Chapter 57: Paying For Damages

Chapter 57: Chapter 57: Paying For Damages

The room was dark when Jason stepped out of the gate.

The gate folded in on itself behind him with a soft, dry sound, like a book closing, and the last of its pitch black edges bled away into nothing.

The array lines in the floor, which had been glowing with a steady light when he’d entered, now flickered weakly.

In the center of the room, where the gate had stood, a ring of scorched stone showed through the cracked tiles.

Jason stood there for a moment, breathing, one hand pressed to his shoulder.

’That’s going to be expensive.’

He opened the door.

---

It was well into the morning when he reached the front desk.

Sunlight poured through the glass doors of the Association branch. The lobby was busy, hunters with coffee and gear bags, someone arguing quietly about a payout.

Jason pushed his way through them in his plain mask, blood dried stiff across his shirt, his stride deliberately even.

The receptionist looked up and froze.

He watched her eyes travel from the mask down the ruined shirt, the dark stain spreading across the shoulder, the torn skin at his ribs.

Her mouth opened slightly. She said nothing.

She simply stared, and somewhere in that silence he saw her working out which parts of him were holding together and which weren’t.

’Right. I probably look worse than I feel.’

"Sir," she said finally, her voice thin. "Are you... do you need a medic?"

"No. I’m fine."

"You’re bleeding."

"It looks worse than it is."

She did not look convinced. Her hand had drifted toward the phone on her desk, and then, seeming to remember her job, drifted back.

"There was a surge in your room around four," she said. "The array registered a spatial disturbance and locked itself down.

One of the array masters checked on it. He said there’s scorching in the center of the floor and two of the array runes have cracked."

Jason made himself nod slowly, the way a man did when he was embarrassed.

"A backlash. From the breakthrough. I lost control at the end."

"A backlash huh." She looked relieved, and a little sympathetic."

"I’ll cover the damage."

’Not like I had much of a choice’

He remarks internally

"The repair is three thousand five hundred pounds. For the array lines and the floor."

Three thousand five hundred.

He didn’t blink. He pulled out his phone, transferred the sum, and watched the confirmation light up on her screen.

"Thank you, sir." She paused. "You really should see someone about that shoulder."

"I will."

He did not.

---

The itch began even from the second the fight against the first assailant.

It started in his shoulder, a deep, crawling sensation under the skin, as if a hundred tiny threads were knitting the torn muscle back together.

Then his ribs. Then his thigh. By the time he turned into a narrow alley two streets from home, it was almost unbearable.

He slipped behind a row of bins, pulled the mask from his face, and tucked it into his inventory.

Veil settled back into his usual First Level reading. He shrugged out of the ruined shirt and pulled on the spare jacket he’d stashed, zipped it to his chin, and rubbed a hand across his face to scrub off the worst of the blood.

’Good enough.’

It wasn’t. But it would have to do.

---

Judith met him at the door.

She had a towel in one hand. Behind her, in the front room, Novaria sat in her chair near the window, her hair wet and loose across her shoulders, wearing a clean sweater that smelled faintly of soap.

’She’s just had a shower.’

Judith was God sent

"Jason," Judith said. Her eyes dropped to the zipped jacket, then to the dark stain seeping through at the collar. "That’s a lot of blood."

"Most of it’s dry."

"That’s not the part I’m worried about."

"You’re bleeding through your jacket," Novaria said from across the room, quietly.

"It’s already closing," Jason said. "I promise."

Judith sighed, a long, tired exhale. She looked as if she’d been about to say something sharper, then reconsidered.

"I’ll go, then," she said. "Since you’re alive and all."

"Judith, wait."

She paused, one hand on the door.

"Come to dinner tonight," Jason said. "Both of you. Bring your son."

She blinked. "Jason, that isn’t..."

"You’ve been working for me for almost two months. I’ve paid you, but I’ve never thanked you properly. Let me cook."

Judith stared at him for a long moment. The line around her mouth softened.

"I’d like that," she said. "I’ll bring him by around six."

"Good."

"Thank you, Jason. Really."

She gave Novaria a small nod and went out.

---

Jason turned.

Novaria was watching him. Her chin was tilted slightly, her eyes narrowed, the look of someone who had been waiting for a door to open.

"So....," she said.

He sat down on the couch with a grunt.

’Can’t hide this from her. Not with the state I’m in.’

"A Gate opened in the room last night," he said. "In the middle of the floor, while I was cultivating. A private one, I think. No Association notice."

"A private Gate."

"I don’t know why it formed. I won’t pretend I do." He rubbed the back of his neck. It was true, as far as truth went.

"Inside was a plain with a tower in the distance. Corpses in red robes and masks kept attacking me, ten at a time.

The second group were Second Level. Then a single one came out of the haze at Third Level, Peak."

Novaria’s fingers tightened on the armrest.

"I almost died," Jason said. "He was faster than I was and he hit harder, and I spent most of the fight trying not to be killed. In the end I found a gap and put everything I had into one strike. Then I ran for the gate before the rest of them caught me."

She was quiet, but he could see her tracking each detail, a small crease of worry deepening across her forehead whenever he mentioned a wound.

"And now you’re sitting here," she said finally, "with a shoulder that was torn through, and it’s already stopped bleeding."

"It itches."

"It should be a good deal worse." She leaned forward, studying him. "Jason, your healing is extraordinary.

Any A rank at the 6th level could shrug off wounds in a day that would’ve put others in bed for weeks, and even that wasn’t close to this."

Jason went still.

He had known his body healed quickly. He’d noticed it after the fight with the hound, and the Gates, and the dungeon.

But he had always measured it against his own life, against sixteen years of ruin, against injuries that used to linger.

Hearing it from Novaria, a woman who had once been a peak cultivator herself, put a different shape on it.

’It’s abnormal.’

He did not say that.

"Lucky, I guess," he said.

She gave him a long, unreadable look, and let it go.

---

They talked for a little while longer, about nothing that mattered, about dinner, about whether Judith’s son liked pasta.

Then the exhaustion finally hit him, the whole night crashing down at once.

"I need to wash this off," he said, standing.

"You do smell like a battlefield."

"Thanks."

He bathed quickly, watching pink water swirl down the drain, the itch settling into a dull, bearable hum along his ribs and shoulder.

When he came back downstairs in clean clothes, Novaria had a book open on her lap.

"Wake me in two hours," he said.

"Two hours."

"Exactly."

"I heard you."

He lowered himself onto the couch, one arm over his eyes.

He was asleep before she turned the page.