Chapter 201: Who Is the Woman Inside My Body?

Chapter 201: Chapter 201: Who Is the Woman Inside My Body?

I didn’t answer.

Talking back meant accepting that a woman was speaking directly into my mind.

Replying meant admitting the moments I had lost control were not entirely me.

That something else sat inside the core and had been waiting for a chance to surface.

The gold cut still tingled across my palm. The ape’s blood was still spreading across the plaza.

None of it felt like the right time to start a conversation with a voice that should not exist.

[You’re partly right. Mostly wrong.]

The tone was almost gentle.

Almost amused.

’Shut up.’

The chains answered instead of the voice.

They erupted from both palms without command, blue-white and violent, and swept low across my own legs before I could dismiss them.

The links caught my ankles and yanked.

I went down hard, face-first into dust and drying monster blood.

The impact knocked the breath out of me.

For a second the world was only the smell of iron and blood and the sound of my own pulse in my ears.

Draven’s laughter rolled across the plaza, bright and delighted.

"Is that supposed to be an after-effect? Adorable. Most people just get the shakes."

Giselle didn’t laugh.

She walked toward me in silence, boots clean despite the carnage, mask still sealed.

I pushed myself up onto my elbows and glared at the empty air in front of my face.

’Stop it.’

[Or what?]

’Or I will walk into the nearest research wing and volunteer myself as a full dissection subject. They can map every channel, every fragment, every voice. I will sign the forms myself.’

Silence.

Longer this time.

The presence behind my thoughts withdrew a fraction, like someone stepping back from a line they had not expected to be drawn so quickly.

[...Understood.]

’You’re awfully cooperative.’

I stood slowly, brushing dust and dark blood from the front of the combat suit.

The chains had already dissolved.

My ankles still felt the ghost of the binding.

Giselle stopped in front of me.

She didn’t reach for a weapon.

She took my right hand, turned it palm-up, and studied the faint scorch marks where the gold edge had formed.

"What was that?"

"A malfunction. Probably."

"No."

Her gloved thumb pressed against the centre of my palm.

"I saw the chains turn gold. That is not anything you showed me in training."

I met the red lenses of her mask.

Behind us, barrier teams were already sealing the fresh corpses and resetting emitter pylons.

Draven had wandered a few metres away to speak with a guild captain, but his attention kept drifting back toward us.

"Will you let it go if I tell you I’ll explain afterwards?"

"You’re hiding so much."

"Trust me. It isn’t easy for me either."

Giselle held my hand a second longer, then released it.

The pressure of her fingers lingered.

"Afterwards," she said.

"And it had better be the full version."

Before I could answer, the red gate changed.

The angry, wounded crimson that had pulsed since our arrival began to lighten.

First at the edges, then across the entire membrane, shifting toward a deep, stable amber.

The black veins of energy thinned and withdrew.

A low harmonic note rolled out of the tear, almost musical, and the pressure that had been sitting on every chest in the plaza eased.

"Exit vector confirmed!" an analyst shouted.

"Main team returning!"

The gate surface bulged outward and then parted like a curtain.

Figures stepped through in staggered pairs.

Eight hunters, three supports, all of them marked by battle.

One woman’s left arm hung at an unnatural angle.

A support’s tether lines were burned down to glowing stubs.

They still walked under their own power.

The moment the last pair cleared the threshold, the amber light intensified, held for three heartbeats, and then the gate sealed itself with a sound like a heavy door closing underwater.

Cheers and professional relief moved through the perimeter teams in a controlled wave. Healers were already advancing with stretchers and light.

Draven clapped once, loud enough to cut through the noise.

"Textbook clear. Someone buy the captain a drink later. And someone else get these two inside before the membrane fully stabilises. Field trip time."

Giselle’s head turned sharply.

"Inside?"

"Observation only. The core chamber is already secured. I want the unmarked support to feel what a living dungeon tastes like while the essence is still fresh. You can hold his hand if it makes you feel better."

He didn’t wait for permission.

One hand settled on my shoulder, the other on Giselle’s, and he walked us toward the amber surface as if strolling into a private club.

The remaining hunters stepped aside.

No one questioned Draven’s authority to bring guests through a freshly cleared S-rank gate.

The membrane accepted us with a sensation like walking through warm oil.

On the other side, the world changed.

The air was thicker, heavier with mana so dense it tasted metallic on the tongue.

Its sky, or what passed for a sky, was a vault of dark stone veined with slow-moving rivers of red light.

We stood on a broad basalt platform that overlooked a cavern large enough to swallow a city block.

In the centre, far below, a crystalline structure the size of a small tower pulsed with the same amber light that had coloured the gate.

The core.

Already ringed by containment pylons and the residual glow of whatever binding the raid team had used to keep it from reforming the portal.

My core reacted instantly.

The fragment of Giselle under my ribs flared hot. The Sybaritic Nexus structure above it tightened like a fist closing around new information.

And deeper still, in the space the Pillow Talk skill had opened, the foreign presence stirred with unmistakable disdain.

[What a weak dungeon.]

The voice was clearer here, as if the ambient mana gave it more room to breathe.

I kept my face neutral and answered under my breath.

’You’re awake again.’

[Hard not to be.]

[This place is leaking so much low-grade energy it’s almost insulting.]

[An S-rank should have more teeth.]