Chapter 23: Devil’s Contract: The Wraith
[Mutation points acquired: 2.]
Raphael exhaled slowly and got off the bed before the gri on his skin could reach the sheets. He made it to the bathroom first.
Hot water. He stood under it and let it run.
The reflection in the mirror when he’d passed it was leaner than he rembered, not that there had been much to spare before.
The muscle definition was clean, the kind that ca from years of work and not a gram of anything unnecessary.
He stood in the steam and breathed and felt, for the first ti since the evening had started, like sothing that had been compressed was decompressing.
Level 2.
The difference wasn’t incrental. It was qualitative, he could feel it in the way his mind processed the room, the way his body responded to small shifts in his weight, the clarity behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Like the difference between a window with dirt on it and a window that had been cleaned.
He pulled up the paraters panel.
Physical resistance: Lv1. Still.
"That doesn’t auto-scale with level?"
He focused on the stat. A prompt appeared imdiately.
[Consu 1 mutation point to raise Physical Resistance to Lv2?]
He looked at the four base paraters and the two points he had to spend. Full coverage wasn’t possible.
Spending evenly would leave him diocre across the board, and diocre had nearly gotten him killed tonight by a Lv4 opponent with a dissolving flesh trick.
The vampire gave him regeneration. The Flesh Bishop’s imprisoned soul gave him access to two skills when he needed them. What he needed was a sharper edge, not a rounder profile.
He spent both points without hesitating.
[Sinner’s Hunting System.]
[Hunter: Raphael Alanster.]
[Cardinal Sin: Superbia.]
[Level: 2.]
[Sin: 0.3 / 60.]
[Sin-Fruit: 60.]
[Mutations: 2.]
[Physical Functions elevated to: Lv3.]
[Physical Resistance: Lv1.]
[Arcane Reserve elevated to: Lv2.]
[Arcane Resistance: Lv1.]
Lv3 baseline. Blood Frenzy at double. Full moon amplification on top of that.
In the right conditions, Lv6 physical functions.
He stood there a mont with that number in his head.
Then he entered the First Hunting Ground.
The wasteland received him the sa way it always did, wind cutting across the open ground, thunder rolling sowhere behind the horizon, the soil underfoot soft with moisture and grey with everything else. He looked around.
A small patch of ground had changed.
It wasn’t much, a loose arrangent of rocks, modest and unpolished, the kind of marker that had been made by hand rather than purchased.
Between the stones, a gap, and through the gap a glimpse of color. Vivid even here, even in this washed-out place.
A small football.
The headstone had Rick’s na on it. Simple marks, as though carved in a hurry or with the wrong tool. The vampire’s execution stake still stood nearby.
Everything else was empty. The undead Jason had sent weren’t anywhere in the ground.
"Strange." He turned it over. "The system flagged them as artificial undead, sa classification as Henry. So why aren’t they here?"
Jason had talked about his undead body as a discarded vessel. Sothing he’d evacuated rather than occupied.
Empty shells. No souls to anchor them. Nothing for the hunting ground to take in.
It was a hypothesis, not a conclusion. He’d need more evidence before it ant anything.
He let it rest and crouched beside Rick’s grave. His hand moved across the headstone and ca away with dust on it, which he brushed off thodically.
"Little one. I’m going to borrow your strength for a month." He kept his voice low and steady, the sa tone he’d used in the nursery. "After that, I’ll let you go."
The grave didn’t answer. Rick had found his rest, whatever he’d carried was gone. But the system had claid the power he’d left behind, and here it was.
[Demon Contract: Wraith.]
[Demon Level: 2.]
[Cardinal Sin: Invidia.]
[Low sin compatibility. Partial mutation abilities extracted.]
[Wraith Form: Consu arcane energy to partially manifest as a wraith. Form becos semi-transparent. Can pass through thin materials. Passing through a living body inflicts cold stiffness and cognitive delay.]
[Contract Cost: Emotional suppression.]
He read the contract cost twice. Then made a short sound.
"Emotional suppression. That’s the cost." He picked up the quill that had appeared in his hand and considered it. "I already don’t express emotions. This is the sa as no cost at all."
He signed. The ground began to tremble at the far edge of the wasteland, and he was already gone before whatever lived there decided to investigate.
Back in his room, he didn’t rush toward the Second Hunting Ground.
The gains from tonight were already considerable.
There was no urgency in stacking more on top, better to process what he had, let the body consolidate the changes, and approach the next one with a clear head.
The A-9 unit’s rooms were clustered around the conference room. Four of them, one per team mber. Evelyn’s was next door to his.
He knocked.
A pause. Then a muffled sound from inside, low and slightly blurred at the edges.
"Mm... Raphael? Co in..."
Her voice had the particular texture of soone who had been asleep very recently and hadn’t finished leaving it. He could hear the small unfocused sounds underneath the words.
"Sorry to disturb you."
He pushed the door open and closed it behind him out of habit.
He had questions about the team’s direction, the next assignnt, structural gaps, what the unit’s operational rhythm looked like now that they had a full roster again. He turned to ask.
The words didn’t co.
She was sitting up against the headboard, both hands pressed to her eyes, rubbing them with the unselfconscious thoroughness of soone who had forgotten they had a visitor.
Her hair was loose and going in several directions.
The sleep clothes she wore were soft and lightweight and did relatively little in the morning light that was coming through the gap in the curtains.
The collar had co open at so point during the night, one side of it fallen off her shoulder entirely, leaving it bare.
Raphael turned. Crossed to the window in three steps and pulled it open, leaving only the curtains as a filter.
"You’re still doing this." He kept his voice level. "Sleeping with the window sealed. The whole room slls like the furniture."
Evelyn lowered her hands from her face. Her eyes opened halfway, the green of them catching the shifted light, clear even half-asleep.
She looked at him standing in front of the window, the white shirt he’d changed into doing a reasonable but not comprehensive job of concealing the fact that he was built like soone who had been trained since childhood to be difficult to kill.
The sunlight found the angles of his face and found nothing much changed from years ago. Ti had made no particular impression on him.
"Mm." A soft sound, almost amused. "Ha... Raphael."
She said his na the way you say sothing you’ve been thinking about without aning to.
"You’re exactly the sa. Like a strict teacher. Everything has to be correct, everything has to be reasonable."
She murmured it without criticism, the words coming out slow and warm in the way words do first thing in the morning. "Always have been."
Sothing occurred to her, he could see it in the small shift of her expression, the way her eyes curved slightly at the corners. She slipped out of bed quietly, her feet finding the floor without sound.
He heard the fabric move behind him. He didn’t turn, she was Evelyn, and whatever she was doing, it wasn’t a threat, and he looked out at the base grounds and let his mind move back over the fight.
He always did this after. Reconstructed the sequence, found the errors, catalogued what could be improved.
"Evelyn, I’ve been thinking about tonight, the approach to the Bishop, there were two points where..."
He turned.
The warmth hit him first. Soft pressure against his chest, thin cotton between it and him, and a familiar scent that had always been hers specifically.
Sothing clean, sothing faintly floral, the particular quality of it that didn’t belong to any perfu he could have nad.
"Aw..."
Her face was against his chest, both arms wrapped around his waist, her voice coming out low and slightly muffled.
"I wanted to co up behind you. Surprise you." A small, theatrical sound of disappointnt. "You turned around at exactly the wrong mont."
She lifted her chin. Her eyes found his, unhurried, the sleepiness still at the edges of them.
"Is this reasonable? We’re colleagues, we’re not supposed to..." She tilted her head slightly, mouth curving.
"Is it correct? A hug, when you ca in here to discuss the team’s tactical future? Probably not."
Her gaze didn’t move from his face.
"But I wanted to."
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