I woke in bed, not screaming in agony, which was a good sign.

There were a lot of things I could potentially do, such as bask in the warmth of Sophia's embrace for hours to avoid having to go back to that god-forsaken dungeon, but I first and foremost wanted to see if wasting time in bed actually caused any problems. Perhaps if I ran straight to the audience chamber I would be able to rescue the queen in time or something, though I doubted it.

I stroked Sophia's arm then licked her nose. She awoke with a start, then did her flat stare, and as per my pre-established plan, I leaned forward to kiss her once again. It was just as wonderful as last time, though this time I broke it short a lot faster so as to not risk actually spending hours enveloped by the softness of her elvish lips. She gave me the same intent, loving gaze as she had before.

"Sophia..." I whispered as romantically as I could. She cocked her head slightly; not willing to speak, but willing to listen. "Why is it that a spell called Dominate Beast, meant for animals, created a womb tattoo that glows pink when you're aroused? Aren't the implications of that kind of fucked up when you think about it?"

She scowled and pushed me away so she could get out of bed. Once up, she began stripping to get changed just like yesterday. I stood up as well; waiting for her to offer up her panties, and going through that whole song and dance again, would be a huge delay. I walked to my dresser for clothes, grabbing Sophia's bubble butt along the way and giving it a squeeze just for fun. It was delightfully springy, the kind of ass I could easily squeeze forever and never get tired of the sensation. She let out a tiny squeal and jumped, but quickly settled back down, pouting.

I hurriedly got dressed, picked up her wet panties before she could, and tossed them into the trash. She frowned at that, but I didn't want to risk her trying to enact the ritual even when I was up and about. There was a silent tension between us the whole time; Sophia with her dogged resistance to speaking, and me actually moving around. I was a bit relieved to see her watching me out of the corner of her eye as I got changed as well; there was mutual ogling here, the basis of any good relationship, though she was too proud to openly act on her desires.

Which was the basis of her morning stare ritual, of course. She wanted a good morning kiss, probably unbearably so, but she would absolutely not act on that desire herself. It was all she could to linger with a stare and give me the opportunity to kiss her. "I-It's not like I wanted to kiss you or anything, idiot! I-I was just being nice by kissing you back!" Perfect plausible deniability. Putting aside the whole "sneaking into bed" thing. Honestly, it was best not to question elf logic too much.

Once I was in my armor and she was in her green outfit, off we went. She stuck with me while I went to Duran, instead of going to the dining hall, but we didn't say much. The silence of the morning was kind of lingering around us, and as I have said, I was no expert roleplaying. I used the opportunity to idly check my stats, ignoring Sophia's weird look when I muttered "Check status." under my breath.

General Information Attributes Skills Name Malcador Name Value Name Level Species Human STR 1723 Sex 100 Sex Male DEX 1148 One-Handed Blades 79 Age 18 AGI 1240 Athletics 68 Class Hero (Level 17) END 965 Dodging 48 HP 1930/1930 (9.65/sec) INT 1332 Natural 45 MP 2664/2664 (+13.32/sec) WIS 1332 (more...)

Oh lord have mercy. Look at these fucking numbers. Holy shit. I warned of this moment way back at the start, as soon as I realized that levels gave exponential growth, and now it was all coming to head. Every level up boosted my attributes by 10%, with the base value of the attributes being buffed each time I got a skill milestone, which led to doubling every 7-8 levels. There were literally exponents involved: base * (1.1 ^ lev-1). At this point, a single level up would earn me... Yeah, 172 points in STR, which is way more than I even started with. This leveling up system was absurd. Literally built for making someone OP. Imagine this in an actual video game; it would be easy as hell.

Experimentally, I punched a wall with my bare fist. The stone shattered beneath my blow and formed a crater. My bones were OK.

Skill Up! Unarmed Combat Level 6!

I ignored the balking of Sophia and the dwarves to dramatically clench and unclench my fist in front of the crater. Whatever I had been at the start, I felt I was rapidly leaving the realm of what normal humans could do. Then again, I hadn't seen the peak of what humanity could offer, since we left the Penndrack Kingdom without much sightseeing, but still. This felt abnormal. Not that I was going to complain. I would presumably be needing all this and more when we got the Beastkin Empire.

We kept walking. The calculating look in Sophia's eyes told me she was mentally going through all the same chains of logic that the author of "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" had. I was pretty sure that wouldn't apply here, but I could understand her worry. I too would be afraid about sucking the dick of someone who could cum so hard the force of the ejaculation would pierce my skull and splatter the wall behind me with both brains and cum, a suitable metaphor but no less grisly for it.

There weren't as many dwarves running around, but there were some, and I found Duran shouting his orders by the throne room again. It seemed highly unlikely now that my autosave was before the kidnapping, which was no big twist. Fate wasn't about to let me avoid conquering the dungeon of my dreams, and I was fine with that. I had numbers to raise.

"Ho there," I said, waving. Duran gestured me over like before.

"Malcador! Jus' the man I wanted ta see. Ye need to get goin', and fast."

"Yup. I heard all about the situation. Got any maps for me?"

"That I do. Here ye are," he said, handing me the maps. I looked over the map of the first floor; it was the same one as the last loop, of course, and therefore wrong. "They should help get ya to the bottom as fast as ye can. Ye gotta be careful, though. Dungeon walls be ever shiftin'. These maps might be out of date as soon as tomorrow."

"Could they be out of date already?"

"Eh? Could be. We got these made jus' the other day, though. It'd be a mighty bad sign if the dungeon was changin' already."

"Alright." Things were mighty bad, then.

I left Duran to his work again and swiftly headed to the dining hall with Sophia. We were on a strict time limit here, and there wasn't much point dilly-dallying around the palace when I had a dungeon to bust. Just had to eat breakfast with the others and we could be gone.

Rose and Hilda were already at the table, having started eating but not finished. Sophia grabbed some food for ourselves and sat down too.

"I see you two are arriving together," Rose observed.

"Hmph!" Sophia said, tilting her head up. "He would get lost without me leading him around. Humans are just too dumb to be left on their own."

"Yeah," I nodded, then tossed Rose the maps. "Some maps of the first and second from Duran. The first one is wrong."

She picked them up and frowned. "How do you know?"

I spun a circle with my finger in the air. The universal symbol for time looping.

"What?" she asked.

"Time loop," I said, the universal grammar for conveying that a time loop was involved.

"Ah." She looked at the map again. "Is it sabotage, then...?"

A reasonable first assumption, but no. Dungeons were fickle beasts. "Nah. The dungeon just shifts a lot. Every couple of days, even. But it doesn't matter. I know where the switches and stairs actually are."

"Ah. The fruits of our past labor, I suppose."

"Correct. It was extremely unpleasant and we had to deal with literally one hundred or so encounters with monsters. I got quite a bit stronger, though. Check it." I stomped my foot on the ground for dramatic effect, hoping to cause a crater, but I forgot this was a multi-floored palace. My foot sunk clean through the ground, bending the stone floor beneath me and nearly caving in entirely. The table slid towards me, and as I stopped it from crashing into me with a hand, I heard grunts from below as rubble hit innocent dwarves going about their business.

Skill Up! Unarmed Combat Level 7!

"Oops," I said.

Rose was giving me an exasperated look, whereas Hilda was attempting to use the now-slanted table and bench as an excuse to fall over me. I dodged and continued what I was saying. Somehow, her lovestruck antics came off a lot differently when she was wearing a badass necromancer outfit. She hadn't quite adjusted to playing the part of a cool villainess, I supposed.

"So yeah, lots of combat, which you guys won't have to deal with, thanks to me. You're welcome," I said, while pulling my leg out of the hole and marveling at the dwarven architecture. A lesser ceiling/floor would have collapsed entirely from that.

"How did you not learn your lesson the first time?" Sophia complained. She had a point, but please let me just pretend that never happened.

We finished eating and left for the elevator as per the initial plan. I had been feeling pretty good since waking up, but felt my mood sink along with the elevator. The dungeon was just... really, really drab. I had kind of been expecting a funhouse of crazy gimmicks, but it seemed more designed around wasting time and making everyone inside it miserable than anything. Hopefully floor two would be better, but judging by how Rose hesitated to even mention what was actually there, I somehow doubted that.

One walk through a dark tunnel later and we arrived at the entrance to Malgreed. I tossed the doors open for dramatic effect and stepped inside.

"Just remember: There's an encounter at every junction. The switches are on the second room of the first row, the ninth room of the second row, and the fourth room of the third row. Then the stairway out is the first room on the fifth row. From what I can tell, the minimum number of encounters to get out of here is eighteen, but don't get mad if I'm missing a more obvious problem. I lack the natural insight of slugs recreating subway systems through chasing after food."

The team nodded, hopefully to reflect their understanding of the plan and not to agree I lacked slug-like insight. Did they even know what subway systems were? Whatever.

We got a move on, and while Hilda and Sophia were just as excited to be fighting as they had been last loop, I remembered the monotony. I graciously saved Hilda from having her armor comically eaten away by a slime, and did Sophia the favor of not laughing when she failed yet again to pierce both eyes of a monster at once. Honestly, that was more insurance than anything, because I didn't want her to pop up randomly several years from now and shoot out both my eyes like "Haha bitch I finally learned how to do it!" That would definitely be a Sophia thing to do. Though maybe not to me, actually.

The switches were where I remembered them, which was nice. It had been a brutal, what, 12 hours or so on the first loop, but the floor was officially conquered for good. We only needed to do eighteen encounters to get through every time from now on. The staircase was there too, of course, and we began our climb down.

"So," I said, as we stood in front of the door to the next floor at the bottom of the stairway. "Give it to me straight. What fresh hell awaits us?"

Rose smiled. "A teleporter maze."

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."

I hated teleporter mazes. They were often used well in dungeons, and required creative thinking to solve, but it was impossible for me to keep all the teleporters and their locations in my head. I always tried to solve them without writing anything down, then hours later I would admit defeat, completely humiliated. Oh well.

"Let's get this over with," I said, and pushed through the door. We found ourselves standing in front of three teleporters squares, big enough to hold two people at most, it seemed. "What does the map say?"

Rose double-checked. "Leftmost."

"Well. I think it's probably a safe assumption that the map is wrong, but we might as well try what's marked, just to see. It's either that or blind guessing, after all. Agreed?" Everyone nodded. "Okay. Any details on how the maze works, Rose?"

"Yes. One of the three is correct, and the other two are wrong. Selecting the correct one will take you to a room of three more teleporters, of which only one is correct again. There are five layers of this before you arrive at the final teleporter."

"That's not so bad. It's, what..." I did the math in my head. "Fifteen tries until we get it, at worst?"

Rose shook her head. "There is no immediate punishment for selecting the wrong teleporter. A wrong teleporter will take you to a room of three more teleporters, all of which are wrong, and so on, until you reach the final layer, whereupon the three final wrong teleporters will whisk you away somewhere that is not the next floor."

"Where is that somewhere...?"

"Nobody knows. No dwarf has ever returned, and the wrong teleporter shut off for days afterwards."

I frowned. This wasn't even a maze. It was just... just... a lottery in teleporter form. There were 243 final teleporters here. You had a ((1/3) ^ 5)% of guessing right, and every other attempt would be a failure that gave no information whatsoever beyond that specific path being incorrect. You just had to play the 0.4% odds until it worked. There were no mazes to chart or puzzles to solve. It was just pure repetition.

"What the fuck?" I asked aloud. "Why is this dungeon so terrible?"

"Hold out hope for floor three, Malcador. Surely it will be better. And in any case, we should perhaps be glad the dungeon is being so kind to us. These are exponents we are dealing with, and double the amount of layers would take it from 243 possibilities to 59,049. To say nothing of how bad it would be with ten base teleporters instead of three."

"Yeah yeah, numbers numbers, blah blah. Are there teleporters that go backwards?"

"Yes. Excluding the incorrect final teleporters, that is."

"Alright." I turned to face the group as a whole. "Since there's only space for two, Rose and I will go together, since we're the two front fighters. We'll check the map's combination first, and if it's right, we'll come back within ten minutes or so. If not, uh, assume we're dead, I guess. Weep for me only briefly before facing the future."

"We'll come after you!" Hilda declared with fire in her eyes.

"Didn't you hear Rose? The teleporter shuts off. I don't think you'll be able to follow us if you wanted to."

Hilda frowned, and Sophia pouted, but there really wasn't much leeway here. There was only space for two on the teleporter, and if we got jumped on the other side of them, Rose and I were the ideal combo for fighting.

"Fine," Hilda said, and that settled that.

"Which way, Commander Rose?"

"Leftmost, as I said."

"Oh yeah."

We stepped onto the leftmost teleporter, and with a flash of light we arrived at a new room, identical to the last. The only difference was the sole teleporter on the front side of the room, presumably used for going backwards. From there we went in the following sequence: right, left, middle, and then, finally, middle again.

When the flash of light faded, we were in a cubical stone room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were featureless except for the stone bricks they were made of. We looked around.

"Well fuck," I said aloud.

"Well fuck indeed," Rose agreed.

Some quick investigation revealed that there really was nothing here. I tried punching the wall, but my fist actually broke this time, with the bones of my knuckles and such cracking to bits beneath my skin. Thankfully that gave me an opportunity to practice Restoration, but things were looking grim.

All in all, it took about an hour for us to accept our deaths. Help was not coming.

"So this is the end," Rose said.

"Kind of. Not really. I can just loop back."

She gave me a look. "Are you going to? Now?"

I sensed the fainted note of trepidation in her voice, but discussing it further would break a sacred oath sworn many moons ago.

"No. I can wait until Sauron forces me. Oh, that reminds me. I mentioned him before, but are you familiar with a tall figure wearing spiky black metal armor and wielding a terrifying looking mace? Fire for a face? And so on? You seemed to recognize him in the past loop."

Rose looked up thoughtfully. "Hmm. It is something of a generic description, but I suppose I might have thought it was the Demon King."

"The Demon King?"

"The one who fell into the Silence years ago. The Demon Realm has been quiet in his absence, or whatever is happening. We know little of the details."

"Are you telling me the Demon King himself comes to hit me with a mace if I try to linger in a doomed timeline? Why? Why would he ever do that?"

Rose shrugged. "I am not saying it is him, only that it suits the classic description of a Demon King. Perhaps I was so struck by his black armor that I immediately found it the only plausible answer."

"Okay. I'll keep it in mind."

The conversation trailed off, and we stewed in silence for a bit. Rose paced, I daydreamed, and overall, a fairly morose air blanketed us, weighing us down. Maybe it was the morose atmosphere that encouraged me to ask the question I had failed to ask for so long.

"Rose," I called. She looked at me.

"Yes?"

"I have a pretty dumb question about something that happened a long time ago, but it's been gnawing at me. Mind if I ask?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Go ahead, of course. Far be it from me to discourage open communication."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "Back before we arrived at Koh'rin, when we bathed in the pond together, why did you make me join you and Hilda? Were you trying to acclimate me to having a harem by getting me used to being around multiple naked women at once?"

The air froze. There it was. The epic Plan I had deduced in the pond. To me, Rose's actions only made sense if she knew I wasn't good around girls, and wanted me to get used to having multiple girls lusting after me at once. All Heroes were womanizers, and she knew it. She knew she had to mold me into a proper Hero so I could Unite the Five. Her inoculation had actually paid off, since I was prepared for the insane elves in part thanks to her forcefulness and seeing both her and Hilda nude up close, but still. I wanted to ask to be sure.

Rose's eyes widened. There was a pause, and then she threw her head back and laughed. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It turned into more of a cackle, and soon she was doubling over, laughing until she could barely breathe. I stood up, blinking in surprise. That had not been the reaction I was expecting, at all. Rose? The Rose? Cackling like a madwoman? What?

Eventually, she caught her breath. She wiped a tear from her eye and looked at me. "That is the funniest thing you could have ever asked me, Malcador. I am well and truly stunned."

"Er... Was it wrong, then?"

"Yes, and in the most hilarious way. Good Goddess, Malcador. It is the exact opposite. I was trying to acclimate myself to you having a harem," she said with another laugh.

Uh... What?

"You were... Huh? You were trying to acclimate yourself to the harem? I don't understand," I said. I truly was at a complete loss.

Rose looked me over, then laughed. "Fuck it, I suppose. I am dead anyway. I might as well sabotage my alternative self."

"Hey!" I said, pointing. "You said you didn't think it was murder. And we vowed to never talk about it again!"

"Well gee, Malcador, I apologize for not remembering that vow, but the memory was wiped clean out of my head! If this is even the same head!" Rose shouted. I faltered. Rose rarely ever shouted, and it was always intimidating when she did.

There was pause. Rose shook her head.

"Anyway. As I said, I will explain. What else are we to do while I wait to die?"

She looked up at the ceiling, collected herself, then began.

"It all began the moment I saw you. At the time you were much less impressive looking, but you still wore the symbol of the Heir, and effortlessly used magic while wielding a blade. A quick test all but confirmed my suspicions, and within seemingly moments we were fighting side by side like we had known each other our entire lives, slaying a troll together that every other man in the army would flee from at sight. I felt the tingle of destiny in the air, and something deep inside me told me that I was one of the Five, and that the Meditator had awoken on his field to save my life. For millennia we wondered the meaning behind the statue, and it turned out that all along, it was there to save me in my time of need. Me! Our meeting was millennia in the making, and I felt that in my very soul."

She paused, then continued. "It is important to understand that almost every man I have met in life has been terrible. They either belittled me for being a woman despite my achievements as a paladin, or they saw me as only a pretty face to try to woo into bed. I had to question whether all men were spineless cowards, or if I just happened to have horrible luck. And then you came along, breaking the mold and proving yourself courageous, strong, and above all else, truthful."

"Truthful...?" I asked.

She laughed. "I will perhaps regret this, but look. Do you know what this is?" She held up her palm and pointed at a ring. "It is an ancient Penndrack artifact, created by a powerful court Mystic. It is enchanted with a permanently active Lie Detection spell, and I have worn it on my person since almost birth. I live in a sea of blue and red, Malcador, and men speak fluently with both. The words of those who tried wooing me were painted red as if they were vomiting blood, and it was all I could do to not strike them down as their false praise and flattery fouled my boots. In contrast, the words of those who belittled me shone blue as the sky, a constant reminder that their bigotry was as sincere as anything else in their lives. They viewed me as beneath them, they truly did, and they made no effort to hide this fact."

I blinked as the realization hit. That was why she had been so quick to kill me when I lied about being a soldier in the early loops. That was why my... wait. Wait. Is this all building up to...?

"When I interrogated you before leaving, I had already resolved that you and I would be romantically bound in some way. You passed the tests, I was one of the Five, you were the Heir of the World, and that is simply how fate works. I was largely unmoved by this fact. You were interesting, but not much more." She sighed. "And then the road trip began. You became more attractive before my very eyes, and for all your irony, I have never seen more blue come out of a man's mouth. Time and time again you spoke words of blue that struck a chord with my very heart. Shall I recount them? It is quite easy, since each moment is burned in my memory, and I can recall each with ease."

"I..."

"First, you called me stunningly attractive, and attractively deadly, with no deceitful intent whatsoever. Call me shallow, perhaps, but an increasingly attractive legendary hero honestly saying he found me attractive and my combat abilities part of that attractiveness was heartwarming. Second, I goaded you by intentionally hitting you with a sword, to see if your prior claim was a bluff after all, but you only doubled down. You said that proficiency in combat and, in turn, assertiveness, was exactly what you liked to see in a woman. Your words were blue and true, though as of late I have begun to wonder if you like a lack of assertiveness just as much. Third, after a sparring match, when I was feeling sweaty and incredibly self-conscious of myself, you inhaled my scent and smiled. It made you happy, and you even compared it to roses with some surprisingly quick thinking. I felt like a fool for ever being self-conscious, and in that moment, it struck me that you truly would accept me for who I was, even at my worst. Even when I felt I was at my worst, and unbearable to even be around. And that," she said, "is when I started to lose my mind."

This was wrong. This was wrong. She shouldn't be saying this. I shouldn't listen.

But I have to.

"Thoughts of you came unbidden to me at all times. The three mentioned moments were burned well in my memory, and I found myself addicted to simply recalling them, allowing the warmth to spread through me as if they had just happened. I could not stop thinking about you if I wanted to. The warmth was too powerful, too lovely, too addicting. And with it, came jealousy. Jealousy for Hilda, and jealousy for the Four yet to join our party. My budding love for you was as strong as my urge to eliminate all those who would threaten it. I wanted to cut down every woman who approached you. I wanted to slit Hilda's throat for daring to slip into your tent. I wanted to take you to Penndrack Castle and make you my king, mine alone, forevermore. I wanted you to look at only me, for I knew I would only ever be able to look at you. I wanted to chain you down and stop you from ever fulfilling your destiny, because it was a destiny that would make you less mine. You were simply too large for even a single princess to make her own. It would take Five."

I took a step back. Horror flashed across my face as realization struck.

"I made you bathe with us so I could adjust to seeing you ogle Hilda without being overwhelmed by the urge to kill her! And, in the future, other women as well. I took up meditation more and more so I could focus on finding peace within myself. Thoughts that did not have to do with you. Thoughts that did not compel me to seek your company or kill those who would deny me it. As time passed, I grew more used to the compulsions, and more used to containing the urges. I grew more used to the unbidden thoughts of you. I even came to appreciate the situation, quite fervently, for the warmth my memories of you provided was all-consuming. There was simply nothing in life comparable. Love, I would say. It was love, and a life with love is incomparable to life without. Regardless of how difficult it was for me, I would never have dreamed of ever going back. And then..."

"And then?" I breathed, terrified. I knew what was coming next. I didn't want to hear it. But I had to.

"And then it intensified. The fourth memory of mine is when we discussed why we did not bring an army to Koh'rin. I explained my reasoning, expecting to be mocked, but you admitted your fault and praised my intellectual reasoning. That had never happened to me before. My expectations were completely shattered. Perhaps they were low expectations, but they were my expectations nonetheless. It is such a rarity for someone to admit they are wrong, and for that, my love intensified. I ceased to hesitate to call it love, for I could not fathom what else such warmth could be. And it was just as I embraced it as love that you returned the feeling: You said you loved me. Certainly, it was with a humorous tone, calling me a frosty bitch, but my ring left no doubt as to your intent. You loved me, frosty bitch and all, and I loved you. I felt my feelings explode, and my defenses fell. I recall stammering like a girl, and unveiling the feelings of warmth to you. In retrospect, that was almost as embarrassing as this speech to you is. By that point, you were stunningly attractive on top of everything, and I felt that all was right in the world. Our bond was strengthening, even as time itself conspired against us, and things seemed to be going well. Little did I know the consequences of the explosion."

"Consequences?"

Rose slammed a fist against the wall, so hard I could hear her bones crack. "The fucking elves! If thoughts of murder had come unbidden before, they were perhaps all I had during those days in Koh'rin. I was losing you to them. My mind was a swirl of darkness and love, alternating between basking in the warmth of about our past moments and fantasizing about murdering every fucking elf in Koh'rin. I was struggling to think of anything else. If I let my attention wander for an instant, it was back to you, or back to them. How easy it would have been to slit Hilda's throat. How clearly fated we were to be together forever. How easy it would have been to stab Sophia to death. How muscular and handsome you had become. How easy it would have been to break that dark elf's neck. How warm your smile was now. It was maddening." Rose cradled her head with her broken, bloody hand. "Maddening. I had to intensify my meditating to remain in control. To think that stronger love would be so maddening, yet so intoxicating. It felt like I was losing control of myself. But I wanted to lose control, because loving you was so warm, and so right. If only it weren't for those FUCKING ELVES!" She slammed her fist against the wall again. The pain must have been agonizing, but she didn't care.

I froze. I shouldn't have asked. I shouldn't have asked. But I had asked.

And now I had to face the question I had been trying to avoid.

I had to face it.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the love or the love point?

Were love points reflecting their love for me, or were the love points forcing them to love me?

I balked. The thought was staggering. If it were the latter...

No.

I shook the thought out of my head. It just wasn't true. It wouldn't make any sense. Rose had explained it herself. She had given reasons for each love point. She explained what it meant to her. The love came first. It had to come first. It wouldn't work otherwise. Love points would happen at random, or something. I... There was nothing I could do but ask Rose what she thought.

"Rose," I called, nervously.

She looked up, blood streaming from her hand. "Yes?" she asked, calmly.

"Do you consider... I mean... Do you think of the love you feel as your own? Do those memories... do they really mean something to you, as a person?"

Rose gave me a confused look. "Whose love would it be if not mine? And yes, of course they do. They mean everything to me, because I am me."

"You don't feel like the love is being forced onto you?"

She laughed, finally getting it. "Hah! Oh, no. It is so maddening because it comes from within. It is so maddening because I know it's what I want more than anything. The feelings would not be maddening if they were not my own. If it were from the outside, it would not even be a battle. I would just reject them outright."

That was comforting, at least. But... Was it a final answer? Would there ever be a final answer?

I stood there, looking at Rose's bloody hand for a bit, then steeled my resolve. My options were limited here. But it was the best I could do.

I walked up to Rose, got on my knees, and clasped her hands between mine. Her blood trickled down and dropped onto my knees, but I kept her hands within mine. "Rose, I don't know if what you're feeling is love, or something else. But I do know that others have felt what you're feeling, and they handled it with far less grace than you did. I don't even know what to say, Rose. I admire your strength of spirit and mind more than I could ever express. You are a diamond in the rough. You are pearls before swine. In a crazy, bizarre world of sluts, you put everything you had into staying reasonable, no matter how agonizing it was. And for that, I love you. I love you in a way beyond words. I can never accurately express the love I feel for you right now. But know that you are irreplaceable to me. You are the light of my life, and I hope our future is as bright as it can be."

It was a lame speech, maybe, but it was how I felt. Rose had told me how she felt. How else could I respond but telling her how I felt? That was what communication came down to, in the end. Being honest with others, and trusting them to be honest. Telling her tha—

Love Point Gained! Rosalyn +2

Milestone Reached! Infatuation has become Obsession!

The bond between your souls has strengthened even further.

Oh shit.

Rose's entire body stiffened, and her face froze in a half-smile half-frown. She shook in place before me, body still stiff, as if she were restraining herself from the urge to rip off her clothes and throw herself at me. For thirty seconds she stood there, unmoving, unspeaking, doing nothing but trembling in place.

Eventually, she exhaled deeply, and was back in control.

"I rather like you myself, Malcador," she said with a smile.

We had sat together on the floor, backs to the wall. I had my arm wrapped around her, and she was resting her head on my shoulder. We both let the silence linger as we mulled over our thoughts.

The nature of love has alluded humanity since the beginning of history. It is more than a word and more than a concept; it is a force that has influenced us for as long as we've been alive, but we still can't measure it. We can't define it accurately. It's something beyond us, really; it's something beyond our senses and perception. Kant would describe it as a noumenon, something which exists independently of human sense and perception. The realm of love is firmly within the realm of metaphysics, and as Kant describes in his seminal work the Critique of Pure Reason:

Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason. [...] The battlefield of these endless controversies is called metaphysics. - Immanuel Kant

And indeed it is a battlefield, for we are so loathe to admit our inadequacies. But whether we admit it or not, human reason is doomed by its nature to tackle questions which it cannot answer or dismiss, and the nature of love is one such question. To try to tackle love one must enter the endlessly controversial field of metaphysics, and it was for this reason that, as I stared ahead at the wall, I mourned the limits of my human faculty.

At the end of the day, we can never know for sure what other people feel, just as they cannot know what we feel. We communicate through use of language games by relying on public conceptions of terms, but language is limited, and the limits of language are the limits of our world. We can never peer into the metaphysical realm in which love exists and get a reasonable answer once and for all. I would never be able to peer into Rose's soul and divine the nature of her love. Back on Earth, I had doubted love existed at all. But that was foolish. The problem was not whether love existed or not, for it obviously did in the minds of so many. The problem was accepting that it is beyond us. That everyone, perhaps, has their own conception of and relationship with love. To rely on scientific reason in this matter would be to smugly reference brain chemicals and proceed to lead a confused, unfulfilling life, for the proper question has not been answered, and as far as we can tell from millennia of philosophy, may never be answered.

And so I tossed Pure Reason aside, as Kant did centuries before me. I loved Rose. I felt it with all my heart and being. She loved me, too. She felt it with all her heart and being. I could not confirm that for myself. I could not verify it. But she told me with words and actions, the only feeble means of communication we humans have, and to reject her statements would be to reject any hope of us ever understanding each other. It all comes back to belief. It always comes back to belief in one another. Love is formed not when it is measured and the proper chemicals have stimulated the brain. Love is formed when two people believe and accept they are in love, whatever that might mean for them.

Did the love points come first? I don't care.

Was there brainwashing? I don't care.

Was the love real and true in a universal sense? I don't care.

Those were all questions without answers, much like love back on Earth was founded on questions without answers.

The only way to survive was to transcend the physical and transcend reason, embracing the gift of transcendental idealism afforded to us by our conscious minds. The only way to truly love was to accept that these questions didn't have answers, and love anyway. Maybe, on Earth, our brain chemicals brainwashed us. Maybe our evolved monkey bodies tricked us into loving attractive mates so we would breed with them. Maybe we loved fat asses and huge tits because our evil monkey bodies tricked us into thinking they indicated better mates. Did it matter? Should I burn my porno collection because the feelings weren't pure and genuine, they were the manipulations of evil monkeys all along? No. Kant would never forgive me if I did that.

I love fat asses, and I cannot lie.

The noumenon is beyond me, and I can do naught but try.

"I wonder if you look so perfect to everyone," Rose murmured as she rested her head against my shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"It's something that has been on my mind. At this point, it is safe to say that your appearance suits my tastes exactly. I could not even fathom a more attractive man if I tried, which demands the question: are my tastes generic as all hell, or were you made for me? Did the world shape you to be my perfect man?"

"Hah. Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you."

She smiled. "Love is more terrifying than I thought, Malcador. I feel my own love, the burning passion seething in my heart, but I can only dream of what you feel for me. It is terrifying to think that I might be alone."

I took her hand and rested it on my rippling chest muscles, such that she could feel my beating heart. "Just feel my heart, Rose. Each pump is a thought of you, and you can feel it with your own hand."

Rose fell silent as she paused to feel my heart. Badump. Badump. Badump.

"I do feel it," she said finally.

"Then what is there to be afraid of?"

It was a question both for her, and for me.

What was there to be afraid of?

We could feel each other's warmth. We didn't understand it. The true warmth, on the inside, came from something beyond us. But we could feel our hearts. We could feel the pumping. We could see each other, and communicate.

What more could we ask for? Why be afraid when we had so much?

Rose was not being brainwashed. The love points did not come first. She told me such, and I believed it.

I was not being brainwashed. My love for Rose came first. I told her such, and she believed it.

After a moment, Rose lifted her hand. She gripped the lie-detecting ring on her finger, pulled it off, and threw it to the other side of the room. The symbolic weight was staggering.

She looked into my eyes. I looked into hers. We leaned forward for a kiss. Our lips touched. Somewhere, a volcano exploded. A baby dragon was born, and an elder dragon died. A bottle of wine was opened with aplomb. A star exploded. None of this mattered or was relevant. But one thing was for certain. We were in love.