Chapter 275: Choosing Honesty
That morning had been weird. No one said anything, but it showed.
Hayley had taken her place at the cockpit with Eduardo, and simply just wanted to leave already.
Ethan didn’t talk much either.
Percival noticed, and on a normal day, he would’ve said something. But he and Aliyah were wrapped up in their own space, so he left it.
And just like that, the team returned to Gritnia.
—
A few hours later at the Stark Manor..
Ethan was in the living room, and was finally giving some attention to the system.
Earlier, he had noted that he was now at sixty percent of the Skyreaver Dragon stage, while Ragnarok had also reached the sixty percent mark in their bond progress.
But now, the special rewards were laid out before him.
[Respawn Token → Restores any summons destroyed and returned to the Well of Undying back into the system.]
[The token can only be used once]
"Hm..." Ethan muttered.
The system had likely given him this to compensate for the loss of two of his summons; both Commander-class, destroyed by the monsters the previous day.
Still, he decided they weren’t worth using the token on.
[Experience Transfer Ticket → Allows the transfer of up to 100,000 experience points from yourself to your summons.]
[The ticket can only be used once]
[Spirit Advancement Rune → Break to upgrade one summon of choice by one class.]
[Warning: This cannot affect those who have reached their max rating]
The last two rewards made him think of a few summons. Nina would have been his first choice for the advancement rune, but she had already reached her maximum rank at Emperor.
Unless, of course, he used his Culling Rite perk; allowing him sacrifice lower-ranked summons and converting the Culling Points to raise her rating into Beast Class level.
Arael was only 5,000xp off entering the emperor rank, so it wasn’t worth it using the advancement rune.
But then, he could use the tickets to push Arael to Emperor, then apply the rune to elevate her to Beast placing her at a level strong enough to fight even Grand Class.
Then the Nina bias hit him.
"Shit," he muttered, suddenly conflicted. Nina was still his favorite battle summon.
If he gathered just enough points, he could raise her rating to Beast, then use the rune on her then?... or maybe just use the experience points from the tickets and reserve the rune for Arael.
Then it also hit him that using 100k from his current 255k balance would only slow his progress with reaching those other key fragments.
"Urgh." His thoughts stalled.
Then one name came to him—Rue. Not just for the advancement rune, but also for the transfer ticket.
He hadn’t given much thought to her performance the previous day, writing it off as pure luck. However, he decided to check her profile again first.
[Name: Rue]
[Title: Unknown]
[Classification: Divinity]
[Category: Divine Artifact]
[Summon Class: Commander]
[Potential Rating: Beast]
[SKILLS:
•Reading]
[Passive Skill: ??]
[Ultimate Skill: ??]
[Special Weapon: The Watching Clowder]
[Notable Limits: ??]
[Summon Background: ??]
Ethan’s eyes lifted in surprise. There was still no skill listed under her name, and she had advanced another class; which meant one more "cat" added to her clowder, but Rue was now classified under Divinity?
And instead of a race, she was simply categorized as Divine Artifact?
This new information made Ethan’s thoughts race a bit. He wondered many things; was she even human? What kind of artifact appears human and manifests cats?
It was the strangest thing he had ever seen. And with no information on her summon background, he could only keep making baseless inferences without reaching any real conclusion.
"You know what... fuck it."
He dismissed Rue’s profile from his view and willed all the floating rewards back into his inventory for now, deciding he would deal with them later.
A split second later, a horn sounded from the gate, and the moment he heard it, his heart sank.
He already knew who it was, and so did Ishtar who had at this time rushed downstairs in anticipation.
Moments later, the doors opened and they stepped in.
Ishtar quickly paced towards Rayleigh and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He held her just as firmly, letting her stay there for a moment before pulling back.
Then he exchanged acknowledging nods with Ethan, before he and Ishtar headed upstairs together.
Bella watched them with a smile before stepping over to Ethan. "Hey, babe."
"Hey." He said back as they both moved to the seats.
Ethan gestured to them as they went upstairs. "Guess he’s out of the hook too."
Bella nodded. "Yeah. There was nothing wrong with him. But... father found out about Ishtar during the questioning."
Ethan’s head turned immediately. "What?"
Bella raised a hand quickly. "Relax. He doesn’t know anything of her powers....Just that she’s a demon he rescued. That’s all."
Ethan leaned back. "Alright..."
After a short moment of silence, he spoke again. "I stopped by DSB earlier and spoke with President Alva before coming home."
Bella looked at him. "About?"
"That monster," he said. "The last one. According to her, they’ve seen something like it before. They call it a Breach Mason."
Bella repeated it softly. "...Breach Mason."
He nodded. "She says they believe it’s their kind that creates breaches. They pull fragments of their world, or the alien monsters, into the dimensional gap that separates our world from theirs."
Bella nodded slowly. "That explains the portal... and the way it was expanding."
Then, without thinking much about it, she adjusted and laid across his lap.
"I just want to stay here," she murmured. "Like this."
Ethan looked down at her and smiled wryly. But something about it wasn’t feeling right.
He thought about it for a second... then sighed. "...Bella."
"Yeah?"
"I want to tell you something." He said
She looked up at him. "What is it, babe?"
Ethan hesitated slightly. "...You might want to sit up for this one."
Bella pushed herself up immediately, now looking at him properly, with concern already forming on her face.
Ethan hesitated again. "...So, um—"
Then he cleared his throat and just said it, telling her everything that happened the previous night with Hayley.
When he finished, Bella stared at him. "Oh.. wow."
Ethan scratched the back of his neck. "...Yeah."
She let out a small, humorless laugh. And that made him look at her almost confused.
"I always knew there was something there," she said. "I mean... it’s not hard to notice these things."
She exhaled lightly. "Maybe some part of me expected it would happen eventually...But at the same time some other part of me thought maybe it wouldn’t."
There was as she looked at him. "So... you like her?"
Ethan hesitated. "With Hayley... it’s complicated."
"I see," Bella said. There was another moment of silence before she spoke again. "How weird would it be if I wanted to go?"
That hit Ethan differently. His heart dropped and his eyes widened slightly before he looked away and exhaled.
"It wouldn’t be weird," he said. "It’d be understandable."
She nodded.
Then he asked, "When would I hear from you again?"
Bella stood up slowly. "I’ll call you tonight. I just need to sort my head out."
Ethan nodded, then made a move to follow her, but she stopped him gently.
"It’s fine," she said.
So he stayed and just watched her walk out. Then she door closed behind her.
"Fuck." He dragged a hand down his face. Then he grabbed his phone and typed quickly.
:[Bro, I think I fucked up]
—-
A/N: Check Below For Current Overrall System Status
