Dead Nerds Society: What Do You Mean My Guild Was Also Isekaid?-Chapter 71: Shattered Sanctuary (2)

The ten souls brightened the moment his attention grazed them. The shift was subtle and awful. Their torn, glitching outlines smoothing into suspended silhouettes. People frozen in mid-breath.

Helen’s soul, at least Cecilia was sure that that blue soul was her crush’s one, reached toward her. A hand almost touching, fingers halted like someone had pressed pause at the worst possible second.

Cecilia felt something land right in her chest.

A pressure. A want.

The cruel temptation to keep Helen safe.

Safe from monsters and broken systems and the five-hundred-year grave Hyperborea had crawled out of. Safe from the existential horror of learning that ’the game’ had eaten lives to become real. Safe... No.

"That’s not safety. That’s taxidermy."

Her fingers closed around the Chrysalis Scepter until her hand shook.

Muvetheret tilted his head. He didn’t blink.

"Is it cruelty to halt the blade a moment before it strikes?"

"Yes, it is. Of course it is. If you freeze the whole world, the blade never has the chance to miss."

She spat those words with a cadence one would normally use only in temples and in sanctified spaces. The Oracle speaking through the girl who kept insisting she was just a player who’d gotten too deep.

"You talk about attachment as if love is something you can pin to a board and keep clean forever. But love isn’t perfect. It’s stupid. It breaks things. It gets messy and it keeps going anyway."

Her eyes drifted to the blue soul hovering nearest the staff’s ring.

"Helen would hate you for this. Freeze-frame her into some eternal pre-cutscene? She was the idiot who skipped tutorials just to see if the game would let her punch the final boss."

A laugh rose to her mouth, but she shoved it down.

"And besides. You’re cheating."

"Cheating?"

Muvetheret echoed, tone so gentle it came off mocking.

"You’re hijacking my teleport anchor. It’s a system meant for reincarnation, and you jammed your creepy stillness spell into it like gum in a keyhole. If you wanted followers, you could’ve tried, I don’t know, talking to people?"

She was more annoyed at the absurdity than the danger.

Something thin and sharp passed through his expression then. Hairline fractures spreading across his cheeks like cracks in cold porcelain.

"I did. For centuries. Those who listened were called villains for choosing peace over chaos."

Cecilia snorted, sharp and exhausted.

"Yeah, well. That should’ve been enough of a tip about what people truly want."

The Chrysalis Scepter flared mana flames.

She didn’t cast a spell. That would be suicide. Null Essence loved eating structured magic and spitting out abominations. Instead, she went inward. She went into the intricacies of the admin system she had recently unlocked.

The half-visible UI twitched at the edge of her sight, jittering like a scared animal.

VerdantRoot’s lingering network ping still hovered there, ancient and patient:

[Network Ping: Awaiting further Administrator input.]

"Yeah, fine. You want input? Sure. Take this."

Her voice sank into that seam where prayer met code.

"Nythaen velion lythaen-anthyra.

Phor-ael en nythea.

Phor-ael en myrath."

("What was broken shall breathe again.

Through death.

Through dawn.")

[Enael.moris() – call]

[Target: User batch: 03 // Anchor: Eclipsed_Sanctuary.Core()]

[Argument: Release from NULL_THREAD. Route to CyclePath.EPHEMERION]

The void tightened.

The ten souls trembled in unison.

Muvetheret’s body rippled as though something inside him had remembered motion after centuries of refusing it.

"You dare invoke her authority?"

He asked. Not angry. It was a sharp, strained question. Almost a squeak.

Ash drifted off his shoulders. It was the same way it had drifted off Aenoth in the throne room, Cecilia realized. The same unnatural upward drifting.

"I invoke their choice. You’re the god of stillness. So be still. Let them answer without you holding their breath for them."

Threads burst from the staff and from that stubborn VerdantRoot seed still lodged in her inventory. They reached for the souls floating around.

And her memories spilled down the strands whether she wanted them to or not.

Her first login into Hyperborea with hands that barely worked.

The shock of seeing her avatar move with effortless grace - the woman she could never be in the real world.

The first time she logged off crying, not because she was sad, but because she’d felt free.

The day she opened her eyes on Aberswan’s stone floor, naked and shivering and alive in a way she didn’t have vocabulary for yet.

"I chose this. Not the accident. Not the bed. Not the shutdown. But this world. All the people I met here. If Helen wants to punch me later, great. She can use her own fists."

Helen’s soul brightened. A sharp, stubborn flare.

For one impossible moment, Cecilia felt something brush the other end of the thread.

It wasn’t speech.

Just that familiar, furious determination Helen always had the day the devs said her build ’wasn’t viable.’

The system chimed.

[User batch: 03 - Routing confirmed.]

[External process NULL_THREAD.Muvetheret - privileges reduced.]

[Status: Rebinding to physical layer.]

She felt something ethereal releasing.

The freed souls didn’t fall. They shifted state.

Light became data. Data became flesh.

The void cracked.

Cecilia saw glimpses of reality through the cracks. She could see the stone ground of the cave, Marya praying. She could see Mina pacing, feel her restlessness.

Muvetheret remained motionless. But the cracks across his form were spreading fast now. Black mercury bled upward from them in a slow spill.

He murmured. His voice was again tender. That made him feel even more dangerous to Cecilia.

"This conversation is unfinished. You have placed yourself at the center, Morielen. Oracle who refuses, Administrator who never asked."

His obsidian eyes locked onto hers.

"When they suffer and they beg you to end the pain, you will remember that there was an easier way."

Cecilia curled her lip in something that wasn’t a smile.

"If I start embalming people because I’m scared of letting them live, I hope Helen dropkicks me into the next century."

The cracks in the void strengthened, shattering it. She was swallowed back to reality.

:::

Her body slammed back into reality like she’d been tossed into it.

Her knees buckled and her body fell limp.

But, before she hit the floor, Mina caught her right side with a panicked "Master!" and Marya caught her left with a breathless "Miss Cecilia!"

Around her, the silver thread circle was scorched at the edges. The mirrored candles had melted sideways like they’d tried to escape their own reflections.

And on the altar... Ten bodies.

Curled. Naked. Raw.

((Spawned naked. Of course. Why did I expect clothes? Why would the system start respecting modesty now? I also spawned naked, back then.))

Mina made a strangled, high noise and her entire tail puffed, doubling in size like a fuzzy pink explosion.

Marya slapped both hands over her eyes, but it was a beat late. She had already peeked.

"Sensei, they’re-" 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"Naked. Yes. I can see that. I’ll prepare some clothes. Mina, please dress them."

Heat flared across Cecilia’s cheeks.

She’d gotten somewhat used to nudity thanks to Mina’s ridiculous bath rituals. But this was different. Some of these were people she’d fought raids with at three in the morning. People who had screamed strategies at her over Discord.

Her gaze glued to Helen despite her efforts.

Slender body. Soft belly. Breasts she absolutely was not looking at. Curly black hair sticking to her face. And... The scar on her thigh.

The IRL bike crash. Helen had complained about it for weeks only for her, in the end, add it to her character’s model.

Cecilia’s breath hitched.

"Helen..."

Mina followed her gaze. Then looked back at Cecilia. Then back at Helen. And then she smiled the slow, feral smile of a cat who had just discovered an endless source of tuna.

"Oh?"

"Not. One. Word. Just put the clothes on them."

She quickly began to craft clothes for all ten and handed them to Mina as she tried to disguise her own fluster.

One for each body. Not that beautiful or elaborate, just whatever basic clothes she could craft with the few items she had lying around in her inventory.

Not fashionable, but at least not indecent.

When she finally stepped back, her hands were shaking.

The breath of the ten newcomers was in sync, forming an eerie scene that was hard to discern if it was reality or a game.

A pop-up blinked open beside Helen.

[User: Almeida, Helen – Character: Aurenvaelir Kaeliraenel

Initialization: Complete.

Status: Reboot – 09:17:42]

Other windows flickered across the altar - Júlio, Gantz, Vraen, Emi... all of them were part of the Dead Nerds Society guild.

They’d wake soon, and they’d probably freak out.

It was impossible for Cecilia to discern what their reactions would be, so she had to be prepared to anything. She’d have to explain everything to them.

Five hundred years, the Closing of the Servers, the reality of this world concomitant to the existence of the system and bugs, the silence of the gods and the worship of players...

Most of all, their own impossible existence.

But that could wait. For now, she just knelt and reached for Helen’s hand, now that she wasn’t naked anymore. She felt warm and real. It was a human hand... Or, more precisely, an elf hand. And it was real. Solidly real. The texture, the skin color, the warmth, the pulse...

"This is reality."

Her head bowed before she could stop it. Tears burned hot at the edges of her eyes and began rolling down her cheeks.

"Welcome to Hyperborea."

She whispered, her voice breaking.

"Welcome home."

[Cecilia, we need your help. The situation in the capital is dire. Are you done there?]

Martin’s message broke her intimate moment.