Chewie spat the words as she ripped her blade free from the succubus?fey’s torso, a spray of ink and shredded paper fountaining out around her boots.
Eathan didn’t waste the beat that the attack brought him.
With Chewie keeping the main body and its army of minor moths busy, he broke off diagonally, sprinting toward the lightning?rod feeder site the earlier swarm had chewed open. Gravel scattered under his sneakers; the whole rooftop hummed with a headache of charms and overcaffeinated student panic.
Two anchors down. One left, then we zip this shut before exams write themselves into the sky.
He skidded to his knees beside the scorched metal pad, yanked out four of Area 003’s specialty sealing talismans, and slapped them into the empty corners of the feeder site in quick succession.
Paper bit stone with a muffled thunk.
The building shuddered. A deep, invisible muscle under Westpoint’s roofline clenched as the seals gripped the leylines and dragged them taut, stitching this feeder back into the stabilizing net linked with the first vent?shaft site.
“Second feeder restabilised!” he shouted.
[Calamity Radar] ghosted across his retina, overlay blooming in clean lines. A translucent schematic of the building’s qi grid lit in gradients of gold. Three big arteries pulsed bright—the vent shaft, the lightning rod he’d just patched, and the drain spout still flashing a sickly amber.
One left. We lock all three, we starve the rift. We lock the rift, the fey runs out of room.
The world didn’t care about his tidy little flowchart.
The succubus?fey screamed, the sound scraping down Eathan’s spine. It opened its chest?mouth and inhaled hard, sucking in a storm of nearby moths. Hundreds—no, thousands—of paper bodies ripped themselves out of the dome and poured into it, stuffing the fey’s hollow ribs until they bulged.
“...Oh—ew.”
Under Chewie’s wide eyes, the thing bloated like a nightmare pufferfish. Both inky arms rose, blotting out the emergency lights; then, it brought them down in one massive, tar?tide crash.
The impact swallowed the eleven?year?old whole.
“Chewie!” Eathan yelled, already pivoting toward her—
—right as a psychic backhand yanked him off his feet.
A wall of moths slammed into his chest. He flew, skidding across rough gravel until his shoulder bounced off a roof vent hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. Grit filled his mouth; the sky pinwheeled.
[HP] has decreased by 34% (95% → 61%)
“Gross, gross, gross—”
Chewie’s voice came from inside the black puddle. Eathan blinked grit out of his eyes. The succubus-fey ooze clung to her like tar, thin arms punching through, then a small head as she clawed her way out of slimy shadow.
“I’m fine!” he croaked automatically, rolling onto an elbow.
“I’m not!” she shot back, flinging a handful of ink off her bangs.
The bloated succubus?fey lurched toward them again, now with wrongly bent joints and ink spilling out of its mouth and eye sockets in ropes. Around it, thousands of paper moths condensed into a rolling sphere that started to avalanche toward them—an exam?stress meatball the size of a car.
“…We can’t out?tank that,” Eathan said, heart punching at his ribs.
Instead, we out?run it, out?cut it, and close the drain before it refills.
His [SYSTEM] interface flicked up reflexively at his wrist, the way a hand slaps for a light switch in the dark.
He made the choice in one breath.
600 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (797 → 197)
[Primary Stats] have been updated!
[Agility]: Lv. 73 → Lv. 80
Power detonated down his veins, and the world sharpened.
The roar of moth?wings separated into individual beats; each flicker of ink became a trackable object. Muscles that had been screaming a second ago now felt geared, tendons smoothing like someone had oiled his joints.
He sucked in air that tasted like chalk, pushed his foot down, and launched. The ground rumbled in response. He crossed the distance back to Chewie in three strides.
“Left!” he snapped.
She didn’t argue. Weeks of drills in subway mezzanines and shitty Queens alleys kicked in. Chewie twisted low, rolling under the incoming wave. Her blade flashed up in a vicious arc, splitting the rolling moth?sphere down the middle like a pi?ata.
“Tunnel’s open!” she barked.
“On it!”
Eathan dove into that gap, shoulder brushing her as he went. He yanked a Jawdropper Gummies multipack from his pouch, thumb swiping its barcode across the [Receipt Printer].
A mid?range stun talisman spat out, edges still warm. He snapped it toward the heart of the swarm—
—and his UI hiccuped.
The scanner buzzed, text tearing sideways like a glitched slide. For a split second, his entire HUD went to static.
“Now? Really?” he wheezed.
Then the static reassembled itself, snapping into a cleaner, sharper pane that hadn’t been there before.
Skill [Receipt Printer] has levelled up! (Lv. 4 → Lv. 5)
? SKILL: Receipt Printer (Lv. 5)
? DESCRIPTION:
Host may cast talismans from live?scan items, or Stored Barcodes drawer (keeps 7 most?recent scans).
Array Builder can now chain up to 5 seals into a ring or line; executes in order. If you’re interrupted, completed steps persist.
Quick?Swap Palettes (A/B/C): save favourite seal sets; swap palettes mid?fight in one heartbeat.
? COST: Free for regular seals; 6 Qi Tokens per Stored Barcode; palette swap costs 0 Qi Tokens; cancel mid-array refunds 50% Qi Tokens for uncast steps.
? COOLDOWN: N/A
CURRENTLY STORED BARCODES (7):
[1] Lucky Joss Paper (祭) — 8941-113-JP — Guidance
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
[2] Rock Salt 1lb — 0312-SAL-KG — Banish
[3] Copper Scrubber Roll — 5520-COP-SR — Bind
[4] Jawdropper Gummies (Sour) — 2211-JDG-SR — Disorient
[5] Fortune Cat Sticker Sheet — 1688-FCS-SH — Redirect
[6] Oil Wipes — 3388-JOW-PK — Purify
[7] Lantern Wick Coil — 1010-LWC-SP — Ignite
Eathan’s brain did the world’s fastest context switch.
Okay, he thought, heart still hammering.
From what the updated description was telling him, Stored Barcodes was basically a pocket deck of his seven recent seals that he could pull out at any time from browser history.
Array Builder, on the other hand, allowed pre?programmed combo strikes instead of one?offs.
So instead of throwing single receipts at a hurricane, I can wrap the hurricane in a scripted five?step beating.
“Neat,” he muttered under his breath, even as the moth?sphere started re?coalescing. “Let’s ring it.”
His fingers moved before the rest of him had time to panic.
He yanked open the new Array Builder drawer, revealing seven stored seals. In his mind, the succubus?fey’s status lit up like a problem set. With a core body fused to the rift and riding on final-exam mortal stress, it would be the weakest to weapons that attacked the psyche.
We don’t kill it, he reminded himself. We strip it, pin it, then flush it when the drain seals.
He dragged seals into a five?step arc plan.
Rock Salt’s banish affinity could scrape the outer layer of qi off the succubus-fey, allowing better binding from Copper Scrubber. Then, Oil Wipes can remove the remaining residue for Lantern Wick to burn the exposed inner contents and kill the charms. Lastly, Lucky Joss paper, with its guidance affinity, would lead the residues into the rift crevice and Captain Li’s vials instead of back to the students.
The array diagram lit up, each seal a small sun.
[Receipt Printer (Lv. 5)]: Penta?Seal Ring prepared!
No Qi Token required for first-time activation…
“Chewie!” he called, already feeling the qi pull as the array primed. “Give me three beats!”
The eleven-year-old was still panting, shirt stained with black slime. But at his tone, she didn’t ask what or why. She simply nodded once, rolled her shoulders, and launched herself back toward the swollen succubus?fey.
“Three beats,” she confirmed.
She dashed straight at the fey, Chi-You blade leaving a dark arc through the air. At the last second, she planted one foot on the dome’s writhing paper surface, used it as a springboard, and drove her blade into its chest.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Each impact knocked clusters of moths loose, staggering the creature back, opening gaps in the storm.
“Now!” she shouted.
The array snapped free.
Five seals lifted from the drawer like coins flicked into sunlight. They shot forward in a spinning ring, orbit tightening as they met the shrieking mass.
Rock Salt struck first, exploding into a gritty halo that scraped charm?threads off the fey’s outer layer. Glued?on illusions—Emily’s smile, Professor Adoir’s disapproving frown, a flashing ‘FINAL EXAM 28%’—peeled away in strips and burned to ash.
Copper chains followed, bursting from the second talisman in metallic lines. They snaked around the fey’s limbs and torso, anchoring into the rooftop and—more importantly—into the leylines Eathan had already stabilised at the vent and rod.
The creature lurched, movement abruptly jerky.
Oil Wipes detonated third. A wave of clarity rolled over the bound form, dissolving the clotted hex?gunk between moth bodies. Where it passed, the moths lost their cohesion, wings fluttering uselessly as individual scraps of paper again.
The fourth seal lit, Lantern Wick uncurling into a hoop of cold blue fire that dropped cleanly over the fey. Illusions tried one last grab, but the fire burned them away, leaving only the thing underneath: a spirit stitched from stress and stolen desire.
Last, Lucky Joss Paper fluttered down in a soft, deceptively gentle snowfall, layering itself over the binding chains. Guidance sigils sank in. The entire ring of seals pulsed once, in time with Eathan’s heartbeat—
—and the array locked.
The succubus?fey convulsed, shrieking as the five?step program wrapped around it.
But bound didn’t mean harmless.
Charm resonance flared from its core, a desperate surge to slip the chains. The ring shuddered as cracks spidered across the copper binding.
“Not so fast,” Chewie snarled.
She dove back in, feet light on the gravel and blade a blur. She hammered a slash into the succubus?fey’s stomach, sparks flying as Chi-You’s edge skated along copper chains and bit into the spirit’s center
The fey staggered. Hundreds of tattered paper moths poured out of it now, spilling across the roof, interwoven with ink that splattered across gravel before curling in on itself like burned hair.
This is our window.
“Keep it facing the drain!” Eathan called, already bolting toward the last feeder, his upgraded [Agility] eating distance between them.
The drain spout crouched in the corner of the roof, collar still wrapped with the half?burnt talisman Chewie had planted earlier. A cluster of moths huddled there, gnawing at the seal.
He skidded down to one knee and fished out the last specialty nail?seal from Li Wei’s packet—the one he’d been saving for the final anchor.
“Alright, Captain,” he muttered. “We’re cashing this in now.”
He pressed the nail?seal to the drain collar and drove it home with a burst of qi. It sank in with a sharp metallic ring, then vanished, threads of script racing down the pipe like mice.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then the entire grid lit.
Eathan felt it through his soles—the leylines snapping into alignment as vent, lightning rod, and drain stack finally sang the same note. [Calamity Radar] then confirmed it in his vision. Amber threads flickered gold, then white, as the three?point array linked up to the broader net.
The rift membrane above them, still half?merged with the succubus?fey’s torso, shivered violently. Threads of warped space snapped shut one by one with a sound like a zipper dragged across wet canvas.
“Wrap?up!” he yelled.
“Already on it!”
With the array chewing through the succubus-fey from the inside and the rift finally closing from the outside, Chewie went for the throat.
She sprinted along the edge of the roof lip, boots sure on the slick stone, then used a tweaking vending machine as a springboard. For a split?second, she hung upside down above the bound succubus?fey, silhouette sharp against the closing tear—
—then she folded and dropped, heel first.
The drop?kick landed dead center on the spirit’s chest.
“Take that!”
The creature buckled under her heel. For one weird, echoing moment, it tried to speak in Professor Adoir’s cadence—“Student, your exam average is—”
—and then the words broke apart as the rift took it.
Chains cinched. The drain array flared. The succubus?fey’s form shattered into strips of exam paper and liquid ink, all of it yanked down into the collapsing rift channel like trash flushed down a cosmic drain.
In a last, expelled breath, paper moths exploded outward in a burst of monochrome splatters.
Then: quiet.
No charm whisper. No exam?voice. Just the wind, the distant whoop of a campus siren, and the exhausted rasp of two people who had been way too close to being academic casualties.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
You have completed [Side Quest]:
Seal Rift L?4312!
You have been rewarded: +200 Karma, +250 Qi Tokens
Digital confetti slid across Eathan’s HUD, tastelessly cheerful.
He sagged back on his heels, lungs burning but steady. Chewie shook moth dust from her sleeve, wiping a smear of ichor from the corner of her mouth before collapsing the Chi?You blade back into its fishing?rod disguise.
“Better than last time,” she said, sounding almost grudgingly pleased.
“Appreciate the validation."
Eathan pulled himself upright and walked the roof once more, checking each anchor by hand. Satisfied, he pushed a report packet through to Area 003, attaching the scan overlay for good measure.
Li Wei’s reply pinged back six seconds later.
[Li Wei (Area 003)]: Clean work. Two more spikes in Yonkers; I’ll divert a team.
“Captain’s happy,” Chewie said cheerily, which in her language meant we didn’t blow up a roof.
They ghosted back down the stairwell, Chewie peeling her silence wards off the landings with quick, efficient flicks. By the time they stepped out onto the lower floor, fire alarms had been silenced; security was already waving students back inside.
On the quad, undergrads milled in confused knots. The only obvious casualty was a group chat thread and one frisbee wedged in a tree.
A freshman strode past them, grumbling into his phone, “All the vending machines are broken again. They’re taking turns hissing salt water.”
“Campus infrastructure,” Chewie said without blinking.
“Let’s not tell Luke the vending machine’s actually haunted,” Eathan whispered, palming a spare anchor back into his pack. The place in his chest that usually held panic felt… steadier. Tired, yes. But steady.
They cut across the grass toward the road. Eathan’s wrist buzzed—a soft RealmNet ping. Braided into it came a second, lower pulse from the [SYSTEM], like someone had drawn a line between two different networks and synched them.
His HUD blinked; a new pane slid into view like graffiti written on glass.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
[RealmNet Alert!]
Anonymous message received in your private inbox.
Eathan’s brow furrowed.
“Since when do you forward my spam?” he muttered at the interface. The [SYSTEM] was not, historically, interested in being helpful about email.
He glanced sideways. Chewie was watching his face out of the corner of her eye, second calculus book already sliding deeper into her bag like it had never existed.
Curiosity prickled under his skin, tangled with a thin wire of apprehension.
He tapped the alert open.
With the action, his private RealmNet inbox unfolded. One new message glowed at the top—no subject line, no sender icon, just a string of question marks.
He opened it.
Two short lines waited on the screen.
[???]: White Tiger’s last move is unfinished.
[???]: Open the door.