My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 51: Chapter 51 — The Weight of Four Thousand Years

We left Prusna before the sun came up.

Pain had rounded up supplies while we slept: dried meat, hard bread, heavy cloaks lined with wool, a coil of rope, two lanterns, flint and steel, and a small axe for the mountain passes. Karina had added a leather satchel with healing salves and bandages stamped with the Church’s emblem—a woman cradling a child. I wondered if she’d ever held a child of her own, or if the Church considered that kind of love beneath a Saintess.

The streets were empty as we walked to the east gate. No merchants setting up stalls. No children chasing dogs. Just the wind and the distant pulse of the pillar against the clouds.

Dorko and Domack met us at the gate. They were staying behind to guard Lia. Dorko looked like he wanted to argue about it, but Domack had a hand on his shoulder and that hand had the weight of a seasoned soldier who’d already explained the situation three times.

"You’ll come back," Dorko said.

"I’ll come back," I said.

"With the herald’s head."

"Or something better."

He nodded, satisfied. Domack bowed his head slightly, the ash-gray skin of his brow catching the torchlight.

"Watch over them," Samira said.

"With our lives, Lady Samira," Domack replied.

Lia was still asleep at the inn. I’d kissed her forehead before leaving. She’d stirred, murmured something about bears, and rolled over. I didn’t wake her. Goodbyes were easier when the other person didn’t know they were happening.

The four of us passed through the gate. The road stretched east, toward the mountains, toward the pillar, toward the rift where Samira had died and a piece of her was still waiting.

---

The first day was the easiest.

The road was well-traveled for the first few hours, cutting through farmland and pastures dotted with sheep that scattered at our approach. The sky was overcast, the clouds heavy with unshed rain. The pillar’s light flickered against them like a bruise.

We walked in silence, mostly. Chimera took point, her massive frame cutting a path through the tall grass. Odessa walked with her grimoire open, muttering to herself about ley lines and resonance frequencies. Samira stayed beside me, but her mind was somewhere else. I could see it in the way her eyes kept drifting toward the mountains, toward the place where her teacher’s bones were buried.

Around noon, we stopped to eat. Dried meat. Hard bread. Water from a stream that ran alongside the road. No one complained. No one was hungry enough to care.

"It gets stronger the closer we get," Odessa said, her quill scratching against the parchment. "The dark mana. It’s like walking into a fog."

"I don’t feel anything," I said.

"You wouldn’t. Your channels are attuned to ether and mana, not dark energy. But it’s there. Pressing against us." She looked at Samira. "You feel it, don’t you?"

Samira didn’t answer. She was staring at the mountains again.

"Samira."

"I feel it."

"What does it feel like?"

She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Like someone I used to know."

---

We made camp that night in a hollow between two hills, sheltered from the wind. Chimera found dead wood for a fire. Odessa traced a warding circle around the perimeter. I sat with my back against a rock and watched the stars come out, one by one, until the pillar’s light drowned them out.

Samira didn’t sleep. She sat apart from the fire, her knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes fixed on the eastern horizon. I waited until Chimera’s breathing slowed into the deep rhythm of sleep and Odessa’s quill stopped scratching before I went to her.

"You should rest," I said.

"I rested for four thousand years. I’m not tired."

I sat down beside her. The ground was cold, the grass stiff with frost. Our breath misted in the air.

"You said you told me almost everything. Back at the inn."

"I did."

"What didn’t you tell me?"

She was quiet for a long time. The pillar pulsed. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out and got no answer.

"Almira," she said finally. "I didn’t tell you about the last time I saw her. Before she died."

"What happened?"

"She yelled at me." A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. "I’d just gotten out of the Abyss Prison. Ten years in the dark, and the first thing my master did when she saw me was grab me by the shoulders and shake me. She said I was an idiot. That I’d thrown away a decade of my life for a crime that wasn’t mine. That the council had no right to imprison me for something the Andawas did."

"I thought you said you deserved it."

"I did. I still do. But Almira didn’t see it that way. She never saw my guilt the way I did. She saw a young woman who’d made a mistake and been punished too harshly for it." Samira picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "She was the first person who ever told me I was allowed to forgive myself. I didn’t believe her. I still don’t, most days. But she said it anyway."

"What else did she say?"

"She said that one day I’d find someone worth living for. Someone who would make me understand why she was willing to die for me." Samira looked at me. "She was right. It just took me four thousand years to find you."

I didn’t say anything. I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She leaned into me, her head against my chest, her breathing slow and steady.

"Almira knew she was going to die," Samira said. "Before we went to the Rotteline Range. She’d seen it in a vision. One of her spirits—a seer—showed her the moment of her death. She knew she wasn’t coming back. And she went anyway."

"Why?"

"Because if she didn’t, the rift would have swallowed half the continent. Millions would have died. She said it wasn’t a choice. It was math." Samira’s voice cracked. "Math. She died for math."

I held her tighter.

"The last thing she said to me—the very last thing—was that the seal she was creating would need maintenance. That someone would have to watch over it. Tend to it. Make sure it didn’t crack." Samira closed her eyes. "She wasn’t just talking about the rift. She was talking about me. She knew I’d blame myself. She knew I’d carry her death like a stone around my neck for the rest of my life. She was telling me to let it go."

"Did you?"

"No." She opened her eyes. "I went back to the rift after she died. I saw the crack. I felt something pressing against it from the other side. And I did the only thing I could think of. I bound my own soul to the seal. I became the maintenance."

"You held it shut for four thousand years."

"Part of me did. The rest of me—the part that the gacha system pulled out—was wandering the void. Waiting. Until you called me."

I thought of the day I’d summoned her. The green dress. The violet eyes. The way she’d knelt in the dirt and called me master, her voice cold and distant, like an NPC from a game I didn’t know how to play.

"You were in the void for four thousand years."

"Time doesn’t pass there. Not the way it does here. It felt like... waiting for a bus. A very long bus. In the dark." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "When you summoned me, I didn’t know what to feel. I’d spent so long holding the seal that I’d forgotten what it was like to want something. And then you asked me to cook for you. To wash your clothes. You were so useless, Hal. So completely, infuriatingly useless."

"I’ve gotten better."

"You’ve gotten marginally less useless."

"That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me."

She smiled. The corners of her eyes crinkled, and for a moment I forgot we were sitting in the dark on the edge of a war zone.

"I’m scared," she said.

"I know."

"If the herald breaks the seal, the part of me that’s still there dies. The part that’s been holding the line for four thousand years. It’s not just a piece of my soul. It’s the piece that remembers Almira’s face. The piece that still hears her voice. If I lose that—"

"You won’t."

"You can’t promise that."

"I can. And I am." I turned to face her properly, both hands on her shoulders. "We’re going to get to the rift. We’re going to stop the herald. And we’re going to pull the rest of you out of there. All of you. The part that remembers Almira. The part that holds the seal. Every last piece."

"And if we can’t?"

"Then I’ll sit outside that rift and wait until we figure out how. For four thousand years, if I have to."

She stared at me. Her violet eyes were wet. Her hand came up and covered mine, and her fingers were warm, and they didn’t shake.

"You’re an idiot," she said.

"I’ve heard that before."

"You’re going to hear it again."

"Good."

She kissed me. Slow. Soft. Her lips tasted of woodsmoke and dried meat, and her thumb traced the line of my jaw. When she pulled back, her eyes were still wet, but her voice was steady.

"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 like that until the fire burned down to embers and the pillar’s light was the only thing left in the sky.

---

Odessa woke us before dawn.

"We have a problem."

I sat up, blinking the sleep from my eyes. Chimera was already on her feet, her hand flexing. Samira was reaching for her weapon.

"What kind of problem?"

"The villages on the map. The ones forming the perimeter." Odessa had her grimoire open, the pages glowing faintly. "I’ve been tracking the dark mana signatures. They’re moving."

"Moving where?"

"Here. Or, more precisely, between here and the rift." She turned the grimoire toward us. The map was covered in faint red dots, all of them converging on a single point: the mountain pass that led to the Rotteline Range. "The herald is gathering them. Every possessed villager within fifty miles. They’re forming a blockade."

"How many?"

"I stopped counting at three hundred."

Samira sheathed her blade. Her expression was calm, but her eyes had gone cold.

"The herald knows we’re coming," she said. "It’s not hiding. It’s preparing."

"For what?"

She looked at the mountains. "For me."