Chapter 25: Mira

"You don’t intend on going in there," a voice said, calm and unhurried. "That will be a death sentence."

Leon froze.

The voice was female, close enough to belong to someone standing right beside him. He turned. The valley was empty.

Leon turned again in a slow circle, staff still loose in his grip, scanning the dead trees for anything that might explain a voice with nowhere to come from. Nothing moved. No footprints marred the earth around him.

"You can come out now," he said, not particularly loudly. "Unless you’re planning on narrating this entire conversation from wherever you’re hiding."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the air near one of the blackened trees rippled, like heat distortion over stone, and a figure stepped through it as though she’d simply been standing there the entire time, invisible until she chose not to be.

She was tall, dressed in dark, skin-tight leathers that seemed less built for protection and more designed to aggressively highlight every single curve of her body. The supple material clung tightly to a remarkably generous bust, the plunging neckline of her chest piece doing absolutely nothing to hide the heavy, soft swell of her cleavage.

Below a narrow, tapered waist, the leather hugged wide, lush hips and thick thighs, stretching and creaking subtly as she shifted her weight.

A short curved blade rested easily at her hip. Silver hair was pulled back in a loose braid, and her eyes, when they settled on him, carried the particular sharpness of someone who’d spent a great deal of time evaluating whether the person in front of her was a threat, an idiot, or both.

A faint notification flickered at the edge of Leon’s vision, the kind that only appeared when something worth noting crossed his path.

[Player Detected]

[Role: Hybrid]

[Role Talent: Veil Step (B) — Grants temporary invisibility while stationary or moving slowly.]

That explained the empty valley readily enough. She hadn’t vanished. She’d simply never let him see her in the first place.

Leon’s gaze, entirely without his permission, immediately plummeted south of her chin and lingered for exactly one and a half seconds longer than it should have.

She was, to put it plainly, stacked. The way her tight armor pushed her chest up and together created a mesmerizing expanse of pale skin that made maintaining eye contact require a Herculean amount of conscious effort. Leon’s brain, apparently unconcerned with dignity, chose that exact moment to remind him he hadn’t seen another human face—or anything else, for that matter—in ten days.

Smack.

"Eyes up here," she said flatly, already lowering the hand she’d used to cuff the side of his head. "You’ve got exactly one warning left before I start assuming you’re not worth the effort of saving."

"That’s uncalled for," Leon said, rubbing his temple.

"That was extremely called for. You’re staring like you forgot women have faces."

"In my defense, it had been a long ten days."

"That’s not the defense you think it is."

Leon opened his mouth to argue, reconsidered, and closed it again. Fair point, honestly delivered.

"Fine. Apologies." He inclined his head slightly, mostly sincere. "You have my full attention now. Entirely above the neck."

"Good. Keep it there." She crossed her arms beneath her chest—an action that ruthlessly hoisted her impressive assets even higher—and something in her expression shifted from irritated to genuinely baffled as her gaze flicked past him toward the altar. "You’re actually still thinking about going in there."

"I was thinking about it before you smacked me. Now I’m thinking about several things."

"You saw the recommended level."

"I did."

"Twenty-two to twenty-five."

"I can read numbers just fine, if that’s the concern."

"Then you understand that’s not a suggestion. That’s the system telling you, in the plainest language it has, that anyone below that threshold walking through that gate is choosing to die." She said it evenly. "Do you know how many players have hit level twenty? I don’t have an exact number, but I’d bet good coin it’s fewer than you’d fit in a single palm. Everyone’s still exhausted, everyone’s mana pool is a joke, everyone’s healing options are either nonexistent or barely enough to matter. We’re what, a week and a half into this? Maybe two?"

"Ten days," Leon said. "Give or take."

"Ten days." She said it like the number personally offended her. "So unless you’re about to tell me you’re some kind of idiot, walking into a level twenty-two dungeon on day ten isn’t confidence. It’s a very slow, very stupid way of finding out what death sentences actually feel like."

"You say that like you’ve watched it happen before."

Something shifted behind her eyes, brief and guarded. "I have. Twice, actually. Once from a distance, once close enough that I still hear it sometimes." She didn’t elaborate further, and Leon didn’t push. "That’s part of why I’ve been camped near this valley the last few days instead of grinding somewhere useful. Somebody has to be the one saying something before people walk in there thinking they’re the exception."

"And how many people have you managed to talk out of it?"

"Two. You’d be the third, if you had any sense."

"I have plenty of sense. I’m just choosing not to use it right now."

"That’s not a distinction most people would find comforting."

Leon considered several responses, discarded most of them as unhelpfully honest, and settled on the safest one.

"I appreciate the concern."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the answer you’re getting."

She studied him for a long moment, arms still crossed, and something in her expression cooled from frustration into something closer to quiet calculation.

She then glanced down, just briefly, her eyes losing focus in the particular way that meant she was checking something, a habit Leon recognized immediately from the countless times he’d done exactly the same thing over the past ten days.

Leon didn’t comment on it.

"I’m Level nine," she said. "Nine, after ten days, and I haven’t exactly been sitting around. I’ve been running myself half to death every single day since this started, and I’m still nowhere close to that dungeon’s floor."

*****

A/N: for anyone asking about why does she care? She should just leave Leon alone and mind her business, her reasons will be revealed further into the story, so don’t just write her off as annoying yet