Divine Milking System

Chapter 398: 398 | That’s The Mission

Her amber-brown eyes found mine across the chamber. Fear. Real fear. But trust layered underneath it, the kind you didn’t build overnight.

She closed her eyes. The Silver buff surged through her frame, and I felt the connection between us tighten like a violin string about to snap.

"The chest," she said. Her voice came out barely above a whisper. "Center mass. There’s something inside it. Same signature as the core but compressed. Denser. If you can crack the shell—"

"Then we kill it."

"Maybe. Probably. I don’t know, Jace, I’ve never scanned a dimensional guardian before!"

"Good enough."

I pulled up my status. Three percent mana. Three bottles of Belle’s essence sitting in the vault. Enough for one Overclock. Four minutes with a two-rank boost. Bronze to Gold. Copper to Silver.

Wave Motion at Bronze jumping to Gold. The spiral would bite harder, burn hotter, maybe fracture that obsidian shell. Or Reaper’s Edge at Copper climbing to Silver. The death-aspected blade would manifest larger, sharper, capable of cutting through defenses that currently laughed at my toothpick-tier swings.

Neither one was enough.

Not against something that took Blair’s Hellflame and dismissed it like warm breath on a cold day. The math wasn’t there. The gap was too wide. Upgrading Bronze to Gold wouldn’t matter when Platinum-tier firepower had already failed to scratch the paint.

The creature finished its work. The lime-green duplicate dissolved into motes of fading light, leaving only a wet smear on the stone where it had tried to stand. The guardian turned back toward the main group with that same patient hunger I’d seen before. Its hollow eyes swept across us with the unhurried deliberation of something that knew we weren’t going anywhere.

The butcher, examining the hanging meat.

Its gaze landed on Charles.

Charles Leone. Blonde hair still perfect. Blue eyes still radiating that insufferable superiority. Frame Perfect ability primed and ready, his stance shifting into a combat posture that his family’s trainers had drilled into him since childhood. He looked every inch the guild heir who’d never lost a simulation, who’d spent his entire life being told the world would bend to accommodate his excellence.

The creature didn’t care.

"It’s selecting the strongest threat first," Charles said. I could hear the lecture-hall tone he used when explaining basic concepts to people he considered beneath him. Like he was demonstrating a thesis. "Logical progression. Eliminate the primary combatant, then methodically process the remainder."

"Charles, don’t." Naomi’s warning carried no weight.

Charles smiled, and something in it reminded me of a man stepping into a spotlight he’d been waiting for his entire life. "Frame Perfect predicts optimal timing down to the millisecond. Speed-based attacks become trivial. Whatever this creature generates, I’ll interpolate the pattern three full seconds before impact registration."

"That’s not how—" I started.

"Observe."

He lunged forward, crossing ten meters in two bounds that showed off the athleticism his family’s trainers had beaten into him since childhood.

Frame Perfect flared to life around Charles in golden light that outlined him like a warrior saint. His sword snapped up into a guard that would’ve earned nods from every instructor who’d ever critiqued his form. Every angle of his body locked into the mathematical ideal for intercepting a frontal assault from something bigger and stronger.

Perfect timing. Perfect positioning. Perfect execution.

The creature hit him anyway.

Not from the front. Not with speed.

It just reached through the space between them. Distance didn’t matter. Timing didn’t matter. Frame Perfect predicted attacks that obeyed physics, followed patterns, respected the basic rules that combat training was built around.

This thing didn’t respect anything.

Its claw passed through Charles’s guard like the guard was made of smoke. Center mass. Dead center. The impact made a sound that was wet and awful and final. Charles’s eyes went wide. His mouth opened. Blood came out instead of words.

The creature lifted him off the ground.

Charles Leone, heir to one of the most powerful guild families in America, hung from the creature’s claw like meat on a hook. Frame Perfect flickered and died. His sword fell from fingers that couldn’t hold anything anymore. His perfect blonde hair finally, finally fell out of place.

"Charles!" Javier’s voice broke.

The creature looked at Charles with something that might have been curiosity. Then it squeezed.

I kept my eyes away from where Charles had been standing.

The sound told me enough.

Something heavy and wet hit the ground. The creature turned back toward us with that same patient hunger. Nine targets. Eight if I was being honest because Blair still hadn’t gotten up from where that blow had put her. Jordan was down, blood all over his face. Dante looked like he’d stopped moving entirely.

And here I was with almost nothing left in the tank and no plan worth a damn.

"Jace." Belle grabbed my hand. "Look at me."

I did.

Her blue hair stuck to her face with sweat and cave dust. Her suit had tears everywhere that showed skin underneath. Her lips had cracked from breathing too hard in dry air and her eyes were red from strain but she was alive, she was here, and she was staring at me like I had some kind of magic answer waiting in my back pocket.

"You can’t beat that thing," she said. "Not straight on. Not with what you have."

"I know."

"But you don’t need to beat it. You need to get us past it."

"How?"

"Distraction." She looked at Naomi. "Both of us. Full power. Everything left in the tank. We hit it from opposite sides while you take whoever can still walk and make for the exit. Once you’re clear, we follow."

"That’s suicide."

"That’s the mission."

Naomi moved up beside Belle. Her pink and black hair had come loose from the braid I’d tied for her this morning. Strands stuck to her cheeks. She’d learned how to smile again these past few weeks and I’d been the reason. Her staff hissed with spiral energy. The Gold buff from before still ran hot in her system, a promise I didn’t know if I could deliver on anymore.

"She’s right," Naomi said. "We can do this. Together."

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