Chapter 209: The Saint Following Me Still Says She Isn’t With Us

Elise had been "traveling in the same direction" for exactly three days. Raven knew because he had counted.

Three days sharing roads, eating with them, and using the same stops, the same fires, and, on two occasions, part of the same supplies. And she still refused to admit she was traveling with the group.

Raven watched her from his horse as they followed a secondary road surrounded by yellowing fields. Elise rode on his right, close enough to speak without raising her voice.

"I just want to confirm something."

Elise looked at him. "That usually ends badly."

"You’ve spent three days choosing exactly the same route as us."

"Yes."

"You eat with us."

"Sometimes I cook."

"You also use our supplies."

"I’ve paid for some of them."

Raven held her gaze. "But you’re not traveling with us."

Elise shook her head with complete calm. "I’m traveling in the same direction while monitoring your spiritual condition."

Raven needed a moment. "That is traveling with us with extra words."

"Not exactly."

"What’s the practical difference?"

Elise thought about it. "I’m not a member of your group."

"On that, we agree."

Several meters ahead, Valeria turned her head slightly. She said nothing, but Raven saw the smile. So did Elise.

"You don’t need to look so pleased, Lady Valeria."

"I’m not pleased."

"You’re smiling."

"It’s involuntary."

Raven exhaled through his nose. This was already too much.

Roland, riding behind them, commented, "Personally, I think we should start charging her for lodging."

Elise turned toward him. "I’ve paid for food."

"That covers food."

"Then what does my presence cost?"

Roland looked at Raven. "I don’t know. He manages the problems now."

Raven kept his eyes on the road. "I do not manage problems."

Valeria answered, "Of course you do. Usually the problems just have teeth."

---

Nyxara had been with them since morning. Temporarily. She had insisted on that word twice.

"I’m not joining anyone," she said while riding beside Valeria. "Our routes happen to overlap for a few hours."

Valeria glanced at her. "Interesting. Elise has been saying exactly the same thing for three days."

Nyxara smiled. "Maybe it’s contagious."

"I hope not."

Raven listened without participating. Nyxara was different around him, though not dramatically. With anyone else, she maintained that aristocratic, faintly predatory air of someone accustomed to everyone else adjusting the space around her presence. With Raven, she was still proud, but there was something else. Curiosity.

He didn’t treat her like a princess. He didn’t treat her like a monster either, or even like a Champion, at least socially. He treated her like Nyxara: a dangerous, inconvenient, occasionally useful person. And Predation had put a number on the possibility of eating her. That seemed to fascinate her in a way Raven still didn’t understand.

Nyxara accelerated until she was beside him. "You’re still thinking about three point one."

Raven didn’t turn. "No."

"Liar."

"I’m thinking about why you keep talking about three point one."

"Because it increased."

"It’s still low enough to kill me."

"But it isn’t two point seven anymore."

Raven looked at her then. "Is this a competition to you?"

Nyxara considered the question seriously. "I don’t know yet."

"That answer doesn’t help."

"It wasn’t meant to."

Valeria watched them from ahead, only for a moment, but Raven saw it. She wasn’t angry, not exactly. It was something more uncomfortable.

For a long time, Valeria had been the person who best understood how Raven functioned in this world. The first person who had seen enough of Predation to stop reacting to every strange detail as though it were sacrilege. The one who knew his habits, his silences, and the way he concealed injuries until they became impossible to hide.

Now Elise occupied part of their everyday life, and Nyxara appeared with information Raven considered important. Valeria was beginning to understand that her place beside him was no longer automatically unique. She didn’t like that feeling.

The worst part was that she wasn’t even sure she had the right not to like it. She urged her horse slightly faster. Raven saw her do it. He didn’t comment. Not yet.

---

They stopped at midday beside a narrow stream. Roland checked the horseshoes while Valeria organized food. Nyxara sat beneath a tree with the posture of someone who considered the ground a personal inconvenience.

Elise washed her hands and walked back toward Raven. He was inspecting one of the Mk.I rounds.

"Can I ask you something?"

Raven didn’t look up. "You already started."

Elise sat across from him. "You still react every time I say I want to save you as though I’m threatening you."

Raven set the round down on the cloth. "Because the first time you explained what saving me meant, one of the possible outcomes was me dying."

"Only if Predation couldn’t be separated from you."

"And you would decide whether that was true."

"After a proper examination."

Raven looked at her. "Elise, from my perspective, that is still homicide legitimized by doctrine."

She frowned. "It isn’t the same thing."

"Explain the difference without using the word purification."

Elise opened her mouth, then stopped. Nyxara raised her head slightly beneath the tree. Valeria was listening too. Elise took several seconds.

"If corruption irreversibly destroys a person’s ability to act as themselves, removing that corruption may be the only way to protect what remains of them."

Raven nodded slowly. "Continue."

"If the corruption cannot be separated from the body without destroying it, then prolonging physical existence may mean keeping the person trapped inside something they no longer control."

"And that’s when you decide death is mercy."

"Not always. But it can be."

Raven looked back at the round. He understood the logic. That was exactly what bothered him. Elise wasn’t a fanatic repeating empty words. She had built an entire moral framework around it.

"The problem," Raven said, "is that your argument depends on you knowing when someone has stopped being themselves."

Elise didn’t answer immediately. "Sometimes we can know."

"Sometimes."

"Yes."

"And when you can’t?"

She held his gaze. "That’s why there are investigations, witnesses, doctrine, and review."

Raven pointed with two fingers toward the bandage he still wore beneath his shirt. "The last investigation ended with something going through my torso."

Elise winced slightly. "That wasn’t the ideal procedure."

Nyxara laughed. Valeria smiled too. Raven shook his head. "That sentence should concern you more than it seems to."

Elise exhaled. "I understand why you don’t trust the process."

"No. You understand why I don’t trust someone else to decide when my consent stops mattering."

That left her silent. Raven continued calmly.

"I can accept that there are cases where someone is altered enough that they can’t make rational decisions. I’ve seen it. What I don’t accept is that the automatic solution should be giving an institution that already decided what counts as corruption authority over my body."

Elise looked down at her hands. "Then you don’t completely reject the idea."

"I reject the part where you opened the conversation with ’let me examine you and maybe I’ll have to kill you.’"

Nyxara smiled from beneath the tree. "Still one of the worst attempts at courtship I’ve ever heard."

Elise turned. "I was not courting him."

Valeria spoke before Raven could stop the conversation. "Thank you for clarifying."

Her tone was too gentle. Raven looked toward her. Valeria was already cutting bread, as if nothing had happened. Information, again.

Elise turned back to Raven. "Then what would have to change for you to trust me?"

Raven thought before answering. "Stop assuming that having the right intention makes every decision you reach correct."

Elise frowned. "That could also apply to you."

Raven looked at her. "Yes."

She seemed surprised. Raven picked up the round again. "That’s why I try to keep exit plans."

Nyxara laughed. "I like him better when he admits he’s a problem too."

Raven ignored her.

---

Nyxara split from them shortly afterward. Her investigation into Soren Vhal continued north while Raven intended to keep heading east. Before leaving, she approached him.

"I’ll find something."

"I hope so."

"You could sound more grateful."

"You haven’t found anything yet."

Nyxara smiled. "That’s why I find you interesting."

Valeria stood several meters away. Raven noticed her pretending to inspect a strap she had already checked twice. Nyxara noticed too. Of course she did. She stepped a little closer to Raven just to make things worse.

"When I come back, maybe the percentage will have increased again."

"That depends on what Predation does, not you."

"Then I’ll have to keep giving it reasons."

Valeria released the strap. "Didn’t you have an important investigation?"

Nyxara looked at her. "Yes."

"Then you should leave."

"I like it when you worry about my productivity."

"That isn’t what this is."

"Of course."

Raven intervened before it grew. "Nyxara."

She looked back at him. "What?"

"Soren."

Nyxara smiled. "I’m going."

And finally, she left. Valeria watched her disappear between the trees. Raven waited several seconds.

"The strap was fine."

Valeria looked at him. "What?"

"You checked it twice."

"I was making sure."

"It was already checked."

Valeria narrowed her eyes. "Do you inspect my straps now too?"

"I inspect anything that could cause someone to fall off a horse."

She held his gaze. "Of course."

Raven decided leaving the matter there was tactically sound. Roland passed beside him. "Good retreat."

Raven looked at him. "I wasn’t retreating."

"Of course."

---

That afternoon, they reached a small mercenary post beside the road. Roland went inside to gather route information. He returned twenty minutes later with a different expression.

"I found something else about your bullets."

Raven stopped inspecting the Mk.I. "Talk."

Roland sat beside the road. "The buyer isn’t paying only for intact projectiles. They also want fragments, spent firing components, and stone or metal that took direct impacts."

Valeria frowned. "Residue?"

"Looks like it."

Raven held out a hand. Roland passed him a copied notice. There were prices. A deformed round from the Thunder Weapon was worth more than several weeks of an ordinary mercenary’s wages. A confirmed fragment was still worth too much. Even a spent component paid well.

Elise read over his shoulder. "That doesn’t look like collecting."

"It isn’t," Raven said.

He studied the amounts. Someone wanted to know what happened during the shot: material, deformation, residue, maybe traces of mana. Every fragment could tell part of the story.

Valeria sat beside him. "How much did they pay for the last one?"

Roland gave the number. Raven looked up. Too much, and not slightly. Too much for someone to be buying curiosities. Elise understood it too.

"Someone is studying the weapon."

Raven folded the notice. "Yes."

Roland looked at the Mk.I. "Is that bad?"

Raven thought about the rifle. Five systems, different biological functions turned into a single weapon, FORGE, Black Mithril, and the sheer number of things someone would need to understand to reproduce it correctly. They couldn’t copy it just by examining a bullet. But they could learn. And someone was willing to pay a great deal of money for every small lesson.

Raven put the notice away. "Not yet."

Valeria looked at him. "Yet?"

Raven rested one hand on the Mk.I. "Depends how much they’re willing to pay for the next piece."

Because if someone was offering that much for residue, sooner or later they would stop buying whatever Raven left behind.

They would start trying to obtain it directly.