Chapter 37: Noise Buys Attention
Chapter 37: Noise Buys Attention
We waited until the ruins thinned before firing the rifle.
Liora chose an old loading yard bordered by concrete warehouses. The nearest road lay far behind us, and rubble blocked the only two vehicle entrances. We spent twenty minutes circling before she approved it.
"A gunshot travels," she said. "Before you make one, know where the sound can bring trouble from."
Our target was a six-legged scavenger feeding beside a loading ramp. Its body was the size of a calf’s, though its narrow head and thin limbs looked fragile. Liora had already found the prints and confirmed it was alone.
Before loading a magazine, she made me rehearse the sequence with an empty chamber. Raise. Sight. Breathe out. Safety. Trigger. Lower and listen. I repeated it ten times, then another ten when the muzzle dipped during the trigger press.
We counted the ammunition together. One magazine held twenty-eight rounds because the guard had already fired twice. The other three were full. Boxed cartridges added forty more.
One hundred and fifty-eight shots sounded like abundance until Liora divided them into mistakes.
"Three rounds per kill gives you fifty attempts," she said. "That assumes nothing is wasted on warnings, panic, or targets that need more."
"You are excellent at making supplies feel smaller."
"Supplies are always smaller than fear thinks they are."
She positioned me behind a concrete barrier and adjusted my stance. Left foot forward. Weight leaning into the stock. Shoulder firm. Cheek low enough to align the sights.
"Safety off only when you are ready. One shot. Then lower the rifle and listen."
"What if it charges?"
"Then you have learned whether your first shot was good."
Her smile did nothing for my confidence.
The creature lifted its head. I found its chest between the sights and pressed the trigger.
The rifle struck my shoulder like an angry door. Flame jumped from the muzzle. The sound filled the yard, slammed back from every wall, and erased the world for an instant.
My shot hit low, tearing through one foreleg.
The monster screamed and charged.
I forgot the safety. My finger pulled again and nothing happened.
"Safety," Liora said from beside me, perfectly calm.
I corrected it, shouldered the rifle, and fired. The second round hit the ramp far to the creature’s right.
Liora moved forward. She cut across its path without killing it, forcing the charge sideways and buying me another clear line.
I breathed out, settled the sights, and fired a third time.
The round struck behind the front shoulder. The creature fell, slid several metres, and went still.
The stock had driven into the same shoulder three times. Pain spread down my arm, and I nearly dropped the weapon while trying to engage the safety. Liora caught the barrel, guided it toward the ground, and moved my finger outside the trigger guard.
"Every shot ends with control," she said. "A dead target does not make the weapon safe."
My ears rang so loudly that Liora’s next words arrived as shapes. She took the rifle, set the safety, and pushed the barrel down.
Then she raised one finger.
We listened.
At first, I heard only the high tone left by the shots. Gradually, the yard returned: wind over broken roofing, metal ticking somewhere inside a warehouse, a bird calling twice and leaving.
One minute. Two.
Nothing approached.
At three minutes, birds erupted from the trees beyond the northern wall.
Liora pulled me behind the barrier. Something moved through the brush, heavy enough to shake branches. It reached the edge of the yard and remained hidden, sniffing.
The carcass lay between us and the northern wall. I wanted the meat. Liora shook her head once.
We backed through the warehouse and left by the southern breach, sacrificing the kill and three rounds. Whatever had answered the noise could claim both.
"That is what the shooting bought," she said when we were two streets away. "Attention does not always arrive where you can see it."
We marked the yard on my rough map with a circle and a line through it. Future ammunition practice would require somewhere new. A useful location could become dangerous after one loud visit.
Liora also checked the bruise forming beneath my shoulder. My stance had absorbed the recoil poorly, so the next lesson would begin by fixing it.
"That was the important part," Liora said. "Noise purchases attention. You wait to learn what you bought."
[Combat contribution verified.]
[Experience transferred.]
[Level increased.]
[Adrian Vale has reached Level 8.]
[Active summon synchronisation complete.]
[Liora — Manifested Level: 7 → 8]
[Attribute and energy ceilings increased.]
[Existing injuries unchanged.]
[New energy capacity: Unfilled.]
[Duration added: 10% of D-grade Level 1 duration.]
[Remaining timer capped by the one-time stabilization maximum.]
The familiar warmth moved through me. I placed two points into Agility and one into Vitality.
Strength: 8
Vitality: 9
Agility: 10
Liora rolled her shoulders and rose slightly onto her toes, testing the stronger manifested body. "Better."
"That’s all?"
"Would you prefer applause?"
"I killed something with a rifle on my third shot."
"You forgot the safety while it charged and missed a creature running directly toward you."
"So no applause."
"Perhaps after the tenth."
We moved before anything distant could investigate. Liora made me carry the unloaded rifle for the first kilometre while repeating every error. She did not let me turn the shot into proof of competence.
At a stream running through a cracked drainage bed, she taught me to collect water upstream from the tracks along the bank. Clear water could still carry disease, so we boiled it while cutting the meat we had kept from the ratlike scavenger into strips.
The work stretched into evening. My new Agility helped, though my fingers still arrived late whenever I hurried. Liora slapped my wrist lightly each time speed began ruining a cut.
"Smooth first," she said. "Fast grows out of smooth."
When we finally moved again, she let me choose the route around a collapsed school. I identified a wide exposed yard, a shadowed corridor with fresh droppings, and a longer path along the outer wall.
I chose the wall.
Liora nodded and followed without correcting me.
Trust: 50 → 57
Resonance: 13% → 17%
Her silence felt better than applause.