Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 1064: Vespera’s Declaration

He could have answered that. He could picture arriving, finding more of them, making certain they never touched another person.

Finding them was the part he would have to leave to someone else.

Vespera watched the answer fail to reach his lips.

”Until we have a lead worth your attention, I will not have you wasting your time pretending to be an investigator. You have a dungeon to invest your resources into. You have an entire, powerful nation to build an alliance with. You have a new tunnel from Japan opening behind your dungeon’s defenses, and you have level one hundred to reach.”

”I’m aware of all that.”

”Then please act as though you are.”

The rebuke hurt more than he wanted to admit. He had come downstairs because he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving these people to his mother again. Now she was looking at him as though he had volunteered to spend his morning getting underfoot.

Yunohana’s hand touched his wrist.

”The people following those addresses will need time to establish what is there,” she said. ”Even if you accompany them, much of that time will be spent waiting.”

”Which will bring you no closer to one hundred,” Vespera added. ”I can search buildings and question the people we find in them much more efficiently than you ever could. I have people who specialize in this. Allow us to do our work.”

Kaiden lowered his eyes to Yunohana’s fingers resting against his wrist. He knew what his mother was saying. There was even a part of him that wanted to accept it, go back upstairs, and let her be as terrifyingly competent as she always was.

But he had just held her while she spoke about watching him bleed through a phone screen.

”And if you find something worse?” he asked. ”Am I supposed to sit in Japan and wait for a call telling me you’ve been hurt?”

Vespera’s expression softened.

”If I need you, I will ask you to come.”

”Will you, though?”

”Kaiden.”

He said nothing, looking past her toward the stairs. He wanted to believe she would call him before she was hurt, but he knew how readily she would step in front of something meant for him.

His mother stepped into the space before him. When he kept his gaze lowered, she put her fingers beneath his chin and lifted it until he was looking into her red eyes.

”I need you to listen to me.”

The touch was gentle. Her voice allowed him very little room to pretend he hadn’t heard.

”You are far more unusual than you seem willing to notice.”

”I notice plenty. It’s difficult to miss when the world keeps finding new ways to fuck with me.”

”And what do you think happens when it finds the next one?”

His irritation faded enough for him to study her face.

She was serious. The worry in her eyes reached beyond the prisoner they had lost, beyond the people his mother was trying to find.

”What are you not telling me?”

Vespera let her hand fall from his chin, but stayed close enough that he could see every change in her expression.

”I have a very bad feeling about what is coming.”

The admission made him cold beneath his clothes. His mother had sat across a tea table explaining that she was prepared to fight the United States government. Whatever could put that look in her eyes deserved more than the impatient answer he had been about to give.

”Have you heard something?”

”Nothing that tells me when, or what shape it will take. I look at what has happened, and I cannot convince myself that we have reached the worst of it.”

Yunohana withdrew her hand from his wrist. When he glanced toward her, the shrine maiden was watching Vespera with a gravity that left him wishing she had found a reason to disagree.

”Humanity survives one disaster,” his mother continued, ”then something worse appears. We learn how to fight the monsters in front of us, and the next ones make that knowledge insufficient. I would like to believe we will be given time to prepare. I cannot build your safety around that hope.”

”You’re talking as though we have nothing to fight them with. We have you, Scarlet, Yunohana, and many more who’d fit the SSS-tier denomination. I might be special, but life doesn’t revolve around me.”

He meant it. He had seen her wounded and kept fighting beside her, knew perfectly well that she could bleed. Even so, when he thought of something terrible reaching his family, his mother’s shadows were among the first things he imagined rising to meet it.

”You’re beyond powerful, Mom. You just made the President start looking for answers because you were angry with him.”

”And did the Claimant challenge me?”

Kaiden hesitated.

”You fought it.”

”Because it came for you. It challenged you, for your dungeon. I was there because you are my son.”

He remembered the choice between enduring the siege and striking at the creature itself. His mother had stood with them, ready to fight, while the system waited for his answer.

”Without you, we could have died.”

”Yes,” she said. ”And I intend to be there again. But I was never the one it challenged.”

Vespera glanced toward the door of the vampire’s empty cell.

”The Pact knows where I am. They could’ve devised a plan for weeks and executed it when most of our people left for Japan. Yet they attacked you, not me.”

”Then all the more reason to find them.”

”Which is why I am looking.” Her fingers closed around his hand. ”And while I do, I would like you to become someone they regret finding.”

Yunohana moved closer as Vespera spoke.

”We can look for suitable dungeons when we return,” she offered. ”Ones that will help you grow. I would be glad to arrange it.”

Kaiden was grateful for the offer. Both women had settled on the same answer for what he should do next, and their certainty made him uneasy.

”You both make it sound very simple.”

”I expect it to be difficult,” Vespera replied, her thumb resting over his knuckles. ”That is why I am asking you to give it your attention.”

”Governments would welcome my strength. You have seen how readily they listen when I choose to use it. Yet you are the one they keep trying to bind to them.

”Your dungeon, your family, the things only you can do, the things only you know... They have watched you grow from an innocent boy to the most involved man in the apocalypse. They want to know where you will stand when the next disaster comes, not where I will stand. I’m just a powerful bystander while you...”

He stared at her.

Vespera held his gaze while the words sank in. It cost her to let him see that fear; he could feel it in her grip, as though she wanted to draw him close and was making herself finish speaking first.

”There may come a time when we need something you alone can give us. I cannot tell you what it will be. But I would like my son to be strong enough to survive being asked.”

Kaiden let out a short, bitter laugh.

”So I should get ready to be humanity’s hero, then? Grind levels endlessly to protect Earth, ignoring anything else I might care about along the way?”

Vespera stepped closer and brought both hands to his face.

He fell silent as her palms settled against his cheeks. There was such tenderness in the touch that the resentment in his own words embarrassed him, but she held him before he could look away from it.

”Humanity’s hero? No, Kaiden.”

Her thumbs moved over his cheeks. She looked at him with an affection so open that his throat tightened, leaving him unable to manage even her name.

”I want my son to have the power to decide what he wants. If you wish to save humanity, then I want you to have the power to save humanity. If you choose to become its villain, I want you to have the power to see humanity’s end through. And if you would rather live with the people you love and do whatever pleases you, that is the life I want you to have.”

Vespera drew him down until she could kiss his forehead.

”All I want is to see my beloved son happy.”

Her lips lingered there before she eased back far enough to look into his eyes again.

”But to do that, I need you to become more powerful than anyone. That is what you must focus on, my child.”