My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 50: Chapter 50 — What the Mouth Remembered

We walked back into Prusna at noon with nothing but bad news and blood under our fingernails.

The gate guards recognized us from a hundred yards out and hauled the iron doors open before we had to shout. One of them took off toward the guild hall the moment he saw our faces. The other offered us water. I shook my head. Chimera took the whole canteen and drained it without stopping.

The streets were emptier than when we’d left. A few merchants had packed up their stalls. The bakery on the corner was shuttered. The children who usually chased each other past the well were nowhere in sight.

Ronald Pain met us halfway to the guild hall, still wearing the same rumpled shirt from the day before. The dead cigar had been replaced by a fresh one, unlit, jammed between his teeth like a placeholder for something he couldn’t say.

"Report," he said.

"Oakvein’s gone," I said. "Not destroyed. Occupied. The villagers are alive but they’re not the ones driving. Something’s wearing them. All of them."

Pain’s jaw tightened. "Survivors?"

"One. He died in our arms."

I didn’t mention that Samira had been the one holding the blade. Pain didn’t ask. He’d been guild master long enough to know what mercy looked like, and what it cost.

"Karina’s been waiting for you," he said. "She’s got maps. Theories. Priests muttering about scripture." He turned and started walking toward the guild hall. "I told her to keep it short. She didn’t listen."

"When does she ever?"

"She’s a Saintess. Listening is optional."

---

The guild hall’s main room had been converted into a war council. The long oak table where adventurers usually picked up quests and complained about pay was now covered in parchment, inkwells, and a massive map of the eastern territories. Someone had pinned four black markers at the locations of the pillars. Oakvein was circled in red ink. Thornfall and Millbrook were marked with question marks.

Karina stood at the head of the table. Her traveling cloak was draped over the back of a chair, and her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows. She looked less like a Saintess and more like a general who’d been awake too long.

"Tell me everything," she said.

I told her. The road to Oakvein. The silence. The synchronized blinking. The farmer who’d smiled and offered us stew while his skin sagged over something dark and moving. The kitchen. The voice. The cage.

Karina listened without interrupting. When I finished, she pressed both palms against the table and stared at the map like she was trying to burn a hole through it.

"The herald," she said. "The farmer mentioned a herald."

"More than once. Said it was part of a ’design.’ That the herald loved stains."

"A herald is a messenger," Odessa said. She’d opened her grimoire on a corner of the table and was flipping through pages with quick, precise movements. "A subordinate entity sent to prepare the ground for something larger. In the old texts, heralds are never the main threat. They’re the scouts. The terraformers. They arrive first and make the environment suitable for their master."

"Then where’s the master?" Pain asked.

"Still behind the pillars. Or beyond them. The farmer said the pillar was a cage. That means something is inside, trying to get out. The herald is the one directing the possessed. The thing in the cage is what the herald serves."

Karina nodded slowly. "That matches the Church’s oldest records. The Herald of the Outer Threshold. A servant of the entities that tried to enter this world during the Rift Wars."

Samira stiffened. It was subtle—a shift in her shoulders, a tightening at the corner of her mouth. I doubted anyone else noticed. But I’d spent too many nights next to her not to recognize the signs.

"The Rift Wars," I said. "That’s what the Church calls what happened four thousand years ago."

"The official term, yes." Karina’s voice was careful. "The war that destroyed the Kingdom of Fortunna. The Church was founded in its aftermath."

"Fortunna," Samira said quietly. "That was my home."

The room went still. Pain set down his unlit cigar. Karina looked at Samira with an expression that was difficult to read—surprise, yes, but also something else. Something older. Like she’d suspected this for a while and was only now hearing it confirmed.

"You never told them," Karina said.

"I told Harold. The others knew enough." Samira’s hand rested on the back of a chair. Her knuckles were white. "I didn’t want to talk about it. I still don’t."

"Then let me." Karina straightened up. "Samira Von Skillar Salazar was a High Mage of the Tower of Nava. She fought in the Rift Wars and survived what most of her generation did not. The Church has records—fragments, mostly—of a spiritist who could command legions of spirits. The texts call her ’the Bridge.’ We didn’t know she was still alive."

"I’m not," Samira said. "Not in the way you mean."

Karina didn’t press. She’d spent enough time around the gacha system’s summons by now to understand what Samira was.

"The point," Karina continued, "is that the enemies we’re facing are the same ones she fought four thousand years ago. The same entities. The same tactics. Possession. Corruption. The slow infection of a population before the real assault begins." She tapped the map. "This is not a random attack. Oakvein is too small, too isolated. There’s no strategic value in possessing thirty farmers unless those thirty farmers are a stepping stone to something else."

"Then what are they a stepping stone to?" I asked.

---

The answer came from Chimera’s throat, but not in her voice.

She’d been standing apart from the table, near the window, with her arms crossed and her eyes half-closed. Exhaustion had settled into her posture like a heavy coat. I thought she was about to fall asleep standing up. But then her right hand twitched. The fingers uncurled. The skin over her palm rippled.

"Chimera?"

She didn’t answer. Her eyes opened, but they weren’t focused on anything in the room. Her lips moved, and the voice that came out was not her own.

"Forty days," she said.

It was Dollmun’s voice. The same one I’d heard in the basement of our cabin, trapped in a jar, screaming curses at me while I made love to his other half. But this was different. This was not rage. This was memory.

"Forty days and forty nights in the dark. They opened my skull. They planted a seed behind my eyes. They said it would grow into something beautiful."

Odessa’s quill stopped moving. Karina took a step back. Pain’s hand drifted toward the axe at his belt.

"The seed was a name," Chimera continued. The mouth in her palm was visible now, pressing against the skin. "A name I was supposed to carry. A name I was supposed to become. But I was not strong enough. They threw me away. They left me with my mother’s corpse and told me to rot."

Her voice broke. It was Chimera’s voice, but underneath it, something older. Dollmun’s memories, tangled with hers.

"The name," Odessa said quietly. "What was the name?"

Chimera’s mouth opened again. The voice that came out was Dollmun’s, but weaker now, fading like an echo.

"Herald of the Threshold. That is what they called me. That is what they wanted me to be. But I failed. I was too human. Too broken. They found others. Stronger vessels. Better seeds."

The mouth closed. Chimera’s knees buckled.

I caught her before she hit the floor. She was heavy—all two meters and forty centimeters of gothic giantess—but I’d gotten stronger since the canyon. I eased her down and let her back rest against the wall. Her breathing was shallow, her skin clammy.

"Chimera. Can you hear me?"

Her eyes focused on my face. For a moment, she looked confused, like she’d just woken up from a nightmare she couldn’t quite remember. Then her expression hardened.

"I heard him," she said. "Dollmun. He was inside my head. Speaking through my mouth."

"We noticed."

"He was supposed to be a herald. The things that tortured him—the ones with the eyes—they were trying to turn him into one of them. But he wasn’t compatible. So they discarded him."

"Which means," Odessa said, "the current herald is someone else. Someone who was compatible. Someone the entities found after they threw Dollmun away."

"Or before," Samira said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

She was still standing by the table, her hand resting on the map. Her face was pale—paler than usual—and her violet eyes were fixed on a point somewhere far beyond the parchment.

"Four thousand years ago, a cult called the Valetri tried to summon an Outer God into this world. I stopped them. I killed their vessel before the ritual could finish. But the vessel—her name was Hestia—said something to me before she died. She said the Outer God had already planted its seeds across the continent. That the Andawas were only the beginning. That there were other heralds, waiting."

"Hestia Valetri," Karina breathed. "The Church has records of that name. She was executed for dark magic."

"She was a monster," Samira said. "But she was also a warning. The Outer God has been trying to enter this world for millennia. The pillars are its latest attempt. And the herald is someone who was prepared for this a long time ago."

---

Odessa had been silent for most of the conversation, her grimoire open, her quill scratching across the pages. Now she looked up.

"The fragments from Dollmun’s memory mentioned a location."

"What location?"

"I don’t think it was a location. I think it was a pattern." She turned the grimoire toward the table. On one of the pages, she’d sketched a rough version of the map, with the four pillars marked. But she’d added something else—a series of smaller dots, clustered around the eastern pillar.

"These are the villages with reports of strange behavior," she said. "Oakvein. Thornfall. Millbrook. And three others further north. They form a circle."

I leaned over the map. She was right. The villages weren’t spread randomly. They surrounded the pillar at a precise distance, like spokes on a wheel.

"A perimeter," I said.

"A containment perimeter. Or a staging ground. The possessed villagers aren’t just random victims. They’re positioned. Organized. They’re surrounding something."

"What?"

Odessa drew a line from each village toward the center of the circle. All six lines converged on a single point. A stretch of mountains northeast of the pillar, marked on the map as the Rotteline Range.

Samira made a sound I’d never heard her make before. Something between a gasp and a choke.

"That’s where I killed my master."

The room went cold.

"Almira Florens," Samira said. Her voice was steady, but her hands were shaking. "She died sealing the first rift in the Rotteline Range. I was the one who opened it. I was the one the Andawas copied. I was the one who—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Her body is still there. Sealed inside the rift with the creatures she sacrificed herself to contain."

"The herald is trying to break the seal," Karina said. "It’s not just opening new rifts. It’s trying to reopen the old one. The original one. The one Almira died to close."

"Why now?"

"Because the pillars aren’t just anchors," Odessa said. "They’re resonators. Four pillars, vibrating at the same frequency, amplifying the herald’s power. It’s using the new rifts to crack open the old one. Like a tuning fork shattering a glass."

I looked at Samira. She was staring at the map, at the convergence of lines, at the place where her mentor had died four thousand years ago.

"Hal." Her voice was barely a whisper. "I have to go there."

"I know."

"Almira’s soul is still trapped in that rift. If the herald opens it—"

"We won’t let that happen."

"We don’t know what’s waiting for us. We don’t know how many possessed are between here and the Rotteline Range. We don’t know if the herald can be killed."

"Then we find out."

She looked at me. Her violet eyes were wet, but she wasn’t crying. She was past that now. What I saw in her face was something harder. Something older.

"Almira gave her life to stop this. If the herald succeeds, her sacrifice meant nothing."

"Then we make sure it meant something."

---

Pain broke the silence with a grunt. "If you’re heading into the mountains, you’ll need supplies. Food. Cold-weather gear. The Rotteline Range isn’t a day trip."

"How long to get there?" I asked.

"Three days on foot. Two if you push hard."

"We push hard."

Karina stepped forward. "The Church can offer support. I can send word to the capital, request reinforcements—"

"There’s no time." Samira shook her head. "The longer we wait, the stronger the herald becomes. More villages fall. More people get possessed. We leave tomorrow."

Karina didn’t argue. She’d seen the map. She’d heard Chimera’s voice speak with the memory of a dead man. She knew as well as we did that waiting was a luxury we couldn’t afford.

"I’ll stay in Prusna," she said. "Coordinate with Pain. If you find the herald, send a signal. We’ll have riders ready to spread the word."

"What kind of signal?"

"Something visible from a long way off. Fire. Light. Anything that can be seen from the mountain peaks."

"I can manage that," Odessa said.

Pain retrieved his unlit cigar from the table and tucked it behind his ear. "Get some rest. All of you. You look like death warmed over."

"Compliment accepted," I said.

---

We spent the rest of the afternoon preparing.

Dorko and Domack had been guarding Lia in the inn. When we walked through the door, she launched herself at me with the force of a small cannonball. I caught her and held her tight, breathing in the scent of her hair—smoke from the inn’s fireplace, a hint of the soap Samira had bought her. Normal smells. Human smells. The kind worth fighting for.

"Did you kill the monsters?" she asked, her voice muffled against my shoulder.

"Not yet, princess. But we’re going to."

"Is it scary?"

"A little."

"Are you going to come back?"

I pulled back and looked her in the eyes. "Listen to me. I came back from the canyon. I came back from Oakvein. And I’m going to come back from this. You know why?"

She shook her head.

"Because I promised you I would. And I don’t break promises."

Lia stared at me for a long moment. Then she nodded, very seriously, and hugged me again.

That night, we ate together in the inn’s common room. Pain had cleared it for us, so it was just the family: Samira, Chimera, Odessa, Dorko, Domack, Lia, and me. The food was simple—bread, stew, some kind of roasted bird that Dorko had hunted earlier—but it tasted better than anything I’d eaten in weeks.

Chimera was quiet. She’d been quiet since the episode at the guild hall. But when Lia asked her to pass the bread, she did it. And when Lia asked if her hand still hurt, she said no. It was a lie, but a kind one.

After dinner, I tucked Lia into bed. She insisted on hearing a story. I told her about Kirishima Satou, the hero who had hunted three impossible kings to prove his love. She fell asleep halfway through, clutching her bear plushie.

I stood in the doorway for a while, watching her breathe.

Then I went downstairs to find Samira.

---

She was on the inn’s roof, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge, watching the pillar. The violet light had grown brighter since the night before. It pulsed against the clouds like a heartbeat.

I sat down beside her. For a while, neither of us spoke.

"I lied to you," she said.

"About what?"

"In the canyon. After you died. You asked me how I got my scar, and I told you everything. Almost everything." She turned her hand over and traced the old wound across her torso through the fabric of her shirt. "I told you about my parents. About the Valetri. About Hestia. But I didn’t tell you how I died."

I didn’t say anything. She needed to do this at her own pace.

"The Rotteline Range," she said. "After I sealed the rift—after Almira died—I went back. I was going to bury her. Give her a proper funeral. But the rift wasn’t fully closed. There was a crack. A seam. Something on the other side was pressing against it."

"What did you do?"

"What I had to. I used my own body as a seal. I bound my soul to the rift and held it shut for four thousand years." She looked at me. "That’s why I’m in the gacha system. I didn’t die in battle. I gave myself to the rift. The system pulled my soul out before it could dissolve."

I thought of the description the system had given me when I first summoned her. Five-star spiritist. Maximum level. A soul that had transcended death. I’d never really understood what that meant until now.

"The herald is trying to open the rift where Almira is buried. Where I died. Where I held the line for four thousand years."

"Then we stop it."

"It’s not that simple. If the rift opens, everything inside it comes out. The Andawas. The dark energy. And..." She hesitated. "Me. The part of me that’s still there. The part I left behind to hold the seal."

I stared at her. "You’re saying there’s a piece of your soul still trapped in that rift."

"Yes. And if the herald breaks the seal, that piece of me is the first thing it’ll destroy."

I took her hand. Her fingers were cold, even through my gloves.

"Then we don’t let it break the seal," I said. "We get there first. We stop the herald. And if there’s a way to pull the rest of you out of that rift, we find it."

She looked at me for a long time. The pillar’s light reflected in her eyes.

"You’re an idiot," she said.

"I know."

"You’re going to get yourself killed."

"I’ve already done that once. It didn’t stick."

She laughed. It was a small laugh, fragile and tired, but it was real.

"I love you, Harold Pitt."

"I love you too, Samira Von Skillar Salazar. All of you. Even the part that’s still in the rift."

She leaned her head against my shoulder. We stayed on that roof until the pillar’s light began to fade with the approaching dawn.

Tomorrow we would leave for the Rotteline Range. Tomorrow we would hunt a herald and try to save the soul of the woman I loved.

Tonight, we sat together and watched the sky.