My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 47: Chapter 47 — The Seal Has Broken

Dawn broke with the sky stained a dirty, bruised red, as if the sun had risen with a hangover and regretted every choice that had led it there. The light filtering through the bedroom window was weak and jaundiced, casting long, sickly shadows across the floorboards. The air smelled of wet earth and something else, something metallic and sharp that I couldn’t identify — like a copper coin held too long in a sweating palm. I stayed in bed for a while, eyes half-open, listening to the birdsong outside. It sounded wrong. Thinner. Weaker. As if the birds were singing out of habit rather than any real desire, their notes falling flat before they reached the treetops.

Chimera stirred beside me. She’d slipped into the room at some point during the night, after Samira had fallen asleep, and coiled herself around my right side like an enormous cat seeking warmth. Her breathing was deep and rhythmic, a low rumble that vibrated through the mattress. One of her arms was draped possessively across my waist, her claws retracted but her grip firm even in sleep. I didn’t mind. Sleeping between Samira and her had become the closest thing to peace I’d known in this world — a fragile, improbable peace, but peace nonetheless.

Samira was already gone. Her side of the bed was cold, the sheets smoothed down as if she’d been up for a while. I eased myself out from under Chimera’s arm with the exaggerated care of a man defusing a bomb — a pointless exercise, because the beast slept like a boulder and wouldn’t have noticed if a herd of stampeding orcs came through the room. I dressed in silence, pulling on my trousers and shirt while the morning light continued its sickly crawl across the walls.

I found her in the kitchen, stirring a pot of porridge with a wooden spoon. She wore her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, a few stray strands escaping to frame her face, and an apron over her robe — a simple, domestic image that still caught me off guard every time. The steam from the pot dampened her cheeks and plastered a couple of violet wisps to her temples. When she heard me enter, she looked up and offered me a brief smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

"You slept well," she said. It wasn’t a question. She stated it with the quiet certainty of someone who already knew the answer, who could feel my rest through the bond we shared.

"Like a log," I said, leaning against the counter. "And you?"

"Also." She stirred the porridge a few more times, the spoon scraping against the bottom of the pot in slow, meditative circles. "I dreamed of my mother."

I didn’t say anything. I just stayed where I was, my shoulder against the cool stone of the counter, and waited. I’d learned that Samira would share when she was ready, and pushing her only made her retreat further behind her walls. Four thousand years of walls took time to dismantle.

"It was a strange dream. One of those that don’t hurt." Her lips curved into an absent smile, her gaze drifting somewhere beyond the steam and the porridge. "We were on the farm — the one from my childhood, before everything. She was teaching me to bake bread. I kept getting the proportions wrong, too much water or not enough flour, and she just laughed at me. Not unkindly. Just... laughed. Like mothers do." Her voice caught for a fraction of a second. "I hadn’t remembered her laugh in centuries. I’d forgotten the sound of it."

I moved closer and placed a hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. I felt her muscles tense beneath the thin fabric of her robe, a knot of old grief and fresh longing, but she didn’t pull away. She leaned into the touch, just slightly.

"Do you think it was only a dream?" I asked.

Samira shook her head slowly. "Who knows. The veil between worlds has always been thin for me. Maybe it was just my mind giving me something I needed. Or maybe..." She trailed off, then shrugged. "But it was pleasant. And that’s enough for me."

I stayed there, my hand on her back, while the porridge burbled in the pot. Neither of us said anything more. There are moments when words are just noise, and this was one of them.

---

That morning’s training was with Domack.

"Are you ready, master?" the ashen orc asked, spinning his club with one hand as if it weighed less than a broomstick. The morning light, still sickly and strange, caught the scars on his grey hide and made them gleam like old silver.

"I’ve been ready since I got up," I said, rolling my shoulders to loosen them.

"I hope so. Yesterday I saw you doing channeling exercises with the mage." Domack’s tusked mouth twisted into a grin. "You looked like a cat coughing up a hairball. A very sad, very inept cat."

"Thanks for the support, Domack."

"Don’t mention it." He slammed the butt of his club into the soft earth, and the ground shivered. "Now show me if the hairball is gone."

We were in the clearing, about a hundred meters from the cabin. The ground was soft from the previous night’s rain, and the marks of past training sessions — furrows, small craters, the occasional tree split clean in half — dotted the terrain like battle scars. The pines around us stood silent, their needles drooping in the strange, heavy air.

Dorko watched from the sidelines, an apple in his hand. He’d taken an enormous bite that filled half his cheek, and juice was dribbling down his chin. Runi floated over his shoulder, sparking with curiosity, its tiny flame-form flickering between orange and blue.

"Do you want me to referee, master?" the young orc offered, his words garbled around the mouthful of apple.

"That won’t be necessary. This is a demonstration."

"A demonstration of what?"

"Of the fact that I’m not useless anymore."

Domack let out a booming laugh that echoed through the clearing. "That remains to be seen."

The ashen orc charged first. He didn’t use his maximum speed — I’d seen him move in real combat, a grey blur of violence, and this was a stroll by comparison — but his opening strike was fast enough that the air whistled around his fist. I took a short, precise sidestep and let the punch pass within inches of my shoulder. The wind of the blow kissed my cheek.

"Good," Domack said, circling. "Your reaction speed has improved. But that’s not magic. That’s just not being slow."

"Wait for it."

I opened my core. The golden ether bloomed from my chest and flowed through my channels without resistance, without blockages, without the stabbing pain that had been my constant companion for weeks. It was smooth and warm, like honey poured through a clear pipe. I guided it to my right arm and let it rest there, dense and ready. Then, with my other hand, I pulled a thread of ambient mana from the air — the trick Odessa had drilled into me through torture and sarcasm — and channeled it to my left.

Ether in one hand. Mana in the other. Two parallel currents that didn’t mix but could work together, like two musicians playing the same song on different instruments. My right palm glowed gold. My left shimmered blue.

"What the hell...?" Dorko murmured, the half-eaten apple forgotten in his hand.

"Shut up and watch," Domack said, but his tone had shifted. He wasn’t the condescending instructor anymore. He was a warrior recognizing another. His grey eyes narrowed, and the grip on his club tightened.

The orc attacked again. This time it was a combination: a right hook to the torso, a low sweep at the legs, a downward elbow aimed at my collarbone. Three strikes chained together without pause, the kind of sequence that would have flattened me a week ago.

I dodged the first with a pivot of my hips, the fist grazing my ribs. I hopped over the leg sweep, feeling the whoosh of air beneath my boots. The elbow I met with my right forearm, and on contact I released the golden ether in a controlled burst that shoved Domack backward two full meters. His boots carved twin furrows in the mud as he skidded to a halt.

The orc stood still. He looked down at his chest, where the ether had singed a patch of his leather armor. A wisp of smoke curled upward. Then he looked at me.

"You used both energies," he said slowly. "At the same time. Without collapsing."

"Without collapsing," I confirmed.

"And without passing out."

"That too. It’s been a good week."

Domack let out a grunt that could have been approval or disbelief. He turned to Dorko, who was still frozen with the apple in his hand and his eyes the size of dinner plates.

"Did you see that?"

"I saw it," Dorko said, swallowing his mouthful with an audible gulp. "But I don’t believe it."

"Believe it." Domack pointed his club at me, but the gesture wasn’t threatening — it was almost proud. "The master has stopped being useless."

"Thank you. That’s very moving."

"I’m stating a fact. If you’d tried that a week ago, your channels would have burst like pig intestines on a bonfire. I’ve seen it happen. Messy."

"What a poetic image."

"I’m a warrior, not a bard. Poetic images are for people who don’t get hit in the face for a living."

I let out a laugh that came straight from my chest, bright and unrestrained. This was pure euphoria, more than simple relief. For weeks — no, for months — I’d depended on the System for every spell, every summoning, every goddamn spark. Now, for the first time, the magic flowed because I wanted it to flow. Not because I was pushing a button. Not because a golden screen was doing the work for me. Because I had learned.

"Another round," I said.

Domack smiled. It was one of his real smiles, the kind that crinkled the corners of his grey eyes and showed his tusks. "As you command, master."

---

He kept me in the clearing for a full hour. When we finished, I was covered in mud, sweat, and a fresh collection of bruises that would probably turn interesting colors by evening, but I hadn’t passed out. Not once. My channels remained open, my breathing was ragged but steady, and the ether and mana flowed through me like two rivers that had finally learned to share a single bed without flooding.

Dorko gave me a slap on the back that nearly sent me face-first into the mud.

"Incredible, master! You’ve improved so much!"

"I’m glad you noticed," I coughed, staggering to regain my balance. "Now stop hitting me before you break something."

"Sorry. I just get excited."

"I know you do."

Domack, leaning on his club, watched me with his arms crossed. His expression was serious, but there was a glint of satisfaction in his grey eyes, a quiet pride that he was too stoic to voice.

"What?" I asked, wiping mud from my cheek.

"Nothing. I was just thinking that the giant who killed you wouldn’t recognize you if he saw you now. You move differently. You carry yourself differently." He tilted his head. "It’s like you’ve finally grown into your own skin."

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. The memory of Urdok — his fists, his grief, the embrace with his resurrected children — flickered through my mind like a shadow passing over the sun. I didn’t flinch from it anymore. It was part of me now, a scar that had healed clean.

"I don’t plan on running into him again to check," I said.

"Good decision. Some lessons only need to be learned once."

On the cabin porch, Odessa was watching us with her arms crossed, her silver hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her white robe was immaculate, as always, not a single smudge or wrinkle despite the strange, heavy morning. Beside her, Samira leaned her hip against the railing, with Lia sitting on the step, absorbed in a rag doll Chimera had sewn for her — a lopsided little thing with mismatched button eyes that the girl loved fiercely.

"Your projection has improved," Odessa said as I approached. Her electric-blue eyes swept over me in a quick, clinical assessment. "The ether is flowing cleanly. The mana as well. Your channels are responding to exercise without micro-fissures. The structural integrity is holding."

"Thanks."

"I’m giving you data, not thanks." She adjusted the cuff of her sleeve with a precise little tug. "You’re still a novice. A beginner. A dilettante playing with forces he barely comprehends. But you are now a functional novice. That’s an important distinction."

"I’ll take it as a compliment."

"Take it however you like. As long as you don’t die in my next lesson. I’ve grown accustomed to having a student who survives the curriculum."

"I don’t intend to."

"The corpses didn’t intend to die either." Her lips curved into that thin, almost-smile she wore when she was being particularly insufferable. "And yet."

Samira rolled her eyes and handed me a towel. "Stop torturing him, Odessa."

"This is negative reinforcement, not torture. It’s well documented that it works."

"On dogs. Not on husbands."

"There are more similarities than you might think." Odessa turned a page in her grimoire without looking down. "Both respond to consistent discipline. Both require clear boundaries. Both are significantly more pleasant to deal with after regular exercise."

I laughed, a tired, breathless sound, and looped the towel around my neck. Lia looked up from her doll and fixed me with those big brown eyes that always caught me off guard, no matter how many times I saw them.

"Daddy, are you strong now?"

I crouched down to her level and ruffled her hair. She giggled and swatted at my hand. "A little stronger than yesterday," I said.

"Stronger than Miss Samira?"

"That’s impossible. Miss Samira is the strongest woman in the world. I’m just working my way up to second place."

Lia nodded, deeply convinced, as if I’d just explained a fundamental law of the universe. Samira shot me a look that was half pride and half "stop talking nonsense in front of the child."

Chimera appeared in the doorway at that moment, yawning with her fangs on full display. She’d just woken up, and it showed. She wore a loose shift that barely covered her thighs, and her black-and-white mane was a bird’s nest of tangles and snarls. She rubbed one eye with the heel of her palm and blinked sleepily at the gathered group.

"Did something interesting happen?" she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

"Harold used both energies without exploding," Domack said.

"Ah." Chimera looked me up and down, her mismatched eyes slowly focusing. "Is that good?"

"It’s very good."

"Then why aren’t we having a party?"

"Because parties require food," Samira said, turning back toward the kitchen. "And if you don’t get dressed and help prepare lunch, there won’t be any party. Or any food, for that matter."

Chimera grumbled something unintelligible — something that sounded like "tyranny" and "unfair" and possibly a curse in a language I didn’t recognize — and dragged herself back into the cabin to find clothes. Lia laughed, that bright, bubbling girl-laugh that never failed to lift my mood, and I let myself drop onto the porch step, exhausted but content.

That’s when the sky split open.

---

There was no warning. No tremor. No premonition. One moment, the world was still. The next —

The morning sun, which until that instant had been warm and lazy behind the strange red haze, went out like a candle snuffed by an unseen hand. Darkness didn’t fall — it surged, a tidal wave of black clouds boiling up from nowhere, thick as tar, swallowing the blue of the sky in a matter of seconds. They didn’t drift or roll; they devoured, spreading with a purpose that no natural weather possessed. The wind stopped dead. The birds fell silent mid-song, their voices cut off as if a door had slammed shut. Even the creak of the cabin’s timbers seemed to hush, the world itself holding its breath.

"What the hell...?" I started to say, rising to my feet.

A low, grinding thunder rumbled on the horizon. But it wasn’t thunder — not the kind that comes with a storm. This was deeper, longer, a sound that seemed to come from inside the earth rather than the sky. A groan of stone and soil, as if the planet itself was in pain. The pine tops swayed without wind, a sickly, unnatural movement. A flock of crows erupted from somewhere deep in the forest and scattered northward, cawing in frantic desperation, their black shapes cutting ragged lines across the bruised sky.

Lia grabbed my arm, her small fingers digging in with surprising strength. "Daddy?"

"It’s okay, princess." I scooped her up and held her tight against my chest. Her heart was hammering against my sternum, a frantic little drum. "Stay with me. I’ve got you."

Samira was on her feet. Her expression was the look of a soldier who recognizes the distant sound of battle — not fear, not yet, but the cold, focused calm that comes before violence. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the porch railing. Chimera emerged from the cabin without a sound, fully alert now, her mismatched eyes locked on the horizon and her nostrils flared wide, scenting the air. Her tail lashed once, twice. Domack and Dorko positioned themselves in front of the porch, one on each side, falling into a defensive formation we’d never practiced but which they executed as if they’d drilled it for centuries. Odessa snapped her grimoire open with a crack like a breaking bone, and the pages began turning themselves, illuminated by an urgent blue glow that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.

"This isn’t natural," the mage said, her voice tight.

"I know," Samira replied. Her voice was low and tense, a bowstring drawn to its limit. "I recognize it."

The sky tore open.

Literally. A fissure of violet light ripped across the firmament, a claw-mark gouged into a canvas. From its depths erupted a column of black and purple energy that surged toward the clouds with a deafening roar, twisting like a wounded serpent. And in the distance — beyond the mountains, in the direction of the Kingdom of Mouka — another identical column punched through the sky. A third to the east, jagged and terrible. A fourth to the west, its light casting long, writhing shadows across the land.

Four pillars. Four rifts. Four open wounds bleeding corrupted light into the world.

The air thickened, dense and foul, heavy with the stench of sulfur and ozone and something else — something ancient and wrong. It scraped my throat with every breath. An invisible pressure bore down on my shoulders, a weight like a hand the size of a mountain, and my knees buckled. Lia whimpered, and I wrapped my arms tighter around her, shielding her head with one hand, my lips pressed to her hair.

"Samira!" I shouted over the roar of the pillars. "What is this?"

She didn’t answer immediately. She was still staring at the columns, her face pale as bone, her violet eyes reduced to two slivers of ice. Her hands were shaking. I’d never seen them shake. Samira didn’t shake. Samira was the woman who’d survived a massacre, a decade in the Abyss, the loss of everything she’d ever loved. She’d faced down monsters and mages and gods-damned titans without flinching. And now her hands were trembling.

"The seal," she said at last. Her voice was barely a whisper, but in the unnatural silence that followed the roar of the pillars, I heard her perfectly. "The seal my master created with her life. It’s broken."

Odessa snapped her grimoire shut. The sound was jarringly loud. Her face had lost every trace of academic arrogance. "Are you certain?"

"I’ve been feeling its echo in my nightmares for four thousand years." Samira turned to face us, and her eyes were no longer ice. They were fire — old, terrible, consuming fire. "I would recognize it anywhere. In any world. In any life."

"The seal of what?" I asked, though I already knew. I’d known since she first told me her story, since she’d mentioned the Andawas, the Valetri, the outer god that had tried to force its way into this reality. The pieces had been there all along, waiting.

Samira looked at me. Her expression was that of someone who has just seen their own grave, freshly opened and waiting.

"The seal that contained the creatures that destroyed my home," she said. "The Andawas. The god the Valetri tried to summon. Everything that’s been waiting on the other side for millennia." She paused, and her fingers closed around my wrist, gripping with a strength that would leave marks. "The war that consumed my era, Harold. It’s back."

The silence that followed was worse than the roaring. It was a living thing, thick and suffocating, pressing in from all sides.

Chimera growled. Not a threat, not a warning — something deeper and more primal, a sound that came from her chest rather than her throat. Her hackles were raised, and her claws had extended without her seeming to notice. Dorko gripped his club with both hands, his usual cheerfulness gone, replaced by the grim determination of a warrior facing the unknown. Domack closed his eyes for a moment, his lips moving in what might have been a prayer. Odessa pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and fastidiously wiped non-existent dust from her robe — her way of maintaining calm when everything was going to hell.

Lia tugged at my shirt. "Daddy? Why is it dark?"

"I don’t know, princess." I lifted her into my arms and pressed her against my chest, her small body trembling. "But whatever happens, I’m not letting you go. I promise."

I looked at the violet columns on the horizon. They were beautiful in a twisted, terrible way — like poison flowers blooming from the earth, their petals reaching toward a sky they were slowly devouring.

"System," I called silently. "Do you have anything on this?"

The golden screen flickered into existence before my eyes. The familiar interface felt jarringly normal against the chaos.

«Alert. Detection of divine-category dark energy at multiple points across the continent. Origin: unknown. Recommend avoiding direct contact until further information is available. Probability of survival upon direct contact: negligible.»

"You’re a huge help, as always."

«Thank you for your feedback, User Harold. Please stay safe.»

I dismissed the screen and turned to the others. They were all watching me, waiting for orders. Even Odessa, who took orders from no one, had her eyes fixed on my face. All of them except Samira, who was still staring at the columns with her fists clenched at her sides and her eyes bright with unshed tears.

"Samira," I called, my voice cutting through the unnatural stillness. "Tell me what you need."

She blinked. She lowered her gaze from the columns and looked at me, and in that moment, I saw her as she was — all of her, all at once. The child who had watched her parents die. The prisoner of the Abyss. The disciple who had killed her master by mistake. The warrior of four thousand years, tempered by grief and loss and love. And the woman who had promised to stand beside me until the end of everything. All of it was Samira, and all of it was facing me now.

"I need us to be together," she said. Her voice was raw, stripped of all pretense. "All of us. We can’t face this apart. If we scatter, we die. That’s how it was before — that’s how they win."

"Then we do it together." I extended my hand toward her, palm up. "You, me, Chimera, the orcs, Odessa. And anyone else who joins us along the way. We face this as a family, or not at all."

Chimera stepped forward and laid her hand on top of mine without hesitation. Her claws had retracted, and her touch was warm and steady. "I’m with you," she said simply. "Always."

Dorko and Domack moved as one, their massive grey hands covering Chimera’s. "We swore an oath, master," Domack rumbled. "Oaths don’t break just because the sky does."

Odessa let out a long, put-upon sigh — the sigh of a woman who had signed up to teach magical theory and found herself in an apocalypse. But she stepped forward and placed her slender fingers on top of the pile anyway. "I suppose a world-ending catastrophe would invalidate my research leave. Very well. I’m here."

Lia, not fully understanding what we were doing but not wanting to be left out, stretched up on her tiptoes and placed her tiny hand on top of Chimera’s. "Me too! I’m here too!"

Samira looked at us — at the pile of hands, at the mismatched family we’d built out of broken pieces and stubborn love — for a long, suspended moment. Then, very slowly, she placed her hand on top of Lia’s. Her touch was feather-light, as if she was afraid the child might break.

"Together," she said.

The columns still roared on the horizon. The sky was still a map of violet scars, spreading and deepening. The air still stank of sulfur and ancient malice. But on the porch of that cabin, surrounded by my family — my strange, fierce, impossible family — I felt something I didn’t expect to feel in the middle of an apocalypse.

Hope.