I woke Monday morning to find myself exactly one inch taller.
Five-ten now instead of five-nine. The universe had apparently decided that in addition to stealing abilities through supernatural lactation, I also deserved an extra inch of height as a participation trophy.
The system notification glowed in the corner of my vision: Physical Transformation Detected - Height Increased. Limit Breaker recalibrating body composition for optimal hunter physiology.
Great. Wonderful. Now my uniform fit even worse than before, the pants riding up my ankles like I’d sohow joined a flood preparedness club.
I pulled on gym clothes and headed out, finding Hikaru already at the door with her bag. She glanced at , her red eyes doing that quick assessnt thing, and her eyebrows lifted a fraction.
"You look different."
"New haircut."
She didn’t buy it but didn’t press either. We walked to the rec center in our usual morning silence, which had evolved from hostile territory to sothing almost companionable over the past week. Her attraction percentage sat at five percent now. Still pathetically low, but climbing.
Small victories.
The routine had locked in hard over the past three days.
Five AM gym with Hikaru. Six AM field training with Misato, who seed determined to kill us all through burpees and formation drills. Seven-thirty breakfast with whoever showed up first. Eight AM classes, which varied between Cross’s engaging lectures and Vale’s sporadic appearances when he rembered teaching was technically his job.
Then Physical Conditioning with Garrett at ten, where I’d stopped being dead last in everything and moved up to rely embarrassingly bad at most things.
Lunch at noon with the squad. Two PM electives. Four to seven with Misato running us through combat scenarios until soone collapsed. Usually Jordan, though Belle had face-planted twice this week.
The real routine, though, happened after hours.
Monday night I spent with Naomi in her room, practicing what she’d started calling "training exercises" despite the fact that we both knew exactly what kind of training we were doing. She’d discovered that applying micro-waves of her ability to nerve clusters created feedback loops that made every touch feel like the first ti, which made extraction sessions significantly more efficient.
Also louder. Her roommate had started wearing noise-canceling headphones.
Tuesday I gave Belle her buff before our morning run, which ant Private Sanctum at five-thirty while Hikaru was presumably at the gym. Belle had gotten comfortable with the arrangent, treating it like a business transaction right up until I activated Sensory Hijack and made her taste vanilla cream while her body thought I was touching her everywhere simultaneously.
Then it stopped being business and started being Belle grabbing my hair and demanding I stop talking and get on with it already.
Wednesday Aurora texted at eleven PM claiming she needed ergency extraction because her squad had a Tier 2 gate scheduled for Thursday morning and she wanted the buff active. I found her waiting outside Building C in yoga pants and an oversized sweater, looking like she’d just rolled out of bed.
Which she had.
We burned through the entire forty five-minute sanctum window, and Aurora left with a forty-eight-hour Gold-tier buff and a promise to bring actual food next ti instead of making subsist on whatever protein shakes the dining hall was pushing.
The pattern held. Wake up. Train. Class. Train more. Extract. Sleep. Repeat.
My stats climbed faster than should have been possible.
Strength: [D] ▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱ (5/10)
Endurance: [D] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱▱ (7/10)
Agility: [D] ▰▰▰▰▱▱▱▱▱▱ (4/10)
The sexual training multiplier stacked with Silver essence like compound interest. Every extraction session moved the bar. Every morning workout pushed closer to C-rank.
And Thursday morning, after Belle left my apartnt at six AM with her hair still a ss and her lips still swollen, the system dropped a notification I’d been waiting for.
◆ NEW ITEM UNLOCKED ◆
Essence Bottles (Basic)
Quantity: 3
Capacity: 1 cup per bottle
Function: Direct extraction into storage for later consumption
Preservation: Indefinite shelf life, no quality degradation
Note: Essence retains full buff potency when consud within 48 hours of extraction. Potency decreases 50% after 48 hours.
Three glass bottles materialized in my inventory, each one sized like a wine bottle with a wide mouth and a cork stopper. The glass had an iridescent quality that shimred when light hit it.
I stared at them for a solid minute, processing the implications.
I could extract without drinking imdiately. Store essence for ergencies. Bank points for later.
The vault held six cups now after I’d upgraded it to Bronze. Add three bottles and I had storage for nine cups total.
Nine cups of Silver-tier essence equaled eighteen hundred points. Eighteen days of breathing room.
The system had just handed a safety net.
Thursday night I tested the bottles with Naomi.
She’d co to my place after dinner, her shell necklace catching the light as she stepped inside. Hikaru’s door remained closed, though I suspected she heard everything and simply chose to ignore my existence harder.
"So," Naomi said, settling on my bed with that new confidence she’d been wearing lately. "You said you wanted to show sothing?"
I pulled out one of the bottles.
She stared at it. Then at . Then back at the bottle.
"You have got to be kidding ."
"System reward," I said, holding it up. The glass caught the lamplight, refracting it into rainbow patterns across the walls. "Direct extraction into storage. Keeps indefinitely."
"You want to milk into a bottle."
"When you say it like that, it sounds weird."
"Jace." Her voice went flat. "It is weird."
"But practical."
She made a noise sowhere between a laugh and a groan, falling back onto my pillows. "I hate that I can’t argue with that."
I sat beside her, turning the bottle in my hands. "Look, I know how it sounds. But having stored essence ans I don’t have to panic if sothing happens and I can’t see you for a few days. It’s insurance."
"For you."
"For both of us," I countered. "Less pressure on you to be available. You can focus on training, classes, whatever you need without worrying that I’m going to keel over dead if we skip a day."
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