CHAPTER 63: FORCED REBOOT

The world froze for a second.

Eren felt it. It wasn’t just the wind, nor the change in temperature—it was as if the environment itself had held its breath.

The warning came in silence. It didn’t appear on the screen. It didn’t flash on the interface. It went straight to his mind.

As if the game had whispered in his ear.

[Link reset in progress...]

[Disconnecting emotional connections...]

[Reason: automatic correction | PATCH 2.7.9-A]

Eren shuddered.

In the blink of an eye, the familiar feeling of warmth and connection—that constant presence of his monsters, that shared breath, that invisible bond that kept him anchored—disappeared. As if they had been erased with the push of a button.

Kaela. Nyssa. Morwynn. Sylha.

All of them... gone.

The silence was immediate. And horrible.

"No..." he whispered.

He tried to access the interface. The bond tab now displayed a new field:

[Shadows of Bond: 3/3]

[Manual Summoning Required]

Three points. Three. For four companions. An arbitrary, cruel, calculated limitation. The system had rewritten the rules. Again.

"So this is how it’s going to be?" Eren said into the air. "You’re going to force me to choose?"

No answer.

There was no need.

The sky remained gray. The clouds did not move. But the world around him was different. It was like walking into a theater where all the lights had gone out at once—and he was the only actor who still remembered the old script.

He clenched his fists.

The screen flashed with a new option:

[Summon by Shadow]

His shadow stretched out beneath his feet. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t shaped by the ambient light — it was pulled from within, like a reflection torn from the soul.

Eren chose.

[Summon: Kaela]

[Cost: 1 Shadow of the Loop point]

[Confirm? Y/N]

He confirmed.

The shadow trembled. It grew. It cracked like a liquid surface. And then, she appeared.

Kaela burst from the darkness like an animal lightning bolt.

The ground cracked beneath her feet. Her amber eyes glowed with raw fury. She didn’t understand.

She didn’t remember. To her, it was as if she had been sealed away—as if someone had locked her will in a box and thrown it to the bottom of the sea.

The shadow at Eren’s feet shattered like liquid glass.

Kaela emerged from the dark crack with an explosion of energy and hatred—a wild animal torn from a nightmare. The ground shook beneath her feet as she landed. Her half-formed claws scratched the earth, and her amber eyes burned like embers, focusing on the only possible target: him.

"WHO DID THIS?!" she roared, her fangs exposed, her vertical pupils reduced to slits.

Many would have instinctively backed away.

Eren did not move.

He raised an eyebrow, adjusted the floating interface screen with a casual gesture, and watched the newly appeared tab with almost bored indifference.

[Shadows of Laço: 2/3]

[Emotional state: forced / unstable synchronization]

Kaela took a step forward, her muscles tense. Her voice trembled with indignation.

"You pulled me back as if I were some kind of spell! You sealed me in that place. Dark. Cold. Silent! Nothing! I could hear my own heart trying to convince me that time no longer existed!"

Eren muttered something inaudible, without taking his eyes off the menu. He did a quick mental calculation: 3 Shadow of the Lasso points per long combat would be unfeasible. He would need to prioritize roles. Kaela was a tank. Morwynn, a saboteur. Nyssa, support. Sylha, also a saboteur.

"REACT, DAMN IT!" Kaela shouted, her eyes flashing. "LOOK AT ME, EREN!"

He finally looked up. A direct, dry, precise gaze. But nothing on his face showed emotional involvement. No trace of guilt. No apology.

"You’re active now. That’s what matters," he said, already turning his gaze back to the screen.

Kaela froze. That hurt more than a thousand words.

Eren refocused on the new interface. Summoning through the shadow cost energy, but it also provided flexibility. He could activate monsters like cards, one by one, without having to keep the entire group active. Strategic. Restrictive. But, with planning, useful.

"It was a reboot," he commented, more to himself than to her. "Forced." The system reset the links and hid the command in an emotional subroutine. Nice. Almost organic.

"Reboot?" Kaela repeated, as if the word were poison on her tongue.

Eren didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the "Summoning Conditions" submenu. The restrictions were there, written in almost symbolic language:

[Minimum affinity required: 70%]

[Non-persistent physical presence: yes]

[Monster returns to shadow after 10 minutes of inactivity or emotional deviation.]

"Yeah. Of course they put that in too," he muttered, running his fingers over the "emotional persistence" option. "They want to force me to keep you spinning. Affection cycle by cooldown. That’s new."

Kaela moved closer, her steps slow. Her posture was now less aggressive—but more wounded. The kind of pain that cannot be resolved with a fight. She bent down, her hands still shaking.

"I was alone, Eren. In a void." I thought you had left me.

Nothing.

He was just testing shadow animations, summoning and canceling holograms of the next options.

Morwynn, Sylha, Nyssa. He tested the delay between one summon and another.

"Two seconds between calls. Hm. I can play with that if I isolate the synergy triggers..."

"Tsk," Kaela looked away, her eyes moist. "You don’t even care."

Silence.

Eren turned slowly toward her. Not with anger. Not with coldness. It was... focus. The absolute concentration of someone too busy trying to win to think about the people around them.

"Kaela. I summoned you because you’re the best option for direct containment." You’re the first to go because you have strategic value.

She looked at him, surprised.

He continued.

"I didn’t leave you in that void. I was left without you. The system cut the ties, not me. What I did now was a choice. A choice that cost me a point. I can’t waste that on drama."

Kaela clenched her fists.

"So that’s it? I’m a resource?"

"You’re my partner," he said firmly, "but in this game, everything has a cost. Emotion, time, decision.

I don’t have room to break now."

She clenched her teeth, swallowed what she wanted to say, and walked away with a sharp step. Her heart racing, her mind screaming, but... speechless.

Eren reopened the hidden map. The Core Guild had left subtle instructions—layers of symbols and poetic coordinates that, in practice, meant "go to the point where the world bends over itself." He was guided not by directions, but by sensations.

Kaela turned her face away.

"Tsk. Don’t leave me in that void again. Ever."

He opened the interface. There were two points left.

But before summoning another, he needed to move. Time was running out, and the place he had to go... was not something that would appear on the map. On the contrary.

The Guild The Core had given him coordinates in symbols. Words that did not exist in the common language of the game, but appeared as psychic impressions: "Where the sky recedes, and the stones resemble the bottom of the sea."

He searched for it.

And then he found it.

The hill ahead rose unremarkably, but the stones scattered on top... did not belong there. They were shaped like broken columns. Fossilized shells engraved in spirals. A star-shaped mark on the ground—six curved points, like waves frozen at high tide.

Kaela looked at him.

"Here?"

"That’s what the signs say," Eren replied.

He walked to the center of the stone star. The feeling there was... dense. As if the world had multiple layers. He knelt down, touched the ground, and murmured:

"I accept the invitation."

Nothing happened.

For three seconds.

And then, the ground shook.

Slightly, almost like a whispered response.

The stones turned—not physically, but symbolically. A fragment of the world was recoded. And a line on the ground opened as if an invisible brush had drawn a line in the air. From it descended a staircase made of murky light.

Eren looked at Kaela. She snorted, but said nothing.

They descended.

The staircase led to a corridor shrouded in crystal and living runes. Each step echoed with a different sound — not of stone, but of voices murmuring Eren’s name in languages he did not know. It was disturbing, but not threatening.

The headquarters of the Core.

Eren was about to face something beyond monsters, paladins, or even rival players.

Now he faced the game itself.

And he did so... alone.

At least until he summoned the next one.

But he hesitated.

Because every choice now came with a cost.

And the system loved to charge interest.