All My Summons Become Divine Girls

Chapter 526: Two Sets of Pain

The morning after the unlock, Ferra laid out a route test that looked, on paper, like an errand list.

Deliver a sealed chit to the registry, collect the stamped return from Lana’s clerk, then carry a spare gauge to the canal survey team.

The route home had to fit inside the eighth minute, by design.

"No drama, no distance records, no spectators beyond the cordon," she said, pinning the route sheet to the silo board.

"Today we learn what a boring Tuesday costs, because boring Tuesdays are what the engine actually needs from this skill."

The route sheet itself was three lines long, stamped by the war table, plus initialed by the wardens, which made it the most governed errand in the city’s history.

"The mission is the errand list, in order, at a walking pace," Hajin told the forming clone at the center marker. "You speak to the clerks as me, you carry nothing you are not handed, and you dissolve at the gate on return."

"Understood," the clone said, tucking the sealed chit into its belt the way Hajin tucked things, which nobody had taught it.

Juna took her place at the terms bench and did not pretend to be casual about it.

"Today’s true thing, before the count," she said, because the clause had teeth plus she intended to keep them sharp.

"Yesterday’s cost was the ache," Hajin said to her and the bench.

"Eight minutes of a stranger’s walk arrived in my legs at once, and these have been campaign legs for years. The fatigue is real fatigue, borrowed in one single lump."

"So today we measure the borrowing in detail."

Juna raised her hand flat, held the count, then dropped it like a starting flag.

The clone walked the whole route like an ordinary citizen with somewhere modest to be.

It waited at the registry crossing for a cart to pass, out of neither order nor fear, because the cart was there plus the crossing was there.

It delivered the chit to Lana’s clerk, who stamped the return while maintaining a professionally blank face.

No clerk in the freed districts had yet been trained for paperwork handed over by a gold man. It accepted the stamped return plus a compliment about its manners, then carried the spare gauge on to the canal survey.

Eirwen took the instrument from it there without one spoken comment.

Then she stood watching the clone walk away, wearing an expression the feed dissected for a full hour.

"It is strange," Eirwen said later, to the record.

"The body is entirely his, plus the courtesy is entirely his, and something in me still waited for him to turn around."

"He did not turn, because he had an errand."

[ NewViewer_02: ] the elf watched the copy walk away and I think that is the saddest thing on the stream this week

[ LurkerNoMore: ] note for the file: the clone said thank you to the clerk. nobody ordered a thank you

The bell rang at seven minutes and forty seconds, with the clone already back inside the gate.

"You are home," Hajin said from the gate.

The clone dissolved itself voluntarily, mid-nod, folding home like a letter closing itself.

Voluntary dissolution had been the morning’s quiet triumph, ranked by Aria above every distance number.

A body that ends itself on request is a tool, plus a body that refuses to leave is only a tenant.

And then, on schedule, the bill for the whole errand arrived.

The Ring took its thirty seconds to return, and the panel logged the fact coldly while the family watched.

[ Ring Clone Dissolved: Voluntary ]

[ Duration: 7 Minutes 40 Seconds ]

[ Ring Return Delay: 30 Seconds ]

The thirty seconds passed in ordinary quiet, then the Ring settled home, plus Hajin went abruptly white.

Seven minutes and forty seconds of a walking man’s whole sensory ledger landed in one delivery, with no novelty left to soften it.

The sun on the copy’s shoulders arrived first, then the summed cobble impact of every single step.

The clerk’s ink smell plus the canal’s cold arrived together, then the small sustained effort of carrying a gauge one-handed.

Underneath everything sat the copy’s manufactured fatigue, which had spent its whole short life being generated nowhere, plus it arrived all at once in legs that had never earned it.

He sat down on the packed dirt without any ceremony, his hands shook, plus he laughed once at the sheer accounting of it.

"Two sets of pain," he said, through it. "One body’s real day, plus the copy’s whole borrowed day, stacked."

Vella was already there, gold moving before his shoulders finished dropping, and what she found made her mutter in healer dialect.

The muttering was for the record, in the old trade tongue of the treatment carts, plus Aria translated none of it out of respect.

"I can treat this body."

Her hands mapped his arms, his legs, the original’s true pathways, while she spoke.

"I can drain the summed fatigue from your real legs, ease the sensory overload, plus shorten the shakes. What I cannot touch is the other set of it."

"The copy’s fatigue has no body to treat," she said, flat with the frustration of it.

"It is a receipt for work done by flesh that no longer exists. It resolves on its own clock, inside your real flesh, plus there is no medicine in my gold for arithmetic."

[ Vella Treatment: Original Body Only ]

[ Clone-Sourced Fatigue: Not Treatable ]

[ Natural Resolution: Hours ]

The chat took the panel in quietly, like people updating their estimates.

[ CringeSlayer91: ] every clone ride ends with two taxi meters running, and only one of them takes healing

[ ShadowMage44: ] so the price of boring tuesday is a full day of someone else’s legs, bro

Ferra timed the whole recovery herself, charcoal out, entirely unsentimental.

"Four hours before your hands stop shaking on a nothing route," she said. "Scale that to a combat route, and the price of one deployed body is an evening spent paying for two."

"Then the deployments will be worth evenings," Hajin said, from the dirt, still pale, still entirely lucid.

"That is the decision, you have made it, plus I have written it down."

Ferra closed her charcoal book firmly on the morning’s findings.

"The engine gets boring Tuesdays, you get the bill, plus Vella gets the only half of the bill that medicine can touch."

Juna sat down next to him on the packed dirt, not touching, just present, and delivered the terms clause verdict.

"Today’s true thing is due now."

"The copy enjoyed the walk," Hajin said quietly, and the yard got quieter around the words.

"Seven minutes of being a man on an errand in a city that was polite to it, then it dissolved mid-nod, content."

"I felt it go home satisfied, plus the satisfaction is in me now. I do not entirely know what to do with a good day that belongs to a body I ended."

Nobody joked, nobody made it smaller, plus Juna wrote that one down herself.

"That is the cost the panels cannot log," she said finally. "We will count it anyway."

The recovery passed in the yard’s shade, four hours of trembling hands plus good company.

The family rotated through the shade on no schedule at all, which was itself a quiet and rather small therapy.

Tessa Varn sent bread twice, because the outer districts had heard about his shaking hands within the hour.

The river heart slipped its schedule again, plus thirty skies stood over the Last City.

Tomorrow, by every sign the wardens could read, the engine intended to stop being patient.

The technique that had spent a week learning to be boring was about to meet the least boring morning of its short life.