Chương 42: Three Months to Live

Grim spent the next month recuperating from her injuries and training. Phil had gone over the basics again during the first week, and then after that, they'd dove into learning the new abilities she'd gotten at D-rank. Aura awareness was the big one, the more aura you had, the more it leaked out of you. Naturally, the system fed energy into you until you reached your capacity.

Phil had her training to keep it contained, as in his words, her control over her aura was like throwing cat piss in every room you walked in. It permeated everything, and you couldn't get the scent out of your nose. At first, Phil had her sit alone in an empty room and meditate, flexing every muscle she had one by one. She didn't understand at first, but eventually she flexed one that wasn't physical. It felt strange, like holding in a breath in another set of lungs.

This was her hold, the part of her that could control her Aura. Stopping the bleed-out rate was the most important thing because, for one, it was apparently rude and a sign of an amateur if they couldn't, and two, the less aura she leaked, the better her stamina during a fight would be. So Phil had her focus on the Hold and whenever she'd let it slip, he'd smack her with a branch in the back of the head.

Grim got smacked a lot, so much so that Phil threatened to quit training her if she didn't start trying, even though she had been. She'd even thought she'd gotten pretty good at it and after a month she could hold it almost subconsciously. She'd still drop her hold if she got too distracted, but it was a good start. Apparently, no matter how hard she tried, she was still leaking aura like a sinking ship.

Phil had measured it one time, and after holding her aura so hard she almost passed out, he only noticed a slight drop in leakage. The problem had been with how she was getting so much aura. Leaching it from the memory curse was almost tripling her intake rate, and at her advancement, there was no way she'd be able to hold that with only a few weeks' training. So she didn't. The other part of becoming a D-rank was with Aura awareness, came the ability to manipulate the Boons you had.

Every Boon had a very specific effect, even if it wasn't always laid out plainly, but with the awareness of how that worked, it was possible to change the effects slightly. It'd never be possible to get something new, but within the same domain was well within possibility. [CEDE] was what she spent her time training with as she hadn't summoned Hazel since what happened. Grim had activated the Boon so at least she'd be aware, but Hazel had said nothing to her since she had.

She ignored that the best she could and threw herself into the training, they'd figure it out eventually. Boons in essence were just aura wrapped up into a specific effect, and they could be thought of like a barrel of a gun, there was a limit to how much you could fire it before the barrel melted. Boons were the same way with the exception that they'd eventually repair themselves.

[CEDE] had several noticeable restrictions, it was incredibly inefficient and could only be used a few times before it burnt itself out, depending on the target. It had a range of touch which meant to use it she needed to be touching the source of a Boon or the effect, if it was possible. Not to mention, even to use it in the first place, she needed to know the name of the Boon she was trying to take or have some other measure of ownership of it. Phil had her train by using the skill as much as possible.

He had a collection of enchanted items, and she spent her time either moving them into herself and back into the item or into Phil. This had the added benefit of helping Phil as well, and he quickly got a lot better at resisting her attempts to steal the Boon back from him. Which let her improve her abilities at taking Boons overall. She tried but couldn't make any progress in taking something she wasn't in physical contact with.

What she could do was use the Boon to grab onto her Aura and reel it in, which let her massively improve her hold. With her Boon active, she could drop the leakage down to almost nothing. It wasn't something she could do forever as it required both focus and to guzzle down aura with [CEDE]. On her first try, she was able to hold it for just under an hour, and at the end of the month, she could hold it for an hour and a half before her skill burnt out.

It wasn't perfect, but it would be enough for now if she really needed to keep her aura hidden. The first month passed by quick and by the end, Phil had deemed her fit enough to do physical activity again, so she'd gotten started back on her basic fitness regime. She'd also found some old free weights locked in a storage room that she'd included to supplement the bodyweight exercises she was doing.

She'd wanted to get in touch with Jeremy to check on how everyone was doing, but she couldn't think of a way to do that safely. With the Boon he'd gotten, he'd be able to check on her, but she'd have no way of knowing. She'd have to trust that he'd already made contact in a different timeline. Phil had made it clear that while it would be smart for them to train together, he wasn't comfortable being in Hazel's presence. Grim hadn't argued with that because she still hadn't heard anything from her.

Grim had the basic militia training everyone received while they were in school. It was a core class needed to graduate that covered the basics of working together in a team, hand to hand combat, fire arms and basic first aid. In some private schools she'd heard the class was just regular physical education and they played games instead of lets find the best places to hide because a B-rank gate just opened outside or how to prioritize triage after mass casualties.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. It was one of her favourite classes. Despite that, Phil still had a lot to say about how she fought. Her instincts were good, but she had a lot to work on. Notably, once an opponent learned the surprises, she was often left all out of tricks. Which was irritating because that was not her fault, and yet she couldn't deny there was no one else to blame but her.

She just hadn't been strong enough before to fight back against most people. Weight classes existed for a reason. Now that she was D-rank, there were no excuses now. She was strong enough to do a one-armed pushup, and Phil estimated she was about as strong as an average man now, which, in a 125-pound woman, was pretty strong. One morning he came home with a black leather case, after getting her attention, he opened it up to reveal a medium sized, one handed arming sword.

"This is yours now, it's unenchanted but made of good metal, stuff you can't find on planet. I'm sure you can use your Boon there to plant something in it. I doubt it will be as strong as something innate, but the metal will hold on to it at least so you don't have to worry about it expiring." Grim grabbed the blade, dazzled by the look of it. The sheeth was simple black but it fit wonderfully on her hip. The sword itself was simple but exotic.

The leather on the handle wasn't like anything she'd felt before, and the balance seemed to change to exactly what she'd need as she swung it. Where had he gotten this? There was a special place in her heart for her daggers, but the advantage more reach would give her wasn't something she could give up. Besides, there were ways she could still incorporate the dagger's boon in the future.

"I can't take this, Phil. This is too much." She said as she put it back in the case and locked it.

"I can't take any more from you." Phil shook his head, "Kid, the world has already taken from me everything I care about. There's not a damn price I won't pay to find out why."" I guess we're on the same page then," Grim said.

"I'll enchant it during the trials, you know. Try to keep a low profile so I don't get arrested before I can even start."

"You're going to do the opposite, we're going to hide you in plain sight. You're going to be assuming the identity of Mariko Fennel, an independent I used to know, it's how we're going to get you into the Witching. I've got her papers, and the weapon used to be hers as well. I doubt anyone there will have heard of her, but you should be able to bluff your way through anybody who tries to talk to you. Nobody's seen her for years.

Her last set of armour was unsalvageable, but I've got contacts still, and I was able to get a replica made. Try it on, see if it's in your size."

"Wait, wait, hold up. Why do you even have all this stuff? Was this from when you were a dispatcher?"

"No, no," Phil said.

"Somebody I used to know. Nothing we need to get into." After that, Phil answered no more of her questions until she'd tried on the armour. It was an all-black bodysuit made of a flexible membrane that was part metal and part non newtonian fluid. The physics on that definitely didn't add up, but Gate worlds tended to have that in common. It also came equipped with a hood attached to a full-length cloak that could cover her whole body.

She looked in a mirror, and the way the armour drew in the darkness had a certain effect that gave her an intimidating aura. She looked like a completely different person, someone a lot more dangerous than she actually was. This would definitely work even if a small part of her felt like a kid playing dress-up. By the end of the second month, she still hadn't heard anything from Hazel. Not even a peep.

She was getting worried, but between the steady routine of sparring, exercising, and intense aura training, she was able to distract herself. By the third? She knew something was wrong, but she couldn't figure out why. Hazel wouldn't just abandon her, even if she did feel guilty. She got desperate enough one day to use [CEDE] to enter her Terminal room like she had before, but despite her best effort searching, she wasn't able to find her.

The only thing that stopped her from panicking was that she felt she was still there. Somewhere. She almost didn't ask Phil for help, but she pushed through that. He wasn't thrilled, but he was able to get Doctor Lalok to check her over again. Despite all the tests she ran, she wasn't able to find anything wrong with Grim or her Boon. She'd have to figure it out on her own. The rest of the month they continued training, and Phil, perhaps feeling bad, even started giving her tidbits of what it would be like.

He was pretty cagey on details, and the most he'd tell her was that she would go into a Gate world called the Dead City. Very ominous. He also gave a warning that it'd be best to stick in teams at the start but not to get too attached, those loyalties would only hold her back from surviving, and the other people there would be doing the exact same thing. Once the finish line was in sight, there were no rules or common decency anymore.

Pretty soon the day of the Witching had arrived, and she'd improved a lot over where she'd started. Others around her rank would be way more experienced and talented than her, but she would never overcome that in three months. She'd only just started looking like she knew what she was doing with her blade. Along with that, her hold with the help of [CEDE] increased to a full two hours, and her strength with the ability was probably twice as strong as she was before.

To fill her empty boon slot, she'd taken E-rank [Muted Strings] from one of the items they'd gotten from the gate world which let her muffle the sounds of whatever she tied a lute string around. She'd wanted to bring the staff along too, but there apparently wouldn't be very much water, and it'd be awkward to carry if she also needed to draw her sword. Phil's car stopped outside a cordoned-off block of the city.

Massive metal barricades surrounded the streets while office buildings and skyscrapers were the only things peeking above them. Massive turrets that bordered on anti ship weaponry lined the top, all facing inward. Patrols of the most heavily armoured watchmen walked the walls armed with anti-material rifles.

"Are we in the right place?" Grim asked, she'd never been in this part of the city before, it was a bit too close to the crater for her comfort.

"Yeah," Phil said.

"We are." They pulled up to a checkpoint staffed by two people who were obvious witches