Free Web NovelChapter 15: Intimacy and ’Energy’
The notification hung in Ronan’s vision for a full ten seconds before he managed to close his mouth.
[Increase intimacy with (Bonded) to unlock.]
He read it again. Then a third time. The words didn’t change. The implication didn’t soften. The system, corrupted, unstable, barely functional, had just told him that killing monsters wasn’t enough anymore.
He needed to get closer to Sarael.
Literally.
"You’ve got to be kidding me," he said, his voice flat.
The marsh stretched around him in all directions, black water rippling faintly where unseen things moved beneath the surface.
The dead golem lay sprawled across the broken stone field, its shadow already absorbed, its corpse already cooling.
Ronan dismissed the Titan Greatbow and sat down on a chunk of rubble.
His mind was racing.
Intimacy.
What did that even mean in this context? The affinity meter had moved when he’d called her his wife. It had moved when she’d kissed him. It had moved when he’d held her while she cried and apologized for nearly choking him to death.
So intimacy meant... emotional connection? Physical closeness?
Both?
Neither?
"System," he said, keeping his voice carefully level. "Define intimacy parameters."
[Error: Information Corrupted]
"Of course." He rubbed his temples. "Define bonded relationship requirements."
[Error: Information Corrupted]
"Is there anything about this bond that isn’t corrupted?"
[Affinity: 1.1%]
[Intimacy Level: Insufficient]
[Required for Level 15: Intimacy Level 2]
A new term. Intimacy Level 2. Which implied there were multiple levels, and he was currently sitting at whatever qualified as Level 1, or maybe not even that, given the "Insufficient" tag.
Ronan stared at the notification until it faded.
"Sarael," he said.
The warmth in his chest flickered like a candle flame disturbed by a breath.
"Are you listening? I need to understand what this means." ƒгeewёbnovel.com
Nothing.
"She’s not coming out, huh?"
[Location not suitable]
A new notification appeared, and Ronan looked around. He was still sitting in the middle of a foul-smelling marsh.
’Maybe this was the reason?’
"Do you want me to find somewhere more romantic?"
[...]
"I’ll take that as a yes..."
Despite having been in Sarael’s presence for less than a week, Ronan had surprisingly grown used to her. It was nearly unbelievable to him that he had adjusted so quickly to a literal deity being in love with him, especially in just a few hours.
Still, considering how she had saved his life, acted human, and was ridiculously beautiful, Ronan couldn’t dismiss the idea entirely.
Ronan pushed himself off the rubble and scanned the marsh with fresh eyes.
The black water, the bloated humanoid corpses floating face-down, the distant ripple of something large circling beneath the surface, none of it screamed romance.
"Alright," he muttered. "Find somewhere that doesn’t smell like rotten meat and swamp gas."
The warmth in his chest pulsed once.
Agreement, maybe. Or impatience. He was getting better at reading her, but the signals were still vague, like trying to interpret a language he’d only heard in dreams.
He turned his back on the marsh and started walking.
***
The dead forest thinned out after another hour of hiking, the brittle black trees giving way to a stretch of rolling hills that looked almost normal.
The grass was the wrong color, pale silver instead of green, swaying in a breeze Ronan couldn’t feel, but it was grass.
Actual, living vegetation that didn’t try to eat him.
At the crest of the largest hill, he found what he was looking for.
A structure. Intact and surprisingly not a ruin or a collapsed shell of a building, but something that had survived whatever cataclysm had broken this world.
It was small, maybe a shrine or a waystation, with white stone walls that gleamed faintly under the violet moon and a roof that had kept its shape.
Vines crawled up the sides, but they were flowering vines. The same night-blooming flowers he’d smelled in Sarael’s shrine, their petals closed tight against the perpetual twilight.
"Okay," Ronan said, approaching slowly. "This is... actually promising."
The warmth in his chest flared.
He stepped through the open doorway and stopped.
The interior was simple. A single room with a stone bench along one wall, a cold fireplace opposite, and a window that looked out over the silver hills.
Dust covered everything, thick and undisturbed, but the air was dry and clean.
And in the center of the room, someone had laid out a blanket.
Dark fabric, soft-looking, embroidered at the edges with silver thread that caught the moonlight and held it.
At this point, Ronan was starting to think that finding this location wasn’t just a coincidence or luck.
It was too perfect for him to have stumbled upon it randomly.
’Did Sarael lead me here without me knowing?’
Ronan looked around the building, checking every nook and cranny to make sure nothing dangerous was hiding.
The last thing he needed was some cockroach-sized creature with poison strong enough to knock out an elephant.
And while his expedition had never encountered anything like that before, he wasn’t about to risk it after everything he had seen in this world.
"Sarael, I’m here. You can come out now."
[(Bond) unable to manifest, lacking energy]
"Energy...? What energy?"
The system didn’t respond.
He was supposed to be just grinding, but now he found himself in some weird, puzzle-like situation that involved intimacy.
Ronan knew what intimacy meant, but given his situation, he’d rather not jump the gun.
"Do I need to pray? Is that how this works? Do gods get power from prayer?"
Ronan decided to test his theory, mimicking the actions he had done at the shrine where he had first met Sarael. He uttered those same words while kneeling on the blanket, doing his best to recreate the reverence he had felt for her in the past.
And after two minutes of praying...
[(Bond) unable to manifest, lacking energy]
Nothing happened.
"Not budging, huh?"
Ronan looked around again, trying to piece together any clues, but the only thing that seemed remotely interesting was the blanket.
It was the cleanest thing in the building by far, but even it had nothing worth examining.
"Sarael, what in the world do you want from me...?"
