Ralsei has known what's been going on with Kris the ENTIRE time, and once you realise that, EVERYTHING he says and does around them makes a thousand times more sense. And you realise that, far from dismissing Kris's "true" self in favour of a copy, he has been working tirelessly to prop them up, to validate their most basic and fundamental choices, to keep them from the brink of despair, and perhaps even death.
We always thought it was strange, how Ralsei seems to baby Kris at times - how he offers heaps of praise upon them for performing the simplest of tasks, how he lets them express themself through violence while chastising Susie for the same thing, how at every turn he puts so much emphasis on Kris's choices, their talents, their intrinsic personhood, almost above the very prophecy he serves. We thought him mollycoddling and completely out-of-touch at best, and downright malicious at worst. We presumed he was encouraging the player to keep playing, and was in fact speaking over Kris's head directly at us. We presumed that the prophecy was all he cared about, and him encouraging Kris was simply a means to that end.
And we were wrong about all of it. Because we didn't know what Kris was truly going through until now. We thought that our possession was the worst thing that was happening to them, and that he was complicit in their suffering by trying to downplay it.
But Ralsei knew. Because Ralsei knows Kris better than anyone else - better than Susie, better than Noelle, and certainly far better than us.
Kris is hopelessly trapped, at all times. There is no hope for them, they cannot see a way to escape their bonds... not alive, in any case. Their suffering is so great, the pressures upon them so immense, that they have been hollowed out into a catatonic shell of their former self - unable to move except through great effort, unable to speak except through stilted phrases. They don't sleep or eat well at all. They don't try at school. They cannot tell anyone about what's happening, and they cannot make friends because of it. For all intents and purposes, they have given up.
But it's worse than that, because they KNOW that what they're being made to do is wrong. They don't want to do any of it, and yet they feel they cannot refuse. That knowledge eats away at them, to the point where they feel like they are inherently Bad, because only Bad people do Bad things, and they're doing Bad things all the time. They don't feel like they deserve the good things in their life because of it. They feel like they're living a lie. And no-one else knows - no-one else can possibly know.
But Ralsei knows.
Why does Ralsei go to the trouble of arranging a tutorial battle for Kris, when they've already demonstrated their capabilities fighting against Lancer? Because Kris doesn't know what they're doing during that fight. They're issuing commands, fighting alongside Susie, and they don't know how or why. They're scared, they don't know where they are, and the one other person they knew from school just ditched them. Through the tutorial, Ralsei breaks down each combat function step-by-step, walking Kris through each one with patience and restraint. And he lets them go off-piste up to a point - he'll let them attack his mannequin and say it's alright if they want to hit him too, he'll let them hug him several times throughout the tutorial, and he will show remarkable restraint throughout the entire endeavour, despite his obvious frustration at their uncooperativeness.
Seen this way, the Tutorial becomes less about the GAME teaching the PLAYER how to battle, and more about RALSEI providing to KRIS some semblance of structure and context to a new and frightening world. Both of them are literally starting at Zero, and have to establish the basics before anything further can happen.
This in turn establishes the framework for their relationship - not an annoying tutorial fairy lecturing an experienced player on things they already know, but a kindly tutor gently guiding a broken teen, one tiny step at a time. Not lashing out at mistakes, not admonishing when they try to assert themself against the established framework - he will let them fight, and let them command him to fight as well, because his desire to help Kris find themself again means he has to provide leeway for if they "misbehave". There have to be bounds, but they must feel like the choices they make matter - even if they actually don't.
When you're drowning in a world that has seemingly conspired to take your agency from you, and break you down into nothing more than a pawn that does what it's told and nothing else... even the illusion of choice is a life-preserver that you'll cling onto for dear life. The support Ralsei provides Kris in this capacity is what gives them the drive to protect Susie from King's attack - to make a choice to protect their friend, even if it wouldn't have meaningfully changed anything.
It explains his secret conversations with Kris too - while we are busy watching Susie, Ralsei is free to let Kris know that despite being literally controlled, the one controlling them is on their side, and that we will help them break free from the more insidious influence of the Knight. He has to tell them to trust in us, trust that we will do right by them to the best of our abilities. And indeed, by Chapter 2, they have become more willing to express themself through their tone of voice, through how they choose to interpret the instructions given to us, either to play pranks or to show their appreciation for the people who, despite everything, still care for them.
And even Ralsei's apparent dismissive attitude to Spamton NEO's effect on Kris can be explained through this prism. Kris is very very slowly starting to recover from the trauma of their situation, and literally EVERYTHING about Spamton is a huge trigger for them. It's not farfetched to say that Kris sees in Spamton a cautionary tale of how they will end up - used up, cast aside, wretched and desperate and bitter and broken. All of Ralsei's work building Kris back up could be undone in an instant, and so he has to tread extremely carefully - downplay its significance, offer nonthreatening proximity (he will hug Kris, but only if they hugged him on the boat ride prior to this), distract them from the immediate trauma with very basic "nice" thinks like cake, and warm/soft things. It seems dismissive at the time because we don't yet know what Spamton truly represents to Kris - not just the fear of being controlled against your will, but of being used up and broken down, and then tossed away like an unloved toy. It's only when we have that additional context that all of Ralsei's actions towards them start to make sense - not only make sense, but also show a level of care and tact that we did not previously assume him capable of.
And I suppose the last question is: why does Ralsei do any of this in the first place? Why go to this trouble when he knows he'll just be left behind, when he knows that if he succeeds, Kris will go back to the light world and live a full life without him? Well... look at the colour of his horns. If Ralsei is the horned headband, and Kris wore him for months, he would have borne witness to Kris's deepest, darkest fears about themself. It's possible that he might have seen the inciting incident that led Kris down this unfortunate path. Either way, he would have been so close to them that he'd almost be like an extension of them.
So, again - why does he do this? Because his purpose was always to guide them back to themself - first as a pair of horns to better fit in with their family, and then as a physical manifestation of those same horns to help them overcome the terrible harm that has been wrought upon them.
But more than this, I think it's because he loves them - the same way that they would have loved him when they wore him all those years ago. And isn't that what you do for the people you love - help them when they're struggling, comfort them when they're sad, gently challenge them to expand their window of tolerance, give them the tools they need to return to the light, to heal and grow back into themselves?
Ralsei knows Kris better than anyone else. And maybe we should start listening to him.
