A pair of arms reached out to you from behind; wrapping around you and pulling you back to a cold, metallic chest that you’ve become familiar with over the past few weeks.
Maxing out with the Ring Nursefather Hong Lu turned out to be a mistake. He was far more affectionate than any other identity or ego you befriended so far, not to mention how…
“My dear,” he purred into your ear, dragging one of his fingers up your chest and stopping at your neck; uncaring of how deep his metallic finger dug into your skin or the small trail of blood it left behind. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
…possessive he tended to be at times.
“It’s not like that,” you replied, hands fidgeting with each other as you tried to not move around so much lest his finger dug deeper into your skin. “I need to use different teams to get the most I can out of the mirror dungeon, so I just haven’t been using bleed teams much which includes you.”
Your words were half truth, half lie. You did need to use different teams so you’d have extra starlight to strengthen your units for the more difficult floors, but you were also avoiding using a bleed team to the best of your capabilities. Even though you were fine with it at first, his overbearing nature got too much too quickly.
He wouldn’t leave you alone, either. It wasn’t bad at first — having a bodyguard and someone so powerful was nice — but that changed when he would overtake your Hong Lu so often that he could barely interact with you. Not to mention how he’d keep the other sinners away from you, too.
“Is that so?” he hummed, his voice oddly cheerful. You nodded.
He moved his hand away from your neck and waist towards your shoulders, turning your around to face him after.
“In that case, I’m sure you won’t mind going through the mirror dungeon with me this one time, hm? Unless you were lying about what you said.”
…Shit.
“Well I— uh, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt this one time…”
He chuckled. “This one time?” He trailed his hand up your neck again, this time not stopping until he was squishing your cheeks together; claws stabbing lightly into your skin as a warning. “Are you merely tolerating my presence? Do you not want me around anymore?”
“That’s not—!”
“Don’t touch them.”
A third hand grabbed the back of your collar and pulled you back until you were hidden behind someone else. Her warning came low yet firm, the three words she spoke being enough to convey her threat; that she’d cut Hong Lu down without hesitation if he didn’t listen.
“Oh?” He took a step back and mockingly put his hands up. “I didn’t know that the two of you were close.”
You weren’t, not really.
“My relationship with them is none of your business,” Ryoshu hissed, “Now leave if you know what’s good for you.”
Hong Lu let out a laugh but surprisingly didn’t protest and did as she demanded him to. Your Hong Lu didn’t linger for long either, he muttered a small “sorry” with an apologetic smile before leaving.
Ryoshu turned to look at you only when he was out of sight. Her glare softened when her eyes landed on you and she let out a sigh. “Bring me with you.”
“Where to?”
“To the mirror dungeon,” she answered a bit impatiently. “If you’re bringing that man with you, then bring me too.”
“Oh, right, sure.” You could definitely use a bodyguard with you if the Ring Nursefather ever tried anything.
“Good.”
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Hong Lu | Ryoshu
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“Hong Lu, I’ll need your Lord of Hongyuan identity for the dungeon.”
No reply. Odd… He would’ve usually responded to you by now.
“Hong Lu—”
A finger pressed against the underside of your chin, preventing you from talking any further any further as it slid down to your neck, where a hand replaced it and gentled tilted your face backwards. You stumbled, losing your balance from the action only to be caught by the very person responsible as they wrapped their free arm around your waist.
Their — rather, his — face came into view then, looking at you with a faint smile that could either be fond or annoyed. You weren’t sure.
“Now what did you call me for, hm?” the Lord of Hongyuan spoke, a hint of teasing in his voice.
“For a mirror dungeon run,” you answered, shuffling a bit in his arms in hopes that he’d let you go and you wouldn’t have to deal with your neck continuing to hurt from looking up at him, to no avail. “I didn’t call you yet though.”
He hummed in response, the corner of his lips twitching as his smile widened ever so slightly. “Is that so? I believe I heard your voice loud and clear saying that you need me.”
How would he have— never mind, that wasn’t too important.
“…Anyway, I need more lunacy so I need to borrow you and your heishou for a quick run in the mirror.”
“Oh? This again…”
His grip on you weakened, allowing you to finally pull away and turn around so you could look at him without being uncomfortable. You parted your lips then, ready to announce that you’d be back soon before leaving to gather the other sinners when he grabbed your wrist and pulled you close again.
“And if I don’t want to?”
You blinked. “…Huh?”
“What are you going to do if I don’t want to?” he repeated, thumb rubbing against the inside of your wrist. “You only call for me when you want to do mirror dungeons, after all. Isn’t it only fair that I do something else once in a while?”
“…You can’t do that.”
“Hm?”
“I’m your manager, you have to listen to me.”
He let out a laugh, clearly amused by your lack of a proper excuse. “Do I? I don’t believe you have any sway over me, but…”
“But…?”
“If you take only me to the mirror dungeon, I’ll do as you say.”
Only him? “You want to do a solo run then?”
“That’s one way to put it.” He nodded as he let go of your hand. “Now, lead the way… unless you believe that I can’t take on your mirror dungeon on my own.”
“No— yeah, I think you can take it on…” you trailed off. He was strong so there was no doubt that he’d make it to the end and unite you with your precious lunacy so long as you brought the right ego gifts with you, but… “Let’s go then.”
It’s not like anything could go wrong, right? Aside from the Lord of Hongyuan being defeated, that was. But so long as you were careful with your pack and ego gift choices, everything would be fine.
Yeah, you had nothing to worry about.
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The passage of time seemed to be the exact same between all mirror worlds.. If you called them in during the afternoon, they’ll make a comment about it — maybe something about missing lunch or being interrupted in the middle of their work.
The Lord of Hongyuan’s unusually panicked response made sense then, as you summoned him a little past midnight.
You only saw the alert in his eyes for a brief moment before he grabbed you by the wrist and pulled you close behind him; looking around rather frantically in search of threats. When he didn’t find any, he turned to face you. Despite his stoic facade, you could easily tell that he was worried. “What happened?”
You quietly held out the jar that you were struggling to open before you summoned him.
“…Are you serious?”
He looked like he wanted to strangle you.
You nodded.
“You—” The Lord of Hongyuan pulled away, shooting you an incredulous look as he tried to make sense of your words in the vain hope that you didn’t really summon him just to open a jar. “You could’ve asked my counterpart instead of summoning me.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to see you…”
The corners of his lips twitched. You couldn’t tell if it was because your answer flustered him or if it annoyed him further. “At this hour?”
“Yes.”
He looked like he wanted to kill you really, really bad.
Nonetheless, he grabbed the jar from you and popped it open with ease. “Summon me at a normal hour next time,” he told you as he handed you the jar back before disappearing, leaving you with your Hong Lu who merely smiled at you and took his leave.
Unfortunately for the Lord of Hongyuan, his reaction was funny so you were not going to summon him at a normal hour next time.
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The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is normal. No rewards are given at this stage.
Affection level 2 - Acquaintances
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is familiar. You get a 10 lunacy reward for reaching this stage as well as a small cutscene where nothing of note happens.
Friendly identities/egos might come by on their own to visit you in rare instances.
Affection level 4 - Friends
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is fond. You get a 25 lunacy reward for reaching this stage as well as a cutscene where nothing of note happens.
Friendly identities/egos will come by more often, other identities will come by rarely.
Affection level 6 - Close Friends
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is close. You get a 45 lunacy reward for reaching this stage as well as a cutscene with few important notes for the identity/ego in question. You will need to remember these for later (or look up a guide).
Identities/egos will come by often.
Affection level 8 - Best Friends
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is very close. You get a 50 lunacy reward for reaching this stage as well as a cutscene that's important to the player and identity's/ego's relationship.
Identities/egos will come by frequently.
Affection level 10 - Best Friends/QPR Partners/Lovers
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is extremely close. You get a 50 lunacy reward for reaching this stage as well as an important cutscene that determines how your relationship with that identity/ego will continue on, as well as the chance to break the bond if you make the "wrong" decisions.
Identities/egos will come by very frequently, even if the timing is inconvenient.
Affection level 12 - ???
The relationship between the player and the identity/ego is unbreakable. Fanservice.
Some identities/egos may refuse to leave your side, but this can be dealt with via special items.
Affection level ??? - ???
The bond between the player and the identity/ego is broken. You will either have to wait a long amount of time or use a special item to reset your progress and start over.
Additionally, the identities/egos in question will not be available to use until progress reset.
about the limbus company affection system, since i want to write a fic w the premise, i wanna ask: if you max out affection w 2 ids of the same sinner (say, kod rodya and fauvist rodya for example) then can they both appear at the same time or only one at a time?
-rodyanon
Only one at a time and depending on their personalities, they'd be fighting over who gets to be with you so Rodya in this situation would switch back and forth between KOD and Fauvist. This may or may not have consequences~
That said, there's nothing stopping you from writing about both of them being there at the cost of a sinner. So KOD gets to appear on Rodya while Fauvist Rodya appears on Meursault. This also may or may not have consequences.
Lastly, you can go the horror route where both ids manifest on Rodya at the same time.
There's a lot of ways you can go about it and while I'd personally prefer to write the ids as appearing one at a time, you don't have to do the same. Only rule for this au is that there's an affection system 🙂↕️🙂↕️
