January 2, 2026 — 06:15 AM | Rest Period — Time Remaining: 23 Hr 45 Min
Sssssssss.
The sound of searing meat filled the bunker. The smell that rose up was confusing—savory, rich, and terrifyingly similar to pork, mixed with the earthy scent of a damp cellar.
"See that, Malenia-chan?" Gilbert called out, not looking up from the grill. "Perfect sear. A strategist knows that morale is built on the stomach. You might be the blade, but I'm the logistics."
He glanced over his shoulder.
Malenia sat by the barricaded door, perched on a stack of toppled metal shelves. She was a silhouette of tarnished gold against the thin line of crimson light bleeding in from the street. She was eating, too—chewing a strip of raw fungal meat with mechanical, joyless efficiency. She stared at the wall, her eyeless helm unmoving. She offered no praise. She offered no gratitude.
Gilbert turned back to the fire, flipping the steak. Grease popped and hissed, spitting onto his wrist.
"She's just shy," he reasoned to himself, watching the fat render on the mushroom-meat. "Intimidated by the sudden shift in power dynamics now that I'm fully healed. Typical support-character behavior."
Gilbert didn't wait for the meat to cool. He grabbed the rubbery, translucent slab of the Matriarch's thigh with his bare hands, his fingers digging into the hot, fibrous tissue.
He took a bite.
Rrrrip.
It offered a perverse resistance against his teeth, like biting into a dense, well-cooked tire. Visually, it was a horror show. The anatomy was too correct. The white "skin" on the edge of the steak was too smooth. It felt like he was gnawing on the forearm of a burn victim. A wave of physiological revulsion rolled through his gut—the texture was distressingly similar to human muscle.
But as the juice hit his tongue, the moral nausea lost the battle to his crashing blood sugar. It was savory. It was rich. It tasted like victory.
"Acceptable," Gilbert mumbled, his mouth full. Grease ran down his thumb, mixing with the dried orange dust of yesterday's Doritos to form a slurry of sludge that dripped onto his wrist. "The texture is a bit rubbery, but the protein density feels high. Good for the gains."
He swallowed the bolus of meat with a heavy gulp that bobbed his double chin. He ate with a frantic, wet intensity, his jaw working like a piston. Smack. Squelch. Smack.
He finished the first piece and immediately reached for a second—a slender, charred radius that had once been the creature's arm. He stripped the meat from the bone with his teeth, tossing the clean white ulna onto a pile of discarded magazines. It landed with a hollow clack atop a glossy cover promising "Extra Girth."
"Round two," he whispered, licking a smear of soot from his thumb.
He reached for a third piece, but the air in the room suddenly grew heavy. The scent of cooking meat was overpowered by the cloying smell of rotting lilies and old iron.
Clink. Whir.
Gilbert froze. A hand of tarnished, unyielding gold thrust into his field of vision, hovering directly over the food.
He looked up. Malenia stood over him. She hadn't made a sound approaching. She simply materialized, her palm open, her eyeless helm tilted down with an expectant, lethal silence. She didn't ask. She didn't demand. She simply existed, and the universe—including Gilbert—was expected to yield.
Gilbert didn't hesitate. To him, the silent gesture was obviously an acknowledgment of his role as the provider—the hunter sharing the spoils with his loyal vanguard.
"A strategist knows when to ration supplies to the tank," he muttered, affecting a benevolent, greasy tone to mask the fact that his hand was shaking. "You need the calories to keep that aggro up."
He grabbed a steaming chunk of the Matriarch's shoulder and slapped it into Malenia's open, golden palm.
She didn't nod. She didn't bow. She simply turned on her heel, her scarlet cape swirling in the stagnant air, and returned to her post at the door.
Gilbert watched her go, then turned his attention to the corner of the room where the "Boss Battle" had concluded hours earlier.
There, amidst a pile of wet, minced mushroom-flesh that looked like spilled coleslaw, something glittered.
The obsidian blades.
The Abyssal Warrior's weapons lay scattered in the gore—jagged, serrated shards of hardened bark that shone like black glass.
'Loot,' Gilbert's brain whispered, the primal neuron activation of a thousand RPGs firing at once. 'I forgot to check the drops.'
He pushed himself up, his knees popping like bubble wrap. He waddled toward the pile, stepping over the puddle of green ichor.
"Malenia-chan, you really minced this guy," he muttered. "But a smart player always checks the loot table. You probably missed the rare drops."
He reached down—using his newly healed, porcelain-white left hand—and gripped one of the serrated blades.
"Equip Primary Weapon," Gilbert whispered, his voice dripping with the gravelly reverence of a man about to start his hero arc.
He planted his feet wide, tightening his grip on the sticky, root-bound hilt. He visualized the cover art of Berserk. He channeled the energy of every Strength-build he had ever min-maxed. With a sharp intake of breath that sucked his polyester shirt against his ribs, he heaved.
The weapon didn't soar. It dragged.
The obsidian-bark blade was shockingly dense, a dead weight that had no balance point. It felt like trying to lift a grand piano by one leg. As Gilbert tried to hoist it to waist level, his wrist gave a sickening pop. The sheer leverage of the crude, top-heavy club pulled his entire upper body forward. He stumbled, his "Alpha" stance collapsing into a frantic, stumbling waddle to keep from face-planting into the concrete.
"Hnngg—gah!"
He tried to correct the swing, engaging his core. His core, however, was mostly soft tissue and undigested rations. A sharp pain shot through his lower back. His "Neko-Maid" shirt rode up, exposing his pale, sweating flank to the cool morning air. He looked less like a warrior brandishing a trophy and more like a toddler trying to drag a telephone pole.
Panting, sweat stinging his eyes, Gilbert let gravity win.
THUD.
The weapon slammed back onto the floor, chipping the concrete inches from his toe. Gilbert stood over it, clutching his throbbing wrist, his chest heaving with a wet, rhythmic whistle. He adjusted his glasses, looking quickly at Malenia to see if she had witnessed the failure.
She hadn't. She was staring at the wall.
"Trash mob loot," Gilbert scoffed, kicking the heavy blade with his sneaker. It didn't budge. "Obviously a Strength-requirement of 50. Totally unoptimized for a high-IQ Strategist build like mine. I'm not wasting my inventory slots on vendor trash."
He turned away from the weapon, dusting his hands off on his pants as if he had voluntarily chosen not to wield the power of the Abyss.
He shuffled back to his cardboard nest and sat down.
Time began to stretch. An hour passed. Then two.
The silence in the bunker became a physical weight. Without the constant feed of content, without the chat screaming at him, without a screen to scroll, Gilbert's brain began to eat itself. He picked at a scab of dried nacho cheese on his cuticle. He tried to spin a limited-edition figurine on his finger, dropped it, and watched it roll under a shelf. He sighed, the sound loud and pathetic in the stillness.
He looked at the doorframe. Malenia was still there. Still motionless. Still cooler than him.
The itch to speak—to assert his presence, to force the narrative forward—became unbearable.
"So," Gilbert said, the word exploding out of him just to break the quiet.
He paused for effect. Malenia didn't blink. She didn't even turn her head.
"Me," Gilbert finished, pointing a greasy thumb at his chest, waiting for the inevitable question about his backstory. "I bet you're wondering how a guy like me ended up running this sector. It's a pretty wild arc."
He held the pose—thumb cocked, smirk plastered—for a solid ten seconds.
Nothing. Not a twitch. She treated his "protagonist introduction" with the same reverence she gave the concrete floor. The silence stretched until it became physically awkward, the only sound the wet whistle of his own nose.
Realizing his cool opener had bounced off her indifference like a pebble off a tank, Gilbert dropped the pose and scooted his cardboard throne a few inches closer, deciding to force the interaction.
"Hey, Malenia-chan."
Malenia did not move. Her silhouette remained etched against the crimson light of the doorway, as still and silent as the grave she often spoke of.
"I just wanted to chat," Gilbert continued, his voice taking on a nasal, conversational whine as he picked a piece of mushroom gristle from his teeth. "Since it doesn't look like we're busy. Strategizing requires communication, right? Team building."
Malenia adjusted her grip on her blade. The metal scraped softly against her greaves. She did not turn.
"So," Gilbert pressed, undeterred by the wall of ice radiating from her. "Where did you learn to fight? Was there a dojo? A master? I taught myself, mostly. Analyzed frame-data until my reflexes were basically pre-cognitive."
Silence.
Gilbert frowned, shifting his weight on the cardboard. "Okay, fine. Keep your secrets. But what about your spawn point? Do you know where you're from?"
Malenia's head tilted slightly. Her lips parted to speak the name of the Haligtree, of the Lands Between, of the rot that was her birthright. The words were there, heavy on her tongue.
"I am of..."
She stopped. Her brow furrowed beneath her hair. The answer was there—she could feel the shape of it, the taste of the rot, the golden light—but the moment she tried to voice it, the concept turned into smoke. It was a terrifying, slippery sensation, like trying to grip water with a clenched fist. The harder she reached for the memory of her home, the more it felt like a painted backdrop rather than a place she had actually stood.
"I... I am formless," she whispered, a sudden, sharp note of confusion cutting through her stoicism.
"Huh? You can't remember?" Gilbert smirked, waving a dismissive hand. "Must be the summoning lag. Or maybe the data transfer scrambled your backstory files. Classic glitch. Don't worry, I know your lore better than you do, probably."
Malenia fell silent again, her mind churning. Why did the memory feel so thin? Why did her past feel less like a history and more like a script she had been forced to memorize?
Gilbert, sensing an opening, pivoted to his favorite topic: Power Scaling.
"Anyway, forget the geography. Let's talk stats. Have you ever fought someone strong? Like, really strong? I'm talking S-Tier. Someone who actually made you sweat?"
Malenia looked down at her golden hand. "I have known war since my first breath," she murmured, the fog in her mind clearing slightly when focused on violence. "I have matched blades with the Starscourge, holding the stars themselves in place. I have severed the ambitions of demigods."
She paused. A specific image flickered in her mind—sharp, humiliating, and undeniably clear amidst the blur of her existence.
"But there was... one," she said slowly, her voice tightening with a mixture of respect and baffled irritation. "A warrior of strange constitution. He bore no armor. He spoke no words. He wore upon his head only a vessel of clay."
Gilbert sat up straight, his eyes bulging behind his greasy lenses. "Wait. Naked? A pot on his head? Two katanas?"
Malenia nodded slowly. "He sought me out. He did not flinch."
"NO WAY!" Gilbert shrieked, scrambling to his feet. "You actually remember fighting him?! That's him! That's 'Let Me Solo Her'!"
Malenia turned her head fully, her expression one of genuine curiosity. "You know of this wretch? By name?"
"Know him? He's a legend!" Gilbert was vibrating with fanboy energy, spittle flying from his lips. "That man is a god in the gaming community! He's famous for beating you countless times! He literally solos you while we all watch! No armor, perfect dodge-rolls, just pure skill! He farmed you, Malenia! Countless times!"
Malenia froze. The mechanical whir of her prosthetic died down to absolute silence.
"'Countless'?" she repeated, the word tasting like ash. "I remember... one defeat. I fell to his blade once. Why do you speak as if I have died a thousand deaths?"
"Only one?" Gilbert scoffed, scratching a flake of dried skin from his neckbeard. He looked at her with the pitying expression of a man explaining a plot hole to a casual viewer. "That's weird. The metrics don't lie, Malenia-chan. Maybe your internal save file is corrupted or something, because the streams show you getting wrecked on repeat. Daily."
Before Malenia could respond—before she could unsheathe her blade to correct his insolence—a vibration buzzed against Gilbert's hip.
He dug the sleek black smartphone out of his sweatpants, smearing a fresh layer of facial oil across the screen with his thumb.
The violet glow of the smartphone screen reflected off Gilbert's oily lenses, casting a sickly, artificial light over his furrowed brow. The heat from the nearby embers licked at his shins, but a colder, sharper chill ran down his spine as he stared at the five choices suspended in the digital void.
His thumb, slick with a cocktail of mushroom grease and strawberry lubricant, hovered over the glass. It trembled.
[Evolution 1: Multi-Summon Lvl.1]
'Multi-Summon...' Gilbert thought, his eyes darting to the first option. The prospect of a harem—two waifus fighting for his attention—sent a jolt of dopamine straight to his lizard brain. But the red text below it, "Safety is not guaranteed", made his throat click dry. He glanced up at Malenia, who was currently wiping the green blood of a matriarch off her blade with a look of absolute, homicidal boredom. One of her was barely manageable. Two might decide that the "Master" was the only mob worth farming.
[Evolution 5: Maturity Filter Lvl.1]
He scrolled down, ignoring the intermediate options and paused on Maturity Filter. "Biologically 25 years or older," he whispered, a wet, rasping sound. The idea of summoning a character with "Ara Ara" energy, someone who would baby him and praise his strategist intellect without the tsundere attitude, was intoxicating. It was the dream. It was the "Milf-O-Rama" fantasy come to life.
But then, the gamer instinct—the part of his brain wired by thousands of hours of min-maxing and stat-checking—itched at the back of his skull.
'Status Peek,' his mind whispered.
He looked at Evolution 4. View summons' info and stats. Loyalty data.
Gilbert bit his lip, tasting salt and stale Nacho cheese. If he picked the harem or the milf filter, he was flying blind. He didn't know Malenia's HP. He didn't know her mana. Most importantly, he didn't know her Affection Meter.
"If I can see the numbers, I can game the system," he muttered, the orange dust on his fingers smearing across the word Loyalty. "I can fix her if I just know what the stats are. I can optimize the relationship."
He needed validation. He needed an audience.
"Yo, Chat."
Gilbert shifted, the plastic casing of the waifu pillow peeling off his sweat-saturated back with a wet, Velcro-like rrrip. He shoved the phone toward the empty air, angling the screen so the invisible audience could see the violet text, completely oblivious to the fact that his thumb—coated in a shiny glaze of mushroom grease—was obscuring the text for "Multi-Summon."
"I've already run the sims in my head. Obviously, a strategist of my caliber sees the meta pick instantly," he wheezed, adjusting his glasses with a wrist to avoid smudging them further. "But I'm a benevolent leader. I'll let you guys feel involved."
He leaned in close to the microphone, his heavy breathing distorting the audio input. "So? Which one of these screams 'Alpha progression' to you normies? Don't disappoint me."
[LIVE FEED: UTAH SECTOR CHAT]
SLC_Savage: "Wait, hold on. Vile_Virtue is right. Why are we voting for stats? We already know she hates him. Seeing a number is boring. Watching him try to manage TWO uncontrollable boss-tier women in a porn shop? That is CONTENT. ⚔️🍿"
Gamer_God_69: "You know what? You're right. Imagine the chaos. Malenia is already one bad mood away from ending him. If we add another variable? The entropy is beautiful. Change my vote. OPTION 1. 🔄🔥"
Vile_Virtue: "YES! HAREM ARC! (But the kind where the protagonist gets eaten). SPAM 1! Let's turn this bunker into a battle royale! 🏟️💀"
Utah_Momma_Jen: "Oh dear. Two women? He barely has enough rations for one! He's going to start fighting over the mushroom meat! This is a disaster waiting to happen. 🍖📉"
Beehive_Babe: "Gilbert thinks 'Multi-Summon' means a threesome. The System clearly stated 'Safety Not Guaranteed.' He's literally voting for his own execution. Do it. #TeamMultiSummon ⚰️💄"
Void_Walker: "Two dooms are better than one. Accelerate the cycle. Option 1. 🌑"
TrollFace_Provo: "THE HIVE MIND HAS SPOKEN. GIVE HIM THE HAREM. GIVE HIM THE PAIN. 111111111 📈😈"
Gamer_God_69: "Gilbert, show us you're a real man. Can you handle the dual-wielding waifu meta? Or are you scared of the micro-management? #Option1 🎮👀"
Gilbert watched the waterfall of text scroll by. The tide had turned. They weren't mocking him anymore—well, they were, but they were also challenging him. They were daring him to fly close to the sun.
"A challenge?" Gilbert chuckled, a wet, phlegmy sound that vibrated in his chest. "You think I'm scared of micro-management? I played StarCraft at a Diamond level. Controlling multiple units is my bread and butter."
He looked at Malenia. She was staring at her blade, tracing the nicks in the metal, completely unaware that her "Master" was about to bring home a sister-wife.
If he picked Status Peek, he proved the haters wrong. But if he picked Multi-Summon... he became a legend. A King with two Queens. The "Safety Not Guaranteed" warning was obviously just flavor text for casuals. A strategist of his caliber could balance the aggro.
"You want a show?" Gilbert whispered, his breath fogging the screen. "I'll give you a dynasty."
His thumb moved. He bypassed the "Maturity Filter." He bypassed "Status Peek."
He pressed [Evolution 1: Multi-Summon Lvl.1].
The screen flashed white, then settled into a crisp, pulsating violet interface.
[SKILL EVOLUTION COMPLETE]
[Feature Unlocked: DUAL-TETHER]
[Summoning Slots Available: 1/2]
Gilbert didn't wait. The dopamine hit was too strong, the rush of his "Alpha" narrative overriding every survival instinct he had left. He didn't check his resources. He didn't ask Malenia for permission.
He scrambled to his feet, kicking the cardboard "nest" aside. He stood in the center of the adult store, bathed in the sickly crimson light of the Abyssal sun and the flickering fluorescent buzz.
"System!" Gilbert bellowed, throwing his arms wide, his 3XL "Neko-Maid" shirt riding up to expose his pale, glistening navel. "I call upon the archives! The narrative demands a second act! Give me power! Give me beauty! Give me a loyal servant to complete my collection!"
He tapped the [Initialize Summon] button with a greasy, decisive thud.
[Searching Database…]
[Entity Located.]
[Manifesting...]
The air in the bunker changed instantly.
It didn't grow cold, like it did with Malenia. It grew heavy. The crimson light bleeding in from the street seemed to bend, sucked toward a singular point next to the magazine rack.
A sound filled the room—not a holy choir, but a low, static distortion. It sounded like a radio tuned to a dead channel, screaming with white noise.
Malenia moved.
For the first time in hours, the Blade of Miquella showed emotion. She stood up so fast her chair—a stack of crates—clattered to the floor. She didn't look at Gilbert. She looked at the swirling vortex of black and neon-blue energy forming in the center of the room.
Her hand gripped the hilt of her katana. She didn't unsheathe it to clean it. She unsheathed it to kill.
"Gilbert," she said, her voice sharp, stripped of its usual weary boredom. It was a command. "Sever the link. Now."
"Relax, Malenia-chan!" Gilbert shouted over the rising static roar, a manic, drooling grin plastered on his face. "It's just a reinforcement! We're building the party!"
"That is not a reinforcement," Malenia hissed, dropping into a combat stance, her golden prosthetic humming with a violent, overclocked whine. "That is a calamity."
The light exploded.
The shockwave blew the remaining "Milf-Hunter" DVDs off the shelves. Gilbert was knocked onto his back, his glasses skittering across the concrete.
Through the haze of dust and static, a silhouette began to rise from the floor. It wasn't human. It was too tall, its limbs too long, its presence radiating a pressure that made the hair on Gilbert's newly healed arm stand on end.
A new scent filled the room, overpowering the rot and the strawberry lubricant.
Gilbert squinted, reaching blindly for his glasses. "See?" he wheezed, terrified but unable to stop smiling. "I told you... I have EX-Rank potential."
From the smoke, a pair of eyes opened.