CHAPTER 34: POST-RAID CLARITY

Rin woke up at 1 PM the next day feeling like someone had tossed him in a blender set to puree.

He stared at the ceiling of Leo’s mansion, his mansion now, trying to remember why his left kidney was pulsing with his heartbeat. Oh yeah, he’d spent six hours raiding an illegal underground laboratory, fighting corrupted goblins, and watching a corrupt government official get dragged away in cuffs.

Standard Tuesday stuff.

He sat up, hissed as his muscles complained, and swung his legs out of bed. The tracker in his shoulder gave a phantom itch. It wasn’t vibrating or shocking him, it was just there, a little piece of metal reminding him the Association owned his ass.

"You know," Rin muttered to the empty room, "if this was a light novel, the protagonist would’ve ripped this thing out by now and gone rogue."

[Analysis: Light novel protagonists typically possess plot armor]

[You possess a mortality rate]

[Do not rip out the tracker]

"I wasn’t going to, relax."

He walked to the kitchen. The mansion was quiet, that expensive lonely silence that usually depressed him, but today it felt peaceful. Volker was in a cell. Leo’s killer, or the guy who ordered the hit, was done.

Rin grabbed instant noodles, Spicy Beef flavor, breakfast of champions and depressed college students.

He looked at the kettle. Too slow.

’Let’s test Fiona’s theory.’

Fiona had said the tracker monitored sustained energy output over five-minute windows. Short bursts didn’t flag the system, like downloading massive files on bad wifi, if you paused every few seconds, the bandwidth monitor didn’t freak.

Rin held the cup of water in his hand, focused on the fracture energy, not the heavy void-like stuff he used for closing portals, but a thin sharp thread of it.

He pulsed it. On.

The water bubbled instantly.

Off.

He waited three seconds.

On.

Steam rose.

Off.

He glanced at his shoulder. No shock, no angry text from Reva or Tau asking why he was flaring his aura in a residential zone.

[Tracker Status: Dormant]

[Energy spike duration: 0.4 seconds]

[You are gaming the system]

’I’m making lunch, there’s a difference.’

He grinned. It was small, stupid really, using cosmic horror energy to cook noodles, but it felt like victory. The leash was there, but it wasn’t tight, if he played the rhythm, he could still move.

He sat at the counter, slurping noodles and scrolling through his phone. The internet was losing its mind.

**#AssociationRaid** was trending number one.

**#VolkerGate** was number two.

**#WhoIsThePortalGuy** was number five again, which was annoying.

He opened a forum thread titled: "Theory: The Association is Civil Warring???"

xX_ShadowSlayer_Xx: "Saw the convoys in Sector 9 last night. That wasn’t a dungeon clear. That was a raid. Hunters fighting Hunters."

SimpForJin: "Volker got arrested? Lmao rip bozo. Never liked his vibes. Dude looked like he kicks puppies."

GamerGod2025: "Bet you 100 credits this is a coverup for a dungeon break. The government is lying to us."

"They’re not entirely wrong," Rin mumbled, closing the app.

His phone buzzed, group chat notification.

Joy: you alive?

Joy: tell me you’re awake.

Joy: tayo and i are outside. open the gate.

Rin blinked, checked the security feed on his phone. Sure enough, Joy and Tayo were standing at his front gate, Joy holding a box of donuts, Tayo looking like he regretted being awake.

Rin hit the unlock button.

Two minutes later, they were in his kitchen. Joy looked surprisingly fresh for someone who’d been in a combat zone twelve hours ago, Tayo looked like Rin felt.

"We brought sustenance," Joy said, slamming the pink box onto the counter, "and by sustenance, I mean sugar and regret."

"I’m eating noodles," Rin said.

"Disgusting, eat a glazed." She shoved a donut at him. "So, we won, Volker’s in jail, his lab’s shut down, how are we feeling, are we feeling victorious?"

"I feel sore," Tayo said, collapsing onto a barstool. "My throat hurts from the screaming, sound manipulation is cool until you lose your voice for two days."

"We won the battle," Rin corrected, taking a bite of the donut, "Volker said the war’s bigger than him, and the Architect sent me a DM saying ’good job,’ so you know, mixed bag."

Joy’s expression tightened for a second, then she forced a smile. "Don’t ruin the vibe, Rin, we took down a Director, a literal Director, do you know how impossible that is, we’re basically the main characters right now."

"Please don’t say that," Rin said. "Main characters have tragic backstories and get traumatized for character development."

"Too late for the tragic backstory," Tayo pointed out, gesturing vaguely at Rin’s entire existence.

"Too soon, man, too soon."

Joy hopped up onto the counter, swinging her legs. "Okay, serious talk for five seconds, my dad called."

Rin stopped chewing. "Is he pissed?"

"He’s confused, apparently Director Tau briefed the Senate this morning, painted us as heroes who uncovered a rogue element, my dad doesn’t know how to process that I helped arrest the guy he was having dinner with last month." She smirked. "He told me to ’stay out of trouble’ but didn’t threaten to cut my funding, so win."

"Tau is controlling the narrative," Rin said, "making the Association look like they cleaned up their own mess instead of admitting they were compromised."

"Politics," Tayo shrugged. "As long as Volker stays in a cell, I don’t care how they spin it."

"Speaking of," Joy said, "we need to go to the hospital."

Rin looked up. "Reva?"

"Yeah, she’s out of surgery, woke up an hour ago, Investigator Han texted me, said Reva wants to see us, well mostly you, but we’re a package deal now."

Rin looked at his half-eaten noodles, then at his friends.

Reva had taken a hit for them, she’d held onto the evidence, got attacked, and still coordinated the raid from a hospital bed via Tau, she wasn’t perfect, she was still Association, but she wasn’t Volker.

"Let me change," Rin said. "I can’t visit a Deputy Director wearing sweatpants with goblin blood on them."

"That’s goblin blood?" Tayo asked, eyeing Rin’s pants. "I thought that was soup."

"It can be two things."

---

The Association Medical Center was cleaner than a regular hospital and smelled faintly of ozone and disinfectant, where Hunters went when potions weren’t enough.

They found Reva in a private room on the top floor. She looked rough, her arm in a cast that glowed with healing runes, and a bandage wrapped around her head.

She was sitting up though, typing on a tablet with her good hand.

"You’re supposed to be resting," Rin said from the doorway.

Reva didn’t look up. "And you’re supposed to be decompressing in a secure location, yet here we are." She set the tablet down and looked at them, her eyes tired but sharp. "You look terrible, Matsuda."

"Thanks, you look like you got hit by a truck."

"A gravity-enhanced kinetic blast actually, hurt more than a truck." She gestured to the chairs. "Sit."

They sat, the room felt heavy but not hostile.

"Volker is being processed," Reva said. "He’s denying everything, claiming the evidence was planted, claiming the lab was for ’national security,’ but the prisoners we rescued are talking, the records we found are damning, he’s not getting out."

"Good," Joy said.

"However," Reva looked at Rin, "the investigation into his ’associates’ has hit a wall, the moment Volker was arrested, three ghost accounts wiped themselves from our servers, whoever was helping him on the digital side is gone."

"The Architect," Rin said.

"Likely, Volker was a pawn, a high-level dangerous pawn, but a pawn." Reva sighed, wincing slightly as she shifted. "Director Tau is taking over the Windhoek branch temporarily, he likes you three, thinks you’re promising."

"Is that good?" Tayo asked.

"It’s dangerous, Tau is a pragmatist, he sees you as assets, he lifted your protective custody obviously, but the monitoring on you, Matsuda?" She pointed at his shoulder. "It’s not going away, in fact, Tau wants to increase the frequency of your check-ins."

"Of course he does," Rin said. "I closed a portal and raided a Director’s lab in the same month, I’m a liability."

"You’re a weapon they don’t know how to aim yet," Reva corrected, "but you did good, Leo would be proud."

The mention of Leo made the room quiet.

"We found his file in Volker’s lab," Rin said, his voice low. "Confirmed ’Terminated,’ it wasn’t an accident."

"I know," Reva said softly. "I’m sorry we didn’t catch it sooner, I’m sorry I didn’t catch it sooner."

"You helped us finish it," Joy said. "That counts."

Reva nodded, looking away for a second. "Get out of here, go be normal for a day, you’re D-ranks now, or you will be once the paperwork clears tomorrow, the grind starts again next week."

"Yes, ma’am," Tayo said.

They stood to leave, but Rin paused at the door.

"Reva?"

"What?"

"The Architect contacted me after the raid."

Reva froze. "What did he say?"

"Called Volker expendable, said I exceeded expectations, said we’d speak soon."

Reva closed her eyes for a second. "He’s grooming you, Rin, he thinks if he isolates you from us, if he feeds your ego and your anger, you’ll come to him willingly."

"I know."

"Don’t let him."

"I won’t."

---

They left the hospital and walked out into the bright Namibian afternoon, the sun blazing, the sky blue, and people walking around eating ice cream like there wasn’t a secret war happening in the shadows.

"Okay," Joy said, putting on her sunglasses, "that was heavy, I need to hit something or buy something, retail therapy or violence?"

"I’m broke," Rin said. "I spent all my credits on the investigator."

"Oh right, Kira." Tayo looked at Rin. "Is she okay, Volker threatened her."

"She messaged me this morning," Rin said, "encrypted channel, said she’s going dark for a while, moving to a safe house in Swakopmund, but she got paid, and she’s alive."

"Good." Joy hooked her arms through Rin’s and Tayo’s. "Since Rin is poor, I’m buying, we’re going to the arcade, I’m going to beat both of you at that dungeon simulator, and then we’re going to eat an unhealthy amount of pizza."

"I just want to sleep," Rin groaned, letting himself be dragged.

"You can sleep when you’re dead or S-rank," Joy said. "Right now, you’re D-rank trash like the rest of us, come on."

Rin looked at his friends, Joy who’d defied a Senator to back him up, Tayo who’d faced down horrors he didn’t understand just because they asked.

The leash was still there, the Architect was watching, Volker was just the beginning.

But as Rin let himself be pulled down the street, listening to Joy rant about how much she hated the new Hunter uniforms, he realized something.

For the first time in two years, he wasn’t just surviving.

[Analysis: Dopamine levels increasing]

[Social bonding efficiency: High]

[Recommendation: Eat pizza. You have a calorie deficit.]

’Shut up,’ Rin thought, but he was smiling.

"Fine," he said aloud, "but if we play the zombie shooter, I get the shotgun."

"In your dreams, portal boy," Joy laughed, "in your dreams."