Chapter 67: Act Like Nothing Happened

The dimensional rift snapped shut, rushing air into the room, knocking a lamp off the table. Damara was gone.

My chest tightened as I threw the mental valve in my core wide open. White heat flooded my arms.

Katrina screamed, launching her body at the empty space where the rift had been. Her hands tore at the rug.

Sarah shot toward the ceiling. The air grew blisteringly hot as her panic turned ambient moisture into boiling steam. Scalding water pooled on the floorboards.

Elise gripped her staff until her knuckles turned bone-white, scanning the dark corners for a threat that wasn’t there.

"Find a trail!" I yelled. "Katrina, track the magic!"

I dug my boots into the floor. The system had given me seventy-two hours, but I refused to wait. I channeled mana into my fists, prepared to punch a hole through the floorboards to find a hidden portal. The white light flared brighter. I needed a target.

The room remained empty, the silence heavy beneath the roar of Sarah’s boiling steam. Katrina let out a frustrated growl, pacing across the rug.

A spark of purple fire ignited above the coffee table, ripping reality open a second time.

I raised my glowing fists as Katrina lunged forward with a feral hiss, ready to strike whatever came through the portal.

Damara stumbled out of the rift, her boots hitting the rug with a thud before the portal vanished behind her.

She didn’t look like a hostage. Smoothing wrinkles out of her gray hoodie, she held a delicate porcelain teacup in her right hand.

Katrina froze in mid-air, crashing onto the sofa in a baffled heap.

I lowered my hands, letting the white aura bleed away. "Damara?"

She took a slow sip from her teacup. "The audacity of some people," she muttered. She noticed Katrina, Sarah hovering near the ceiling, and my glowing fists. "Why is everyone yelling?"

"You got abducted by a dimensional rift," I said, my heart hammering. "The system gave me an urgent quest to rescue you."

Damara scoffed loudly, walking to the armchair and sitting down. "Rescue me from what? I’m sitting right here," she echoed, laughing maniacally after.

I stared at her as adrenaline drained from my veins. She looked unharmed and annoyed.

My phone vibrated inside my pocket. It wasn’t the frantic buzz from earlier; it felt just like a polite, mocking tap.

I pulled the device out. The glaring red banner was gone, replaced by a cheerful green box.

[ URGENT QUEST CLEARED: This Girl Don’t Need Rescuing ]

[ NOTE: Target handled her own affairs. + 5000 Favor for panicking anyway. ]

I stared at the screen, realizing the system was laughing at me. I locked the phone and tossed it onto the coffee table.

"I hate that thing sometimes," I muttered, dropping onto the couch next to Elise.

Elise let out a breath and rested her staff against the wall, while the boiling steam dissipated into warm puddles on the floorboards.

Sarah drifted down from the ceiling, landing lightly on the coffee table to peer at Damara’s teacup. "Where did you get that?"

"A pompous estate in the third circle of the Demon Realm," Damara explained. "Lord Vane is a traditionalist noble who took extreme offense to my father allowing me to live in the human realm."

"So he kidnapped you?" Katrina asked, picking a thread from her claws.

"He attempted to summon me for a formal marriage proposal," Damara corrected. "He bypassed the palace registry and used an old bloodline tether, thinking he could intimidate me."

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "Are you okay?"

Damara smirked. "I’m fine, Sam. I materialized in his parlor, and he started a monologue about demonic purity. I let him talk for ten seconds. Then I broke his nose with a paperweight, stole his tea, and stepped back through the tether before his guards reacted."

Katrina burst out laughing while Elise covered her mouth to hide a bright smile.

I leaned back against the cushions. Damara handled a demon lord without breaking a sweat, proving she didn’t need a savior. She was an equal partner here.

The word marriage echoed in my head. Vane wanted a political contract, an idea that felt disgusting to me, but the concept of marriage itself didn’t. Calvin’s joke from the market returned to my mind. Where are your wives? I looked at Damara sipping tea, Katrina laughing, Elise safely relaxed, and Sarah examining a water droplet. I wanted a permanent life with them. I shoved the thought down for now, knowing the timing wasn’t right today, but the seed was planted.

"Alright. Heart attacks averted," I said, clapping my hands together. "I’m buying us junk food so we can actually relax."

I picked up my phone. We had ten thousand Favor from the cavern bounty, plus the pity points the system awarded me, so I opened the Celestial Market app.

"What are you buying?" Sarah asked, leaning over the edge of the table to look at the screen.

"Comfort," I replied. I scrolled past weapons and armor, found the luxury goods tab, and tapped the screen. I selected assorted donuts and a tray of roasted meats.

Golden light flashed as heated massage blankets appeared on the floor, alongside classic board games dropping onto the rug. A platter of fresh pastries and roasted meat materialized on the kitchen island.

Katrina abandoned the empty air she had been clawing at, sprinting to the island. She grabbed a roasted turkey leg and bit into it. "I claim the red blanket," Katrina announced around a mouthful of meat, wrapping herself in the thick fabric.

Damara set her teacup down, grabbing a purple blanket and draping it over her shoulders. "A wise investment. The coastal storms make this house drafty at night."

Sarah walked directly to the donut box, picking up a powdered sugar donut. She took a massive bite, covering her nose in white dust while chewing.

Elise walked into the kitchen to grab a pastry from the island. When she returned, she held the dark, hexagonal cylinder we found in the cavern. Damara had dumped her loot pack on the counter earlier, leaving the Precursor Master Key next to the pastries.

"I wanted to look at this again," Elise said, sitting cross-legged on the rug.

I grabbed my own blanket. "Did you figure out what it opens?"

"Precursor technology relies on sympathetic frequencies," Elise explained, turning the metal cylinder over. "This key didn’t react to the ruins, and it didn’t react to the vault door’s lock. It reacted to the core."

She held the key up, letting the faint, internal light hum quietly. "But it’s reacting to something else right now."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Look at the base," Elise pointed.

A thin line of blue light pulsed at the bottom of the cylinder in a rhythmic, directional pulse rather than a steady glow.

"It’s pointing," Damara observed, leaning closer.

Elise turned the key, the light flaring brighter as she aimed it directly at the floorboards beneath the coffee table.

I knelt beside her on the rug, reaching out to touch the cold metal. The faint vibration matched the exact rhythm of the blue pulse.

"Are you certain it isn’t just interference from your relic?" I asked.

Elise shook her head. "My relic operates on a distinct turquoise spectrum. This navigation beacon is actively seeking a receiver terminal."

Damara ran a hand through her hair. "The rogue mage spent years tearing apart a mountain outpost searching for the matching lock. You are telling me it’s sitting beneath our living room?"

"It makes sense," Sarah chimed in. "Celestia gave Sam this house, and the system upgrades it based on our achievements. Maybe it absorbed the precursor terminal when the manor relocated here."

Katrina swallowed her pastry. "Or maybe the house was built on top of a buried ruin, and Celestia just didn’t tell us."

Both theories held weight since the goddess of pleasure rarely gave straightforward answers, preferring games and unpredictable surprises. A hidden precursor dungeon buried beneath our floorboards fit perfectly.

"It isn’t pointing out toward the mountains," Elise said softly. "It’s pointing down."

Katrina stopped chewing her pastry. "Down where?"

"Under the manor," I said.

The house was a system construct that upgraded itself over time. It also had a foundation.

"Ignis," I called out.

The autonomous butler floated into the living room holding a feather duster. "Yes, Master Sam?"

"Does this house have a basement?"

Ignis tilted his mechanical head. "The manor possesses a subterranean expansion sector. It is locked, and access requires a master override."

I looked at the key in Elise’s hand. The blue light pulsed steadily, aiming down into the earth.

"I guess we know what the key is for," Damara said.

I stood up and tossed my red blanket onto the couch. A locked precursor door underneath our own house was a problem we couldn’t ignore.

"Grab your gear," I said. "We are going to the basement."