Could it not mean intelligence...” he said slowly.
“What if it means IQ?”
He had a strange feeling he was close to the truth.
Smack.
A crisp sound interrupted his thoughts.
Kiro’s palm landed squarely on the back of his head.
“What nonsense are you thinking about?” she scoffed, pulling her hand back and planting both hands on her hips.
“IQ? If I only had nine IQ points, do you think I’d still be capable of human conversation?”
She lifted her chin proudly.
“And even if it did mean IQ, so what? That just means I’m secretly a misunderstood genius.”
“Anyway,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him like an interrogator, “what about you? Stop stalling.”
“What’s your Intelligence stat?”
“One hundred and thirty-six.”
Silence.
“One... hundred...” she repeated slowly, voice trembling.
“How much?”
“One hundred and thirty-six,” Loran repeated patiently, perfectly calm.
“...”
Kiro went quiet.
This wasn’t a gap anymore.
This was evolutionary separation.
“Hah... haha...”
She let out a dry laugh.
“So that’s what this is...”
As though she had realized something.
Or perhaps understood absolutely nothing.
She took two steps back and plopped onto the grass, hugging her knees and burying her chin into them.
Only the back of her silver-haired head remained visible.
Loran turned his attention back to the status panel.
What exactly did this absurd Intelligence stat mean?
If it truly represented some form of “intelligence,” what use was it?
Could it let him poke the Tree Sentinel to death with one finger?
Negotiate with the Greater Will?
Probably not.
The 136 Intelligence felt utterly meaningless.
He certainly didn’t feel any smarter.
Just as he was about to move his attention away from the menu, something caught his eye at the very bottom of the interface.
Beneath the rows of resistances and damage negation numbers floated a faint line of text, nearly blending into the background.
Like a forgotten footnote.
Had he not instinctively searched for a close button, he might never have noticed it.
[Abnormal Intelligence Overflow Detected.]
[The system offers the following correction methods:]
[Option 1: Redistribution.]
Redistribute the excess 37 points beyond the maximum limit (99) evenly among all other base attributes.
[Option 2: Conversion.]
Convert the excess 37 Intelligence points into an unknown special ability.
[Note: This process is irreversible. Ability generation is highly random and may include, but is not limited to, beneficial effects, harmful curses, or unpredictable structural changes affecting the user and surrounding environment.]
[Risk Level: Unknown.]
Loran understood the difference instantly.
Option One—
The optimal solution.
His mental finger hovered over it.
He could practically feel the reassurance of power spreading evenly through his body.
Safe.
Calculable.
Reliable.
And yet—
His eyes refused to leave Option Two.
Conversion.
Unknown.
Unpredictable.
Risk.
The words radiated a strangely fatal attraction.
A primal impulse overwhelmed every rational calculation.
Maybe—
Just maybe—
The true gift of his absurd Intelligence wasn’t superior reasoning.
Maybe it was the willingness to gamble on the unknown.
A sulking “Wretch” curled up in the corner, obsessing over lost stat points.
A “smart person” still weighing pros and cons.
Or—
A gambler.
Not necessarily smarter.
Just braver.
He stopped hesitating.
The finger in his mind slammed decisively onto:
[Option 2: Conversion]
Bzzzz—
A vibration pierced straight through his soul.
The simple status panel vanished.
In its place—
A completely new interface unfolded.
A classic Japanese galgame UI.
At the top floated a pink lace-decorated banner written in elegant script:
【Romance In The Lands Between】
And directly in the center of his vision—
Above Kiro’s head—
Hovered a dialogue box.
The kind used to display character names and affection levels.
[Name: Kiro]
[Identity: Finger Maiden (Temporary)]
[Affection: -10]
[Status: Annoyed / Confused / Guarded]