Chapter 105 : Blades and Frameworks
New York, Queens – Alex's POV
The room was quiet in the particular way only late afternoons ever were.
Not silent—never that—but muted. The city outside my window was still there, alive and restless, yet distant enough to feel abstract. A car horn somewhere below. Voices drifting up between buildings. Life continuing without needing my attention.
I sat on the edge of my bed, elbows resting loosely on my knees, phone face-down on the desk beside me. The curtains were half-drawn, letting in just enough light to paint the room in soft gold and shadow. My jacket hung over the chair where I'd left it the night before. Everything was exactly where it should be.
It had been a few days since the last real surge of activity. Long enough for things to settle. Long enough for habits to reassert themselves.
The concert was coming up fast—close enough that it sat in the back of my mind like a fixed point, something inevitable. Dazzler and the Mary Janes were deep into rehearsals now, schedules tightening, pressure building in that familiar, productive way. I'd stayed mostly in the background since the integration phase wrapped up. Observing. Adjusting small things when needed. Letting them do what they did best.
For once, there was no immediate crisis to respond to.
Which meant I finally had time.
I leaned back slightly, eyes drifting to the ceiling, and let out a slow breath. It had been weeks since my last pull. Not because I'd forgotten about the system—far from it—but because I hadn't needed to force progress. Things had been moving forward on their own, organically. Projects completed. Objectives cleared. Quiet milestones stacking up without fanfare.
Still, ignoring an available vector for growth was never smart.
I stood, crossed the room, and sat down at the desk. The chair creaked faintly under my weight. I turned on the monitor, the screen flickering to life in stages, and waited as the familiar interface began to overlay reality.
The system didn't announce itself dramatically. It never did. No flourish. No sound. Just a subtle shift, like a lens snapping into focus.
I brought up the menu with a practiced gesture.
[System Interface: Online.]
My gaze moved naturally to the section I hadn't opened in a while.
Gacha.
I hesitated for half a second—not out of doubt, but habit. Pulls weren't something I treated casually. Each one mattered. Each one altered the trajectory, even if only slightly.
I opened it.
The display expanded, clean and minimal, lines of light resolving into clear data.
[Available Pulls: 4.]
A faint smile tugged at my mouth.
"Yeah," I murmured under my breath. "That tracks."
Four pulls wasn't insignificant, but it wasn't excessive either. Enough to matter. Enough to change things.
I rolled my shoulders once, loosening the tension there, then rested my hands lightly on the desk.
No rush.
I let myself sit with the moment, grounding it. The quiet. The stillness. The absence of urgency. It was important not to rush decisions like this, even if the system itself didn't care about pacing.
When I was ready, I selected the option.
[Initiate Gacha Sequence.]
The interface responded instantly. The background dimmed slightly, the focus narrowing until the rest of the room felt distant, secondary. Symbols began to rotate slowly across the screen—not random, exactly, but not entirely predictable either.
I watched without blinking.
The first pull always set the tone.
The motion slowed. The symbols aligned. Then stopped.
Text appeared, crisp and unmistakable.
[Template Acquired: Geralt of Rivia.]
I leaned back in the chair, the exhale leaving my lungs before I consciously registered it.
"…Right," I said quietly.
Geralt of Rivia.
The Butcher of Blaviken. The White Wolf. A name pulled straight out of a world where monsters were hunted for coin and survival wasn't a heroic ideal—it was a daily negotiation.
The Witcher.
For anyone who knew the stories, the title alone carried a very specific weight. Not a knight. Not a chosen one. A professional monster slayer, engineered through brutal trials, alchemy, and training to do one thing exceptionally well: fight things that should not exist.
That was the part that mattered.
Swordsmanship refined to a lethal, practical art—not ceremonial, not flashy. Every movement optimized to kill efficiently, even when outmatched. Layered on top of that, the Signs: compact combat magic designed for speed and adaptability. Quen for protection. Aard for control. Igni for pressure. Simple, effective tools meant to be used mid-fight without hesitation.
And then there was the alchemy.
Potions, decoctions, oils—systems built around preparation and optimization. Enhancing perception, strength, endurance, resistance. Turning the body itself into a weapon, at the cost of pushing it past what it was ever meant to handle.
The thought nudged something loose in my memory.
A previous pull. One I'd shelved, not out of disinterest, but because it hadn't fit anywhere yet.
A potion recipe.
Not from this world. Not even close. The kind of formula designed for a setting where power scaling was obscene and biology was more suggestion than rule. Overlord.
I'd never had the framework to even attempt it. The theoretical gaps alone had made it impractical—wrong assumptions, incompatible processes, missing intermediates.
But Geralt's alchemy wasn't theoretical.
It was brutal. Empirical. Built to force hostile substances through a living system and make them work anyway.
"…That might actually bridge the gap," I murmured.
Not directly. Not cleanly. But as a translation layer. A way to reinterpret something fundamentally alien into a form my body—and my systems—could process.
I didn't smile, but the idea settled comfortably.
That recipe might not be dead weight anymore.
I let that settle, mentally slotting the template into place.
"This isn't just combat," I murmured. "It's a full kit."
A close-range framework. Melee dominance. Layered survivability. Pre-fight preparation and in-fight adaptability, all wrapped into a single, coherent system.
Clean. Efficient. Lethal.
I didn't need to romanticize it. I didn't need the legend. What mattered was what it gave me—and how well it would integrate with everything else already in place.
"Yeah," I said after a moment. "That fits."
I didn't rush the integration. I never did. There was no need. The system would handle the mechanics; my job was understanding. Anticipating how this new layer fit with everything already in place.
When I opened my eyes again, the interface was already waiting, patient as ever.
Three pulls remaining.
I leaned forward, fingers hovering over the confirmation icon.
The room felt a little smaller now. Not oppressive—focused.
The interface reset smoothly, the remnants of the first pull dissolving into faint traces of light before vanishing altogether. No lingering effects. No afterimage. Just a clean slate, waiting.
I stayed where I was for a few seconds, letting the implications of Geralt of Rivia settle properly. Not the mechanics—the system would handle those—but the scope of the toolkit I'd just added. How it would fit, where it would apply, and what it would let me handle that I couldn't before.
That sort of template didn't shout. It endured.
When I felt the mental edges click into place, I shifted my attention back to the screen.
Two breaths in. One out.
I triggered the next pull.
[Draw Initiated.]
The visuals changed this time. Sharper. More defined. The rotating symbols condensed, their movement more deliberate, almost ceremonial. I'd seen enough draws by now to recognize the pattern.
This wasn't a capacity. This was an object.
The rotation slowed. Light converged. Then—
[Object Acquired: Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.]
I frowned slightly.
"Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi?"
The name alone wasn't enough. It sounded old. Heavy. But nothing clicked immediately.
I glanced back at the interface and tapped for details.
A tooltip unfolded:
[Item Summary: Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi — A legendary divine katana that can cut through almost any material, including magical and supernatural defenses. Associated with control over wind, allowing ranged slashes and enhanced mobility. The blade is indestructible and spiritually attuned, subtly guiding its bearer against hostile intent.]
I stared at the text for a second longer than necessary.
"…Right. That Kusanagi."
Recognition settled in all at once. Not from fiction—from myth. A name that didn't need embellishment. In Japanese mythology, Kusanagi stood where Mjolnir did in the Norse legends. Not just a weapon, but a divine constant. A blade whose authority existed independently of whoever held it.
I exhaled slowly.
"So I just pulled a divine katana," I muttered.
I went back over the summary, this time focusing on the capabilities.
Cutting through almost any material—including magical and supernatural defenses. That alone put it in a category where most weapons didn't belong. Conceptual resistance, layered protections, exotic materials—none of that mattered if the blade simply ignored the premise.
Wind control caught my attention next.
Ranged slashes. Enhanced mobility.
That wasn't flavor. That was reach and positioning. The ability to dictate distance, to turn a melee weapon into something that didn't have to respect conventional engagement ranges.
The last line made me pause.
Indestructible. Spiritually attuned. Subtly guiding its bearer against hostile intent.
"…Interesting," I murmured.
Not control. Guidance. A passive alignment rather than an override. That meant heightened awareness, better instinctual reactions—small corrections that added up in the middle of a fight.
I leaned back in the chair, already sorting it mentally.
Not subtle. Not discreet.
But brutally effective.
This wasn't an everyday tool. It was a commitment. The kind of weapon you drew when escalation was no longer a concern and the goal was to end things decisively.
[Item stored in Inventory.]
"Yeah," I said quietly. "That'll do."
I dismissed the detailed manifest for now. There would be time to examine it properly later—testing, calibration, understanding how it behaved under different conditions. For the moment, acknowledging its place in the arsenal was enough.
Two pulls down.
I flexed my fingers once, rolling my neck slightly as tension built in a familiar, manageable way. The room felt warmer now, the air denser—not because anything had changed physically, but because my attention was fully locked in.
The system responded to focus. It always did.
I went for the third pull without hesitation.
[Draw Initiated.]
This one felt different immediately.
No dramatic visuals. No symbolic buildup. The interface simplified instead, stripping itself down to a cleaner, more abstract presentation. Information over spectacle.
A capacity, then.
The result appeared almost instantly.
[Ability Acquired: All-Speak.]
[Ability Summary: All-Speak – Grants the ability to speak, understand, read, and write all spoken and written languages. Includes automatic contextual comprehension, allowing seamless communication across cultures and species.]
I blinked.
"All-Speak?"
That one, at least, I recognized immediately.
A built-in universal translator. Gods talking to mortals, aliens speaking to humans, ancient runes making sense the moment you looked at them.
Simple. Clean. Effective.
I skimmed the summary, just to be sure, then nodded to myself.
Speak, understand, read, write. No delay. No learning curve. No barriers.
"…Yeah," I murmured. "That's solid."
Not flashy. Not something anyone would ever notice unless I wanted them to. But in a world like this, language was friction. Every misunderstanding, every mistranslation, every missing nuance created openings for things to go wrong.
This removed that variable entirely.
Alien languages. Ancient texts. Obscure dialects. Dead civilizations. None of it would slow me down anymore.
I leaned back slightly.
"Low profile. High value," I said quietly.
Exactly my kind of upgrade.
Which made it perfect.
The interface pulsed once, subtly.
[Remaining Pulls: 1.]
I straightened.
Last one.
There was a certain weight to final pulls. Not superstition—pattern recognition. The system had a habit of ending sequences on notes that mattered.
I didn't rush it.
I closed my eyes briefly, not in anticipation, but alignment. Making sure my focus was where it needed to be. That I was ready to integrate whatever came next without friction.
When I opened them again, my finger was already moving.
[Draw Initiated.]
The interface didn't reset this time.
Instead, it paused—just long enough for me to notice.
Not a delay. A recalibration.
The symbols that formed on the screen were tighter, more abstract than before, their motion inward rather than circular. There was no spectacle here, no attempt at ceremony. Just a sense of compression, like something being folded into a denser shape.
Then the text resolved.
[Ability Acquired: Internal Flow Amplification.]
I stared at the result for a moment.
"Internal Flow Amplification…"
I exhaled slowly.
Not bad. But not standalone either.
I skimmed the description once, then again, letting the implications line up properly. This wasn't a new vector. No new ability. No new output. It didn't create anything on its own.
It reinforced what was already there.
"…Right," I muttered. "A multiplier."
Internal flow. Circulation. Efficiency. Less loss between intent and execution. More stability under strain. The kind of ability that never looked impressive on paper, but quietly decided how far everything else could be pushed.
Useful—conditionally.
I ran a quick inventory in my head.
At the moment, there were only two things it could actually interact with.
The Signs.
Geralt's magic wasn't flashy spellcasting. It was compact, internalized, driven by precise control rather than raw output. Exactly the kind of system that would benefit from smoother flow and tighter feedback loops.
That alone made this pull relevant.
The second option was Ki Concentration.
Same principle. Internal energy, structured circulation, deliberate release. Another framework where amplification didn't mean excess—it meant control under pressure.
I leaned back slightly.
"So this doesn't do anything by itself," I said quietly. "But paired correctly…"
It would make both systems cleaner. Safer. More repeatable. Higher ceilings without the usual penalties.
Not exciting.
But necessary.
I nodded once, decision made.
"Alright," I murmured. "You'll earn your keep."
I opened my eyes again and looked at the interface, already aware that the sequence was complete.
[Available Pulls: 0.]
No fanfare. No summary screen. The system trusted me to remember what mattered.
I leaned back in the chair, letting it support my weight fully now, and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. Four pulls. Four distinct vectors.
A template grounded in survival and restraint.
A blade tied to myth and authority.
A capacity that erased barriers of meaning.
And an internal refinement that made everything else… cleaner.
Not explosive.
Stable.
"This is a good set," I said quietly, more to myself than anything else.
My gaze drifted back to the window. Outside, the light had shifted again, the sun lower now, shadows stretching longer across the buildings. Time had passed without me noticing.
That was fine.
I stood and crossed the room slowly, stretching my shoulders as I went. There was no immediate need to test anything. No urgency to summon the blade or stress the new flow. Rushing integration was how mistakes happened.
Instead, I let the changes sit where they were, settling naturally.
The concert flickered back into focus in my mind—not as a source of pressure, but as context. A fixed point ahead. Something public. Loud. Bright. A sharp contrast to the quiet recalibration I'd just completed.
Dazzler was going to shine.
The Mary Janes would carry the rest.
My role, as usual, would be mostly invisible.
"Good," I muttered, glancing around the room one last time before heading for the door. "Let's keep it that way."
I turned off the monitor, the screen going dark as the system interface folded itself away, and stepped out into the hallway.
There were a few days left before the concert.
Plenty of time.