Novak’s sudden withdrawal caught me off guard. At first, I thought he was messing with me. Surely he couldn’t be backing out after putting in so much effort to convince me.

  "I don’t like your attitude," he said.

  Novak leaned back and looked at me carefully, with no trace of irony or sarcasm on his face.

  "I tried to make this offer as beneficial for you as possible. I’m giving you time, offering valuable materials and opportunities. You have every right to say no, but you’re acting like you’re being forced into it."

  I frowned.

  Wasn’t I? Could I really say no to materials like that, to those opportunities? Wasn’t this manipution?

  Besides, I definitely didn’t want to offend him with a refusal. I didn’t want us to return to the original format of our retionship, when he quite literally held my life in his hands.

  I chose my response more carefully.

  "The circumstances are such that I have no choice but to accept."

  Novak nodded, as if that was exactly what he’d been waiting for.

  "Why?"

  "Because it improves my chances of survival," I said at st. "Because it takes me out of direct combat. Because access to the portal project means information, resources, and protection. Because…" I paused and sighed. "Because I’m not an idiot."

  Novak listened attentively and didn’t interrupt.

  "You just listed the benefits," he said when I fell silent. "Benefits, and only benefits."

  I said nothing.

  "And all those benefits," he went on, "didn’t appear on their own. I put effort into making them avaible to you."

  A flicker of irritation stirred in me.

  "Then what’s the problem?" I asked. "You’re offering, I’m accepting."

  Was I not grateful enough?

  "The problem," Novak replied calmly, "is that you're afraid of responsibility."

  That was not the answer I’d expected. At first, I felt indignant. Then I started thinking. And finally, I got completely confused.

  "Could you eborate?" I asked.

  "It’s a small-man complex, Jake. 'The great, powerful Master made a decision, and I’m just a tool in his hands!'" He mockingly mimicked someone — no idea who. "No. Wrong. Any decision you make is yours. Even if someone forces your hand, even if your options are reduced to obey or die, the decision is still yours."

  "Well, dying isn’t much of a decision," I said.

  "Depends on the alternative," Novak countered, and something inside me responded to that.

  "I don’t treat my disciples as mere tools," he went on. "I don’t need reluctant agreement or a cornered ally. If it’s not something you need, then I don’t need it either.

  "Artem wouldn’t have achieved anything if I’d spent my time telling him what to do. He’s my expert on drones and AI because he understands them better than I do."

  I nodded, and for the first time, allowed myself a little liberty with Novak. Probably because of his reflective mood. Or maybe Lina’s example — she regurly got away with saying wildly inappropriate things around him.

  "You don’t like my attitude? Great. That makes two of us, because I don’t like the choice I’m about to make. I’m fully aware that it’s the best option I’ve got.

  "It’s like that death thing again. Even if the alternative is worse, it’s still a shit choice."

  "I genuinely appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Without your help, without Clear Thoughts, I might not have made it through selection. The materials, the techniques… Working with you, as dangerous as it is, has been incredibly beneficial.

  "What really gets to me, what actually pisses me off, is how little control I have over my own life.

  "You can’t deny me the right to feel something about that!"

  Novak raised an eyebrow and just looked at me for a few minutes.

  "How do you rex?" he asked.

  "Um…" And there he went again, throwing me off track. "I… watch nature through the 'window'," I said.

  "That’s it? What about music, games, series, books? You’ve mentioned books. I could recommend a few web serials."

  "Thanks, but I’ve got enough going on. I’m afraid I’ll get hooked and lose focus."

  "Right," Novak said, and with a single movement, stowed the sand box away in a spatial pocket. "We’ll return to this conversation in a few days. Until then, you’re forbidden from cultivating or training. That includes working with the Chainsaw and the library."

  That st part stung. Library-surfing for new information had become my default pastime. It was a habit now.

  "Why?"

  "Because you're showing clear signs of stress. You’ve overworked yourself."

  "I don’t think…"

  "It really looks that way."

  "Evening Sun might fix it…" I hinted.

  Brilliant tea. You sleep like you’re in heaven after it.

  "We’re not in a rush," Novak replied. "Take a few days off. Three. Three days of rest, meet up with some friends, then we’ll see."

  This conversation had gone absolutely nothing like I’d expected.

  Novak just showed me out of the room.

  I left with a strange sense of emptiness. Not relief, not anger — more like a vacuum. The kind that remains after tension is drawn out of you, but nothing is put back in. No mission. No decision. No clear direction to move in.

  Three days without training, cultivation, or the library?

  Novak was wrong. I hadn’t overworked myself that badly. Three days? That was way too much free time. Especially when I had a working version of Chainsaw Punch ready! I was going to die of withdrawal.

  It was already starting. I was in the metro and practically itching to open the technique and see how Novak’s friend had rearranged the channel structure.

  For a few minutes, I distracted myself by analysing the conversation. His words. My replies. What I didn’t say. What I said that I shouldn’t have.

  Control. Lack of control. The illusion of choice.

  Mixed feelings about his vision of disciples, or at least what Novak cimed was his view of them.

  With these thoughts spinning in my head, I got home. Where once again, I had nothing to do. Thanks to the sudden time-zone shift and that recent nap, the approaching night promised to be a sleepless one.

  I switched the window view to a mountain river. Novak hadn’t banned window-watching.

  Resting. Talking to friends…

  Zo!

  I called her. The call rang… and then dropped.

  A few seconds ter, a message came through.

  "Everyone’s asleep here. I’ll text you in the morning."

  I remembered the cramped space of the crawler. Late-night conversations — a guaranteed way to start a fight with the rest of the raid team.

  Bao was still out of reach.

  That was bothering me more than it should have. As if my irritation was growing and multiplying, feeding off the previous conversation. I wasn’t worried that something truly serious had happened to him, but the way Zo had talked about him definitely meant he’d gotten himself into some kind of mess. The ck of contact only reinforced that idea.

  The first network dead zone that came to mind was a medical capsule.

  I kept watching the river in the window until the water lulled me. I fell asleep well past midnight, finally managing to calm my mind. Which, even without the Thousand Sparks, was running at a thousand per cent capacity.

  The morning greeted me with a message from Bao.

  Tired. Sleeping until noon. We can meet up after.

  Short, to the point, and with no unnecessary expnation. So, not in a pod, and at least on paper, everything was under control.

  The fridge was empty. That alone broke the usual breakfast–training routine. But it did open up a new time-filler: shopping.

  First though — breakfast at a cafe.

  Over a pte of scrambled eggs from a well-known species and some metallic rice, Zo’s call caught up with me.

  "How was the raid?" I asked, remembering clearly that she’d spoken out against them.

  She snorted.

  "Filthy, cramped, and smelly. Cssic."

  Zo talked freely, but didn’t sugar-coat anything. They’d gone into some abandoned tunnels where Golden Worms had started to appear recently.

  "We got lucky. Found a few small crystals and one medium one. I didn’t get a cut, but! We managed to catch a juvenile worm alive!"

  A live specimen meant a completely different payout, and a different level of interest from those funding the expedition.

  Zo had joined the team as a medic. Minimal pay, maximum safety. She wasn’t expected to participate in the fighting.

  Not a word about Bao.

  I finished breakfast, ordered an extra cup of coffee and sat for a bit, killing time, then headed out for shopping. Groceries… and a shelf for the trophy sword.

  As soon as I was done and had everything delivered home, Kate called.

  We had a brief chat about how I was, how things were going, and how we should meet up sometime, have some tea, maybe even now.

  The whole thing reminded me a lot of the time she’d come back injured from a raid, and Novak had asked me whether she was really okay, even asked me to keep an eye on her.

  Swear to god, this time he gave her a simir assignment. But about me.

  Even if I am overworked — I’m not bloody injured!

  I gave her a general update, said I was doing fine, and mentioned that I was already meeting up with Bao. We hadn’t actually spoken yet, but there wasn’t much time left until noon.

  Before he called, I managed to hang the sword up on the wall.

  We arranged to meet at Marco’s. His suggestion, and despite Zo’s warning, his voice sounded lively.

  Marco’s was, as usual, half-empty. The prices were steep, though the service and quality justified it. On top of that, they served rare, specialised drinks you couldn’t find just anywhere.

  Bao was sitting by the window, sipping coffee. Just regur Earth coffee — high-quality, and priced to match.

  I made a detour before heading to the table and ordered a tte with strawberry cheesecake at the bar.

  "Well?" I asked as I sat down across from Bao. "Zo says you got yourself into trouble."

  "To her, anything even slightly unorthodox in cultivation counts as trouble," he replied, taking a sip.

  I stared at him silently, waiting.

  Bao sighed and set the cup down.

  "I broke my foundation."

  I didn’t process it right away.

  "You… what?" I asked slowly.

  "Back down from Second Stage to First," he confirmed.

  Something unpleasant clenched inside me.

  "Shit! Greedy again?" I snapped. "Didn’t First Year teach you anything?"

  "Deliberately broke it," he corrected me. "Under a Master’s supervision."

  "Johansson signed off on that?"

  "Not exactly fully approved, but we talked it through and he didn’t stop me."

  "Why?!" I asked.

  "To tear it all down and rebuild it properly. With carefully selected red materials, not just whatever happened to be lying around."

  I opened my mouth to say something sharp, but stopped myself. First, I needed to figure out if there was any point in giving him a lecture. He looked a bit tired — nothing more.

  I leaned back in my chair, let out a slow breath, and checked Bao’s status through the interface.

  First Late.

  "That sounds dangerous," I said at st.

  Bao smiled.

  "Zo said I was an idiot."

  "Well, given her experience, maybe she’s right. They must’ve had medics check you after that. What did they say?"

  "They said there’s minimal damage to the subtle body. It’s not an obstacle to breaking through, but I’d rather wait until it’s fully recovered. I’ll break through again in a month."

  MaksymPachesiuk