Chapter 191 - The Big Leagues

I spent another several minutes just recovering, before the urge to actually check the [ {Anima Razor} ] Perks became too large to bear.

‘It’s been so damn long since I’ve been able to look at the Perks for [Blades], [Knives] and all the other Skills that ended up being eaten by this one… Show me what you came up with, System!’

Immediately upon my request, the Perks arrayed themselves in front of my inner eye.

[False Edge] [ Requirement: Level 3  [ {Anima Razor} ]]
What the hell is "Invisible Air" even supposed to mean? Air  is already invisible!  You gain the ability to project a thin shell around a held blade, turning it invisible. This can be activated and deactivated at will.

[One Good Knife] [ Requirement: Level 3  [ {Anima Razor} ]]
It's not hoarding if you only keep the best one.  You gain the ability to designate a single blade as your primary weapon and call it to you from a distance. The blade must physically be able to traverse the distance to reach its destination. This designation persists until you choose a different blade, and only one weapon can hold the attunement at any time.

[Spiritual Draw] [ Requirement: Level 3  [ {Anima Razor} ]]
The blade hums... The Sprites answer. You gain the ability to use the act of drawing or unsheathing a blade as a trigger for Sprite accumulation, building the foundational layer of an [Anima Razor] technique in the same motion, reducing the amount of preparation time required to unleash the technique drastically. This does not reduce the amount of Anima  Energy required to use the technique.

[Thermal Inlay] [ Requirement: Level 3  [ {Anima Razor} ]]
Is this... a fucking light saber or something?! You gain the ability to weave Red and Yellow Sprites into any held blade's edge, causing it to retain intense localised heat along the cutting surface without deforming or damaging the weapon itself. Cuts made with a thermally inlaid blade cauterise instantly, and the heat transfers into whatever is struck without dispersing into the surrounding air. The amount of Red and Yellow Sprites that can be woven into the blade is determined by your Anima Attribute.

[Singing Resonance] [ Requirement: Level 3  [ {Anima Razor} ]]
The most beautiful of sounds... The singing of the blade.  You gain the ability to instinctively listen to the micro-vibrations of your held blade to get perfect spatial awareness around yourself, even in complete darkness, smoke or other visual impairments. The range of the spatial awareness is determined by the knowledge-level of the Skill.

My eyes widened progressively as I read through them—each entry pushing them a little further—and my jaw was doing a matching descent that I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried.

' Wow… These are all fucking insane. '

Not only were they all immediately useful—some more than others, sure, but there wasn't a single dud in the bunch that I could dismiss outright—but they were also… surprisingly fantastical in nature, for lack of a better word.

Most Level 3 Perks I'd seen so far, Tier 1 in other words, had been relatively grounded.

Impressive, yeah sometimes, but rooted in something that at least pretended to respect the laws of physics. [Wall Runner] had been about the most out-there thing I'd encountered, and even that was effectively just a modified version of what a normal person could already do—it just lasted longer than physics had any right to allow.

But these?

A straight-up lightsaber-style thermal upgrade for any blade I held? Making my weapon fully invisible for as long as I maintained it? Jedi-like powers to recall my sword from a distance if I got disarmed?!

All of it was pure, undiluted, Anima-fueled nonsense  that had absolutely zero foundation in realistic physics and no grounding in reality whatsoever.

"And I'm honestly all for that, hot damn…" I muttered, grinning like an idiot.

The main issue was twofold.

First—I wasn't Level 3 yet, because I hadn't done the Knowledge and Muscle Memory download for [{Anima Razor}] and wasn't going to until after the meetup with Kenzie, just to make sure I didn't accidentally mess something up with the Network while it was still healing.

And second—what the hell Perk was I supposed to pick out of these? I wanted  all of them.

Like, right the fuck now. Every single one . Immediately. No waiting whatsoever!

I let out a heavy sigh and let myself fall back onto the bed again, arms spread wide, staring at the ceiling.

'That's going to be a damn pain to figure out… But I guess at least I'll have some decent amount of time to think about it all.'

There was no gig coming up and likely wouldn’t be for at least a few days, after all.

Ultimately, I decided to wait with making any bigger decisions on the Perk side of things for now—at least until I had gotten the download for the Skill first. That one might, after all, provide some additional insights on what Perk would be best suited for my current situation.

With that settled, I pulled up the Rest Function and—for the first time in what felt like an eternity but had only been a few days—let myself drop into its embrace.

The nothingness hit like a gift from whatever deity ran this world.

My eyes fluttered open an instant later.

One moment I was confirming the Function, the next I was once again awake and several hours had ceased to exist in the space between one blink and the next.

[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 04:00:00
[System]: 200 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.

Then the changes registered .

The lingering ache and burn from the after-injection downloads had dulled, pushed back to somewhere I had to actively search for to even notice.

The residual stiffness and soreness that had been my constant companion since the foyer  was also not fully gone, but reduced to something that felt like a memory of pain rather than pain itself. The damage in my hands had receded to being barely even noticeable. My shoulders didn't ache at all anymore and my head was clear for the first time since before the gig.

I could've cried . And maybe I did a bit, who knows?

' God, I missed you, ' I thought at the Rest Function with entirely too much affection for a System feature, and then started getting ready.

I threw a bag together—casual clothes on, gi folded and packed as a backup, because I genuinely had no idea whether Kenzie was expecting full dojo attire for this or something more relaxed, and showing up wrong in either direction felt like a lose-lose.

Better to have options.

Then I made my way to the elevator. The ride started normal  enough.

I punched in the 101st floor, watched the number register on the display, and then stood there as a small, quiet knot of nervousness settled into my stomach.

This was the first time I'd be going to a triple-digit  floor in the Megabuilding.

Anything 100 and above was a different world entirely, I knew from the playthroughs—high-end residential, corporate suites, the kind of space that existed behind layers of security and access restrictions that made the mid-floors like mine look like public parks by comparison. Nothing even remotely  close to any of the floors I'd visited so far.

As if it had been reading my mind, the elevator reminded me of that fact immediately .

An angry chime cut through the cabin, followed by a biometrics prompt and a visitor pass request that flashed across the interface with the polite-but-very-firm energy of a bouncer who was absolutely  not going to let me through without the right credentials.

Even with my elevated access levels from Valeria's household, the system had taken one look at my destination and decided I needed to prove I had business being there.

Thankfully, Kenzie had attached a visitor pass to her message—which I loaded in right away.

' And this is "just" Kenzie, ' I thought as the biometrics cleared and the elevator accepted my credentials with a considerably less hostile second chime. 'I can't even imagine what getting to Tom's floor is going to be like later this week. Probably a full-ass security screening and a blood sample… I hope not, cause [Lightfoot] is going to make  that fairly problematic.'

With everything verified, the elevator shot upward.

Not the usual, steady climb I was used to from hopping between the lower and mid floors—this was fast . I felt the acceleration press slightly into the soles of my feet and saw the floor counter tick over with a speed that was almost hard to follow.

The numbers climbed past double digits, past the fifties, past the seventies, the usual stops and slowdowns that broke up any normal elevator ride entirely absent. Apparently, once you cleared whatever threshold the triple-digit floors operated on, the elevator stopped pretending it had other places to be entirely.

Usually, even when I went to double-digit restricted floors, there was still some level of slowdown involved as other elevators could be routed onto your track before yours had the chance to go—they were somewhat three-dimensional in movement, after all.

But here? Not a single time.

It took several minutes  even at that speed before the cabin finally began to decelerate, the smooth slowdown settling into a gentle stop that barely registered in my knees.

Then I finally arrived.

Not with the usual sharp electronic beep I'd heard a thousand times—but with a sound that was almost musical. A soft, layered chime that reminded me of wind-chimes caught in a gentle breeze, each note distinct, clear and thoroughly unlike anything the elevator had ever produced on any floor I'd visited before.

Even the doors themselves moved differently as they opened—slower and smoother, like they had all the time in the world and wanted me to know it.

As the doors fully opened, I stepped outside right away, looked out, and felt my brain stall .

The first thing that hit me wasn't the architecture.

Nor was it the strange, unfamiliar give of the ground beneath my boots, or the fact that the elevator shaft behind me was sheathed in a massive mirror panel that caught the light and blended almost seamlessly into its surroundings, making the entire structure effectively vanish unless you were standing right next to it and knew what you were looking at.

It was the all-encompassing sky .

Vast, open and blue, stretching overhead in every direction.

Thick, voluminous clouds drifted across it in lazy formations, catching light from a sun that wasn't real but looked more than real enough to make my brain completely refuse to process the difference.

And beyond the buildings—past the rooftops and the treeline, which in itself was already insane to mention— hills  rolled outward into forested ridges that climbed toward a god damn mountain range  sitting heavy and distant along the horizon, their white peaks fading into a soft, bluish haze that looked exactly like atmospheric perspective was supposed to look when you were staring at something genuinely  far away.

I had to actively, consciously remind myself that I was still inside Delta.

Still inside the Megabuilding. Still standing on a floor—the 101st floor to be exact—of a structure made of rockcrete, steel, composite paneling and absolute fucking bullshit, apparently, surrounded on all sides by hundreds of other floors above and below me.

My brain, however, was  not buying it.

Because even the air was wrong —or right, depending on perspective.

It smelled clean —not filtered-clean, not recycled-atmosphere-clean, but actually  clean, carrying a faint, sweet undertone of something floral that mixed with the crispness of open space in a way that hit me somewhere deep and unexpected.

It smelled the way Japan had smelled, during that one trip I'd taken in my past life.

The memory was extremely vague—more feeling than detail—but the recognition was still immediate and not any less visceral. Cool air with just enough warmth underneath it, carrying the scent of blossoms, wet earth and the sea.

I stood there for a solid few seconds, simply breathing; taking it all in.

Then the architecture around me finally registered and my brain stalled all over again.

Cherry blossoms in full bloom lined both sides of the path ahead of me in thick, mature canopies that scattered pale pink petals across the ground with every faint movement of the air—and the air  did move. A gentle, consistent breeze moved around me that felt entirely too natural to be artificial but absolutely had  to be.

I lazily watched the petals collect in soft drifts along the edges of the walkway, clustering against stone borders and wooden fences, before a stronger breeze carried them away to who-knows-where.

The buildings on either side of the path were… estates .

There wasn't a smaller word for them that I could come up with.

Traditional Nighon architecture—as intended by the game devs—scaled up to manor level, each one set back behind low stone walls and wooden gates with the kind of deliberate, spacious separation that communicated a very specific message about the people who lived behind them.

Sweeping tiled rooftops with curved eaves, dark timber framing over pale plastered walls, sliding panel doors visible through gaps in the outer walls where courtyards opened up.

Some had multiple structures connected by covered walkways—main houses, auxiliary buildings, what looked like private garden pavilions—all arranged with the careful, asymmetric intentionality of traditional Nighon estate design.

But it wasn't pure Japanese—hence Nighon.

It was not a straight recreation of simply “Japan” that the game designers had intended.

Nighon was inherently cyberpunk. And that bled through in many places—woven into the aesthetic rather than simply bolted on top of it.

Thin strips of soft neon traced the underside of some eaves, casting faint blue or amber light against dark wood.

Interface panels sat recessed into gateposts, their holographic displays cycling in muted tones that matched the surrounding palette rather than fighting it.

Security drones drifted between the cherry blossoms at rooftop level, their casings styled in dark lacquer finishes that made them look almost ornamental.

One of the larger estates had some kind of array mounted on its roof that had been shaped to resemble a traditional, bronze ornament.

And the ground… I finally looked down properly for the first time and realized what had been throwing off my footing since the elevator.

It wasn't rockcrete.

The path I was standing on was gravel . Actual, loose, crunching-underfoot gravel, raked into clean lines along the borders and mixed with a fine-grain dirt that packed firm under my weight but still gave just enough to feel completely, unmistakably different from every other surface I'd walked on inside the Megabuilding.

The kind of gravel path you'd find leading up to a shrine or through a formal garden in exactly  the kind of place this floor was pretending—very convincingly—to be.

' I'm still inside Delta, ' I told myself again, with slightly less conviction than the first few times.

I took a breath. Then another.

The cherry blossom petals drifted past me in the breeze.

' This is someone's floor… This is where Kenzie lives… This is a residential floor inside a Megabuilding… and it has fucking mountains . '

I pulled up the directions Kenzie had attached to her message, let my cerebral link overlay the route onto my field of view, and started walking.

Deliberately slower than I needed  to, if I was being honest about it—but the floor earned it.

Every few steps there was something new to look at, some detail that caught my eye and held it for a moment longer than I'd intended.

The gravel path wound between the estates in gentle, unhurried curves, lined on both sides by low stone walls topped with dark timber fencing that had been oiled and maintained to a deep, rich sheen.

Mature, green trees I couldn't name dotted the spaces between properties—some clearly decorative, sculpted into the kind of precise, deliberate shapes that took years of careful tending to achieve, others left wilder, their branches heavy with new growth and the occasional cluster of pink-white blossoms that added to the steady drift of petals already filling the air.

Small stone lanterns sat at precise intervals along the path, their surfaces weathered and moss-touched in a way that looked genuinely aged rather than artificially distressed.

Whether they were actually  old or just extremely well-made reproductions was anyone's guess, and frankly I wasn't sure it mattered—the effect was the damn same.

They lined the approaches to estate gates, flanked small wooden bridges that crossed narrow water channels running alongside the main walkway, and clustered in small groupings near intersections where the path branched toward different properties.

The water channels were a nice touch too, I couldn’t deny—visibly clear, shallow streams that burbled quietly over smooth stones, catching light from the simulated sky overhead and throwing faint, dancing reflections onto the underside of nearby foliage.

Actual fish —or what looked like actual fish from a distance, at least—darted through the shallows in flashes of orange and white.

‘This place is fucking unreal…’

I passed a few people on the way.

Not many, given that the floor likely had the kind of population density that came with very large properties and very few of them, but enough to confirm that this wasn't some abandoned heritage exhibit.

A woman in a fitted, high-collared outfit that blended traditional Nighon layering with sleek modern lines walked leisurely past me without a second glance at some point, her attention fixed on a holographic display projected from a slim device at her wrist.

An older man sat on a bench near one of the bridges, reading something on a datapad, a small drone hovering at shoulder height beside him like a patient attendant.

Nobody looked at me at all. Nobody seemed particularly concerned about someone from a lower floor wandering through their immaculate, mountain-having, cherry-blossom-lined neighborhood.

' Kenzie lives here, ' I thought once more, watching another drift of petals scatter across the path ahead of me. 'Kenzie fucking lives  here, and I live on a floor where the elevator smells like recycled air and mild regret at the best of times. Cool… That's fine. Not jealous at all or anything. Nope!'

The route eventually brought me to what the overlay confirmed was my destination—an estate set slightly back from the main path behind a stone wall that was a touch higher than most of the others I'd passed, its surface clean and well-maintained, dark timber framing visible above the stonework.

A large gate dominated the front—more dark, wooden-paneled, visibly heavy, traditional in design, with similarly dark, heavy iron fittings that had been styled to look hand-forged.

‘At least I hope  they’re styled to look like that… I don’t even know if actual blacksmiths still exist in this world.’

Beside the gate, a datascreen sat recessed into the outer wall, integrated so cleanly into the stone that I almost walked past it before my eyes caught the faint glow of its standby display.

I stared at it for a few seconds, trying to figure out how it worked—there were no obvious buttons, no familiar interface layout, just a smooth surface with what might have been touch-reactive zones marked by barely-visible indicators that I was squinting at from two different angles before I finally found the right spot.

A name lit up across the display in clean, elegant script.

Molida.

'Right place, then.'

I found the contact icon—shaped like a small bell, because of course it was—and pressed it.

A soft chime sounded from somewhere beyond the gate, muted and melodic, nothing like the sharp electronic buzz I was used to from every other door system I'd interacted with in the Megabuilding.

I waited, hands at my sides, bag slung over one shoulder, doing my best to look like someone who belonged in a place with mountains and koi fish.

A few moments passed.

Then the gate's panels shifted, separating down the center with a smooth, mechanical motion that was almost entirely silent, the heavy wood gliding apart on tracks hidden somewhere in the stonework.

I was already composing a greeting for Kenzie in my head when the person standing on the other side turned out to very much not be Kenzie.

I froze, just slightly.

He was tall, slender and immaculately composed—an older gentleman, his posture carrying the particular brand of straight-backed precision that communicated decades of professional service.

His features were sharp and angular, marked with the unmistakable signs of genetic modification.

Pointed, wolf-like ears sat high on his head, their fur a silvered grey that matched the neat, close-cropped hair at his temples. His eyes were a pale, striking amber—the kind of color that didn't occur naturally in baseline humans and wasn't trying to pretend otherwise.

And, most importantly of all, he was wearing a damn butler's outfit. Like an actual proper, honest-to-god  butler's outfit—dark fabric, crisp lines, white gloves, the full works.

‘It looks like it costs more than my entire Operator loadout combined, good fucking lord… What even is that fabric…?!’

His gaze swept over me once—brief, efficient, unmistakably cataloguing everything relevant about me in less than half a second—and then he spoke, his voice carrying the precise, measured cadence of someone for whom every syllable had been considered before it left his mouth.

"Would I be correct in addressing Miss Vildea?"

My mouth opened and the word "no" almost— almost —came out, before the rest of my brain caught up to the part that had been living as Sera and Ela so exclusively for so long that my actual legal surname had apparently been filed somewhere in deep storage.

'You are, in fact, Miss Vildea, you idiot!'

"Yes," I said, recovering with what I hoped was an acceptable delay. "That's me."

He gave a single, precise nod, then stepped to one side and extended one gloved hand toward the interior of the estate grounds in a gesture so practiced it looked choreographed.

"The younger Miss Molida is expecting you. Please, do come  in."

I stepped through the gate and it closed behind me automatically, the heavy panels sliding back together with that same near-silent motion, and I found myself standing at the entrance to a space that made the rest of the floor look like a damn warm-up act.

A wide gravel path—raked into immaculate, parallel lines with the kind of precision that suggested either a  very  dedicated groundskeeper or a very well-programmed drone—led from the gate toward the main house, which sat at the far end of the property behind a screen of sculpted pines and ornamental maples whose leaves had been allowed to grow into cascading, layered canopies of deep red and green.

To my left, a formal gravel garden dominated an open courtyard—raked white stones arranged around several large, dark boulders in patterns that probably had some deeply significant philosophical meaning that I was  entirely unqualified to parse.

A low wooden platform bordered one edge of it, polished to a warm sheen.

Soft neon accent lighting traced the platform's underside, casting a faint amber glow against the white gravel that was subtle enough to be almost subliminal in aura.

To my right, the grounds sloped gently downward toward a koi pond that was significantly larger than anything I'd have expected to find on a Megabuilding floor—or anywhere indoors, really.

The water was clear and still except where clusters of koi broke the surface in slow, languid movements, their scales flashing gold, white and vermillion as they caught the light.

Flat stepping stones crossed one end of the pond, leading to a small wooden pavilion on the far bank that sat beneath a canopy of wisteria, its trailing purple blossoms hanging low enough to nearly brush the water's surface—but never quite touching.

A narrow stream fed into the pond from somewhere further back on the property, its path winding between carefully placed rocks and low-growing moss that was impossibly, aggressively green.

The main house itself, which we were heading towards, was traditional in structure but the cyberpunk signatures were there if you really looked: Thin light strips ran along the base of the exterior walls, pulsing softly in standby mode.

The shoji-style sliding panels along the front of the house had a faint, barely-visible hexagonal pattern embedded in them that suggested they were reinforced with something considerably more durable than paper and wood.

Several security nodes were mounted under the main eave, styled to look like decorative roof ornaments but carrying the unmistakable silhouettes of sensor arrays .

The butler, meanwhile, walked ahead of me at a measured pace, footsteps crunching softly on the gravel, and I followed—trying very  hard not to gawk at everything like a tourist, and almost certainly failing.

There was only one thing going through my mind at this point.

‘Fucking hell, can I just marry Kenzie and live here or something…?’