Chapter 147: I Should Learn To Keep My Promises

Far off on the eastern side of Lake Merrin stood a prestigious estate, hidden in the embrace of tall trees. They grew so tightly together that it seemed their whole purpose was to keep it out of sight.

Tonight, though, the storm was far more vicious over here. The wind shoved the trees stubbornly one way, and the tall things dragged their weight right back. And so the whole wood rocked back and forth against the rolling storm, neither side willing to give.

At the heart of the estate stood a white, cone-shaped building. It rose far into the sky like some kind of lighthouse, and the lightning streaking through the dark clouds kept gathering around its tip.

A man sat on the balcony of that spire, under the shade of an umbrella. He had been reading a newspaper before all of this began.

Right now, he was leaning forward with a hard expression on his aged face.

The furious wind tore at his spiky grey hair, and every flash of lightning picked out the deep lines of his face. His grey eyes were fixed on the distance.

From up here, he could see past the tall trees that should have blocked his view, all the way to the dark clouds gathered on the horizon. Every so often, something pitch black stretched out across them. It looked for all the world like something was flying through the sky.

He stayed there watching, and each explosion rattled him in his seat. At first he had blamed the storm.

But no storm made weather like this.

When it was finally over, he frowned and leaned back. Then he picked up a mobile phone that didn’t belong to this age at all. It looked more like a relic than an actual phone.

There was only one number saved on it, and he dialed it.

The thing barely rang before somebody picked up, and a woman’s voice came through the speaker.

"Chairman, sir! It’s good to receive your call, sir!"

"Hmm... hmm... is there someone in Lake Merrin?"

The lady went silent, clearly confused.

"Uhm... uh, I’m not—"

Then she went stiff, and when she spoke again her voice had its confidence back.

"There was a man, some newly awakened. He purchased the entire Lake and now owns it."

The old man’s mouth rounded into an O, and he began to stroke his beard gently.

"Interesting, interesting..."

After that, he said nothing for a second longer. Seeing this, the lady quickly put in:

"Chairman, sir, will you be coming to take care of things? With the rate at which gates are appearing, we could really use your guidance and wisdom and strength."

He grunted almost angrily.

"I’m retired, damn it. That stupid son of mine and his son are enough."

"The President has been in the Agency, sir, and his son has chosen to join the Association just to antagonize us."

The old man tilted his head.

"What? How come I don’t know about this?"

The lady sounded exasperated. Even so, she answered with calm grace and didn’t dare raise her voice:

"Because you never pick up your calls, sir."

The Chairman chuckled shamelessly.

"Well, you can’t blame me. I retired."

He waved his hand at nobody in particular.

"I’m sure it’ll all take care of itself. Let me be."

The lady hurried to speak, but before her voice could make it through, the line went dead.

Afterwards, the old man sat staring into the distance.

’Some newly awakened, huh...’

Meanwhile, on the porch at Lake Merrin, the rain was still hanging in the air.

Every drop within a yard of Theo had stopped dead. They glittered in the porch light like a curtain of glass beads, and Estea was staring cross-eyed at one that hung an inch from her nose.

Then the Coffer went still, and the rain remembered itself.

It all came down at once, slapping cold across Theo’s face and running straight down the back of his collar.

[??? Egg]

[Status: Incubating]

[Note: it will need more]

’MORE? It just ate half a monster!’

Estea looked at the water dripping off the end of his nose. Then she looked at the hand he still had pressed flat against his chest.

She asked slowly:

"Theolyne. What was that?"

"That was the good news."

"And the bad news?"

Theo scratched his cheek and looked sheepishly away.

"I didn’t bring you a head."

For a moment, Estea said nothing at all. Then she let out a long breath.

"You are soaked through, you are limping, and you smell like a burnt kitchen. And you have come home with nothing in your hands but an excuse."

She turned her chair sharply toward the door.

"Get inside before you catch your death, you dimwit."

Theo blinked.

’...That’s it? No shouting?’

He followed her in. As he passed behind her chair, he noticed the blanket over her legs was soaked right through. The backs of her hands had gone pale and wrinkled from the cold.

’Has she been sitting out here this whole time?’

Theo didn’t say anything about it. He knew better.

Uthed went straight to the kitchen and started boiling water without being asked. Asterion stopped at the door, as he always did, and stayed on the mat.

Theo waited until the house had gone quiet.

Then he went downstairs.

The sublevel was cool, the way it always was. The array hummed low in the concrete, and the green line on the monitor climbed and fell in its slow rhythm. Thall lay exactly where he had left her.

He pulled the chair up and took her hand.

It was still warm.

Only then did he let the System speak. It had been beeping insistently since the Serpent went into the plate, and he had ignored it the whole way home.

[A LIFE-RISK Investment has been Detected]

[Grade: EXCEPTIONAL]

[You walked into the dark after something you could not hurt, because it had come too close to your wives. You nearly died, and each time you got up thinking of them. And in the end, you won with the elements of the very women you went out to protect]

[Effect on Estea: VERY HIGH]

[Effect on Sesan: MODERATE]

[Effect on Thalleria: TRACE]

Theo’s eyes went to the first line.

’Very high... from the woman who just called me a dimwit at the door.’

Then his eyes dropped to the last one, and stayed there.

For as long as she had lain on this bed, every single panel had said the same thing about her. Nil. Whatever he bought, whatever he fought, however many nights he sat in this chair and talked to her, Thall had never felt any of it.

Trace wasn’t much.

But it wasn’t nil.

Theo’s fingers slowly tightened around her warm hand, and for a while he had to look up at the ceiling.

’She felt something... she actually felt something.’

The rewards came after that, one gold panel at a time.

[Your Mana Heart Capacity has increased]

[You have gained another ten years’ worth of clean Mana]

The hollow ache behind his ribs, the one he had carried home since the ice, filled up like a cup under a tap. Theo sagged back in the chair and very nearly moaned out loud.

[You have received: Frost Lotus ×3]

He sat bolt upright.

’Frost Lotus! That’s the one I’ve been missing for the Draught!’

The recipe had sat uselessly in his inventory for months, waiting on a single flower he had never managed to find. Its note promised to ease post-reversion tremors. Sesan had just lost ground to the curse, and her hands would be shaking by morning.

Now he could do something about it. Tonight, even.

[Free Investment — Target: Forest Spirit — has paid off]

[You kept the fire away from what fire kills]

[Compatibility: Moderate → High]

[You have received: Leaf of the Forest Spirit]

A single leaf settled into his palm. It was green and waxy and still wet, as though somebody had just plucked it from the branch in the rain. It was warm, too.

It was the same warmth as the hand in his other palm.

Theo looked from the leaf to Thall, and back again.

’Okay. That’s weird. That’s definitely weird.’

The last panel took its time coming up.

[You have received a Rare-grade cooking vessel: The Hearthkeeper’s Pot]

Theo stared at it blankly.

’A pot.’

He read it a second time, in case it said something else. It didn’t.

’I froze the sky, my coat ate a monster, I nearly died three times tonight, and it gave me a POT.’

Then he read the description, and his mouth slowly closed.

[The Hearthkeeper’s Pot]

[Rank: Rare]

[Type: Cookware]

[Description: Whatever is cooked in this pot keeps everything it was meant to keep. Nothing is lost to the fire]

He thought about nine ingredients from a garden nobody could find, and a broth that was supposed to put a dying woman back on her feet.

’Alright. That’s actually a very good pot.’

He sat there a while longer, a leaf in one hand and Thall’s warm fingers in the other. Upstairs, somebody was clattering around the kitchen. Uthed, most likely, boiling far too much water.

Then the sublevel door opened behind him.

Theo turned.

Asterion stood at the top of the stairs, soaked from head to boot. He was inside the house. He had come straight past the mat without being asked, and he had never done that before.

His voice came down the stairs, flat and careful:

"Lord Theo. There is a man at your gate."

Theo frowned.

"At this hour? In this weather?"

"That is the part I do not like."

Asterion glanced back over his shoulder, up toward the dark hall.

"He walked here. And he is not wet."