Divine Milking System

Chapter 395: 395 | You Absolute Idiot

She launched herself into the air. The Gold buff I’d given her must have been running on fumes by now, but it still had enough juice to let her cover the distance between the forest floor and the ridge in a series of aerial bursts that left blue-white afterimages hanging in the corrupted atmosphere. Her pink and black hair streamed behind her, escaping from a braid that looked like it had been through a war, and her amber eyes were bright with tears she wasn’t bothering to hide.

I had approximately two seconds to brace myself before she hit me like a guided missile.

Her arms went around my neck. Her legs wrapped around my waist. Her face buried itself in my shoulder and she was crying and laughing and saying my name over and over in a voice that cracked on every syllable.

"You’re alive. You’re alive. You jumped off a cliff, you absolute idiot, I watched you disappear and I thought—I thought—"

"Still here." My arms closed around her automatically, pulling her tight against my chest despite the pain it caused. Her body was warm and real and present, and the Gold buff hummed through her veins in a frequency I could feel against my own damaged mana channels. "Still breathing. Mostly."

"I hate you. I hate you so much." She pulled back just enough to look at my face, her amber eyes searching mine with an intensity that had nothing to do with combat assessment. "Don’t ever do that again."

"Can’t promise that."

"Then lie to me."

"Never again."

She kissed me. Right there on the ridge, with Blair standing three feet away and the rest of the squad ascending the slope below us, Naomi pressed her mouth to mine with the desperation of someone who had spent hours believing she would never get the chance again. Her lips tasted like salt and smoke and the particular sweetness that was just her, and I kissed her back because I’d spent those same hours fighting through a canyon with a woman who wanted to destroy me and wondering if I would ever feel this again.

"Ahem."

Belle’s voice cut through the moment with the gentle precision of a surgical blade. Naomi broke the kiss but didn’t unwrap herself from me, just turned her head to look at the blue-haired archer who had appeared at the ridge’s edge with her crossbow still in hand and her Silver buff glowing faintly at the edges of her amber-brown eyes.

"Glad you’re not dead," Belle said. Her voice was flat, but her eyes traveled across my injuries with an attention that cataloged every wound and calculated every necessary treatment. "You look terrible."

"Thanks. Love the support."

"The burns on your arms need immediate attention. The chest wounds have partial closure but residual corruption. Your mana is nearly depleted. And you’re standing wrong, which suggests either spinal damage or rib fractures or both."

"Belle. I missed you too."

Her expression cracked. Just a fraction, just enough to let something real show through the analytical mask she wore like armor.

"Stupid," she whispered. "Stupid, reckless, impossible—"

She crossed the distance between us in three strides and pressed herself against my side, her arms wrapping around my waist in a grip that would have been painful if I had any sensation left in that part of my body. Her face turned into my shoulder, and her voice came out muffled but audible.

"Don’t do that again."

"That’s what Naomi said."

"Then listen to her. Listen to both of us. Listen to literally anyone except the voice in your head that says jumping off cliffs is an acceptable tactical decision."

Naomi shifted in my arms to make room for Belle, and somehow I ended up with two women pressed against me on a ridge overlooking a dying Void Gate while Blair Davenport stood six feet away watching the whole display with an expression I couldn’t read.

Jordan arrived next, pulling himself up the slope with the casual efficiency of someone who had stopped being impressed by life-threatening situations approximately three hours ago. His grey eyes swept across the scene, and one eyebrow rose approximately a quarter inch.

"Cozy."

"Shut up, Wayne."

"Didn’t say anything." He walked past us toward Blair, who was still standing apart from the group like she wasn’t sure she belonged in it. "Davenport. You look like shit."

"How dare—"

"It’s a compliment. Means you actually did something."

Jordan’s mouth twitched in what might have been the ghost of a smile, and Blair’s outrage deflated into something closer to confusion. She wasn’t used to people treating her like a normal person instead of a bomb that needed careful handling.

Hikaru materialized from the shadows behind Jordan without warning, making Belle startle and nearly reach for her crossbow. The young man’s red eyes found mine across the ridge, and I saw something flicker in their depths that looked almost like approval.

"Alive."

"Yeah."

"Good."

That was apparently all the emotional expression Hikaru was capable of, because the next moment those red eyes had moved to scan the tree line for threats that probably didn’t exist anymore.

Javier scrambled up the slope next, his daggers sheathed and his notebook clutched in one hand like a sacred artifact. The pages were singed at the edges but intact, and the gleam in his eye suggested he’d spent the past eight hours documenting everything he witnessed with the obsessive attention to detail that made him simultaneously invaluable and exhausting.

"Monroe! Excellent, excellent, you survived. I have questions about your death-aspected ability. The corruption pattern I observed during your engagement with the alpha specimen was inconsistent with any documented death mana manifestation in the current literature. The rate of tissue degradation exceeded theoretical maximums by approximately thirty-four percent, which suggests either a novel mutation in the ability’s fundamental structure or external enhancement from the Void Gate’s saturated atmosphere or possibly both factors acting in conjunction with—"

"Javier."

"Yes?"

"Later."

"But the scientific implications—"

"Later."

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