Chapter 111 - Sixty Seconds

Etzel stared at the three dark rectangles.

“Open,” Saeva said.

“They are open.”

“No. Open open.”

“I am trying.”

The first rectangle unfolded.

Dark light became text.

Etzel stopped breathing for half a second.

That was not fair.

His current group had a hole.

A large one.

Orsik could scout because Orsik could do almost anything, but sending an armored knight with a Greatblade to perform delicate reconnaissance was like using a siege engine to check whether a window was unlocked.

Saeva was fast and increasingly clever.

She was also Saeva.

Yesterday she had declared a dead rat an enemy combatant.

A dedicated scout would change everything.

Tracking.

Surveillance.

Forward observation.

Targets Etzel could not approach.

The rectangle showed only a silhouette.

Lean.

Humanoid.

Wrapped in something that moved like smoke.

No face.

No history.

No guarantee of personality.

Just a compatible soul waiting behind a choice.

“Next,” Orsik said.

Etzel looked at him.

“You sound calm.”

“I am not choosing.”

“Coward.”

Second rectangle.

Etzel’s heartbeat changed.

He knew the name.

Not the function.

Etzel read the limited description twice.

Sivenne would have chosen it before the text finished.

Probably while laughing.

A future physical state.

Speed he had not yet earned.

Strength he could eventually possess.

Reaction time his body might develop.

For a short window, he could become closer to the Etzel he might be months or years later.

Then repayment.

Whatever that meant.

Fatigue?

Injury?

Temporary regression?

Time lost from recovery?

The description refused to elaborate.

Of course.

His mind filled the gap anyway.

Predator’s Interval plus Borrowed Tomorrow.

A future Etzel layered over the present one.

That combination could turn fights he currently survived into fights he controlled.

It could also destroy his body if he became greedy.

Which meant it was extremely attractive.

“Bad,” Saeva said.

Etzel looked at her.

“Why?”

She pointed at the ability.

“Etzel stupid.”

Orsik nodded.

Etzel stared at both of them.

“This is prejudice.”

Third rectangle.

Etzel opened it.

The world became quiet.

No immediate combat ability.

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No new summon.

No dramatic attack.

A foundation.

Etzel almost laughed.

The System had spent days teaching him the word architecture and then offered him construction work.

Orsik read the description.

His expression changed.

Etzel noticed.

“You like this one.”

“I understand this one.”

“That sounds dangerously close to advice.”

“It is not.”

“Coward twice.”

Etzel looked between the choices.

Scout.

Ability.

Foundation.

All good.

That was the problem.

The first chest had taught him something important: a three-choice reward was not three gifts.

It was one gift and two permanent losses.

Choose.

The other two vanished.

No refusal.

No later reconsideration.

No collecting the descriptions and coming back when wiser.

Sixty seconds.

The Veiled Pursuer would solve a real weakness today.

Borrowed Tomorrow could save his life tomorrow.

Soul Realm Foundation might not matter for weeks.

Or months.

Maybe longer.

Etzel hated long-term rewards.

They were difficult to feel.

Then he looked at Orsik.

Broken history.

A-Rank current body.

Something much deeper underneath.

Then Saeva.

F-Rank.

A bond whose expression had already begun exceeding normal expectations.

The System had evaluated them before generating these choices.

Reward generation modified by current architecture.

That mattered.

The Foundation had not appeared in a vacuum.

It had appeared after the System looked at what Etzel was already carrying.

“Can I inspect the summon?”

The silhouette sharpened.

A pair of narrow blades.

A soul signature folded tightly around itself.

Etzel felt hunger.

Not for food.

Purpose.

The Pursuer wanted a target.

That could be useful.

It could also be a problem.

“History?”

“Of course.”

“Borrowed Tomorrow. Repayment details.”

“Useful.”

No more.

Etzel ground his teeth.

“Foundation. Exact functions.”

“Also useful.”

Saeva floated directly in front of him.

“Choose.”

“I had forgotten.”

“Slow.”

“Time is literally counting down.”

“Slow.”

Etzel blinked.

She did not mean the timer.

He looked at her.

Saeva pointed at his chest.

Then at Orsik.

Then at herself.

“Slow.”

Orsik said nothing.

He did not need to.

Etzel remembered the resonance test.

The memory field.

The System warning.

What could he carry without breaking them?

He had spent his first Levels asking how much stronger he could become.

Level Twenty had answered with a different question.

What was he building?

Borrowed Tomorrow tempted him hardest.

That surprised him.

Maybe because it was his.

No responsibility for another soul.

No unknown personality.

No infrastructure.

Just power and a bill later.

Clean.

Simple.

Dangerous.

Etzel smiled without humor.

“Of course that’s the one I want.”

Orsik finally spoke.

“Wanting is not choosing.”

Etzel glanced at him.

“That was annoyingly good.”

“I have practice.”

Etzel forced himself to spend five seconds doing something he hated: calculating what each choice would cost him by not being chosen.

The Veiled Pursuer was not merely a summon. It was information he would not have to risk Saeva to obtain. Every unknown ruin, every ambush corridor, every enemy camp would become safer with a specialist moving ahead.

Borrowed Tomorrow was not merely strength. It was an emergency answer when his current body was insufficient and somebody else would pay for that insufficiency.

Foundation was the opposite. It solved no immediate battlefield problem he could name. That made it easy to undervalue. He had spent years surviving immediate problems. Maybe that was exactly why the third reward existed now.

He remembered his first chest. Back then the timer had felt like cruelty because he knew almost nothing. Now it felt cruel for the opposite reason. He knew enough to understand consequences. A summon was a person, not a slot. An ability became part of his soul, not a button on an interface. A Realm upgrade would shape every bound soul that came after. Knowledge had not made the choice easier. It had simply made ignorance unavailable.

Etzel almost preferred the old version of himself for three seconds. That boy could choose quickly because he did not yet know how expensive a good choice could become.

Veiled Pursuer.

A third person inside the bond architecture.

Another soul before Etzel fully understood the two he already had.

Not wrong.

But maybe early.

Borrowed Tomorrow.

Immediate leverage.

A way to reach beyond his current body.

Also exactly the sort of ability Etzel would abuse when someone he cared about was in danger.

He knew himself well enough to admit that.

Foundation.

No immediate victory.

No promise of strength.

Just somewhere for everything else to stand.

Orsik asked one question before Etzel committed.

“If you choose the Foundation and nothing useful happens today, will you regret it?”

Etzel looked at the timer. That was the correct question and therefore deeply irritating.

“Yes,” he said.

Orsik raised an eyebrow.

“Probably. For a while.”

“Then?”

Etzel looked at Saeva, then at the invisible weight of the Soul Realm behind his interface.

“Then I’ll find out whether regret means the choice was wrong, or just that the other choices were good.”

Orsik nodded. No praise. No correction. Etzel appreciated that. A real choice should leave something behind when made.

Etzel exhaled.

“Fine.”

Saeva leaned closer.

He touched the third rectangle.

The other two vanished.

Not faded.

Vanished.

Etzel felt the loss immediately.

The scout he would never meet.

The ability he would never use.

Gone.

When the Veiled Pursuer vanished, Etzel felt a peculiar absence. There had never been a bond, never a voice, never a name, yet the possibility had been real enough for the System to offer. He wondered whether the soul behind the reward returned somewhere, remained stored, or simply became unreachable to him. The System gave no answer.

Borrowed Tomorrow left no trace at all. That hurt differently. He would never know what the ability’s repayment actually meant. Good, he told himself. A closed door was still closed even if he stood there imagining the room.

A tiny irrational part of him wanted to reach after both.

Too late.

“Yes,” Etzel muttered at the forfeiture notice. “I noticed.”

Then the world dropped out from under him.

Orsik caught his physical body before it hit the glass.

Etzel did not feel it.

He was somewhere else.

The Soul Realm.

Darkness stretched in every direction.

Not empty.

Never empty.

Orsik’s presence existed there.

Saeva’s too.

Two lights in a space that had previously felt more like possibility than place.

Then something struck beneath Etzel’s feet.

Once.

A sound like a hammer hitting stone at the bottom of an ocean.

The darkness rippled.

Again.

A line appeared under him.

Not light.

Ground.

Real ground.

Gray stone spread outward in a rough circle.

One meter.

Three.

Ten.

Saeva appeared beside him.

She landed.

Actually landed.

Her eyes widened.

Orsik manifested on Etzel’s other side.

The knight looked down.

The third impact came.

The entire Soul Realm shook.

A single block of dark stone rose from the center of the new ground.

Plain.

Uncarved.

Heavy.

Etzel stared at it.

“That’s it?”

Saeva crouched and touched the stone.

“Mine.”

Etzel closed his eyes.

“Of course.”

Orsik did not laugh.

He knelt.

Pressed one hand against the new ground.

His face changed.

Etzel looked at him.

“What?”

Orsik remained still for several seconds.

Then:

“No.”

“No what?”

“It is not small.”

Etzel looked around at ten meters of stone surrounded by endless dark.

“It is objectively small.”

Orsik stood.

“A wall is large.”

“Yes.”

“A tower is large.”

“Yes.”

“Neither stands without this.”

He tapped the ground once.

Etzel looked down.

Foundation.

The System appeared.

Etzel read the final line.

“Pending?”

The stone beneath them pulsed.

Saeva grinned.

“More.”

The darkness answered.