The notifications ca all at once.
[You have slain a Level 156 Divine Beast: Naga Sovereign]
[New Monster Index Bonus: 102 Strength, 77 Vitality, 92 Dexterity, 83 Mana]
[You have reached Level 115.]
[You have reached Level 116.]
The levels kept coming.
He stood over the fallen Naga Sovereign and let them run, watching the numbers climb past 120 before they finally stopped.
[You have reached Level 127. You have received 1 Stat Point.]
Damon was about to dismiss the screen before a final notification appeared.
[New Soul has been added to the Dark Legion]
His brow raised. He wanted to check what it ant imdiately, but before he could do so, he suddenly realised the sudden silence around him and dismissed the screen.
He slowly looked around, the fallen Naga fighters, the fallen Kitsune clan mbers, the scorched stone where his lightning had touched ground, the massive blade the Naga Sovereign had planted and never reclaid.
The surviving Kitsune clan mbers were watching him.
There weren’t many left standing.
Six, maybe seven, their fox ears oriented toward him with the particular attention of people who had processed a sequence of events and arrived at a conclusion that didn’t match anything they had a reference for.
A human arrived in the midst of a battle between two divine beasts. A human had killed three Naga Clan fighters with a single strike before killing a divine beast with a follow-up.
None of them spoke, and none of them moved.
Raiden was on the ground where he’d been since Damon arrived, his silver-white hair still matted dark, his four tails flat.
He was conscious, his eyes were open, tracking Damon across the clearing with the look of soone whose entire frawork for a situation had just been dismantled and hadn’t yet been replaced with anything.
He didn’t say anything either.
Aya was moving.
Slowly, with the careful deliberateness of soone managing a wound that didn’t want to be managed, her weight distributed to the right side and limping on the left, her nine tails dragging slightly behind her.
Each step carried the visible effort of soone running on nothing but the decision to keep moving, her mana reserves still empty, her left side still bleeding through the darkened silk.
Seeing her cross the clearing toward him, Damon t her halfway.
She stopped in front of him and looked at him for a long mont. It was the sa look she’d given him in the small hall when he first arrived, the one that covered more ground than it appeared to, reading things that weren’t on the surface.
Then she looked at his forearms.
The cuts were still bleeding. Slow and steady, the distinct persistence of wounds that had been reopened too many tis to close cleanly.
Her expression shifted.
She reached out and took his arm gently, turning it slightly to see the damage properly.
Her fingers moved carefully across his wounds, cataloguing everything he had been through despite her own injuries.
Yuki was still on the ground near the treeline where Damon had lowered her.
She was conscious, her eyes open, and her expression carried the look of soone in complete discomfort despite her efforts not to show it.
Three tails moved slowly behind her where four had been. The space where the fourth had been wasn’t empty exactly, just absent, the way a room felt different after furniture was removed, even before you could identify what was missing.
It took a while for everything to be sorted.
The surviving clan mbers helped their fallen, carrying those who couldn’t walk and supporting those who could. Raiden was helped to his feet by two clan mbers and managed to stay upright, though the effort showed in every line of his body. He didn’t look at Damon again after the first ti, which told Damon more than any conversation would have.
Damon carried Yuki inside.
She didn’t protest, which told him how badly the loss of her tail had hit her. The Yuki he’d spent weeks crossing wrong worlds with would have had sothing to say about being carried. This one simply let it happen, her head resting against his shoulder.
He settled her into a room on the second floor and left her with a clan mber who seed to know what they were doing.
Then he found Aya.
She just about made it to her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, with her hands pressed tightly against her left side, her expression showing more pain than she would like to show.
He sat beside her.
For a mont, neither of them spoke.
The waterfall was audible through the narrow window, the sa constant sound it had been the first night he arrived, the world outside continuing its business regardless of what had happened in the clearing below.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"I’m fine—" she tried to say, but at that mont a sudden sharp pain flashed across her face.
He looked at her. "Is that so?"
She held his gaze for a mont before her composure shifted slightly. "It’s deep... But it’ll heal on its own. I just need so rest."
He nodded.
"Yuki," she said quietly. "Her tail..."
"She offered it willingly," Damon replied before she could even properly ask.
Aya was quiet for a mont.
A tail wasn’t just an appearance.
It was directly linked to strength. Losing one wasn’t simply costic. It was sothing more fundantal, a reduction in sothing that mattered to Kitsune Clan mbers more than anything.
"She’ll recover," Aya said finally. More to herself than to him.
"She will," he agreed.
Another silence settled between them, this ti the comfortable kind, the kind that didn’t require filling.
"You were gone a long ti," she said.
"I know."
"I didn’t know if—" She stopped for a second before continuing. "The summoning connection tells if my champion is alive. I felt it the entire ti you were gone." A pause. "But I didn’t know where you were."
He looked at her.
"We got lost between worlds," he said. "But I’m here now."
She looked at him with the expression that carried countless emotions, and just as many questions.
"...Lost between worlds," she echoed the words before chuckling softly. "You might be the only person who could say sothing like this so lightly."
Damon shrugged. "Just another day."
Her body shifted closer toward him, her head resting against his shoulder as she let out a soft exhale.
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