The guards at the dungeon entrance were asleep before Dominic noticed she'd done anything.
He glanced back at them as they passed. Two men slumped against the wall with the specific boneless quality of people who hadn't chosen to sit down there. Theresa didn't break stride or acknowledge what she'd done. She simply walked past them and into the evening air.
"How long will they be out?" he asked.
"Long enough," she said.
He didn't ask anything else.
Caldmore city in the evening was exactly what it always was, the kind of place that never fully quieted because the academy never fully stopped. Lanterns were being lit along the main road. Vendors were packing down stalls. Students in academy uniforms moved in groups, talking too loud, the way people did when they'd just finished something or hadn't burned off all their energy yet. Everyone busy in their own world. Dominic was never one that grabbed peoples attention and that was the norm.
What he didn't expect was how much attention Theresa was going to grab. And the way they'd look at her.
It wasn't subtle. A student stopped mid-sentence staring blankly like he had his thoughts pulled out from his head. A vendor forgetting what he was wrapping delaying his service to his customers. Even ladies out and about that evening whispered to themselves looking shyly at her. She caught the attention of anyone who dared to look as she passed by. She didn't acknowledge any of it. She simply continued walking with the same measured, unhurried pace she'd used through the dungeon, hands relaxed at her sides, golden eyes forward.
Dominic filed that away too.
The Caldmore Adventurers Guild sat three streets from the dungeon entrance, a wide stone building with a board inside its hallway covered in request notices. Lantern light spilled through its windows. Inside, the usual evening crowd. Adventurers wrapping up runs, others just starting their night, a cluster of them around a table in the far corner playing cards. The smell of cheap food and ale.
The conversation didn't stop when he walked in. Instead, it underwent a subtle, unkind downshift. The room's collective attention zooming in on him until the air felt heavy with the weight of a dozen unvoiced opinions.
"Kane."
He didn't look for who said it. Didn't need to.
"F-rank Kane still showing up." Laughs resounding all around him. "What'd you bring back this time, a bruise?"
He walked to the reception desk. The receptionist on duty was a woman he recognised, mid-thirties, efficient, perpetually unbothered. She looked up from her ledger and her expression shifted.
"Kane," she said. "You're..." She stopped.
"Alive," he said. "I know."
Her eyes moved briefly to something below the desk. "There was a report filed this evening—"
"I imagine there was," he said. "I'll have these cores assessed while you sort out whatever needs sorting."
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once and gestured to the assessor's window before moving away from the desk, disappearing through a door behind the counter.
Dominic set the cores down for assessment. While the assessor worked, he turned to check on Theresa.
She was still near the entrance. Technically. The issue was the two adventurers who had decided the distance between themselves and her needed to be smaller. One of them was saying something with a smile that Dominic recognised as the kind men used when they thought they were being charming.
He watched.
The man reached out and put a hand on her arm.
What happened after that was fast and quiet and deeply convincing. The man was on his knees in under a second with his hand bent at an angle that silenced him completely. Theresa had not changed her expression. She hadn't raised her voice. She held him there for exactly two seconds, then released him and stepped back, adjusting her garment where he'd touched it.
The second man had already decided to be somewhere else.
She looked up and found Dominic watching. He held her gaze for a second, then tilted his head toward a seat by the door. She gave a single nod and moved to wait near there instead.
"Strong haul."
Dominic turned back. The assessor was looking at the cores with the careful neutrality of someone doing their calculations efficiently.
"Third floor?" the assessor asked.
"Yes."
The man set down his tool and looked at him once, briefly, then went back to writing figures. "These are all third floor cores. Did you clear the whole floor?"
"Let's just say we moved through it."
The assessor glanced toward the table by the door where Theresa was standing. Said nothing. Wrote more figures.
The receptionist returned after he'd finished, set a coin pouch on the counter and slid it across. "For the cores." A pause. "The branch manager would like to see you tomorrow morning. Regarding the report."
"I'll be here," Dominic said.
He picked up the pouch and left without looking at the room.
Outside, Theresa fell into step beside him.
They found an inn two streets over, a quiet place, clean enough, with an inn keeper who charged reasonable rates. Dominic paid for two rooms. The innkeeper gave him keys and pointed up the stairs.
At the top of the landing Theresa stopped at her door and looked at him.
"See you in a bit" she said.
Dominic nodded in response before she went in. He went to his room, closed the door, and stood in the quiet for a moment.
It was the first time he'd been alone since the dungeon floor.
He sat on the edge of the bed. Washed his face from the basin in the corner. Sat back down. The room was simple, a bed, a table, a window that looked out onto the lamplit street below. Normal. Completely ordinary. The most ordinary room he'd been in on the strangest day of his life.
He looked at the space in front of him.
"System," he said. Nothing.
He tried again. "Gacha system." Nothing.
He felt slightly ridiculous. "System... on?"
Nothing.
He sat back and thought about it for a moment. Then, flatly: "System open."
[INFINITE GACHA SYSTEM: ACTIVE]
[WELCOME BACK, DOMINIC KANE.]
[YOU LOOK BETTER THAN THE LAST TIME WE MET.]
"I wasn't exactly in a good state the last time we met."
[CORRECT. THE IMPROVEMENT IS NOTABLE.]
A beat. Then the interface expanded, panels arranging themselves in the air in front of him as if knowing his intention for calling on the system.
[TUTORIAL: PENDING]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO PROCEED?]
"Yes."
[GT TOKENS: YOUR PRIMARY CURRENCY.]
[EARNED THROUGH COMPLETING SYSTEM QUESTS.]
[QUESTS ARE ASSIGNED AUTOMATICALLY BASED ON YOUR SITUATION.]
[CHECK THEM. COMPLETE THEM. EARN GT. SIMPLE.]
A new panel.
[PULLS: WHAT YOU ARE HERE FOR.]
[COST: 500 GT TOKENS PER PULL.]
[EACH PULL DRAWS FROM THE VOID.]
[WHAT COMES OUT IS NOT RANDOM. THE SYSTEM SELECTS.]
[YOU SHOULD FIND THIS REASSURING.]
"Should I."
[THE SYSTEM HAS BETTER TASTE THAN YOU.]
[MOVING ON.]
[THE BOND: IMPORTANT.]
[EVERY HEROINE PULLED FROM THE VOID IS BOUND TO YOUR LIFE.]
[THIS MEANS THEIR CONTINUED EXISTENCE IS TIED TO YOURS.]
[IF YOU DIE THEY RETURN TO THE VOID.]
[YOUR SURVIVAL REMAINS NON-NEGOTIABLE.]
[THE SYSTEM CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.]
A pause. Then a new line, slower than the others.
[THE BOND IS NOT ONLY A TETHER.]
[AS TRUST DEEPENS BETWEEN YOU AND EACH HEROINE,]
[THE BOND MATURES.]
[A MATURED BOND ALLOWS LIMITED POWER AND MANA SHARING.]
[WHAT THEY CARRY, YOU CAN EVENTUALLY ACCESS.]
[HOW MUCH DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON YOU.]
[THE SYSTEM SUGGESTS YOU BE LESS FORGETTABLE.]
Dominic read that twice.
[THE SHOP: ALSO IMPORTANT.]
[HEROINES ARRIVE WITHOUT THEIR CORE ARTIFACTS AND WEAPONS.]
[THESE CAN BE PURCHASED USING GT TOKENS.]
[ADDITIONAL ITEMS, UPGRADES AND RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE.]
[INVENTORY ROTATES. CHECK IT REGULARLY.]
[CURRENT GT TOKENS: 0.]
[FIRST QUEST: AVAILABLE.]
[SURVIVE THE NEXT THIRTY DAYS.]
[REWARD: 600 GT TOKENS.]
[THIS IS THE EASIEST QUEST YOU WILL EVER RECEIVE.]
[DO NOT EMBARRASS THE SYSTEM.]
Dominic read through it again. All of it. Slowly.
600 tokens. One pull and potentially an item from the shop. One more Heroine from a destroyed world bound to his life and whatever power she carried potentially his to access when the time came.
He thought about Theresa in the dungeon. The monsters killed. The amount of damage she could output with ease.
He thought about Victor Harwick. About Reyes. About the Registry magistrates who had put his father in a cell and called it justice.
He thought about what matured bond meant.
He was still sitting with that when someone knocked on his door.