Aftermath
I went back to my hideout.
At some point, I'd stopped calling it a place to sleep and started calling it home. That realization sat heavier than it should have.
I set everything down on the floor.
What was left of my short sword—no blade now, just the hilt and a jagged stump where steel used to be.
The spearhead, bent and blunted from ramming it into things it was never meant to pierce.
The knife. Chipped. Edge rolled. Still sharp enough to hurt myself if I was careless. Not sharp enough to trust.
I lined them up.
Not trash.
Proof.
This was how far borrowed courage got me.
I sat there longer than I needed to, staring at the collection like it might argue back.
It didn't.
I wrapped them carefully and set them aside. Not to fix. Just to keep. Along with the other three.
Then I counted the valis.
Thirty-five thousand. Saved slowly. Carefully.
Seven more from what survived the last fight.
Too many magic stones had shattered. That was on me—desperation, sloppy angles, killing blows driven too deep. Bell sold what was left and split it clean. No handlers. No questions. No problems.
Fair.
I exhaled and tied the pouch shut.
Waiting wasn't going to fix anything.
Neither was hoping the next fight would be kinder.
I needed something permanent.
Something that wouldn't snap the moment I leaned on it too hard.
A real weapon.
I stood up, slung the pouch over my shoulder, and headed out.
Time to stop borrowing.
Time to build.
Forty-two thousand valis. Heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight.
The streets moved around me—adventurers, merchants, noise. I walked through it without paying attention.
My head was somewhere else.
Bell survived.
Not because he got lucky. Not just because he leveled fast.
He survived because he wasn't alone.
Welf. Lilly.
The smith and the supporter.
I'd watched it happen. Knew how it played out. Seen the way those two kept him standing when everything else tried to knock him down.
That was the difference.
Not just stats. Not just luck.
Infrastructure.
And I'd been thinking about this all wrong.
Buying a sword from a shop would help. For a week. Maybe two. Until the next desperate fight. Until I leaned too hard on something that wasn't built to hold.
What I needed wasn't a transaction.
It was a relationship.
Bell had Welf.
I couldn't take Welf. Bell needed him. I knew that the same way I knew other things I shouldn't—the shape of events that hadn't happened yet, the weight of connections waiting to form.
But I could learn from them.
Find my own version.
Build my own foundation before the next fight left me with nothing but a broken hilt and bad timing.
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