Chapter 15: Chapter 15 — Things I don’t understand?
After our endless, agonizing battle against the Lich, we returned to the adventurers’ guild. The city air felt strangely thick—or perhaps it was us carrying the weight of what we had witnessed in the darkness.
At the counter, we reported the mission’s success, though, as expected, we omitted certain strategic details best kept under absolute secrecy.
"Wh-what?! A Lich?!" the receptionist exclaimed. Her voice, usually sweet and calm, cracked with shock as her eyes flew wide open, scanning the macabre biological samples and fragments of necromantic experiments we had brought as irrefutable proof.
"Yes, I know it’s hard to believe," I replied, planting my elbows on the counter with a cynical grimace. After all, who would willingly admit they’d had a calamity-class entity raising an undead army and slaughtering people practically under their noses without anyone noticing? The incompetence of higher-ups was always the best shield for monsters.
The receptionist, hands trembling, gathered the evidence and hurried up the stairs toward the guild master’s office.
A couple of tense minutes passed in which the murmurs of other adventurers died down at the sight of us covered in crypt dust and residual ether. Finally, the receptionist poked her head over the internal balcony and waved us up.
We climbed the creaking wooden steps and entered the office.
Behind an imposing oak desk sat a robust man, broad-shouldered with a thick mane and beard dyed an ashen gray. His attire was a walking contradiction: a formal medieval military uniform, yet unbuttoned halfway, giving him a carefree air—almost as if he were on a perpetual summer vacation in the middle of a war front.
"So you two were the adventurers who killed the Lich, eh?" the man asked, exhaling a dense cloud of gray smoke from a cylinder of rustic tobacco leaves—the equivalent of a cigar from my old world.
Well, technically we hadn’t been alone, considering the summons and the chaos that unfolded, but for bureaucratic and reputational purposes, what did it matter?
"Yes," we answered in unison, crossing our arms.
The man rose from his carved chair and walked to the window, gazing at the bustle of the main street. Suddenly, he adopted a rigid, firm pose—back straight, hands clasped behind his back, a purely military stance that clashed with his relaxed clothing.
Then, he spun on his heels, strode toward us in large steps, and looked us straight in the eye.
"You did an exceptional job, Samira. Harold." His voice resonated with deep gravity as he extended his enormous hands to shake ours. "You have no idea how many innocent lives you’ve just saved in this sector."
Without wasting time, the guild master reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out two solid silver plaques, perfectly polished, reflecting the dim candlelight. At the center, masterfully engraved, stood the official emblem: a steppe wolf baring its fangs in a hunting stance.
"As promised, here you are. From this moment on, you are officially registered as Silver-Rank adventurers. And, of course, your well-deserved reward."
He dropped a heavy leather pouch onto the table that jingled with the unmistakable clink of coins. Peeking inside, I could see the glitter of hundreds of silver and copper pieces, and the golden shine of the most precious metal. Kalikas—the currency that pulled the strings of this damn fascinating world.
"Thank you, Mister...?" I left the phrase hanging, waiting for the name.
"Ah, forgive my poor manners. I forgot to introduce myself in the rush. I am Ronald Pain, master of this branch."
"Well, thanks again, Mister Pain," I said, shaking his hand one last time.
"Why the hell would anyone be surnamed ’Pain’?" I thought to myself, suppressing an ironic laugh. Destiny in Isekai really had a twisted sense of humor.
"Hey, Mister Pain... What will happen now with the Lich’s lair and the rest of his macabre experiments sealed down below?"
"Don’t worry about that. We will immediately report to the High Seat of the Holy Church of the Eternal Goddess so they can take action."
"So the Church, huh...?" I murmured in my mind, feeling that typical shiver any light novel reader gets when a central religious institution comes into play. Those types always hid something.
"Could they also send a contingent of high-level purifying sorcerers?" Samira intervened, breaking her silence and drawing my attention. "It’s necessary to cleanse the stagnant ether so that the souls of the people unjustly used in those sacrifices can unbind from matter and rest in peace."
I froze for a second. I had been thinking exactly the same thing; she had taken the words right out of my mouth. That relentless empathy mixed with her warrior instinct fascinated me completely.
Samira noticed my gaze and, with a hint of mischief, winked a violet eye at me. God, every day that passed, this woman drove me crazier.
"Of course. It will be done as you request," Mister Pain nodded, crushing the stub of his cigar against a bronze ashtray.
---
A couple of hours later, we headed to an inn with a rustic but cozy façade, a few streets from the guild—a direct recommendation from Karla.
As we walked, a brutal inconsistency kept hammering at my head. During the paperwork, Karla "the receptionist" had casually mentioned that our absence had lasted a total of four whole days inside the dungeon.
Four days. Yet, to my senses, my biological clock, and my own perception, the entire assault and battle against the Lich hadn’t lasted more than four or five hours.
We checked in under false names and went up to the only available room left on the second floor. The door closed behind us with the heavy click of an iron bolt, and I let myself fall onto the soft straw and wool bed.
Samira sat down beside me, unbuckling the upper straps of her light armor with a sigh of relief. I seized the moment of calm to raise my doubts about the temporal discrepancy.
"It’s a common anomaly in entities that brush against the Realm of Transcendence," she explained, crossing her legs and looking at me seriously. "One of the Lich’s passive abilities was the latent space-time distortion within his territory. He created a synchronous deceleration loop. Lucky for us, that monster didn’t yet comprehend the totality of the Temporal Laws; if he had possessed absolute control of that technique, he would have frozen our movements and executed us in the first assault."
She paused and shifted her gaze toward my chest.
"But what should really worry you, Master, is the mutation of your ether core."
I nodded and, with a quick thought, invoked the tactile interface. Violet light illuminated Samira’s face as we examined the detailed statistics.
We dove into a long, analytical conversation about the inner workings of our abilities. As we broke down the battle logs, the puzzle pieces began to fit together, revealing how a low-rank nobody like me had managed to pulverize a Lich.
The secret lay in the system multiplier. The temporary 500% effectiveness buff had not only increased my brute strength; it had forced my ether core to act like a thermodynamic black hole, absorbing the dungeon’s environmental energy at a near-infinite rate. That was why my reserves never emptied, even though I had been convinced I’d run dry after launching that combined spell with Runi during our first skirmish against the skeleton horde.
But the most disturbing—and exciting—discovery was the true nature of the Gacha. The summons weren’t simple holograms or artificial magical constructs created from nothing by the system. They were real biological entities, organic beings of flesh and blood who, at some point in universal history, had transcended death.
The system operated like a colossal genetic and spiritual data bank, safeguarding billions of legendary warriors who mutated their structure to adapt to my current level, waiting in eternal slumber for the moment to be summoned through my pulls.
And that wasn’t all: the database included an interdimensional weapons arsenal, relic items, and an endless array of hidden tricks still blocked by my user level.
"Holy God... I’ve become the damn generic protagonist of a broken Isekai," I thought, flashing a superior smirk. Though well, I had absolutely no complaints about it. After all, I had a tremendous, lethal MILF at my side willing to do anything for me.
---
What unfolded next in that room was our rigorous and savage morning Dual Ether Cultivation training.
Our naked bodies melted against each other in a dance of pure instinct and energy transfer. The flow of hot ether passed from my core to hers with every movement, stabilizing the spiritual channels the battle against the Lich had worn down.
Samira soon lost her composure as a relentless warrior; her muffled moans filled the room as her white skin flushed a burning crimson, sweating under the friction of our bodies. With her purple hair completely disheveled and plastered to her forehead from the heat, she still looked so damn beautiful it was unreal.
We continued cultivating our energies mercilessly, pushing our bodies’ limits until the ether finally stabilized and we granted ourselves a well-deserved rest.
Samira collapsed onto me, resting her head gently atop my exposed chest. Both of us were completely drenched in sweat, breathing heavily as our heart rates normalized.
As I stroked her back and gazed at her generous G-cup breasts rising and falling with her breath, my eyes inevitably drifted to the pronounced, ancient scar that crossed part of her torso. I couldn’t contain the curiosity accumulated over so much time; I extended my fingers and traced the rough texture of the mark on her skin with extreme tenderness.
"Hey, Sami..." I said in an affectionate whisper, "how did you get this scar?"
"Sami?" she repeated, lifting her head a little. Her violet eyes looked at me with a mix of genuine surprise and charming confusion.
"Ah... sorry," I answered immediately, feeling my cheeks heat up a bit. "It’s just... well, I thought since we’re in this... you know, a romantic relationship, or acting like lovers, we could use cute nicknames. Like normal people do."
Samira watched me in silence for a few seconds, until a deeply soft and warm smile completely transformed her face.
"It’s fine, Hal. I like it."
She gently placed her hand over mine, intertwining our fingers right over the mark on her skin.
"Regarding your question... it’s a rather long and dark story. Are you really sure you want to hear it?"
"Of course. I want to know everything about you," I replied, looking at her with total seriousness.
"Very well..." Samira exhaled a brief but heavy sigh, and her eyes seemed to lose themselves in an abyss of forgotten memories. "It all happened... about 4,000 years ago."
My mind stopped dead. My heart gave a violent lurch.
"Wait... what do you mean four thousand years!?" I screamed internally, as the gacha system in my vision flickered with a red warning I didn’t manage to read.
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