I was speechless, but it only lasted a mont.
I inhaled and exhaled.
"Thank you, White Feather."
I took a mont of reprieve, trying to get used to the darkness before speaking to her through it.
"Many say a summoner should be behind their summon, commanding the summon, being protected by the summon. Don’t get wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being protected by you... however... I don’t want that... I do not wish for that."
I shifted slightly in the darkness, my voice hardening.
"I want to be beside you, and one day... perhaps, even in front of you... just like a friend and a comrade."
White Feather did not move. She said nothing in response, and with the thick fog of darkness, it was difficult to tell what look was currently on her face. Her nonexistent voice made it even worse. I had been navigating the narrow world around with the jiggle of her bells and with her sound; now that was also gone, leaving utterly hopeless.
"White Feather?"
[Congratulations]
[You have stirred the emotions of a once Divine and Treacherous Maiden]
[This has caused her to unleash a portion of her hidden abilities]
[White Feather has gained a new Signature ability]
[As a result, you have gained one more attribute]
I trembled slightly, listening to what the Lodestar was saying to at such a ti.
’White Feather... that will be the real White Feather. Then does that an she’s sowhere inside White Feather, alive?’
I shivered at the possibility.
This most likely ant that the situation White Feather found herself in was irreversible. However, even if it was, would White Feather want to do it, and what would it take? Would she even be alive if she did?
’Damnit, I’m thinking ahead. This is not the ti for that.’
Instead, I reached within and took out the panel of runes, ready to study what this new attribute was about.
In the darkness, the blue transparent weave of words showed .
[Summoner Status]
Na: Cade Marlowe
Rank: E
Spirit Essence: 3,000/3,000
Active Spirit: 3/6
[Main Attributes]
• Summoner’s Touch (Basic) Lv. 9
• Infinite Vitality (Basic) Lv. 20 (Requirent not t)
• Sculptor’s Gift (Advanced) Lv. 5
[Extra Attributes]
• Emperor’s Presence (Combat/Support) Lv. 18
• Strategic Apex (Utility/Combat) Lv. 15
• Conqueror’s Will (Support/Combat) Lv. 10
• Warlord’s Command (Support/Combat) Lv. 17
• Sanctified Immolation (Combat) Lv. 18
• Chains of Confession (Combat/Control) Lv. 15
• Inquisitorial Authority (Commander/Debuff) Lv. 10
• Martyr’s Endurance (Survival/Support) Lv. 10
• Feather Step (Utility/Combat) Lv. 1
• Feather Robe (Utility) Lv. 1
Description: You can summon a white flowing robe of feathers. When this robe is summoned, all damage taken is reduced by 20%, speed increases by 20%, and dark elents are negated by the feathers of light, giving you the ability to channel light for a fixed number of seconds.
My eyes widened as I saw the description.
Then an evil smile slowly crawled upon my face.
"White Feather..." I uttered again.
She lingered, but when she answered, I felt her voice sounding with more resolve.
"Lord Cade, I feel more power surging through my soul for so reason. If you would let , I will destroy these riffraff, but since you want to be my friend, then work together with , Lord Cade."
I was stunned for a mont.
’Go, White Feather.’
I closed my eyes. It was pointless in the dark, but it had beco a habit. Then I reached for the attribute the Lodestar had just laid in my hands.
’Feather Robe.’
It answered imdiately.
Light blood at my collarbone first. A single thread of it, curling outward, then another, then ten, then a cascade — feathers of pale gold and white spilling down my shoulders and back, weaving themselves into a robe that draped without weight. The darkness around parted like cloth split by a knife.
And the corridor ca back.
I saw the floor first — grated steel, scuffed, three dark splatters of sothing near my left foot. Then the walls, the seams of the blast door, the angled ceiling vents.
Then White Feather, two paces from , her head turned slightly, her white hair catching the light my robe was throwing in a way that made her look almost — almost — like sothing a painter would have apologized for trying to capture.
Then them.
The four still standing.
They had begun to move the mont the light blood, but they had not moved fast enough.
The closest one was already mid-stride when the light reached him, and I watched his suit flinch — the tiniest hesitation in the joint of his hip, the suit’s optics adjusting to a brightness they had not been calibrated for in this hallway. Half a second of recalibration.
Half a second was a long ti.
I went.
The robe’s weight wasn’t there, but its speed was — my body felt lighter, and with it ca a speed that left even stunned. His swing t empty air where my shoulder should have been. I ca up under his arm, felt the seam of his elbow plate against my forearm, and drove him sideways into the wall with the full conversion of his own committed montum.
His suit hit the bulkhead.
Sothing in it cracked.
At the sa ti, White Feather had already moved. She crossed the corridor in a line so clean it didn’t look like running. The bells at her wrists made no sound — she had silenced them sowhere between his step and her arrival — and the feathers at her shoulders had gone from soft to sothing else, sothing edged. I saw a single feather detach from her sleeve as she passed the second suited figure, and the feather did not fall.
Instead, it hung in the air, suspended at the height of her shoulder for one full beat, and then it moved — fast, faster than her — and went through the seam at the soldier’s neck the way a needle goes through linen.
He was on the floor before he registered it.
A second feather peeled from her other sleeve. A third one followed, and they orbited her in slow, lazy arcs, and then they did not.
The third soldier ca at from the right, this one smarter, this one having watched the first one get put through the wall and adjusted accordingly. He kept his distance. He used the reach of the suit. He didn’t commit.
I felt the strike before it ca — the air pressure rolling ahead of his fist — and I did sothing I’d never been able to do before tonight.
I stepped into it.
The robe drank the impact. I felt the force land against my shoulder and arrive at as a third of itself, the rest of it dispersing into the feathers as a soft, warm pulse, and his fist — the fist that should have folded my collarbone — passed across my body without putting down.
His faceplate was the only part of him I could see clearly. The eyes behind it widened.
I hit him in that faceplate.
The first strike sent cracks through his helt. The second reinforced those cracks. I slamd the heel of my palm and my full weight behind it for the third strike. The plate gave on the third strike, the suit’s reinforced glass crazing across in a single white starburst, and his head snapped back inside the helt hard enough that he went limp before he hit the floor.
Two left. Both of them had stopped advancing. They had retreated to the far end of the corridor, and they were doing sothing I had not seen them do yet.
They were talking.
Helts tilted toward each other, hand signals. The unmistakable body language of soldiers reassessing.
’The audacity!’
White Feather lifted one hand. The feathers orbiting her drew inward, gathered along her arm, layered themselves across her forearm in a long curving line that was no longer feathers and no longer not feathers — sothing between a wing and a weapon, held in the shape of a sweep.
She glanced sideways at , just for a mont. The ghost of a smile.
"Together, Lord Cade?"
"Together."
We moved.
As my foot left the grating, the feather on White Feather’s wrist caught the light my robe spilled, and the corridor’s air rushed past my ears.
I went low.
And she went high.
[Authori’s Note]
I apologize for the pitiful update rates, this is quite unusual of , but I’ve been a little sick in the head, no, not dented like the way Cade is, I consider myself to be much more sane, this is just a sickness and tiredness, a little rest and I’ll get back in shape.
Thank you for your never-ending support. I should take care of myself to make sure I continue to give you guys the peak back to back, in hopes of winning your favors and eating all of your boundless Gold Crowns. Hehehe.
Also any quality control issue will be fixed when I’m alright. Don’t forget to vote golden tickets and power stones, and gift this treacherous author!
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