Chapter 44 | C-Rank

Chapter 44: Chapter 44 | C-Rank

After breakfast Kai washed the dishes.

His ribs complained through the whole process. He breathed steadily and did the dishes.

From the living room Shira wheeled to her spot by the window. He heard the physio sheet sound. Then something different. The resistance sound again. The one he had started hearing in the mornings.

He focused the Nerve Sense without meaning to.

She was doing the shoulder rotation sequence. The full Gale Strike preparatory form. Not just the upper body exercises from the sheet. The actual Gift form. Her arm executing the sequence as far as the nerve signal would carry it before dropping.

Then starting again.

Over and over.

Each repetition identical to the last. The form held correctly until the signal ran out. Then reset. Then again.

’She’s still doing it,’ Kai thought. ’Even after the run. She’s still practicing so that whatever trace activation reaches me is cleaner.’

He finished the dishes.

He dried his hands.

He stood at the sink for a moment.

Then he walked to the living room doorway.

Shira was by the window with her arm extended. Mid-rotation. She registered his presence and stopped.

She looked at him.

"What," she said.

"Nothing," Kai said. "I just wanted to say the Verren Caverns. The clearance. Forty-one minutes."

Shira looked at him.

"The record says forty-three," she said.

"I know what the record says," Kai said. "The record is wrong."

She held his gaze for a moment.

Then she looked back at the window.

"It was a long time ago," she said.

"Not that long," Kai said.

Shira said nothing.

The morning light was coming through the window at an angle that caught the side of her face and the loose fall of her dark red hair and he noticed all of it in the way he had been noticing things recently that he immediately redirected away from.

"Han Dori remembered the canyon run," Kai said. "He said forty-three. I told him it was forty-one."

Shira looked at the window.

"You told him," she said.

"Yes," he said.

She was quiet.

"Why," she said.

"Because it matters," he said. "The correct number matters."

Shira did not say anything for a moment.

Then she said very quietly, not at him exactly, just at the window: "He was the only one who remembered the run at all."

Kai said nothing.

He went back to the kitchen.

He stood at the counter and pressed his palm to it and felt her rhythm through the floor. Still by the window. Still.

After a minute the shoulder rotation started again.

—---------

He spent the morning on run two preparation.

Han Dori’s message had come in overnight. New dungeon. The Kellith Tunnels. Three districts west. Monster type: dust wraiths. Not stone. Not physical in the same way. Semi-corporeal. They existed on the border between physical and mana space.

Kai read the description twice.

’Nerve Sense reads physical presence,’ he thought. ’Semi-corporeal means partial physical presence. The reading will be incomplete.’

He wrote that in the notebook.

He searched for dust wraith combat data on his phone. The information was limited. C-rank classification. Movement speed significantly higher than stone elementals. No joint weakness. Vulnerable to concentrated force output at the mana-physical interface point which was the densest part of their semi-corporeal form.

He stopped.

’Concentrated force at a specific point,’ he thought. ’The full rotation Gale Strike is not a wide output. It’s a concentrated column. The rotation concentrates it.’

He wrote that.

He stared at the notebook.

’Shira told me the rotation concentrates the force exponentially,’ he thought. ’She didn’t know she was giving me a dust wraith ability. She thought she was fixing my stone elemental form.’

He put the notebook down.

He went to the living room.

Shira was still by the window.

"Dust wraiths," Kai said.

She looked at him.

"Run two," he said. "The Kellith Tunnels. Dust wraiths."

Shira was still for a moment.

"Semi-corporeal," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Your Nerve Sense will read them as partial presence. Flickering. You’ll have trouble establishing accurate position before engagement."

"I know," he said.

"The mana-physical interface point is the strike target," she said. "On a dust wraith it’s approximately chest level on their form. It shifts slightly as they move. You need to read the shift pattern before striking."

Kai had his notebook out.

"How do I read the shift pattern," he said.

Shira looked at the window.

"Resonance," she said. "The interface point generates a low frequency resonance as it shifts. If your Resonance Echo can detect it you can track the point without visual confirmation."

Kai looked up from the notebook.

"The Resonance Echo," he said. "That’s from Mira."

"Yes," Shira said.

"So Mira’s ability is what lets me fight the wraiths," Kai said.

Shira looked at the window.

"Between us we apparently cover C-rank dungeons adequately," she said. Very dryly. "Congratulations."

Kai looked at her.

He was smiling before he caught it.

Shira was not smiling. But the line of her mouth was doing something it was working not to do.

He went back to the kitchen.

==================

At noon he knocked on Mira’s door.

Three knocks.

It opened. She was in the doorway with the cane and her whiteboard. She had changed from sleeping clothes. Her hair was up. The scarf was on.

He had not been looking at the area below the scarf.

He had been about to not look at it.

He looked at her face instead.

"Dust wraiths," he said.

She tilted her head.

"Run two," he said. "Kellith Tunnels. Semi-corporeal. The strike target shifts as they move. Shira says the Resonance Echo reads the shift pattern."

Mira was still for a moment.

She reached for her marker.

Then she put it down.

She stood there.

The pause was longer than usual. Long enough that Kai was about to say something to fill it.

Then she picked the marker back up.

She wrote: The Resonance Echo reads frequency shifts. The interface point on a dust wraith produces a specific oscillation. You need to learn what the oscillation feels like before you enter the dungeon.

"How," Kai said.

She wrote: I can produce the frequency. With the audio reader. I can set it to the correct oscillation and you practice reading it through the Echo.

Kai looked at the board.

"You can calibrate the audio reader to a specific dungeon monster frequency," he said.

She wrote: I’ve been using it to study sound frequencies for three weeks. I know what a dust wraith interface oscillation sounds like from the combat records database.

"You’ve been studying the combat records database," he said.

Yes, she wrote.

"When did you start doing that," he said.

She looked at the space where his face was.

She wrote one word.

Tuesday.

Kai counted back.

Tuesday was the day Han Dori had confirmed run two and told him the monster type.

She had started the day she found out.

He stood in the doorway.

He looked at her face. The composed expression. The pale violet eyes aimed just past his left shoulder. The marker held in her hand ready to write the next thing.

’She started researching dust wraith frequencies the day she found out the monster type,’ he thought. ’She didn’t tell me. She just did it.’