met free Chapter 396: Together
Chapter 396: Together
I was speechless, but it only lasted a moment.
I inhaled and exhaled.
"Thank you, White Feather."
I took a moment of reprieve, trying to get used to the darkness before speaking to her through it.
"Many say a summoner should be behind their summon, commanding the summon, being protected by the summon. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being protected by you... however... I don’t want that... I do not wish for that."
I shifted slightly in the darkness, my voice hardening.
"I want to be beside you, and one day... perhaps, even in front of you... just like a friend and a comrade."
White Feather did not move. She said nothing in response, and with the thick fog of darkness, it was difficult to tell what look was currently on her face. Her nonexistent voice made it even worse. I had been navigating the narrow world around me with the jiggle of her bells and with her sound; now that was also gone, leaving me utterly hopeless.
"White Feather?"
[Congratulations]
[You have stirred the emotions of a once Divine and Treacherous Maiden]
[This has caused her to unleash a portion of her hidden abilities]
[White Feather has gained a new Signature ability]
[As a result, you have gained one more attribute]
I trembled slightly, listening to what the Lodestar was saying to me at such a time.
’White Feather... that will be the real White Feather. Then does that mean she’s somewhere inside White Feather, alive?’
I shivered at the possibility.
This most likely meant that the situation White Feather found herself in was irreversible. However, even if it was, would White Feather want to do it, and what would it take? Would she even be alive if she did?
’Damnit, I’m thinking ahead. This is not the time for that.’
Instead, I reached within me and took out the panel of runes, ready to study what this new attribute was about.
In the darkness, the blue transparent weave of words showed me.
[Summoner Status]
Name: Cade Marlowe
Rank: E
Spirit Essence: 3,000/3,000
Active Spirit: 3/6
[Main Attributes]
• Summoner’s Touch (Basic) Lv. 9
• Infinite Vitality (Basic) Lv. 20 (Requirement not met)
• Sculptor’s Gift (Advanced) Lv. 5
[Extra Attributes]
• Emperor’s Presence (Combat/Support) Lv. 18
• Strategic Apex (Utility/Combat) Lv. 15
• Conqueror’s Will (Support/Combat) Lv. 10
• Warlord’s Command (Support/Combat) Lv. 17
• Sanctified Immolation (Combat) Lv. 18
• Chains of Confession (Combat/Control) Lv. 15
• Inquisitorial Authority (Commander/Debuff) Lv. 10
• Martyr’s Endurance (Survival/Support) Lv. 10
• Feather Step (Utility/Combat) Lv. 1
• Feather Robe (Utility) Lv. 1
Description: You can summon a white flowing robe of feathers. When this robe is summoned, all damage taken is reduced by 20%, speed increases by 20%, and dark elements are negated by the feathers of light, giving you the ability to channel light for a fixed number of seconds.
My eyes widened as I saw the description.
Then an evil smile slowly crawled upon my face.
"White Feather..." I uttered again.
She lingered, but when she answered, I felt her voice sounding with more resolve.
"Lord Cade, I feel more power surging through my soul for some reason. If you would let me, I will destroy these riffraff, but since you want to be my friend, then work together with me, Lord Cade."
I was stunned for a moment.
’Go, White Feather.’
I closed my eyes. It was pointless in the dark, but it had become a habit. Then I reached for the attribute the Lodestar had just laid in my hands.
’Feather Robe.’
It answered immediately.
Light bloomed at my collarbone first. A single thread of it, curling outward, then another, then ten, then a cascade — feathers of pale gold and white spilling down my shoulders and back, weaving themselves into a robe that draped without weight. The darkness around me parted like cloth split by a knife.
And the corridor came back.
I saw the floor first — grated steel, scuffed, three dark splatters of something near my left foot. Then the walls, the seams of the blast door, the angled ceiling vents.
Then White Feather, two paces from me, her head turned slightly, her white hair catching the light my robe was throwing in a way that made her look almost — almost — like something a painter would have apologized for trying to capture.
Then them.
The four still standing.
They had begun to move the moment the light bloomed, but they had not moved fast enough.
The closest one was already mid-stride when the light reached him, and I watched his suit flinch — the tiniest hesitation in the joint of his hip, the suit’s optics adjusting to a brightness they had not been calibrated for in this hallway. Half a second of recalibration.
Half a second was a long time.
I went.
The robe’s weight wasn’t there, but its speed was — my body felt lighter, and with it came a speed that left even me stunned. His swing met empty air where my shoulder should have been. I came up under his arm, felt the seam of his elbow plate against my forearm, and drove him sideways into the wall with the full conversion of his own committed momentum.
His suit hit the bulkhead.
Something in it cracked.
At the same time, White Feather had already moved. She crossed the corridor in a line so clean it didn’t look like running. The bells at her wrists made no sound — she had silenced them somewhere between his step and her arrival — and the feathers at her shoulders had gone from soft to something else, something edged. I saw a single feather detach from her sleeve as she passed the second suited figure, and the feather did not fall.
Instead, it hung in the air, suspended at the height of her shoulder for one full beat, and then it moved — fast, faster than her — and went through the seam at the soldier’s neck the way a needle goes through linen.
He was on the floor before he registered it.
A second feather peeled from her other sleeve. A third one followed, and they orbited her in slow, lazy arcs, and then they did not.
The third soldier came at me from the right, this one smarter, this one having watched the first one get put through the wall and adjusted accordingly. He kept his distance. He used the reach of the suit. He didn’t commit.
I felt the strike before it came — the air pressure rolling ahead of his fist — and I did something I’d never been able to do before tonight.
I stepped into it.
The robe drank the impact. I felt the force land against my shoulder and arrive at me as a third of itself, the rest of it dispersing into the feathers as a soft, warm pulse, and his fist — the fist that should have folded my collarbone — passed across my body without putting me down.
His faceplate was the only part of him I could see clearly. The eyes behind it widened.
I hit him in that faceplate.
The first strike sent cracks through his helmet. The second reinforced those cracks. I slammed the heel of my palm and my full weight behind it for the third strike. The plate gave on the third strike, the suit’s reinforced glass crazing across in a single white starburst, and his head snapped back inside the helmet hard enough that he went limp before he hit the floor.
Two left. Both of them had stopped advancing. They had retreated to the far end of the corridor, and they were doing something I had not seen them do yet.
They were talking.
Helmets tilted toward each other, hand signals. The unmistakable body language of soldiers reassessing.
’The audacity!’
White Feather lifted one hand. The feathers orbiting her drew inward, gathered along her arm, layered themselves across her forearm in a long curving line that was no longer feathers and no longer not feathers — something between a wing and a weapon, held in the shape of a sweep.
She glanced sideways at me, just for a moment. The ghost of a smile.
"Together, Lord Cade?"
"Together."
We moved.
As my foot left the grating, the feather on White Feather’s wrist caught the light my robe spilled, and the corridor’s air rushed past my ears.
I went low.
And she went high.
[Authori’s Note]
I apologize for the pitiful update rates, this is quite unusual of me, but I’ve been a little sick in the head, no, not demented like the way Cade is, I consider myself to be much more sane, this is just a sickness and tiredness, a little rest and I’ll get back in shape.
Thank you for your never-ending support. I should take care of myself to make sure I continue to give you guys the peak back to back, in hopes of winning your favors and eating all of your boundless Gold Crowns. Hehehe.
Also any quality control issue will be fixed when I’m alright. Don’t forget to vote golden tickets and power stones, and gift this treacherous author!