"Call off your beast," said Dani Sloan, and she did not move from the doorway.
Soren had clocked her the second she appeared.
Dani Sloan, disciplinary committee, daughter of a Continental Council member, placed in the academy to monitor anomalous students.
Her beast was a Record Moth, Rank B, and it was sitting in her collar right now recording everything.
She was five chapters early, same as Selah.
She had a Tier-2 Incident Report on that clipboard, which in the academy meant she had already made her recommendation and was here for the paperwork.
He did the math in about two seconds.
A Class-A prohibited technique at the academy meant immediate expulsion and referral to the Continental Bureau, which was the organization that had tried to dissect Troy's knight in chapter a hundred and four.
If he got expelled now, he lost the only thing keeping him alive in this world, which was being physically present and watching the plot break in real time.
So he was not getting expelled.
He just needed to figure out what Dani wanted more than a clean report.
"Grimm," he said. "Sit."
Grimm sat but kept the growl at a low constant.
She's lying. She doesn't have questions. She has an agenda.
"I know," he said quietly.
Grimm's ears flicked.
Dani walked in, pulled the chair Selah had been using, sat down, and opened the clipboard.
"The medic's report says your beast evolved from F-rank to approximately C-rank in a single event," she said. "That exceeds the documented maximum by a factor of two. Do you have an explanation?"
"Not really."
"Did you use an external catalyst?"
"No."
"Did you perform a soul transfer?"
He looked at her and she looked at him.
She already knew the answer.
He could see it in the way she was holding the pen, not hovering but resting, because she wasn't waiting to write down his confession.
She was waiting to see how he handled the question.
She was testing whether he was smart.
"I don't know what that is," he said.
"Your soul signature is at thirty-nine percent. The only documented cause of that level of depletion is a soul transfer, which is a Class-A prohibited technique."
She held the pen still.
"So you're either very lucky or very unusual."
Soren looked at the clipboard.
The RECOMMENDATION line was blank.
She hadn't filled it in yet.
"Can I see your beast?" he said.
Dani's pen stopped.
"Excuse me?"
"Your beast. You bonded a Record Moth, Rank B. It stores and replays memories with perfect accuracy, which is why you're on the disciplinary committee instead of in combat training."
He watched her hand move toward her collar and stop halfway.
"It's recording this conversation right now."
The room went quiet except for Grimm's low growl.
Dani's hand returned to the clipboard.
She looked at him with an expression that was mostly controlled and just slightly not.
"How do you know what my beast is," she said.
"Same way I knew the dungeon layout," he said. "I find things that aren't supposed to be findable and right now I know something about this academy that your Record Moth hasn't caught yet."
He let that sit.
Dani's pen had stopped moving.
"If you expel me," he said, "that something goes with me."
Grimm's tail started wagging.
Good, master.
Dani looked at him for a long time.
The moth in her collar shifted and its wings caught the light for a second, pale gold and paper-thin.
"You're threatening me?" she said.
"I'm offering you a better outcome than the one on that form. You write monitoring instead of expulsion, you assign yourself as my observer, and the next time something in this academy breaks the rules of how the world is supposed to work, you're the one who gets the report first."
"And if you're lying about what you know?"
"Then in thirty days you come back with the Bureau and you don't have to ask questions first."
She closed the clipboard.
She stood up, walked to the door, and said something to the two students in the hallway he couldn't hear.
They left.
She turned back.
"Thirty-day monitoring period," she said. "You report any system anomalies to me within one hour of occurrence. Any prohibited technique without prior authorization, and I don't come to ask questions. I come with the Bureau."
"Understood."
"This is not an agreement, Soren Kane. This is a leash."
"Sure," he said. "But you're on the other end of it."
She stopped with her hand on the door.
She didn't turn around, and she didn't answer, and then she left.
Soren looked at the ceiling and let his hands shake a little, because Grimm was the only one left in the room and she already knew everything.
[DING!] — New quest generated.]
[Quest: SURVIVE THE OBSERVATION PERIOD. Duration: 30 days. Failure condition: expulsion or death. Reward: Rank promotion to E. Hidden reward: ???]
[Notice: rank promotion is required to increase Obsession Index cap. Current cap: 50. At Rank E, cap increases to 75. Without rank promotion, bonded beasts reaching cap will enter CONVERGENCE STATE.]
[CONVERGENCE STATE: the bonded beast's soul merges permanently with the tamer's. Survival rate at current soul friction: 2%.]
Grimm put her chin on the edge of the bed.
Master. What's convergence?
She had read the notification too.
Her voice was quiet in a way it hadn't been before today.
"It means I have thirty days to get stronger," he said, "or you kill me by accident."
I would never hurt you.
"I know."
He looked at the ceiling.
"That's the problem."
[DING! — Obsession Index: Grimm 46/50.]
Thirty days.
Rank E by the end of it, or Grimm's devotion would tear through him.
Somewhere across the dormitory Yara Hale was sleeping in a shadow pool.
Selah was in the archives looking for a survey that may or may not exist in this version of the world.
Dani had a recording of a conversation that had just become leverage pointing in both directions.
He needed to get stronger, and he needed to do it before his own beasts loved him to death.
He closed his eyes and started making a plan.