Chapter 40: Stay Safe, Handsome
Chapter 40: Stay Safe, Handsome
Liora used the final minutes to test me again.
She pointed at the front warning line. I recited the response. She named the kitchen window, the cellar, the stream, and the uphill escape route. Each answer came more easily than the last.
"Something stronger reaches the house," she said.
"I take the ready pack and leave."
"The meat?"
"Stays here."
"The rifle falls while you are escaping?"
I hesitated.
Her ears flattened.
"If retrieving it puts me in reach, I leave it too."
"Good. Tools keep you alive. You do not die for tools."
[Manifestation Remaining: 01:52]
The questions ended. Silence filled the kitchen.
The interface continued counting seconds at the edge of my vision. Liora could not see it, so I told her each minute as it passed. She nodded at the first two. At the third, she told me to stop.
"I know it ends," she said. "I would rather spend the time looking at you than hearing it measured."
I dismissed the timer from the centre of my attention. The blue numbers remained available if I reached for them, but they no longer sat between our faces.
For days, every moment had contained another task: check tracks, cut meat, correct my grip, choose a road. Now the water was stored, the warning lines were set, and the pack waited by the door.
I was going to miss her protection. The deeper pain came from losing her company.
Liora’s teasing had annoyed me back into conversations whenever fear pulled me inward. Her tail revealed every emotion she tried to hide. She had known where I was every minute and cared what happened there.
The apocalypse had felt less empty because another person minded whether I survived it.
"You are making the face again," she said.
"What face?"
"The one where you decide silence is safer than saying something." Her tail curled around one ankle. "It is irritating. I have become fond of it."
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.
This time, my body did not freeze. I held her as tightly as my strength allowed. She was warm through the leather and smelled of smoke, rain, and the iron trace of dried blood. Her forehead rested against my collarbone.
My hand moved slowly across her back.
Liora made a small sound and held me harder.
Her heartbeat was faster than mine. She had faced every monster on the route with perfect control, yet returning home frightened her. Perhaps the fear was not the return itself.
Blind Call might never select her again.
"I’m glad it was you," I said.
She raised her head.
"The Call. I know I didn’t choose. I know luck did it. I’m still glad it found you."
Her smile lost its usual sharp edge.
"When I returned the first time, I thought the Call might never find me again," she said. "I told myself that was sensible. You were weak, your world was collapsing, and knowing whether you lived would only become another problem I could not solve."
Her claws pressed lightly through the back of my shirt.
"Then every time I trained, I wondered whether you had learned to hold the knife properly. It was extremely distracting."
"You could have started with that instead of demanding a cheek kiss."
"Absolutely not."
"You will be unbearable when you become strong," she murmured. "I want to see it."
"Liora—"
She kissed my forehead.
"Stay safe while I’m gone, handsome."
[Resonance: 24% → 25%]
Then my arms closed around empty air.
[Manifestation duration complete.]
[Liora Venn returned to origin dimension.]
[Return Point: Exact origin place and instant.]
[Origin-Time Elapsed: 00:00:00.]
[Injuries, healing, poison, exhaustion, spent energy, and technique backlash retained.]
[Active Summons: 0]
[Blind Call Charges: 0/1]
[Natural charge recovery initiated: 72:00:00.]
I stood alone until the delayed windows appeared.
[Resonance Milestone Reached: 25%]
[Preserved Signature Deepened: Liora Venn.]
[Repeat Selection Chance: 25% after an eligible D-grade roll.]
[Trust Threshold Reached: 70]
[Desire Threshold Reached: 100]
[Resonance Imprint Available.]
[Imprint Source: Liora Venn.]
[Selection Method: Random.]
Another window unfolded beneath it.
[Resonance Imprint Milestones Registered.]
[25% Resonance: Random Imprint.]
[50% Resonance: Random Imprint.]
[75% Resonance: Random Imprint.]
[100% Resonance: Summoner-Selected Imprint.]
I read the four lines again.
The first three milestones offered something permanent, but I would have no control over what I received. The System would randomly select an imprint from the summon whose Resonance had reached the required threshold.
Only the final milestone would be different.
At one hundred percent Resonance, I would choose the last imprint myself.
That possibility belonged to a future so distant that surviving until tomorrow seemed like the more urgent achievement.
The milestone did not unlock direct summoning or guarantee that Blind Call would find Liora again. It gave her a twenty-five-percent selection chance only after Blind Call rolled D grade. Every other grade excluded her before the second stage began.
The imprint was the only permanent reward waiting in front of me.
I accepted it.
[Random Imprint Selected.]
[B-Rank Passive Skill Acquired: Feline Grace.]
[Skill Imprint Successful.]
[New Skill Registered.]
B-rank.
I stared at the first line.
The System had not given me a disposable trick or a temporary imitation of Liora’s movements. It had registered a permanent B-rank passive skill—something that would remain inside my body whether Blind Call ever found her again or not.
The skill’s information opened beneath the acquisition window.
[Feline Grace]
[Rank: B]
[Type: Passive Skill]
[Source: Liora Venn]
[Effect: Improves balance, bodily coordination, reflexive movement, landing control, and recovery from unstable footing.]
The skill settled quietly into my body.
For one breath, I felt the pattern carried inside it: Liora’s weight flowing through the outside edge of her foot, her hips turning before a knife moved, her body recovering from a landing without wasted motion. The impressions were too deep to be borrowed experience. They were structures offered to muscles that had never understood them.
I stepped onto the hearth and down.
Both ankles landed together.
When my foot touched a loose tile, my weight shifted away before I consciously reacted. I brought the rifle to my shoulder, and the sights found their position faster and held more steadily.
Frail Body remained. Weak Constitution still limited my endurance. Poor Coordination had not disappeared from my status.
Feline Grace had not erased any of them.
It gave me better use of what those penalties left behind.
I tested a short fall from the kitchen counter. Before the imprint, the height would have sent one ankle sideways and both arms windmilling. I landed in a crouch with my weight evenly spread. My injured ribs protested, and my legs remained too weak to rise smoothly, but the impact travelled through the position Liora had taught me.
Next, I drew the military knife.
The point wandered less when I shifted my feet. The skill supplied no knowledge of where to strike. Every useful choice still came from the hours she had spent correcting me.
That difference mattered.
Feline Grace improved the body performing the movement. It did not replace training, experience, or judgment. It would make every lesson more useful, but it could not invent lessons I had never learned.
I crossed the kitchen using the footwork Liora had drilled into me. The outside edge touched first, weight rolling inward.
It felt like hearing her tell me to be frightened of the ground correctly.
At the back door, I listened to the stream running over stone.
The cellar held enough food to last. Clean water waited beside the hearth. My pack and rifle stood ready. I was Level 9, carried two preserved signatures, and had learned enough to recognise how little I knew.
I remained weak, hunted, and unable to control whom Blind Call would bring.
But a B-rank passive skill now rested inside the broken body I had once treated as disposable.
Still, the next decision belonged to me.
The house was quiet. Loneliness settled into it slowly, softened by running water and the warning wire outside.
For tonight, I knew how to survive here.