Chapter 88

  Raime stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind him.

  “Morning,” he said, voice light.

  The response was immediate and unanimous.

  A chorus of groans, grumbles, and very creative curses rose from the kitchen.

  Victor had his forehead pressed against the table. Albert was sitting unnaturally straight, like bending would shatter him. Their mother was moving with the careful precision of someone whose body had declared open rebellion sometime during the night. Alice shot Raime a glare sharp enough to cut glass. Then froze. “Your eye…”

  Raime nearly forgot. “Ah yes, it regenerated in the end, but it is blind, but I’m sure as soon as someone who can heal get enough levels I’ll be able to restore it completely, same as the arm.” It wasn’t true, he didn’t think it would be so easy at all.

  The twins looked at him for a moment then turned toward each other and together went. “Cool!”

  “I’m glad that at least it regrow, the eyepatch doesn’t suit you.” Said Alice with a small smile.

  Alessandro sighed, then proceeded to retrieve an eyepatch from his pocket and mock slam it on the table. “Well, there it goes my gift.”

  “Hey Raime! If you don’t need it can I have it?” Asked Victor. “Please?”

  “What do you need an eyepatch for?” Asked Raime, “Can’t you already see in the dark with your class?”

  Victor looked at him like he was dumb. “Of course I can but, pirates…”

  “Yea” Pirates big bro!” Followed Albert a second later.

  “Fine by me,” Raime sat at the table after giving to his father a military salute. Alessandro shook his head at his sons shenanigans, then said. “Take it, it’s better for you two to have it, I’m glad that you recovered Raime.”

  “Thanks dad, but bringing me gifts won’t save you from tonight training session, just to let you know…” He said with a mischievous smile.

  “You,” Laura said flatly, pointing a spoon at him without turning around, “are a menace.”

  Raime smile got even larger, then helped himself to some food. A lot of food.

  “My calves hate you,” Victor muttered. “I didn’t even know calves could hurt like this.”

  Albert nodded solemnly. “I sneezed and felt it in my back. My back, Raime.”

  Alice crossed her arms. “I couldn’t lift my arms high enough to tie my hair this morning. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?”

  Raime chewed, swallowed, and shrugged. “It’s just a bit of muscle soreness, it’s worth it.”

  Four sets of eyes snapped to him.

  “And it will get better,” he continued calmly. “The fatigue will lessen. Recovery will speed up. The more consistent you are, the faster it happens.”

  Laura snorted. “You said that even yesterday.”

  “You just started, you can’t expect results without a bit of pain.”

  Victor groaned again. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “A little,” Raime admitted.

  Despite themselves, the twins cracked smiles. The discomfort was real, but so was the excitement humming beneath it — that new, dangerous thrill of progress.

  Raime ate while they complained, letting the noise wash over him. Then, casually, he added, “I closed two Rifts this morning.”

  Silence.

  Forks and spoons paused mid-air. They all turned toward him slowly.

  “…You did what?” Alice asked.

  “Two,” Raime repeated. “One in the plaza, one closer to the old market.”

  Victor’s eyes went wide. “Already?”

  Albert leaned forward. “Were they strange? Like Ithural?”

  “Not that much,” Raime said. “They were smaller. Much smaller. One was hostile but manageable. The other…” He hesitated, then shook his head. “Deceptive.”

  That got their attention.

  As he continued eating, he explained — the size of the Rift-space, the monsters, the core, his choices. He kept his tone measured, factual, stripping away the drama so they wouldn’t latch onto the wrong parts.

  “The important thing,” he said, tapping the table lightly for emphasis, “is this: no one else goes inside. Not yet.”

  Alice nodded immediately.

  “The monster density alone would wipe out any group we have,” Raime continued. “And the guardians are Tier II at minimum. Even if someone survives the monsters, they’ll have to rush out, it’s not impossible, but it will take some more time for team to be capable to face rifts.”

  Alessandro frowned. “So what should we tell to the people?”

  “The truth,” Raime said. “If anything, I confirmed that they are more dangerous than I thought.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Alice exhaled slowly. “I’ll try to make the fighters understand the risks.”

  “Good.”

  Victor raised a hand weakly. “Uh. Hypothetically. How do you close one?”

  Raime glanced at him. “You don’t.”

  Albert scowled. “Oh c’mon, you know what he meant.”

  “I’ll bring you into a rift when I’ll deem you ready, not a moment before,” Raime replied evenly. “Anyway, when you defeat the guardian and reach the core, the System gives you options to choose from, close it, destroy it, clam it and remove the core. Each has its use, but it’s not important for you now, if you want to know the answer, maybe I’ll tell you if you improve your swordplay…”

  The twins exchanged a look.

  “…Cool,” Victor and Albert said in unison.

  “I’m watching you, don’t do anything stupid.” Their mother voice cut through the conversation, and their enthusiasm.

  Raime then turned to his girlfriend, “I’m going to close the one near the river as soon as I finished eating, there are no more inside the town proper right?”

  Alice chewed on that, then nodded. “No, the others are outside the area we designated to build the walls, and don’t worry, I’ll make sure that nobody create a mess with the rifts, not that anyone is dumb enough to touch them.”

  “Appreciated, but I won’t discard the possibility of many people dying inside a rift just because it was a shiny portal to another world, in fact I’m sure that a lot of people died just out of curiosity and wonder.”

  His father raised his fork and said, “Only two things are infinite, the multiverse and human stupidity.”

  A groan passed around the table. “Really now, dad? Citing Newton?” Said Albert while exaggeratedly slapping a palm on his face.

  “It was Einstain you birdbrain!” Said his twin while rolling his eyes.

  The tension eased after that, sliding back into something closer to normal. Laura scolded Victor. Victor accused Albert of existing too dumbly. Alice complained about people refusing to take orders from her, so Alessandro told her to yell louder.

  Raime listened, amused.

  After demolishing his second breakfast, he stood and stretched.

  “I’m heading out.”

  Alice rose with him, catching his arm before he could step away. She pulled him down and kissed him.

  “I don’t know where you want the city to go,” she said quietly, forehead resting against his for a second. “But I trust you.”

  “For now,” Raime said. “Focus on the System quest, we need safety first and foremost.”

  She nodded. “And about the hospital?”

  “Fire, like I said” Raime said without hesitation. “Find people who can burn it down before it spreads further.”

  “Of course.”

  They separated, and everybody started moving about again. Laura grabbed her coat. The twins, still wincing, followed her, arguing the whole way out. Alice headed toward the plaza with Alessandro.

  Raime stepped outside last.

  He rose smoothly into the air, turning toward the river.

  It took him barely a couple of minutes to reach the river.

  The smell hit him first.

  It was overwhelming—rotting fish, stagnant water, coppery blood, and something oily and wrong layered on top of it all. The riverbank had become a graveyard. Hundreds of bloated, pale bodies drifted in the slow current or lay tangled against the shore, their slick hides reflecting the weak daylight. Every few seconds, another shape splashed out of the swirling Rift hovering just above the water, only to be cut down mid-air by gunfire.

  People were stationed all along the embankment, rifles and shotguns braced, eyes hollow with fatigue. They were part of Rinaldi’s group. They’d drawn the short straw apparently.

  Raime descended slowly, boots never touching the mud-darkened stone. The shooting paused when they noticed him. Not relief, but wariness. A few scowls.

  Right, he thought. That kind of welcome.

  He approached two women standing closest to the Rift. Both carried assault rifles slung tight against their shoulders, boots soaked in the murky water. One of them, short-haired, sharp-eyed, jaw clenched like it was carved from stone; watched him like he was something particularly unpleasant. The other, taller, older, with tired lines around her eyes, straightened slightly.

  “I’m going to enter the Rift and close it,” Raime said simply.

  The taller woman blinked, then nodded slowly. “You’re… Raffaele, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated. “You’re the one who cleared the monsters a couple of days ago.”

  “The one and the same,” Raime added with a smile.

  “That’d be—” She exhaled. “If you could manage it, that’d be a blessing, honestly.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  The voice was sharp enough to cut.

  The short-haired woman stepped forward, planting herself squarely between Raime and the Rift. “No. You’re not.”

  Raime frowned, but before anything else wanted to try diplomacy. “I…”

  “Let me make this clear,” she snapped. “You don’t just stroll in here and decide things.”

  The taller woman raised a hand. “Elena, wait a moment.”

  “No,” Elena cut in, eyes never leaving Raime. “I’m tired of this.”

  Raime took a breath. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  “Really?” Elena barked a laugh. “Because from where I’m standing, this whole mess looks like your doing.”

  She gestured broadly at the river, the corpses, the smoke drifting from spent rounds. “Our job is to stop idiots from getting close to the portal and dying uselessly. That’s what we were assigned. And then you show up and decide you’re special.”

  The taller woman stepped closer. “He is, Elena. He’s the one that’s been killing the monsters all around.”

  “Exactly! Whose fault is it that there are hundreds of monsters rotting out in the first place?” Elena shot back. “Huh? You think this things just woke up one morning and decided to die and stink up the river by themselves?”

  Raime stared at her, genuinely stunned.

  “If you’re the one responsible,” she continued, voice rising, “then congratulations. You get clean-up duty. Because I’ve been standing in dead fish and alien guts for six hours, and the smell is so bad I can taste it.”

  She jabbed a finger toward the water. “So unless you want to start explaining to Rinaldi directly why this whole mess happened, you’re staying right here. Roll up your sleeves. Chop chop.”

  For a moment, Raime just… looked at her.

  The taller woman glanced between them, mortified. “Elena, that’s not—he didn’t—”

  “Don’t,” Elena snapped. “I don’t care how strong he is. I don’t care how many monsters he killed. This isn’t a playground, and he need to be held responsible.”

  Raime opened his mouth, closed it again, then tried once more. “Do you understand the risk that a Rift pose?”

  Elena scoffed. “I understand enough to know we’re doing our part while you run around playing hero.”

  Something cold settled in Raime’s chest.

  “These things,” he said, gesturing toward the Rift, “won’t stop. Shooting them is delaying the inevitable. The longer that Rift stays active, the worse this gets.”

  “Yea but we don’t know what is going to happen when somebody gets in, and whose decision is it to risk lives by going in?” Elena shot back. “Yours? Because last I checked, no one elected you.”

  The taller woman stepped fully between them now. “Elena. Enough.”

  “No,” Elena said, breathing hard. “I’m done being polite. If he wants to help, he can start by dragging those corpses out of the water. The stink is unbearable, and it’s his fault I’m working in it.”

  Raime felt something between disbelief and irritation twist inside him.

  Does she really not understand? he thought. Or does she refuse to?

  He looked past her, at the Rift. At the steady stream of monsters still spilling out. At the exhausted people manning the line.

  “I already closed two Rifts this morning,” he said quietly. “And I don’t need anyone permission, if I had to be honest, the bodies in the water are a problem, they are going to contaminate the river, after killing a thousand of them, the least you could do was cleaning up given that you couldn’t solve the problem by yourself.”

  Elena’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck did you just say?”

  For a long second, the air felt tight, stretched thin.

  Then Raime turned toward the portal.

  “You heard me,” His expression didn’t change, it wasn’t worth it to get upset to somebody like this one, in the end she was inconsequential. “I’m going in, you can follow me and help if you really care that much.”

  And without waiting for another word, he rose into the air, drifting past them toward the Rift—leaving Elena staring after him, furious, and the taller woman whispering a soft, helpless, “Shit.”