Chapter 80: Three More Reasons Not to Die
Chapter 80: Three More Reasons Not to Die
The first thing I noticed when I woke was that I knew where I was.
No blank second spent staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. No hand closing around a knife while memory caught up. Just the site office, the low hum of the generator through two walls, and water moving through a pipe I had personally bullied back into service.
The second thing I noticed was that every part of me hurt.
Not dramatically. I had escaped the final fight without anything broken or opened badly enough to require stitching, which put it among the better operations of my short and poorly managed career. But a week of stalking hounds, the assault itself, and two days of claiming the compound had collected payment in smaller denominations.
My shoulders ached from hauling remains and materials. My palms were blistered beneath their dressings. Bruises had ripened along my ribs and thighs, and my right knee objected when I sat up.
Apparently, owning property did not come with immunity to manual labor.
I checked the yard before breakfast.
The vehicle gate remained chained and held by my ugly welds. The pedestrian gate stayed barred. Nothing had disturbed the cleared strip along the south fence, and the two softer sections I had reinforced showed no fresh movement. Feline Senses separated wet steel, turned soil, old hound blood, and the faint exhaust of the generator. Nothing living waited close enough to matter.
I remained at the pedestrian gate longer than the inspection required, one hand resting on the cold bar. Beyond it lay the service road, empty fields, and every direction I might need to run. Behind me stood four buildings, a workshop full of inherited tools, and a smell of hound that would take more than one cleaning to remove.
Mine, I thought again.
The word still felt too large for the place. It also felt true. No landlord waited behind another door. No foreman could decide my debt had increased overnight. No scavenger crew was quietly measuring whether one thin man with a rifle counted as competition or inventory.
For once, I did not need to hurry through my own yard.
Only then did I eat.
I caught myself measuring out the smallest portion that would keep me functional. The habit had survived starvation, Eastbridge, abandoned apartments, and every shelter I had expected to lose. It looked increasingly ridiculous in front of a cabinet containing actual food.
I added more rice, opened a tin of soup from the office cupboard, and ate until my body stopped treating the meal as a negotiation.
My body reacted to a full stomach like it had received an apology. Warmth spread through me, the ache behind my eyes eased, and I found myself scraping the bottom of the bowl instead of calculating how much longer the same food could have lasted.
Afterward, I cleaned my scrapes, changed the dressings on my palms, and slept again.
That was most of the morning. I had plans for the workshop, the washroom, and the Archive token I still needed to earn, but recovery was also work. It was simply the kind that looked suspiciously like lying down.
By afternoon, the shaking exhaustion had eased enough for cultivation.
I cleared a patch of the office floor, laid down a folded tarp, and placed one ordinary hound core before me. The alpha’s core and the better cores remained locked beneath the workbench. I knew too little about their value to feed them into the first circulation that presented itself.
The Origin Vessel Reforging Art did not care that I was tired.
It did not have an on switch so much as a doorway. Every time I cultivated, I walked through it knowing exactly what waited on the other side.
I settled my breathing and found the dense point of dimensional energy rooted below my navel. The first circulation moved through me like a file drawn along the inside of my bones. It was not sharp pain. Sharp pain ends somewhere. This was patient, grinding pressure that seemed determined to correct twenty-two years of bad construction one layer at a time.
I managed four cycles.
When I opened my eyes, the core had faded to dead grey. Sweat clung to my shirt, but only my hands were trembling. A month ago, the same effort would have left my whole body shaking.
I sat there until my breathing stopped sounding borrowed. The pain did not disappear. It settled deeper, as if the Art had filed down one rough edge inside me and left the dust in my blood.
It was progress. Slow, painful, expensive progress, which meant it was the most trustworthy kind I had encountered.
The waiting notification remained where I had left it.
[Unallocated Attribute Points: 3.]
Three points from Level 15. I had postponed assigning them because Ilyana had just returned to her world, the compound had still contained bodies, and sitting in a ruined yard contemplating personal development had felt premature.
Now I considered Strength first.
Every plan I made depended on avoiding a contest of force. That did not make force irrelevant. Against the hounds, careful positioning had repeatedly put me where I needed to be, but when a body heavier than mine reached me, my options narrowed to knives, luck, and assistance. Strength was what remained after stealth failed.
It was also what decided whether the correct position meant anything. Feline Grace could put my feet under me and turn a bad fall into a survivable one. It could not make my arms move a creature that had already pinned me. Technique created opportunities. Strength determined whether I could use them.
Vitality was less exciting and possibly more important. It decided how long I could function without sleep, how badly cultivation damaged me, and whether a minor wound remained minor after three days underground. I had survived several fights only to discover that exhaustion could finish what claws had started.
Agility was the obvious investment. Feline Grace built on it. Predator’s Veil required controlled movement. My public Shadow Scout class made speed and precision believable. Three points there would strengthen the answer I already trusted.
It would also leave the same weaknesses waiting for something smarter to find.
One answer is excellent until the question changes.
I made the allocation.
[Attribute Allocation Confirmed.]
[Strength: 13 → 14]
[Vitality: 14 → 15]
[Agility: 15 → 16]
[Unallocated Attribute Points: 0.]
The System offered no approval. It never did, which was one of its better qualities.
The change settled through me quietly. My breathing steadied first. When I stood, my balance arrived beneath me a fraction sooner, and the stiffness in my knee shifted from an instruction to a complaint. A full water container still felt heavy when I carried it across the workshop, but it no longer required a separate decision halfway there.
The line had moved. Not from weak to strong, or injured to healed. From difficult to manageable.
That was enough.
Near sunset, another notification appeared.
[Blind Call Charge: 1/1.]
Seventy-two hours since Ilyana had returned.
For a moment, the ready charge felt like company waiting behind a closed door. I could activate it and bring someone into the compound within seconds. I could also waste an unknown woman’s limited manifestation time on watching me limp around a workshop.
I dismissed the panel untouched.
The charge was an emergency reserve, not a cure for being alone.
That night I ate properly, shut down every circuit except the office light, and checked both gates before dropping onto the mattress. The hound victory had given me water, power, tools, and walls. Comfort would require another trip and more work, but the important part had already happened.
I expected to wake in the same place.
The thought should have made me feel safe. Instead, it felt like the beginning of having something to lose.
Every shelter before this one had come with an exit already chosen. I slept ready to abandon the room, the building, or the entire district before morning. Here, the calculation began and found gates I had repaired, water I had secured, and twelve cores locked beneath my workbench.
Leaving was still possible. It was no longer free.
I slept anyway.
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