Divine Milking System

Chapter 396: 396 | Wasting Oxygen

He subsided, though I could see him mentally filing away every observation for future interrogation.

Charles Leone was the last to arrive, because of course he was. The blonde prince of Obsidian House pulled himself onto the ridge with movements that were technically perfect and absolutely devoid of the exhaustion that showed on everyone else’s faces. His tactical suit was torn and bloodied, but his hair somehow maintained its artful arrangement, and his blue eyes held the same superiority they’d carried since the moment we entered the gate.

He didn’t say anything to me. He barely looked at me. His attention went straight to Blair.

"Davenport. Status?"

"Operational." Blair’s voice shifted when she talked to Charles, becoming the cold, distant thing she wore at the academy. "Second-degree burns along the left side. Leg wound. Mana depleted. Nothing critical."

"The core?"

"Destroyed. Monroe and I—"

"You destroyed it together?"

Charles’s voice carried a note of something that might have been disbelief or might have been offense. The idea that Blair Davenport had needed help from a lottery student apparently didn’t fit his worldview.

Blair’s eyes narrowed. "Yes. Together. Is that a problem?"

"I’m simply surprised. Given your capabilities—"

"My capabilities are why we’re all still alive. Monroe’s capabilities are why the core is dead. Do you have a point, Leone, or are you just wasting oxygen?"

Dante materialized beside Charles like he’d been summoned by some unspoken command, and even from a distance I could see he was barely holding it together. His face had gone beyond pale into something approaching translucent, the kind of color you only get when you’ve burned through your mana reserves, your stamina, and started dipping into whatever reserves the body keeps hidden for emergencies. His hands trembled with visible tremors even though they hung loose at his sides, and there was a hunted quality to his eyes that spoke of someone who’d seen things he wasn’t equipped to process.

Whatever the fuck had happened in that ravine with Naomi’s group, it had pushed Dante past boundaries he hadn’t even known existed. The cracks in his composure showed in every micro-expression, every involuntary flinch, and I felt something that might have been sympathy if I wasn’t so thoroughly exhausted myself.

Then Misato’s voice cut through the group dynamic from somewhere behind Dante, and I realized with a jolt of surprise that there were actually two Misatos positioned on opposite ends of our formation. Her clones held defensive stances like they’d established a protective perimeter on pure instinct the moment everyone had regrouped.

"Status check complete," she reported with military precision. "All ten operatives present and accounted for. Injuries are significant across the board but nothing immediately life-threatening. Gate seal collapse is accelerating beyond predicted parameters. I’m recommending immediate extraction while the exit point remains stable."

"The exit should manifest within the next five minutes." Blair pointed toward the valley floor, where a shimmer in the air marked the point where reality was thinnest. "We move now, we make it before the dimension becomes unstable."

"Then let’s move."

I tried to step forward and nearly fell. Naomi caught me on one side, Belle on the other, and the three of us ended up in an awkward shuffle that should have been embarrassing but somehow felt right.

"You’re an idiot," Naomi said.

"Complete moron," Belle agreed.

"Ladies. Please. One insult at a time."

We descended the ridge together, the whole group moving as a unit for the first time since we’d entered this nightmare. Blair walked ahead, leading through sheer force of personality despite her burned leg and depleted reserves. Charles followed with Dante and Javier. Jordan kept pace with Hikaru, both of them watching the tree line with the wariness of people who had learned to expect attacks from impossible angles. And I limped along in the middle, supported by two women who had every right to be furious with me and chose to be furious with me while also keeping me upright.

The shimmer in the air grew more distinct as we approached. The gate exit was forming, a vertical tear in the dimensional fabric that pulsed with light from the surface world. I could see California sunlight through the gap, bright and clean and completely ordinary in a way that made my chest ache.

We were going to make it.

We were actually going to survive a Void Gate that should have killed us.

The group tightened formation as we neared the exit. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.

"Something’s wrong."

Belle’s voice cut through the relief like a knife through silk. Her Silver buff flared at the edges of her vision, her detection ability spiking with the warning that had kept us alive through the ravine.

"The core is dead. There shouldn’t be any signatures left." Her eyes darted across the clearing, searching for the source of the warning. "But I’m picking up something. Big. Close. Really close."

The ground trembled.

Not a cave-in. Not a collapse. A footstep.

Another.

The sound came from behind us, from the direction of the burned forest, from the shadows between charred trees that should have been empty because we’d killed the core and everything connected to it.

"Nobody move." Hikaru’s voice was barely a whisper. "Nobody move."

I turned my head. Slowly. Carefully. The motion took what felt like an eternity, every degree of rotation revealing more of what waited in the darkness.

It stood among the ruins of the forest like a monument to everything wrong with dimensional ecosystems.

The creature was tall. Taller than the alpha leopard. Taller than the centipede. Taller than anything I’d seen since entering this gate. Its body was vaguely humanoid, two arms, two legs, something that might have been a head, but every proportion was wrong. The limbs were too long. The torso was too narrow. The skull, if you could call it that, was an elongated nightmare of bone plates and hollow eye sockets that reflected no light at all.

It wasn’t attacking.

It was watching.

Its attention moved across our group with the patient consideration of a predator that had all the time in the world, cataloging each of us with an intelligence that felt ancient and hungry and utterly alien. When its gaze reached me, something in my chest went cold in a way that had nothing to do with mana corruption.

The creature smiled.

It had too many teeth.

"The core," Belle whispered. Her voice shook. "The core wasn’t the ruler of this gate."

The creature took one step toward us, and the ground beneath its foot cracked like it was made of paper.

"It was keeping something contained."

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