The fourth district lay a considerable distance from the Tower plaza, and William made the walk slowly, every step a negotiation with the ache still radiating through his bandaged shoulder. A field medic had wrapped it hastily before letting him go, insisting he see a proper healer before the day was out, advice William fully intended to ignore in favor of simply reaching his apartment and collapsing.
The small black shape curled in his arms shifted occasionally, warm and impossibly light for something that had been the size of a cargo wagon only an hour earlier, and more than once William caught himself glancing down just to confirm it was still real.
’This isn’t a dream. None of today was a dream.’
The streets grew busier as he moved deeper into the district, merchants closing their stalls for the evening, hunters returning from lower floor raids in loose, laughing groups that reminded him uncomfortably of the party he’d left with that morning. Nobody paid him more than a passing glance. A bloodied boy carrying a puppy drew no particular attention in a city built around Tower raids and their consequences, and William found himself grateful for the anonymity in a way he hadn’t expected to be grateful for anything today.
’Small mercies.’ He adjusted his grip carefully, mindful of his shoulder. ’Let them look right past me. Let today be forgotten by tomorrow, if it can be.’
He knew better than to believe it fully would be. Kessa and Bram had already filed their report. Captain Yuen had already seen Cerberus with her own eyes. Somewhere in the Association’s records, a Common grade tamer had just been connected to an Epic grade guardian class monster, and no amount of quiet walking home was going to erase that fact from the paperwork already circulating through the fourth district outpost.
His apartment, when he finally reached it, was a single cramped room above a shuttered bakery, the kind of place that came cheap precisely because it offered nothing beyond four walls and a roof that mostly kept the rain out. William nudged the door shut behind him with his heel and finally let himself sink down onto the narrow bed, the small guardian in his arms stirring awake as the mattress dipped beneath them both.
Home? The impression came uncertain, curious, taking in the cramped, sparse room with what William could only interpret as mild confusion.
"Home," William confirmed, managing something close to a tired laugh. "Not much to look at, I know. I promise it’s usually cleaner than this."
He set the small guardian down on the bed beside him, and it immediately curled into the blanket with the unbothered comfort of something that had never known anything different, dark eyes blinking slowly up at him before settling half closed. William watched it for a long moment, still only half believing any of this was real, before exhaustion finally won out over the tangle of anxious thoughts still crowding his mind.
[Status Window Available]
He almost ignored the prompt entirely, ready to simply close his eyes and let the day end, but curiosity won out over exhaustion, and he called the window forward properly for the first time since the hollow.
Name: William Belforht
Age: 17
Rank: F-Rank
Title: Abandoned One • Survivor of the Tenth Floor • Second Awakener
Primary Talent: Mythical Taming System (Unique - Growth Type)
Grade: Mythical
Core Stats:
Strength: 28
Agility: 35
Vitality: 42
Mana: 67
Spirit: 81
Luck: 55 (+15)
Free Stat Points: 8
Skill Points: 3
Active Skills:
Tame (Mythical)
Taming Realm (Lv.1) — Capacity: 3 slots
Share Senses (Basic)
Doppelganger (Inherited)
Hellfire Manipulation (Inherited)
Passive Abilities:
Second Awakening Resonance
I Can Tame All Things
Tamed Entities:
Cerberus (Epic) — Guardian
Loyalty: Devoted (78%)
William stared at the numbers for a long time, still faintly unable to reconcile them with the boy who’d been mocked out of a party roster that same morning. Eight free stat points sat waiting to be assigned, three skill points beside them, more raw potential in a single afternoon than he’d accumulated across seven years of training on his own.
’I don’t even know what half of this means yet.’ He scrolled through the window slowly, half searching for some catch, some fine print that would explain why all of this had landed in his lap instead of someone who actually deserved it. ’A Taming Realm. Three slots. I don’t even know what that looks like from the inside.’
He glanced down at the small guardian curled against the blanket, already drifting toward sleep despite the late hour of the afternoon sun still slanting through his single window. Something about assigning stat points and exploring a mysterious pocket dimension felt like it could wait until morning, when his shoulder didn’t throb with every small movement and his mind wasn’t still catching up to everything that had happened since the party first stepped into the Tower.
’Tomorrow.’ He closed the window with a tired thought, easing himself down onto the narrow mattress beside the sleeping guardian. ’I’ll figure out what I actually am now. At the moment, I just need to not think about any of it for a while.’
Sleep came faster than he expected, exhaustion dragging him under despite the ache in his shoulder and the storm of unresolved worry still churning somewhere beneath the surface. The last thing he registered before it claimed him fully was warmth against his side, small and steady, a guardian that had chosen, of its own will, to make itself small enough to fit into the narrow, uncertain life of the boy who’d refused to leave it behind.