CHAPTER 32: THE RUNNER’S EVOLUTION... INTO A WOMAN?

The jackpot lights flickered one last time, sparks dancing across the blood-slick floor.

A cold ping cut through the ringing in his ears:

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

[Target Eliminated: Pre-Glutton Steel Rank]

[+ Feed Count: 6,000]

[Feed Count: +3,000]

[Total Feed Count: 17,100 / 20,000]

Johnquis coughed, staring at the blue glow.

"We... we did it? Is he finally dead? We survived THAT."

His chain twitched at his side, almost alive. The metal links pulsed, flowing like fresh blood through veins that had no business feeling warm. He wiped the blood from his mouth, a hoarse, broken laugh rattling out of him.

"Heh... Look at us. Just a leash boy and a mutt... taking down a Steel Rank pre-Glutton."

He let the chain coil loosely around his wrist, then glanced down. The Runner lay there, half-broken, eyes still glowing faintly — watching him with that same eerie, loyal focus.

"You alright...? Hey. Stay with me, you hear? You didn’t get torn up that bad for nothing. We’ll get out of this anomaly quest."

The Runner made a low, guttural click, the smallest sign it understood.

But before Johnquis could move, another cold ping flickered across his vision:

[Feed Count: +3,000]

[Feed Count: ??????/??????] — ??????

THRESHOLD REACHED

Johnquis squinted at the glitching text.

"What?"

He looked back down at the Runner, its body shivering, eyes burning brighter, a strange light building under its skin like something was crawling up from inside.

His gut dropped.

"Hey. Hey, what the hell are you doing now...?"

The Runner’s chest heaved, breath ragged. A deep, unnatural pulse rippled through its limbs, like something was tearing free from the inside out.

Tiny cracks opened across its skin. Light spilled out, leaking between the plates of muscle and bone.

Johnquis clenched his fist around the chain.

"You’re not gonna blow up on me, are you?"

A sudden halo of violet light bled from the wounds Rex left behind. The glow spread under the Runner’s skin like wildfire, outlining bones, veins, the distorted muscle of its hunched form.

The long claws twitched, shrinking back into pale fingertips. Ragged flesh knitted together. Its cracked hide split open like a cocoon, shedding blackened lumps of monster flesh that hissed on the blood-slick floor.

He stumbled back, shielding his eyes with a trembling hand. Too bright. The thing that had once been a beast was unfolding... arms lengthening, spine snapping into a straighter line. Limbs once gnarled and hunched now took on a shape terrifyingly... human.

Hair sprouted, white as snow, cascading down a slender back slick with violet-streaked blood. Its legs bent backward once, then forward again, bones realigning, muscles stitching into smooth, sinewy strength.

A voice, raw and wet, escaped its throat not the mindless hiss of a Runner, but a choked gasp that shivered the air. Eyes opened, no longer beast-glow or predator’s slits, but sharp, beast-like pupils ringed in unnatural gold, locking onto Johnquis with something... almost human.

She fell forward, catching herself on trembling hands. Tattered scraps of the Runner’s hide still clung to her shoulders and hips like rags. The air around her pulsed with residual flow, bleeding off in steam.

Johnquis lowered his trembling hand, staring at the girl kneeling in the wreckage.

"You..."

She was breathing hard, pale as fresh snow, haloed in the ghostly glow of what she used to be. No longer just a mindless Runner but something caught between Eater and human.

His "slave" had a face now... and it was staring right back at him.

A ping flickered across his HUD:

[CONGRATULATIONS]

— Your slave, Level 2 High Eater, has leveled up.

— New level unlocked: [Level 3 — Lord]

"You... You leveled up..." Johnquis whispered, disbelief catching in his throat.

Her golden slit-pupiled eyes blinked up at him.

Another text flashed:

[Your slave is asking for a name...]

She made a low, soft hum, a sound like breath caught in her throat like she was begging for something more than a command.

Johnquis lowered himself until they were eye level, chain still dripping with his blood.

"You want a name...?"

He murmured, voice raw. His gaze drifted somewhere in the dark corner of his memory, he saw Sarah. The orphan girl back at the cathedral. The girl who danced barefoot on the cold stone floors when she thought no one was watching.

"You fought free. Your steps, they were fluid. It was like watching someone... dancing."

He brushed a thumb against the girl’s jaw, she didn’t flinch.

"I’ll call you Dancer. That’s who you are now... my Dancer."

A faint smile spread across her pale lips fragile, unsure, but real. It knocked the air right out of him. For a moment, the ruin around them didn’t matter. He saw a glimpse of something better something he thought he’d lost a long time ago.

Johnquis choked on a half-laugh, half-sob.

"You can smile now? Damn it. You’re not supposed to smile at me like that."

A new ping cut through his moment:

[SYSTEM MESSAGE]

— You have successfully built a bond with your slave [Dancer]

— You have unlocked the first level of [HeartBond]

— Title unlocked: [Battle Buddies]

Johnquis wiped at his eyes with the back of his shaking hand.

"Battle Buddies, huh? Didn’t think I’d ever see the day someone called me that."

Dancer tilted her head, her strange eyes warm and curious almost like she understood.

"Guess we’re not just master and slave anymore..."

[Battle Buddies]

— Your sync range now increases from 50 meters to 100 meters.

"Sync range doubled, huh? Great... means you’ve got twice the room to run away when I screw up."

Another ping flickered across his HUD:

[Since you named your slave successfully, you inherit a portion of your slave’s physical stats.]

"Inherit Dancer’s physical stats—? Ugh!"

A sudden warmth flooded his battered muscles. Strength he hadn’t felt in days pulsed through him, her power knitting into his bones. He flexed his fingers around the chain, feeling it lighten in his grip like it recognized the change too.

Johnquis sucked in a shaky breath, every torn ligament humming with that alien surge.

"My body feels light..."

He flexed his battered hand, felt the bones grate then snap back into place, strength knitting them together with Dancer’s pulse humming under his skin.

"Like I’m wearing someone else’s muscles... but they fit."

He staggered upright, rolling his shoulder until the joint popped. The chain coiled obediently around his wrist. He looked at his reflection. Pale, hollow-eyed, but standing tall.

"Look at me. Bleeding out five minutes ago, now I feel like I could drag an Eater up this damn tower by the throat."

Dancer made that low, soft hum again. Johnquis dropped to one knee beside her, voice low.

"Hey. Dancer."

She blinked those sharp, beast-like eyes at him, so human now it made his chest tighten.

"You feel it too, don’t you? That surge..."

He brushed a hand over the back of her knuckles.

"That’s ours now. You and me. No collar. No leash. Just this bond."

She tilted her head, then leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his. A soft, warm contact that made his pulse stutter.

He smiled through a grunt of pain.

"Damn it. Don’t look at me like that. I’m still a mess, you know."

She let out a tiny click, a noise that sounded suspiciously like a scolding laugh.

Johnquis exhaled. He let the chain uncoil and looped it loosely around her wrist instead. A gesture, not a shackle, but a promise.

"This chain isn’t to enslave you. It’s to keep us tied together. Always. We’re not just leash boy and mutt anymore. We’re one."

Dancer’s strange smile returned. Pale lips curling faintly, eyes burning gold in the darkness. She clicked once, soft but certain. A vow in a language only they could share.

He pushed himself up again, hauling her with him. The weight of the ruined casino pressed down like a thousand ghosts. Rex’s twisted corpse, Lex’s echoes, the ruin of every quest before this. But this time his shoulders didn’t sag.

He turned to where Rex’s body lay sprawled in the wreckage. The monster stilled at last, the jagged saw-arm twitching on the floor like a dead limb cut from a rabid animal.

For a moment, Johnquis saw not the beast but a brother. The big brother who carried all the weight and cracked under it, alone.

He crouched beside the corpse, ignoring the blood soaking into his knees. With a trembling hand, he brushed back the matted hair from Rex’s slack face. There was no rage there now, no twisted grin just the faintest ghost of the protector he’d once been.

"You were just a big brother. Just like me."

His gaze dropped to Rex’s ruined back, chest tightening until it hurt to breathe.

"You wanted to keep her safe so bad... you burned yourself up trying."

A memory of Jiana flickered behind his eyes. Her smile, her laugh when they still had hope.

"I get it. I get why you became this. I felt it too."

He pressed his palm to Rex’s broken shoulder, the chain draped from his wrist glinting wet with fresh blood.

"I swear... I won’t become you. But I’ll carry what you couldn’t. I’ll protect her. I’ll protect them. I’ll protect myself."