The golden prisoners dress rippled like a living constellation. The magic that had burst out of her after she finished drinking hajimes blood had not faded once, only the light dimmed. It clung to her in layers of scarlet and starlight, forming a gown that looked more like a manifestation of will than something sewn by mortal hands.
Countless translucent layers floated around her legs, each hem dusted with glittering motes that drifted upward instead of down, as if gravity had forgotten how to behave around her.
Fine threads of gold traced delicate patterns along the bodice—runes disguised as embroidery, binding her power close to her heart. The long sleeves hugged her arms before flaring slightly at the wrists, where tiny rings of light orbited like obedient planets.
It wasn't clothing. It was a declaration.
An astral dress woven directly from both their mana, anchored to the Tier 4 bond now locked between her soul and Hajime's.
The Golden Prisoner no longer looked like someone entombed. She looked like a crowned executioner.
Hajime took this in with a single, quick sweep of his eyes.
"Going all out for a warm up," he said.
The girl glanced sideways at him from beneath her lashes. Her crimson eyes, once dull from centuries of suppression, now burned with steady, focused intensity.
"This much," she replied calmly, "is the minimum needed to stand beside you."
Their Resonance pulsed between them at those words—a quiet, deep thrum of acknowledgement that settled in his chest and answered in hers.
---
Something tugged at the air warping it inward.
Mana coiled around the girl's right hand, condensing from scattered motes into a tight, spiraling stream. It wrapped her palm, then extended outward as if she were drawing a line through space.
Gold metal took shape along that path.
First, a slender rod formed—a staff bigger than herself, its surface carved in intricate filigree. Ruby inlays emerged between the patterns, each gem set with the precision of a jeweler and the cold focus of a weapon smith. The designs weren't purely decorative; Hajime could see the channels for mana flow etched into every line.
At the top of the staff, the metal swept outward into a circular frame and covering it was a second set of frame forming the out line of butterfly wings.
Within it, a crystal blossomed.
It wasn't just transparent. It was prismatic, a sphere that held shifting rainbows inside its depths. The colors pulsed in time with her heartbeat for an instant—then, subtly, synchronized with his.
Resonance Frequency: Hajime Nagumo.
The core of the scepter was literally tuned to him.
---
She lifted the weapon with both hands and examined it once, head tilting slightly.
"Hm," she murmured. "Better."
"What'd you get?" Hajime asked, eyes narrowing with professional curiosity.
"A focus," she replied, voice soft but certain. "Our bond is too deep to waste. With this as a tuning fork… my magic resonates with you automatically."
He could feel it.
Even at rest, the scepter hummed in the exact pattern of his heart Reactor. Every time he inhaled, the crystal brightened a fraction. Every time he exhaled, faint rings of mana rippled outward along the frame.
"Fine," he said. "Let's test it."
---
The scorpion was not dead.
Its main body and Segments of its tail twitched. One pincer half-lifted, slight
cracks along the parts he had been treating it with constant bomb therapy. Mana still pulsed inside the shell of Shtar reinforced shell that hadn't fully cracked.
"Honestly," Hajime muttered. "That thing doesn't understand death. It should learn to accept it."
Her lips quirked faintly.
"Then," she said, stepping forward, "I'll make it understand."
He felt her move through their bond before she took the first step. The Tier 4 link didn't just transmit raw power. It bled intent, rhythm, and emotional inflection. As she walked, his own stance adjusted with hers without conscious thought, like two pendulums falling into the same swing.
Her astral dress swayed with each motion, layers of crimson gauze and energy brushing against the floor without ever catching on the cracks. Petals of light drifted off the hem, dissolving into mana as they fell.
She stopped about halfway between Hajime and the scorpion.
"Sixty seconds," she said quietly, more to herself than to him.
"Hm?" he asked.
She met his eyes.
"Nexus Overdrive," she said. "Let's see how far it goes."
The words weren't a chant. They were a switch. Mana flared. The world tilted.
---
For Hajime, it felt like someone had abruptly doubled the frame rate on reality. Every breath, every micro movement, every stray particle of dust hanging in the air sharpened. His muscles, already honed and reinforced, suddenly felt like they were operating under a lighter more forgiving gravity.
This was just her boost bleeding into him. He Wondered how big the boost would be when they both activated Nexus Overdrive.
Status windows he didn't remember consciously calling flickered at the edge of his vision:
Tier 4 Resonance – Skill
Nexus Overdrive: ACTIVE (60 → 59…)
Multipliers ticked upward beside his physical stats. His senses climbed with them.
Miss princess, at the center of the storm, changed in more obvious ways. Her astral dress brightened, the crimson taking on deeper, richer tones threaded with streaks of blue white. The runic embroidery along her chest and waist flared, each sigil completing a circuit that sent power surging up her spine and down her arms.
The crystal in her scepter ignited. It spun once within its frame with no visible mechanical support, a ring of pure Resonance building around it. Inside the orb, color compressed from a swirling rainbow into a focused core of azure fire.
"Forty seconds," she murmured.
Hajime smirked despite himself.
"Showing off already?"
Her eyes did not leave the scorpion.
"You said this thing annoyed you," she replied serenely. "I am… removing the annoyance."
Mana poured from both of them, drawn into a co operative pool their bond now managed automatically. He felt the shift as clearly as if someone had turned a valve. His heart Reactor pushed power outward. Instead of simply filling his own networks, it spilled along the Resonance link, into her. She accepted it, refined it, and fed part of it back, cycling the flow into a tighter, hotter loop.
A spell began to form.
She raised the scepter and pointed it toward the scorpion. The crystal at its tip answered like an eager animal straining at the leash. Mana crystallized around the orb, not as a sphere this time but as a flat, invisible plane extending from the scepter's tip out into the air. Hajime's Detect Magic saw it clearly: a compressed edge, a line where fire and pressure had been folded into something like a blade.
"A sword made of calibrated spellwork," she whispered.
Azure Blaze.
Form change—Edge.
The compressed magic snapped into a beam. It wasn't thick. It didn't roar or bellow. It simply existed—a hair thin line of blue white light that started at her scepter and extended across the chamber, passing through the scorpion's bulk and continuing into the far wall.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the world caught up.
The scorpion split. No explosion. No dramatic shattering. One second, its body was whole. The next, it slid apart along the path the beam had traced, the right and left part of its body sliding away in halfs in eerie silence. The cut surface glowed, then dissolved as the azure flame ate everything along the incision line.
The wall behind it fared no better. Shtar fragments embedded in the stone, the reinforcement glyphs the dungeon had carved there, even the dense rock itself—everything along that path parted like paper. A deep, clean gouge appeared from floor to ceiling, the far edge of it glowing molten before cooling to black.
The beam winked out an instant later. Nexus Overdrive's timer ticked down from thirty to twenty nine.
She exhaled slowly, the scepter lowering by a few degrees.
"Overkill," Hajime said his lips Twitching.
"Effective," she corrected as she smiled beautifully.
They stared at the bisected guardian for another long moment. No twitch. No residual mana spikes. Whatever stubborn will had clung to its core before was gone now, cut so cleanly its last thought probably hadn't had time to finish forming.
"Yeah," he conceded. "Effective."
He then went ahead and consumed what was left of it
---
"No more full power beams, then," she said softly.
"Not unless there's something bigger than that, then no it's unnecessary," Hajime replied, nodding at the remains. "And if there is, we both have Nexus Overdrive."
She glanced around the chamber, then back at him.
"The seal is gone. The guardian is gone," she said. "What remains is… us."
Us.
The word sat strangely warm in his chest. The bond hummed again in response, feeding that warmth back to her. Yet it is now he realised he still hadn't introduced themselves, slightly embarrassed he asked for her name while introducing himself.
She sighed wistfully "That name once belong to a foolish Princess. I am way passed that, why don't you provide me a new name in-commemoration of my new life with you moving forward."
Hajime thought for a second she reminded him of the crimson moon and he wanted to name her the type–moon. But then he thought if he did that the next azure blade would be aimed at his ass so he simply went with "Yue"
"What do you think of Yue? I'm not really good at the whole naming Thing, so I can try thinking up a different one if you don't like it."
"Yue…? Yue…Yue…"
"Yeah. Where I come from, it means 'moon.' When I first came into This room your head with that golden hair and red eyes reminded me of the moon, So I just… Well, what do you think?"
She blinked in surprise at his Words. It seemed she hadn't expected him to have a reason behind Picking the name. And though her face remained as expressionless as Always, her eyes were sparkling with happiness.
"…Hmm. Then from today onwards, I will be Yue. Thank you."
"Glad you like it. Anyway…"
He rolled his shoulders, testing how much of Nexus Overdrives Drain from her still clung to his reserves now that the immediate danger was past. The buff was still active, but the adrenaline spike had faded; what remained was a cool, sharpened focus. Movements felt precise. Thoughts flowed cleaner.
"Observation," he said. "Nexus Overdrive is ridiculous."
Yue inclined her head slightly.
"Mm. It was built under the assumption you wouldn't hold back," she said. "If I had tried to channel only my own mana, the bond would have rebelled. It wants both of us, or nothing."
"Clingy system," he grumbled.
"Efficient system," she countered.
He snorted.
"Fine. Efficient and clingy."
He stepped toward the scorpion's corpse, now properly dead. Predator stirred in his Soul Core, having already devoured the main core earlier, but there were still lingering pockets of mana in Shtar chunks scattered across the floor.
"Any more surprises?" he asked.
Yue closed her eyes briefly, letting her perception stretch out in waves.
"…No," she said. "This room is quiet. Whatever this guardian was tied to, it's finished."
He nodded and crouched by one of the larger shards of armor. Up close, the Shtar ore's structure was fascinating. Layer upon layer of mana enriched crystal lattices twisted into each other like someone had tried to braid stone. With his freshly gained Earth Manipulation sitting comfortably alongside Transmute EX, he could feel how the material had drunk in power and hardened accordingly.
"Good material," he said. "Can probably salvage enough for multiple armor plating. Maybe even barrel lining." He filed away a dozen design ideas automatically.
Behind him, Yue watched quietly, her scepter resting against her shoulder as she crossed her arms. The astral dress' brightness dimmed now that Overdrive's countdown had dwindled to its last few seconds, but it didn't vanish. The gown simply settled into a calmer state, the starlight along the hem pulsing at a more relaxed pace.
She looked down at herself, fingers brushing the fabric lost in thought.
"…Strange," she murmured.
"What is?" Hajime asked without looking up.
"This form," she said. "I did not… design it. Not consciously."
He glanced over his shoulder.
"You mean the dress?"
"The dress. The scepter. The way my magic moved." She frowned faintly. "It all came to me as if I had used them a thousand times already. Like memories that belong to someone I haven't met yet."
He blinked. Recognition settling on him.
Multiversal Awareness.
"Thanks for the comforting phrasing," he said. "Always love hearing my partner is channelling outfits from mysterious strangers."
Her lips curved in a tiny teasing smile.
"Mm. I suppose that would bother you," she said. "But it feels less like… someone else, and more like future echoes. As if the Resonance is reaching ahead and dragging back what we will become."
He straightened, dusting his hands off.
"Temporal resonance now?" he muttered. "Great. Add that to the bug report."
Yue tilted her head.
"Does it bother you?" she asked.
He considered it for a moment.
"…No," he said finally. "If the future us knows how to dress you and arm you properly, I'll take the free research."
She actually laughed at that, soft and surprised. The sound bounced once off the ruined walls and settled somewhere warm between them.
Nexus Overdrive's timer hit zero. The extra sharpness in the air eased. Stats slid back to their previous "absurd but stable" values. The link between them, however, did not weaken. If anything, without the Overdrive amplifying everything, its baseline steadiness was more apparent.
The backlash finally rolled in. No pain, thanks to her reserves being connected to his. Just an awareness of expenditure. The co op mana pool they'd formed was still deep, but the top layer had been scooped out in one greedy swipe. His reactor adjusted, raising its output unconsciously to refill the reserves. Yue felt it too through the bond.
---
"Alright," Hajime said, clapping his hands once. "Seal broken. Guardian bisected. New dress unlocked. New weapon manifested. Bond calibrated. Next step?"
"There is a problem, I would still be naked when I turn off the astral dress all i will have will be the coat you gave me. This dress takes mana to manifest and is a constant drain to my reserves." Yue said.
"That shouldn't be a issue wait a minute,I will make a few sets from the pelts I have gathered." with that hajime focused on making clothes while yue clung to his back and observed him.
They left the sealing room and took some time to rest outside and yue didn't want to stay in that room any longer which was understandable after all she went through.
Yue's gaze drifted toward the far side of the chamber—to where Infinite Resonance had earlier hinted at something deeper.
"There is a path below," she said. "The Maverick who built this floor did not intend this floor to be the end. It is an midpoint. A rest space turned into a sealing room by my uncle."
"So he made this your place of rest," Hajime said dryly, nudging a piece of Shtar with his boot.
She hummed, noncommittal.
"From a certain point of view," she replied.
He couldn't argue with that.
He walked back into the sealed room near the now quiet dais where the sealstone had once stood in full, oppressive glory. In its place lay fragments of red gold rock and faint traces of sigils burned into the floor.
He knelt and placed his palm flat against the center. Infinite Resonance flowed down. Beneath the chamber, he felt it: an empty shaft and an item sealed inside. He placed the item alongside all the minerals into his inventory and returned.
Since he had scanned the entire floor before he entered yue's room he knew the path towards the next floor.
"Yeah," he said. "There's the route."
He stood and glanced at Yue.
"You still good to move?" he asked. "No dizziness? No 'oops, I used all my mana and now I'm falling over'?"
She gave him a flat look.
"I am not that fragile," she said. Then, after a tiny pause: "…And if I become dizzy, you will carry me. So there is no problem."
He rolled his eyes.
"Confident, aren't you miss bond-bearer."
"Resonator," she corrected softly.
He blinked.
"Resonator?"
"That is what we should call those bound by Resonance," she said. "You. Me. Anyone who forges this type of connection with you."
Hajime tested the word in his mind. Resonator. Fitted.
"Fine," he said. "You're my FIRST RESONATOR, then."
Her expression softened almost imperceptibly.
"Mm," she replied. "Your first Resonator."
The bond pulsed once more, like a heartbeat they shared.
He sighed.
"Alright, First Resonator," he said, jerking his chin toward the floor. "Let's go see what kind of inheritance a god hating lunatic left us."
Yue came to stand at his side, the hem of her dress whispering over the stone. She shifted the re-summoned scepter in her hand; the crystal's light dimmed to a steady glow, ready but not aggressive.
"Together," she said.
"Together," he agreed.
They crossed the chamber side by side and stopped above the faint outline of a spiral staircase.
Below, the Orcus depths waited. The monstrous boy and the vampire princess descended toward whatever awaited in the dark.
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Author: "Send me stones, I beg thee."
Reader: "A true alpha mines his own."
Author: starts crafting pickaxe in emotional Minecraft 🧱
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