Aria kept her face buried in his chest, crying, and Zilu clung to his arm with red eyes and trembling ears.

"I really am fine," repeated Mark in a softer tone. "I just need some water and something to eat."

Then Aria lifted her face from Mark’s chest, revealing how tears still ran down her cheeks.

"Master..." she said with a broken voice. "You were unconscious for a week."

"...What?"

Mark fell silent.

’Well... that explains why I feel like a truck ran me over,’ he thought, looking at his own hands. ’And also why they’re so affected.’

Because one thing was falling asleep for a couple of hours and something completely different was being unconscious for seven days without showing any signs of life.

Then he looked at Aria, who still had puffy eyes from crying so much, and then at Zilu, who looked at him with tears still accumulating at the edges of her eyes. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"I’m sorry for scaring you all like that," said Mark in a soft tone, putting on a smile.

Aria looked at him for a second and then began to gently hit him in the chest with her fists.

"You idiot Master!" she said between hits that had no strength behind them. "Idiot, idiot, idiot!"

"Aria—"

"You had us worried to death!" she continued without stopping. "Even more dead than we already are!"

"Aria... you’re hitting me."

"These are love taps!" she said between sobs.

Mark let her continue hitting him because honestly it didn’t hurt and because he knew she needed to vent. Zilu, for her part, gripped Mark’s arm tighter and looked at him with a serious expression.

"Don’t you dare put us through something like this ever again, Master," said Zilu in a voice that tried to sound firm but trembled on the last syllables.

"I’ll do my best," responded Mark with a small laugh.

"It’s not ’I’ll do my best’..." insisted Zilu. "It’s ’I won’t.’"

"Okay, ’I won’t,’ are you happy?" he answered without losing the smile on his face.

"...Yes."

Then outside the house, footsteps could be heard approaching rapidly toward them.

"What happened?!" Ely’s voice came first, followed by the sound of the door opening forcefully for the second time. "Why all the commotion?! Did something happen to the Master—?!"

Ely stopped dead in the doorway and behind her appeared Alice, Rose, and Yuki, each peeking over or around Ely to see what was going on.

Upon looking inside the house, they saw Mark sitting on the bed while Aria hit his chest and Zilu clung to his arm.

"MASTER!" they all screamed in unison.

And in just a few seconds Mark already had five women on top of him.

The next few minutes were a chaos of hugs, tears, affectionate reproaches, and questions overlapping each other without letting Mark answer any of them.

"How do you feel?!"

"Does anything hurt?!"

"Are you okay?!"

Mark endured it all patiently, answering what he could and waiting for the emotional storm to calm down on its own. And after a while, when the tears dried up and the hugs loosened, the group finally settled around the bed with somewhat more calm.

Ely was the first to speak again in a more relaxed tone.

"Master," she said, looking at him with disbelief. "You really don’t remember anything that happened?"

Mark took a bite from an apple he had picked up from the floor, one of the ones that had fallen from Aria when she entered, and chewed while thinking.

"No..." he answered, still chewing and with his mouth half full. "The last thing I clearly remember... is the fight with the guy in the white suit... and after that everything becomes blurry."

"I see..."

Both Ely and the others fell silent upon hearing their master’s account, but that silence didn’t last long.

"And speaking of which, where are we?" asked Mark, looking around.

Alice, who was leaning near the window, was the first to respond.

"After the fight and you losing consciousness, we needed a safe place for you to recover," she explained. "So Zilu talked to the people in the village and managed to get them to lend us this house."

"Really?" asked Mark, turning to look at Zilu.

Zilu quickly waved her hands in front of her.

"I-I didn’t really do much," she said, her cheeks slightly colored. "The village people were more than grateful to us after you took care of that psychopath, so when I asked for their help they didn’t hesitate for a second."

"Thang you," responded Mark with his mouth full of bread.

"Master, could you not talk with your mouth full?" said Aria, looking at him with a grimace.

Mark swallowed.

"I understand," he repeated, grabbing another piece of bread that Zilu was offering him. "Thank you."

"Y-you don’t have to thank me, Master," responded Zilu.

Rose, who had been sitting silently next to him until that moment, decided to speak.

"Master," she said in a tone that was more serious than the others’. "Are you sure you don’t feel strange?"

Mark looked at her somewhat confused while chewing.

"Hmmmm, no? Why do you ask?"

"It’s just that..." said Rose in a cautious tone. "Since all that happened, your magical signature has been somewhat... different."

"Different in what sense?"

"I wouldn’t know how to explain it exactly," she said, frowning slightly. "It’s like it’s the same but with something more on top of it."

Mark stopped chewing for a moment and remained thinking.

"Apart from hunger and thirst..." he said, taking the glass of water that Yuki was passing him without him asking for it. "I really don’t feel different."

He took a long sip of water when suddenly he remembered the error message and the new appearance of his interface.

"Wait..." said Mark, lowering the glass. "I think I know what you mean."

"You do?" said Rose, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes... Let me show you something," he said as he raised a hand in front of him to open his interface.

The screen appeared instantly, causing the golden and ornate interface from Eternal Conquest Online to deploy in the air before him, with its categories perfectly organized shining with a soft light.

[User Profile]

[Skills]

[Equipment]

[Inventory]

[Quests]

Upon seeing the interface, all those present moved closer to Mark to see it better.

"Master," said Ely, looking at the screen with very wide eyes. "What is that?"

"It’s something like an organizer I have for being a reincarnate," Mark explained. "Here I can see my skills, my equipment, my stats and all those things."

"Did you always have that?" asked Alice.

"Yes, but it didn’t look like this before," said Mark, looking at the interface in front of him. "Before it was much simpler."

"Wow..." said Rose, moving until she was right behind him, looking at the screen over his shoulder. "This is quite convenient, Master."

Mark nodded and extended his hand toward the first option.

[User Profile]

The screen changed instantly, deploying a new window with detailed information, and what Mark saw made the piece of bread in his other hand drop.

His eyes opened wide, his mouth hung slightly open, and for a couple of seconds he forgot to breathe.

"This has to be a joke..."