Last Shelter Online

Hiro didn't know what to do. The girl in his arms was sobbing and trembling, but he didn't know what to say to calm her down.

His feelings for Liberty were still the same. After all, she had a special place.

But what actually happened to her? Hiro had no clue at all.

"Libe, what happened? Are you okay?" Hiro was a little flustered. He felt as if he went back in time to when he had just met that girl. He couldn't understand her at all.

"I'm sorry, but you have to leave the game now."

The words she said stunned him. Was that so? Did Liberty already know that this world was just a game?

"What? Why? Stop apologizing, I don't even know what you're apologizing for."

Confused, he pulled Liberty's body away to look at her eye-to-eye.

The girl was a little startled when Hiro grabbed both of her hands a bit roughly.

Hiro didn't have the heart. When he looked at that beautiful face turn red and swollen, his chest felt tight.

Was he the one who made her cry like that?

"Everything we've been through, none of them are real. You and me, we aren't real."

Upon hearing this, Hiro's chest felt even tighter. It wasn't because of that swollen face this time, but the words that came out of the girl's lips.

"What? What do you mean?"

Liberty silently bit her lower lip until it reddened. Her eyes didn't blink as she looked straight back at the look of waiting for an explanation in Hiro's eyes.

"I can't. I can't explain."

The girl's voice became smaller and smaller. Hiro almost couldn't hear her.

In an attempt to break the ice, Hiro gently stroked Liberty's smooth long hair. He hoped that she would calm down and talk to him in a better way.

But she fell silent instead. Hiro could only hear her sobs.

Even so, she was no longer trembling like before.

"It's okay if you can't tell me anything. I'll find out about it myself."

"But Libe, I don't know what's in your mind right now. I don't know why you said that none of what we've been through is real, but for me, my feelings for you are more than real." Hiro gently moved Liberty's right hand to his chest and put it there, intending to show her that he was real. The heart in his chest was beating at a calm rhythm.

"See? I'm real. Everything I've done with you, they're all real. And every single one of them matters to me."

Hiro didn't know where those words came from, but the way he could say all those so smoothly made him, who had never experienced something like this before, feel strange. For the first time, he felt that he had truly changed. He began saying things he never did in a soft, gentle voice.

"Where are you going to start finding out?" Liberty mumbled without lifting her face to look at Hiro. Her eyes were fixed on her hands feeling Hiro's heartbeat, as if she was talking to it.

Hiro tilted his head. Liberty always managed to surprise him. He didn't expect her to ask such a question, and he certainly didn't have an answer in his mind at the moment.

But before he could say anything in response, Liberty continued to speak.

"Johnson Hope Hospital. Special 101 floor, VVIP Section, room number 1011."

Liberty lifted her face before she continued. She had released her hand from Hiro's hold and moved it to touch his face.

Hiro didn't move. He really missed warm moments like this.

"It's Monica. My cat's name," she said with a reluctant smile on her beautiful face.

Hiro needed some time to digest what Liberty just mentioned.

A hospital name?

A special room in a hospital?

Her cat's name?

While he was still trying to find the answer in his head, Liberty took a few steps back. A melancholic smile was still on her face.

"I have to go," she whispered as she took out a crystal-shaped item.

Hiro recognized the item.

A [Portkey Cyrstal], a rather expensive item that could teleport one individual no matter where they were. Of course, this didn't include dungeons.

"No, wait!"

He tried to grab Liberty, but the girl immediately disappeared from his sight without a trace. It was too late.

Hiro let out a long sigh.

"She hasn't even accepted my friend request yet," he muttered with disappointment.

"Kwak!"

"!?"

Hiro was startled by the voice that suddenly came from inside his cloak. The recent occurrences made him forget about the important thing that had decided to hide in his cloak in fear of explosion sounds since the beginning.

After feeling safe, the baby dragon finally came out. It flew in front of Hiro and tried to look straight into his eyes, as if it understood what he was going through.

"Kwak!"

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have forgotten about you like that." Hiro rubbed the baby dragon's head.

In the end, Hiro went down from the building that had become his shelter. Below, he could see about a dozen NPCs in a uniform he had never seen before. They all had the same face and posture like they were copy-pasted.

Even their weapons were the same, a magic staff shaped like a ballpoint pen.

Out of curiosity, Hiro watched the scene from the corner of the city to find out about the identity of those NPCs in uniform and what they were doing there.

[NPC System Cleaner]

At that moment, the team of NPCs simultaneously said one word.

"Restart."

Light shone from the end of the magic staff they pointed at the city square of Eternity Kingdom. Except for the fountain where the seven suspected players stopped, everything had been destroyed.

The light flew leaving the end of the identical NPCs' magic staffs and united in the air to form a large light orb in the air. In the next second, the previously yellowish light turned light blue and rose in the air right above the center of the city square, the spot where Yuujin appeared just several moments ago.

Without a sound, the light orb exploded into crystal shards. The shards then rained on the destroyed area and slowly rearranged it, moving everything there as if time was being reverted to before the city square was blown up.

Hiro was dumbfounded when he saw this scene. It felt like he was watching a clip from a magic-themed movie famous in the 2000s. It seemed so easy to revert everything to its initial state.