My Infinite Gacha In Another World: Surrounded By MILFs

Chapter 56: Chapter 56 — The Anchor

The Casket of Muluk sat in Samira’s palm like a thing that didn’t belong in this world. Which, I supposed, it didn’t.

The dark wood drank the violet light of the chamber, refusing to reflect it. The silver runes along its edges pulsed in a rhythm that didn’t match the seal’s heartbeat. Slower. Older. The heartbeat of something that had been old when the Andawas were young.

Samira closed her fingers around it. The runes flared once—FLASH—and then dimmed. She didn’t flinch.

"The overflow," she said. "How much?"

Odessa was propped against the chamber wall, her grimoire open in her lap. Her face was the color of old parchment. The wound in her side had stopped bleeding, but only because she’d cauterized it herself with a flicker of fire magic while I held her steady. The smell still clung to the air. Burnt flesh and wool.

"I don’t know," Odessa said. "The casket was designed to contain a god’s soul. The herald is powerful, but it’s not a god. It’s a fragment. A finger. The casket should hold it. The overflow will be whatever the casket can’t contain in the moment of transfer. Heat. Light. Dark mana in its purest form. It will burn, but it won’t kill you. Probably."

"You keep saying probably."

"Because I’m a scholar, not a prophet. Probabilities are what I have."

The chamber shook—BOOM. A chunk of crystal dislodged from the ceiling and shattered against the floor twenty feet to our left. The fissures in the seal were spreading faster now, the silver lines snapping one by one with sounds like plucked harp strings. TING. TING. TING. Each snap sent a ripple of violet light across the chamber. The darkness inside the seal was no longer seeping. It was pushing.

"How long?" Samira asked.

"Before the seal breaks? Three minutes. Maybe four." Odessa turned a page in her grimoire. Her fingers left smears of blood on the parchment. "The herald has reached the third layer. There are seven. When it reaches the anchor—when it touches Almira—the seal will collapse. We need to start now."

"Then let’s start."

Samira walked toward the seal. The silver light washed over her, bleaching the color from her skin, turning her violet eyes to pools of white fire. She looked like Almira. Not in the shape of her face or the color of her hair—those were still her own—but in the way she moved. The way she held her shoulders. The way she walked toward death without hesitation. She’d made peace with the fear a long time ago.

I followed her without being asked. I wasn’t going to let her stand alone.

"Hal." She didn’t turn around. "If this goes wrong—"

"It won’t."

"If it does. If the casket breaks. If the overflow is more than I can take." She stopped at the edge of the seal, close enough to touch the spinning silver lines. The light traced patterns on her skin. "Take Lia. Take Chimera. Take everyone and get out. Don’t wait for me."

"I’ve already died once. I’m not afraid of doing it again."

"That’s not—"

"Samira." I stepped up beside her. The heat from the seal was intense, a dry, sucking warmth that pulled the moisture from my eyes. "If I die, I die. But I’m not living without you. That’s worse." I paused. "Now stop trying to say goodbye and let’s close this thing."

She stared at me. Then she shook her head, and a ghost of a smile crossed her lips.

"You really are an idiot."

"I’ve heard that before."

"Good." She turned back to the seal. "Then let’s remind this thing why it should be afraid of us."

---

Odessa took her position at the edge of the golden circle, her grimoire floating in front of her, pages turning on their own. Her voice rose in a language I didn’t recognize—old words, heavy words, words that tasted of dust and forgotten temples. The golden circle flared, expanding outward until it touched the edges of the seal.

Chimera was still unconscious. I’d dragged her to the far wall, away from the worst of the heat, and propped her against a fallen crystal. Her breathing was shallow but steady. The black lines on her skin had faded to faint gray marks, like old scars. She wouldn’t be fighting anymore today. She’d done her part. Now it was our turn.

I took my place at Samira’s left shoulder. The Tenazcrya bow was back in the System’s inventory. I didn’t need it for this. What I needed was the thing Odessa had spent weeks drilling into my skull: ether in one hand, mana in the other, both flowing through channels that no longer burned when I used them.

"Ready?" Samira asked.

"Ready."

She raised the Casket of Muluk.

The seal reacted instantly. The silver lines screamed—SKREEE—and the darkness inside lunged toward the light. The herald had sensed the casket. It knew what we were trying to do. And it was not going to let us.

"Now!" Odessa shouted.

Samira opened the casket.

---

The sound hit me. A single, sustained note that pressed against my skull and made my teeth ache. The crystals on the walls shattered. CRASH. The golden circle buckled. BOOM. The casket blazed with silver fire, and the darkness inside the seal poured toward it like water down a drain.

Samira held on. Her arms locked. Her knees bent. The muscles in her back stood out like cables under her skin. The overflow hit her in waves—FLASH, FLASH, FLASH—each pulse of dark mana burning through the casket and into her hands. I saw the skin on her palms crack. I saw the light bleed through the fissures. But she didn’t let go.

"Harold!" she screamed. "Now!"

I slammed my hands against the seal.

Ether from my right. Mana from my left. The two energies flowed through my channels and into the silver lines, and for a moment—one terrifying, exhilarating moment—I felt the seal. Four thousand years of accumulated wear, layer upon layer of silver light stretched to the breaking point. It didn’t need to speak. I could feel what it needed. Rest. But not yet.

Hold, I thought at it. Just a little longer. We’re here. We’re going to fix you.

The seal pulsed. The silver lines brightened. And the darkness inside the casket screamed.

---

I saw things, then. The herald didn’t go quietly.

It poured its memories into me as it was dragged into the casket—a flood of images and sounds and sensations that weren’t mine. I saw the world through Aelric’s eyes. The Tower of Nava, white and gleaming in the morning sun. Almira, younger than I’d ever imagined her, laughing at some joke he’d made. Samira, a girl with dirt on her hands and fire in her heart, charging through a forest with a spirit wolf at her side. I saw the day the rift opened. The Andawas pouring through. Aelric throwing himself in front of Samira, not because he was brave, but because he couldn’t imagine a world without her in it. I saw the darkness take him. I saw the moment he stopped being Aelric and started being a door.

You could have been a god, the herald whispered. Its voice was fading now, dissolving into the silver fire. You could have been endless. You could have been—

The casket swallowed it whole.

The chamber went silent.

---

Samira collapsed.

I caught her before she hit the ground. The casket tumbled from her hands—closed, sealed, the silver runes blazing with trapped light—and skidded across the stone. Her palms were burned black, the skin cracked and weeping. Her breathing was rapid, shallow, her pulse hammering against my fingers. But her eyes were open. They were still violet. They were still her.

"Did it work?" she whispered.

I looked at the seal. The fissures had stopped spreading. The darkness pulled back from the silver lines, inch by grudging inch. The symbols flared one last time and dimmed to a steady glow. At the heart of the sphere, Almira’s body still hung suspended, but the light around her was warm. White. Peaceful.

"It worked," I said. "It worked."

Samira closed her eyes. Her body went limp against my chest. For one horrible second, I thought she’d stopped breathing. But then her hand came up, weak and trembling, and rested on my arm.

"Good," she said. "That’s good."

She passed out.

I held her for a long time. The chamber was silent except for the distant drip of water and the ragged sound of my own breathing. Odessa had stopped chanting. Her grimoire had fallen to the floor. She was slumped against the wall, unconscious or close to it, her chest rising and falling in slow, shallow movements.

Chimera hadn’t woken. The casket lay on the stone where it had fallen. A thin crack ran along the lid. The silver light pulsed weakly, like a heartbeat struggling to remember its rhythm. It had held. Barely. But it wouldn’t hold again.

We’d won. Broken and burned and half-dead, but we’d won.

---

I don’t know how long I sat there. Minutes. Hours. Time didn’t work right in the rift. But eventually, the golden circle flickered and died. Odessa stirred. Chimera groaned and rolled onto her side. And Samira opened her eyes.

"You’re still here," she said. Her voice was hoarse. Her lips were cracked. But she was alive.

"Told you I would be."

She looked at the seal. At the silver lines, still and steady. At Almira, suspended in the light.

"She’s still there," Samira said. "The piece of me. The piece that was holding the seal. I can feel it. It’s still there. But it’s not alone anymore. Almira is with it. They’re holding it together."

"The seal is stable."

"Yes." She turned her head and looked at the casket, still pulsing on the stone. "And the herald is trapped. Not dead. Trapped. The casket won’t hold it forever. But it’ll hold it long enough for us to find a permanent solution."

"That’s a problem for tomorrow."

"That’s a problem for tomorrow," she agreed.

She leaned her head against my shoulder. We sat like that, surrounded by shattered crystals and the fading light of a battle that had almost killed us all, and we breathed. Just breathed.

After a while, I heard footsteps behind me. Chimera. She was limping, one hand pressed against her ribs, but she was upright. She knelt down beside us, her heterochromatic eyes—still red and blue, still hers—flicking over Samira’s burned hands, my exhausted face, the casket on the floor.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thanks. You too."

"I meant her." She jerked her chin at Samira. "I always look good."

Samira laughed. It was a weak sound, more breath than voice, but it was real. "Liar."

"Maybe." Chimera sat down heavily, her back against a chunk of fallen crystal. "Is it dead?"

"The herald? Trapped." I pointed at the casket. "We’ll figure out the rest later."

"Hm." She closed her eyes. "I’m hungry."

"Of course you are."

"I ate half a herald. That burns calories."

Odessa limped over and lowered herself to the ground beside us. She didn’t speak. She just looked at the seal, at the casket, at the four of us—broken and burned and somehow still breathing—and closed her grimoire with a soft thud.

"I’m going to write a paper about this," she said.

"Of course you are."

"It’s going to be very long."

"I’d expect nothing less."

She smiled. It was a small smile, tired and barely there, but it was real. "You did well, Harold. For an idiot."

"Compliment accepted."

---

We left the rift as the sun was setting on the second day.

The pillar above the valley had gone dark. The violet light had faded to a faint shimmer, and the clouds were starting to thin. A sliver of actual sky—blue and distant and painfully ordinary—peeked through the haze for the first time in days. Samira stopped at the edge of the fissure and looked up at it.

"One down," she said.

"Three to go."

"Yes. But not today." She took my hand. Her palms were still bandaged, the burns wrapped in strips of cloth torn from my spare shirt. "Today, we go home."