Chapter 134: Both Girls Mocking My Pathetic Attempt to Gatekeep

Chapter 134: Chapter 134: Both Girls Mocking My Pathetic Attempt to Gatekeep

We started training again without ceremony.

I opened the chains and gave them control, primary rhythm seated in Gianna’s hands, secondary tracking thickened just enough for Rei to steer angles without ripping the axle.

Fracture Step stayed limited on purpose: short bursts only, cooldown respected, no flashy wasting of the after-image when the real exam would punish vanity.

Through the links, both of their vision stacks bled into mine.

Gianna’s field was ordered edges and threat cones.

Rei’s was motion, blood-budget math, the next place a body could break.

Layered together, it was almost too much. Under it ran the quieter problem I had been dodging since the car.

If Gia could feel pressure and regret through a held construct, shared sight was another door.

I felt her attention brush the channel once, curious, careful.

I didn’t close it.

The exam was the biggest thing that had happened since I woke up in this world.

Secrets had a shorter half-life now.

There would be other men on the intake grid, some measured like Shen, some hostile, some already packaged into politics.

There would be women who thought like Rei the moment they tasted what my core could do.

Hiding every internal fracture was a luxury the Scramble would not fund.

On the mat, Gianna’s telekinesis and Rei’s blood edges moved in overlapping arcs against the dummy line.

I held center, distributed, corrected.

And I reached for something I had only seen in the system’s quieter menus.

’Let’s try this.’

[Skill query: Zenith Circulation]

[Requirements: minimum two linked targets at Favorability 40+]

[Gianna Everheart — Favorability: 66 / 100]

[Rei Lawless — Favorability: 44 / 100]

[Requirements met.]

[Activate?]

"Do it," I said under my breath.

[Zenith Circulation — Active]

[Stamina Unlimited: 01:00:00]

[Effect radius: Host + linked participants]

[Note: Multi-participant drain accelerates countdown]

Power ran through me clean, no spike of absorption, no empty-eyed hunger, just the sudden absence of the usual weight in the legs and lungs.

At the same instant both women turned toward me.

"What the hell did you do?" Rei shouted, and then a smile cracked across her face, sharp and delighted.

"I feel so fucking good."

Gianna flexed her fingers; a cone lifted and spun without the micro-strain she usually paid.

"...Revien."

"Shared circulation," I said.

"Don’t burn it on showing off. We train inside it."

[Stamina Unlimited: 00:59:50]

It spread through the links like heat with manners.

An hour on paper.

Three active bodies spending it in real time.

We trained harder.

No polite pacing anymore.

Radius drills with live pursuit drones.

Anti-hook footwork while Gianna denied lanes and Rei cut mock tether points out of hard-light supports.

I kept the stagger honest, drop Rei when the node shook, pulse her back when the objective demanded teeth.

Fracture Step carved short exits through pressure nets.

Sweat should have come.

It didn’t.

Breath should have turned ragged at the thirty-minute mark.

It didn’t.

The timer, though, lied less than our bodies.

[Stamina Unlimited: 00:41:12]

[Stamina Unlimited: 00:28:44]

[Stamina Unlimited: 00:15:03]

"Countdown’s eating itself," I called.

"Because you tied three furnaces to one fuse," Gianna answered, already moving again.

"Stop narrating and hold the left radius."

"I’m alerting you. No false promises."

Rei laughed, blood edge whistling through a dummy’s weapon arm.

"Let it burn. This is what the Scramble should feel like before someone sticks a harpoon in his ribs."

"Less poetry," I said.

"More interruption drills."

We ran denial sequences until the projected rival tethers were a joke we could break on call.

We ran rescue sprints from a forced fifty-meter line with the unlimited stamina still cheating the cost.

We ran pocket-hold while I deliberately let a pursuit drone tag me so they had to peel it without collapsing the channel.

[Stamina Unlimited: 00:03:19]

"Last cycle," I said.

"Then we learn what the hangover is."

"You didn’t tell us about the hangover?" Gianna snapped.

"I hope there isn’t one."

Rei’s grin was feral.

"Scientists. Both of you. Move."

The last minutes vanished in a blur of clean violence and forced cooperation.

When the system chimed softly, the absence of the buff hit like a floor disappearing.

Swoosh.

[Zenith Circulation: 00:00:00 — Ended]

[Recoil: Deferred fatigue applied]

[Linked participants: Affected]

We hit the mat hard.

Not a dramatic collapse, just the body collecting every unpaid bill at once.

I landed on my back, chest working, arms heavy.

Gianna dropped to a seat beside me, telekinetic field guttering out.

Rei sprawled on her other side, laughing at the ceiling like the dizziness was a private joke.

"You didn’t say the effects would hit after the timer ends, you idiot," Gianna said.

"I... I didn’t know either."

My voice came out rough.

"It wasn’t that consuming while it ran. We’re just facing the cost now."

Rei kept laughing, one arm over her eyes.

"God. You keep surprising me. This is a literal huge advantage in that fight. An hour of not dying on our feet while other teams gas out? I’ll take the crash."

"We’ll time it," I said.

"Scramble phase is thirty minutes. We don’t open Zenith at the start and pray. We open it when the hooks come out."

Gianna turned her head toward me, still breathing hard.

"You will tell us before you activate anything that hits our cores. No more surprises in a shared link."

"Copy."

For a stretch, we only breathed.

They were lying closer than habit usually allowed, Gianna and Rei on the same strip of mat, heat and post-buff tremor making the old hostility look temporarily unemployed.

Calm, almost. Near.

I stared at the ceiling lights and started something as casual as I could make it.

"So... about the test."

Both of them turned their heads.

"Mm?"

"We are only going to sever their supports."

I kept my eyes on the lights, not on either face.

"Don’t go thinking you can use their power. Or keep them beside you."

Silence.

Then Gianna’s mouth pulled into something openly mocking.

Rei’s expression followed a half-beat later, sharper, delighted in a different key.

I regretted the sentence immediately.