The fog in his eyes cleared, revealing a dark room. His head was still resting on a soft set of thighs, and Lily’s sleepy yet worried face was looking at him. Their eyes met in that instant, and as her eyes widened in joy and surprise, Claud felt a pang in his heart.

“Lily,” he whispered, a luminous blue pattern settling into his skin.

The sorrow and pain of losing her — no, the Frozen Emperor’s sorrow and pain — had been ingrained into the very core of his being during the Second Tutorial. Now that he had returned to the real world, the way these emotions burst out directly took away his ability to breath, and for a few seconds, he could only gasp.

“Claud?” Panic flashed through her eyes for a brief moment, before a forced calm set in. “Take a deep breath. Don’t think about anything.”

Her hands rubbed the temples of his head, bringing him cool relief. His frenzied gasps slowed down a minute or so later, and the emotions that he had brought out of the Second Tutorial trickled away. Reaching out for her hand, he placed it on his chest and stilled his trembling heart, before looking at the notifications that had popped out.

[Tutorial complete. Mana Circuit Superimposition has reached 4.00. Authority has increased.]

[Your Mana Control Proficiency has increased to Master!]

[Your Presence Nullification has levelled up!]

[Having met the requirements, your passive skill, Mana Hub, has changed to Mana Locus!]

[You have learned the passive skill, Mastery of Permanence!]

[ has been completed.]

[Your skill, FiBoD:A??? has absorbed two Fragments of Fate and changed into FiBoD:O???.]

Claud looked at the deluge of notifications, before snuggling up to Lily, who was naturally bewildered by his sudden bout of clinginess. He held her in silence for a few minutes, before Lily finally broke the silence.

“Are you alright?” Lily asked, her voice gentle. “Tell me about everything that happened in the Second Tutorial.”

Claud took a moment to reorganise his thoughts. “I’m…just happy. You know, because you’re with me and everything.”

He sat up and hugged his knees. “The Second Tutorial generated a world that seemed like the future, two hundred years from now. In that future, I had turned insane, you had died, the rest of the Moon Lords were mostly killed, and humanity had been forced into a corner.”

“The future, huh.” Lily took a deep breath. “Do you want some drinks first? You’re sweating. It’ll help you organise your thoughts, and you’re definitely thirsty too.”

Claud nodded. With Lily’s assistance, he got up from the bed slowly, and then looked around the room. “How long did I take?”

“The Second Tutorial? Three hours.” Lily looked at him, and then threw her arms around his trembling frame. “But it seems like you’ve lived through a few days or so in that…dark future.”

“It’s not the future,” Claud replied. “I’ll never have that as my future, no matter what. Never. I’ll never let that happen.”

Lily nodded. “I believe you, so do calm down.”

“Ah.” Claud shook his head and felt the remaining fog in his head dissipate. “Sorry. It’s a bit hard for me to remain calm, since I still have the remnants of the Frozen Emperor’s personality in me. Having lived with that reservoir of sorrow of regret for a few days, it’s hard for me to remain calm right now.”

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He paused. “You can, however, hug me a bit more…”

“You’ve definitely returned to normal,” Lily concluded. “Come on, let’s get you a drink. Do you want some water? I also stored a few bottles of orange juice for you earlier, just in case you wanted some sweet after waiting up.”

“It’s an odd request, but can you make some soup?” Claud asked.

“Soup?” Lily tilted her head. “Like, uh, mushroom soup or something? We’ll have to wait for the morning or go downstairs.”

Claud didn’t want his reunion with Lily to be marred by outsiders — even if it only seemed like three hours to her — so he shook his head. “Water will do then. We can have soup later. I wonder if I’ll also get that nice, warm feeling…”

Lily tilted her head again. “So, what happened in there?”

“I’m not sure where to begin,” Claud muttered.

“From the start. Maybe you can shorten it or something. Like painting! Broad strokes, and then fill in the details later.” Lily pulled out a canteen of water and handed it to Claud. “But take a nice long swig first…are you sure you don’t want orange juice?”

Claud felt his mouth water. He hadn’t had any orange juice or fruit juice in the Second Tutorial — fruit trees and cold climates didn’t mix — and his mouth was beginning to water.

“I’ll feed it to you if you nod your head now.”

Claud promptly nodded, and Lily raised the small bottle to his lips.

“Say ahh…”

After ingesting the sweet, fruity mix, Claud shivered once and snuggled up to Lily, who simply held his hand and leaned on him again.

“Sorry for being this clingy,” Claud mumbled.

“It’s fine. I’ve always wanted you to rely on me more, you know.” Lily giggled. “The whole time, it feels like you’re protecting me. I wish I can be of more use, but my mana circuits aren’t growing at the same, intense rate as your own.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help with that one,” Claud admitted.

“You can’t,” Lily replied. “I’m not expecting you to help either, okay? I’m just happy that I can finally do something for you, as twisted as it might sound.”

“You’ve always been helping me the whole time.” Claud licked the last of the orange juice off his lips. “Otherwise, I would have been alone here, having escaped the Istrel Sovereignty on my own. You barged into my life and occupied a place in it. That, for me, is worth far more than you might think…”

He took a deep breath. “So, the Second Tutorial.”

Claud led Lily back to the bed and sat down on the edge. “To shorten it for you, I woke up as the future me, who was a true powerhouse. Really bad things happened around this time in that future, and you were killed. I went mad, created a coffin of ice and snow for your body, and shut myself in there for two centuries. In that two centuries, the war between the Moons, the Dark and the Coloured Gods escalated. Grandis was pretty much destroyed, the Seekers of Life — err, Moon Lords — perished as they tried to make it to the area around your coffin, and they established a city called Rimestar there.”

He took a deep breath. “Humanity had been finished, though. Rimestar was simply a cradle of death for them; it was a haven that sapped them of their fighting spirit. And in that two hundred years, where countless tragedies unfolded, I — now known as the Frozen Emperor — simply dreamed and dreamed, heedless to the many dangers facing the last of humanity. It was under such a setting that the Second Tutorial took place.”

Claud paused, took one look at Lily’s uncomprehending face, and then placed his hand on her cheek. Since the feeling of her soft skin on his hand delighted him, he immediately placed a second hand on her other cheek, before squishing her face gently.

Lily immediately obliged by puffing out her cheeks, but under that adorable expression, he could see her mind running through his words.

After some time, Lily cleared her throat. “I think I roughly get it, but you need to go into more detail. After all, in terms of a book, that entire experience could have spanned the entire first half and then some, right?”

“Alright, I’ll start on the first day…”

Claud talked about what he could remember from the Second Tutorial, while writing down a bunch of things that he had tried his hardest to learn. His memories of the tutorial were beginning to fade at an unnatural pace, especially the emotions and thoughts of the Frozen Emperor.

“Something wrong?” Lily asked. “You’re speeding up.”

“My memories seem to be fading rapidly,” Claud replied. “I still can remember the general settings of Rimestar, but the knowledge of the Frozen Emperor is beginning to vanish. I can’t seem to recall his inner thoughts and emotions now…or whatever’s left of them anyway.”

His hand continued to race through the document, penning down whatever he remembered as he continued to narrate his meeting with Risti and the state of Rimestar.

“Risti was the only one left, huh?” Lily muttered. “I wonder what she’d say if she learned about this.”

“She’ll probably be pleased, but the existence that the Risti in my tutorial had led wasn’t a nice one either,” Claud replied. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in the way she mentioned. Tired and fatigued, as if she was hollow…it’s hard to describe it, but I could vividly feel that she was on the verge of giving up on life at any moment.”

Lily let out a sigh. “I can only hope that this future is a fake one.”

“I’ll never let that future come to pass,” Claud replied. “Never.”