Chương 53: Chapter 46 - The pain is the entertainment

I got myself a room at the hotel. They apparently only had single rooms. I shook my head, entered my room, and locked the door. The panoramic windows showed the city dimming beneath me, concentric rings of golden light softening into the floor's artificial night. Above, the elevator shaft vanished into the pseudo-space sky. I kicked off my shoes, tossed the cloak over a chair, dropped Sarah's sword on it, and fell onto the bed. I closed my eyes.

The world blurred, my consciousness sinking inward, and I arrived at my soul chamber. The old house materialized around me. Floorboards creaking, the phantom smell of my mum's baking, the blur behind the windows. Home, or whatever passed for it inside one's soul. I stopped in the living room, focusing on the System. Nothing. I tried both stats and skill tree separately. Nope. Got nothing. Hmph. I was pretty sure I'd gotten some levels for floor twenty-five. Didn't matter if I couldn't spend the points.

I crossed the living room. Three doors lined the wall. Astarielle's. Ashy's. And the one with NOPE! scrawled across it in big red letters that eight-year-old me had considered the height of boundary-setting. Every step toward that door felt heavier than the last. The scent crept in before I reached it. Roses and sin and the particular weight of decisions you can't unmake. I opened the NOPE! door. The chamber beyond was warm, amber-tinted, like sunlight through old whiskey.

In the center stood the statue of Elsha, reclined on her carved wooden sofa, head braced by one hand, leg dangling. The napkin contract at its base. The runic inscription circled the whole thing. Well, I've gotten quite a bit of innocent blood on floor twenty-five. Upon a focused thought, I formed a pool around the statue. I summoned the Lantern of Endless Suffering, detached the vial for blood collection, and released it. Blood exploded from the vial. I directed it into the pool.

The blood filled up the pool so fast I had to expand it. I ended up with a decent pool. All right, so I had enough blood of the innocents. The scent of roses filled the room, and a gentle touch slid over my shoulder. Elsha stood next to me. Her goat-like horns nearly grazed my temple.

"It's starting to look nice and cozy in here." I sighed.

"I need to make a few deals with you."

"A few?" Her eyes sparkled.

"Now you've got my attention."

"I thought I always had your attention." She clicked her tongue.

"You are learning the wrong things from Astarielle." Possibly.

"How we have the deal connected to my death, I need a few more."

"More?" She leaned closer.

"And here I was getting afraid you were getting cold feet about me being summoned upon your death." Through the expenditure of the lifetime I would have had remaining.

"That one's fine. What's the minimum amount of my lifetime that you need to be summoned without expending mana?"

"Properly? About a half."

"And sufficiently? You don't need to be summoned properly. You function just fine at ten percent."

"Ten percent?" she shouted.

"Do I look that cheap to you?"

"Why would you need more than ten percent of my lifetime to be summoned? Like really, even fifteen feels like an overkill." She rolled her eyes.

"Under what conditions do you want that to be triggered, anyway?"

"They've got a stasis-based equipment here. So, I was thinking that I might need you to be summoned after I'm incapacitated for a long enough period of time." Stolen story; please report. She smiled.

"Twelve hours sound good."

"Too short. I sleep for eight to ten hours regularly. Twelve means you'd be summoned every time I take a nap after a long fight."

"Then you shouldn't be fighting things that make you need long naps."

"Elsha."

"Fifteen."

"Twenty-seven." Her nostrils flared.

"Twenty-seven. You want me to sit there, doing nothing, knowing you're unconscious and potentially dying, for twenty-seven hours?"

"A full day plus a three-hour buffer. If I'm out for more than a day straight, something is wrong. Anything under that could be exhaustion, heavy sleep, or recovery."

"Or it could be someone holding you in a magical coma while they drain your blood into a ceremonial bowl." I paused. That was uncomfortably specific.

"Then I die, and you get summoned by the on-death clause."

"Right, so under what conditions would I be summoned in the case of incapacitation? Same as on death?" Hmm… that was an interesting question. The on death clause explicitly had zero restrictions. She got summoned with free will, absolutely no limits, and only a single command – avenge me.

"The command would be free me. No restrictions." Elsha chuckled, unnervingly sweetly.

"Deal. I'll do it for twenty-five percent of your remaining lifetime."

"Right, so I need it for the case I'm incapacitated for 27 hours straight. Then I need it if I'm incapacitated for 59 hours out of any 72 hours."

"That's too complicated. Make it simpler."

"You'll manage. Also, is there a way for you to be summoned if my ability to use magic is restricted?" She frowned, raising her hand to her chin.

"Depends. If you're in an area with no magic, then no. But if it's just you having anti-magical shackles, then yes."

"All right, sounds good. If I don't have access to magic for, say, 96 hours, then you'll summon yourself." She rolled her eyes.

"That's a fourth different number in three rules. Make it easier to remember."

"The bindings will remember it for you." At least that was how I understood it worked.

"So, can we do the rules?"

"I guess. But all the summoning will be unrestricted. If I bother to remember all these conditions and rules and overcomplicated bullshit, then I'm not suffering any restrictions." I smirked.

"Of course. If I'm sacrificing a quarter of my lifetime to summon you, it better be worth it. This is why you've made me put the self-maintenance cost reduction engraving on you, anyway. You don't need that when I'm present to fuel you with mana. You need that when I don't."

"Awfully observant, aren't you?" She slid around me, hand gently tracing my frame.

"This will burn a bit."

"It always does with you." She gasped. My back lit up on fire. I grunted with pain, all my senses momentarily blinded. The binding tattoo changed. The new conditions seared into its pattern. And so did my mana. She burned thirty million mana, ten for each condition.

"You could've used your own mana." Elsha chuckled.

"I could have also done it painlessly. But neither would have been any fun." She turned into a frame of pink petals, which scattered and vanished. I didn't even manage to say thanks. I stood in the empty chamber for a moment, allowing my senses to recover from the searing pain. Then I left, crossing the house to Yushi's room.

The Japanese shrine-style chamber, with the ectoplasm-licked shopping list still visible on the floor and the faintly unsettling atmosphere of a room designed by someone whose only reference for Japanese architecture was anime. In a puff of icy mist, she materialized upside-down, fan spread across her face, translucent form flickering in the shrine's dim light.

"Ku ku ku... Damian-sama visits Yushi in the dead of night. Yushi's heart is not prepared for such forwardness." She narrowed her eyes.

"Though the rest of her is." I pulled out the lantern. Its bright teal light illuminated the chamber.

"Is this enough souls to summon Siegfried?" She floated around it.

"Ku ku ku... Damian-sama has been very busy indeed. No wonder he has no time for lonely Yushi. Yes, it can summon him." Good. One variable solved.

"How much mana will it need?"

"Hmm… about two times that of a normal summoning." One hundred million. Great. I had thirty-three million mana left. If I spent nothing tomorrow, a full night's sleep would regenerate seventy million. Thirty-three plus seventy. A hundred and three. Enough, with three million to spare. But spending nothing meant no inefficiency. No tanking bosses, no resummoning Astarielle five times before she cast the correct spell, and certainly no overnight fun with Astarielle.

"All right. Thanks." I focused and returned to reality. Sleep found me soon. Morning hit me with artificial sunlight. I showered. The water pressure in this place was excellent, though the temperature controls were clearly designed for whatever species built New Haven, and their preferred range apparently started at lukewarm and ended at hypothermia. I dressed and checked the mirror. The bite mark on my lip from Cassandra was still there. I prodded it with my tongue. It stung. Good. I headed down to the lobby.

The ambient lighting had shifted to a warm gold, matching whatever passed for morning on this floor. Through the panoramic windows, the city hummed with quiet activity, vehicles gliding along their lanes, people in their loose clothing going about their sterile lives. Ren and Kael were already at a table by the windows. Ren sat with his katana across his lap, a steaming cup in his hand, posture relaxed in the way that meant he'd already scanned every exit in the room.

Kael was feeding Venn something from a small bowl. The creature's fur had settled into its calm grey-blue, though its ears rotated toward me the moment I came in.

"Morning," I said, dropping into a chair. Ren glanced up. His eyes flicked across my face.

"You look rough."

"Didn't sleep well." Kael's gaze caught the mark on my lip. He looked at it, looked at me, and took a very deliberate sip from his cup.

"Uh-huh. You definitely got that from sleeping."

"It's a shaving cut."

"On your lip."

"I shave aggressively." Venn leaned up to Kael's ear, its tiny mouth moving soundlessly. Whatever it said made Kael snort into his drink.

"What's the little snitch saying about me?"

"That she's got a lot to snitch on." We all chuckled. The door opened, and three men walked into the bar. One with flowing robes, the second with a trench coat and a staff, and the third one in armor with too many crosses. Liu, Henrik, and Aurelio. Fuck.