[Chapter 216. Time alone & Time together]

Before he could form the first cohesive thoughts, he shot up from the chair leaning over the barrier. His gloved hands gripped the cold metal railing, knuckles white, as his gaze pierced the darkness just beyond the massive walls of Androxis. He strained his enhanced vision, knowing full well he couldn't possibly discern anything from this distance, but his instincts screamed at him to look.

"A node just a few kilometers outside of the city walls..." he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, while his gaze drifted inwards towards the memories of his drones. There were six nodes surrounding his city, each of them gave off the familiar signature of the nodes he had encountered in the forest—pulsing concentrations of energy that promised both opportunity and danger.

With a slightly forceful push, he got off the railing of the balcony and settled back into his chair. The metal creaked under his weight. "First I have to assess the changes, then I can go into a trial. Everything else would be suicidal," he said softly to himself, the words a grim mantra in the unnatural twilight.

Searanox sat back into the foldable chair and closed his eyes once more, the visuals from his memories and the active thoughts were a chaotic mix in his mind. This time however he wasn't doing a rough sweep of the area, but a full, tightly spiraling scan that covered everything within their range. Each drone moved with purpose, its sensors painting a detailed tapestry of the changed landscape.

`What could the System have meant by restrictions... What restrictions were placed upon me that had been lifted?` He could only think about the restrictive information he could extract from Iris. `But that would have impacted her as well. And since she didn't get such a notification, that couldn't be it. There must be something else that was only restricting me personally.`

`Then there is this reward, that glitched window. What even was that, I have never seen an unstable System Notification before.` The corrupted text flickered in his memory again, the partial words were maddeningly tantalizing.

Searanox spent the next few hours pondering these new questions that came with the infusion. They were impossible to answer without a lead or any further information, except of what he already knew. The minutes stretched into hours as he wrestled with the implications, his mind racing through possibilities and discarding them just as quickly.

Roughly five hours in, they had only scanned close to forty kilometers out from his position, since this time he was covering the entire field of their influence it took significantly longer than it had been in the past sweeps he had done.

He pushed himself off the chair as the sun up high in the sky, by his guesstimate it was close to 12pm by now. The rays of light painted the bleeding sky in hues of orange and gold, a stark contrast to the otherworldly purples and reds that had dominated the heavens. The chair vanished back into his storage ring with a soft chime before he made his way towards his bed chamber, the weight of unanswered questions pressing down on him like the atmospheric pressure from the infusion itself.

As he entered the chamber he could see a dark form laying between the covers of his bed. His armored gauntlets hissed as they opened and retracted from his shoulders down to his elbows, before they vanished in a flash of blue light. His coat was folded and placed upon a table at the foot of the bed, the fabric whispering against the polished wood.

His shredded combat suit came off as easily as the moment he had put it on, behaving as if the armored plating wasn't dented and cracked, the underlying fabric torn and shredded in places from his recent battles. The System-enhanced suit sealed and unsealed with unnatural precision, the damage fading to the background as the mechanisms responded to his will.

It too was placed on the foot of the bed, before Searanox made his way over towards it. Slowly getting onto the soft mattress, that gave softly in under his weight, the sheets cool against his bare skin. A dark furred hand reached out and scratched over his skin, leaving red lines in their wake, her claws just sharp enough to mark without breaking the flesh.

He reached out and brushed away the thick, beautiful midnight black mane that covered Iris's face, the silver-white strands catching what little light filtered through the window. As his fingers curled up in her hair, gently scraping against her scalp, a soft whimper escaped her before she drew herself against him.

A gentle pressure pressed down on his shoulder as Iris nipped at his skin, her teeth grazing his flesh with predatory tenderness. They indulged in their company for a long while, just as they had since all this began—in the cramped space of his city apartment. The world outside fading away until only the scent of her fur and the warmth of her body against his remained.

"You mentioned the bed earlier. I was worried you might not—" she whispered into the room. Her furred legs wrapped around his midriff, holding him in place as if he might vanish any second now.

"I told you I would," he stated in a calm tone. His hands traced patterns on her back as they lay in the comfortable silence.

"You did. I know. I'm just... worried." Her reply was so soft he almost missed it. Her grip tightened for a fraction of a second, before she relaxed again.

"You shouldn't be. I'm a man of my word," Searanox said, a faint smile playing on his lips. "Now, let's get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us."

He didn't need to say anything more. Iris's breathing evened out, her body relaxing against his as sleep claimed her. Searanox lay there, staring at the ceiling, the unanswered questions still swirling in his mind. The city outside was quiet, the citizens either too terrified to move or exhausted from the day's events. But he knew it was just the calm before the storm.

His drones were continuing their fly over the landscape surrounding Androxis, autonomously scanning for any changes for anything of interest to him. Their mechanical senses processed every ridge and valley, every shadow and movement, feeding a constant stream of memories back to him. The sun was already high in the sky while his drones where still on their duty, its light glinting off their metallic hulls as they cut through the air with quiet efficiency.

Searanox woke up to a sharp ping from one of his drones, his attention instantly directed towards the individual that had sent the ping. In his memory he could see himself floating in the air, above the vast expanse of rolling hills and right there a swirling blue vortex stood. It was a mesmerizing, almost beautiful sight, a stark contrast to the surrounding grass lands. The entrance pulsed with a steady rhythm, as if breathing, its energy palpable even through the drone's sensors. He was too far away to make out the specific detail, but the soft blue motion that his drone had located under the warm afternoon sun was clearly a dungeon entrance.

`A dungeon to the east...`

The thought echoed in his mind, a mix of opportunity and caution. Dungeons meant resources, power, and survival, but they also meant danger, death, and the constant reminder of their existence. He flew over the memories of the other four drones, but they were all mostly the same as before the Infusion. The same landscape the same beasts roaming the lands.

His attention was brought out of the memories by a gentle pressure against his neck and a soft grinding on his lower body. His hand stroked the soft fur of her back, his voice a quiet, sleep-drunken whisper, "You have gotten quite needy, my dear."

She nuzzled deeper into his neck drawing closer, while pressing her lean body against his. "I can't help it," Iris's whispered response was a hot puff of air against his skin, her fur had that primal animalistic scent to her. "I just want to feel you."

Her furred hands roamed over his bare chest, her touch a mix of hesitant exploration and possessive hunger. The rough and yet smooth skin of her palms contrasted with the silky texture of her fur as she traced the defined muscles of his torso. She rolled on top of him, her silver eyes glowing in the bright sunlight of the room. "Please," she whispered, words catching in her throat, her tail thumping softly against the mattress. "I want to forget."

He met her gaze, a flicker of something unreadable in his own eyes. "Forget what?"

"Everything," she breathed, her hips moving in a slow, deliberate rhythm against him, the heat of her body seeping into his. "The System. The impending slaughter. The dread. The trials... I want to feel you. Nothing else. Just you."

He didn't say anything, just reached up and tangled his fingers in her mane, pulling her down for a kiss that was both tender and demanding. Her fangs scraped against his lip, a sharp, familiar sting that only fueled the fire between them. The world outside could wait.

Much later, Searanox carried Iris across the sprawling chamber toward the opulent, sunken bath. His pale neck and shoulders bore a tapestry of faint bruises and light puncture wounds. Scratches crisscrossed his back where her claws had sought purchase, tearing into his flesh in her frantic pursuit to anchor herself to reality. The marks were already sealing shut. His Dhampir physiology knit the torn skin back together, erasing the physical evidence of their feral act.

Thick stifling steam billowed from the churning water, engulfing the massive sunken marble tub. They sank into the scalding depths. Iris remained plastered against his chest, refusing to yield the tiniest amount of space. She rested her head over his heart. The steady, slow thump of his undead pulse offered a grounding counterpoint to the rhythmic lapping of the heated water against the stone edges.

She closed her eyes, fighting a losing battle against despair. She knew the inescapable truth. The second he donned that armor, he would vanish into the dangers of the second Infusion for an unknowable amount of time. In the grueling days ahead, she would experience his touch in stolen, fleeting moments.