Sensory

April 3rd, 2034

A-Rank Wormhole, Streya's Subspace

"''Just you wait.'" I closed the book, having finished reading to Streya. It was an interesting story, leaving me wondering if I'd have the chance to read the rest of the series.

"Ahhh… that hit the spot. Thank you, human. It has been a few years since I've been disembodied, and it's good to finally have something to do."

"My name's Tom." I finally introduced myself to the demon. She probably wouldn't be able to do anything untoward with it, right?

I sighed and got up from the recliner, stretching. It had been a very welcome break to sit down and read a book over the last few hours. My mouth was getting a bit dry and my jaw felt stiff, but it was manageable. However, it was time to leave.

"I'm sorry, but I need to go," I announced. I had worked out that Streya seemed agreeable enough. Ideally, she would let me go and not murder me on the spot.

"Why?" She sounded surprisingly dejected, as if I had just told her that her dog had died. "Aren't you having fun here? I can make different drinks if you want: alcohol, soda, more coffee—anything."

"It's not that." I felt really bad leaving her trapped here, but it couldn't be helped. "It would be fun to stay here and read with you, but I have a duty to my teammates to assist them. There are people back home that rely on me, too. I need to kill the boss of this subspace and leave."

"Take me with you!" she yelled, sounding desperate and scared. "Please. I hate it here. I'm nothing. Please, I'm begging you."

I was stunned by the sudden outburst. How was I to go about consoling a demon? Better yet, if I did release her, how was I supposed to explain to anyone else that I unleashed a demon?

Motivated by some form of misplaced empathy, I couldn't help but ask, "How would I be able to free you from here?"

"Really? You'll do it? Thank you, thank you so much!"

Admittedly, her jubilation did feel nice to hear. Perhaps it was some form of hypocritical self-satisfaction, but I decided I wanted to help this weird demon. Or maybe it was an immediate case of Stockholm syndrome?

Streya continued, now sounding much more reserved. "It's a specific ritual, one that can't be forced. I need your explicit consent to bond to you and make you my sensory. That way, I can be unbonded from this subspace and thus free."

A system notification popped up in front of me, reading, "The demon lord Streya wishes to make you her sensory. Do you agree? Y/N."

Neglecting to choose either option, I asked, "I'm sorry, but I will need more information than that. One: what is a sensory? Two: will this affect my class abilities as the Aspect of Sun?"

"A sensory is different from an aspect. Similar, albeit, but there's different rules for different types of beings. What has 'sponsored' you, so to speak, is neither demon nor god. Akin to divinity, the details of that are above my pay grade.

"As for what a sensory is, specifically, it's an absolute connection between you and me—a contract, in a way. When you become my sensory, we'll borrow each other's power as mutual beneficiaries."

"Streya, this is sounding like some soul-stealing nonsense," I warned her.

"It's not my fault that my race doesn't have collective PR or HR departments."

"You don't even have human resources," I quipped. "Anyhow, so this is some sort of immutable soul bond? I have dedication issues, you see, and I don't want to get married to someone I just met."

"Ugh, why did you have to put it so grossly? It's not about love; it's about power and, in my case, freedom."

Groaning, I paced back and forth in contemplation. On one hand, I did earnestly want to help the persona I had seen thus far. However, she could also have been deceiving me this entire time and was about to steal my body or something.

I finally decided that I would need her help, regardless. I had absolutely no means of finding the real boss at this rate, which was the only way to leave this accursed subspace.

"Fine." I selected the "Y" button on the pop-up and immediately felt a sizzling heat radiate from my chest, near my heart. I was taken aback by the surreal sensation of painful heat after so many years of being immune to it. I gritted my teeth as the heat pulsated throughout my body.

Before long, the phenomena ended and I suddenly felt refreshed.

"Is this thing on?" Streya's voice came from my head, jarringly so. I hadn't experienced much telepathy in the past, leaving me inexperienced with people talking in my head.

"Yeah, I hear you," I spoke out loud, unsure of the rules of this sort of communication.

Understanding my confusion, Streya explained. "If you think with the express intent of communicating with me, I'll receive your thoughts. I can't read your mind elsewise. The same applies to you."

As she spoke, the pile of mugs I had collected started to disintegrate. I looked around and noticed that the same thing was happening to a lot of the books spread about.

"Do we need to leave?" I thought to Streya.

"Now that I'm free, the subspace is starting to collapse. So, yes. We should go. Like, now."

Having no need to be convinced further, I ran for the door and burst through it into the unlit cavern. I threw up some flames for illumination and then noticed that my crispy friends had returned to undeath.

I pushed forth a burst of flames that once again destroyed the skeletons without much effort. True to Streya's words, I received no XP this time around.

"So, now that we're out of there and you have my power to use, can you help me reach the boss?"

"Hehe. That much is trivial, mortal." Streya sounded too haughty for her own good, but I smiled. "Let's see… I can trace the mana pathways through the subspace and they all lead to the same location. All right, let's go!"

Before I could ask what she meant by that, I disappeared. I was suddenly in a large cavern with 3 sleeping bags laid out on the floor.

I didn't have time to comprehend what had just transpired before coughing out a large amount of blood onto the stone floor.

"What did you do?" I hissed. I checked my status to confirm the damage.

—Status—

HP: 183/679

Mana: 0/609

Streya sounded meek. "I… may be a bit rusty at using others' power."

"Boss?" A familiar voice rang out from one of the sleeping bags. I saw Maddy jump up and rush over to me, seemingly checking if I were undead or something.

She frantically asked me a barrage of questions: "What happened to you? And your leg! And who did what? Where did you come from? Did you see anybody else?"

I held up a hand, asking her to pause. Going through my bag—which I thankfully kept through the teleport—I grabbed and chugged the last healing potion.

"Okay," I gasped. "I am also confused. Where are we?"

"We're in front of the boss room."

I looked over and noticed that Alton was here, too. It was good to see the guy.

"Seriously though," said Maddy, "what happened to your leg?"

"I'm pretty sure it's destroyed," I admitted. "My HP won't go above about 350."

"Oh no!" The last person here, a girl I didn't recognize, rushed over to me and started to cast a spell. Given the mana fluctuations and the appearance of the spell circles, I guessed it was some sort of identifying spell.

"This is Sera, a utility caster." Alton introduced me to the woman as she was casting.

When she finished, Sera announced, "It says that you have suffered a shattered femur; a shattered tibia; a dislocated hip socket; and a sprained ankle. On top of that, numerous sources of damage have been applied to your flesh. My skill isn't even completely thorough. This will require a professional healthcare institution's help to mend."

"Great, so it's as expected." I laughed wryly. "Oh well. I have it covered for now, though I'm not very nimble."

"I'm so sorry." Maddy sounded guilty, weirdly enough. It wasn't her fault I fell over 1700 meters. "Do you know what happened to the other members of your team?"

"I'm sorry to say, but there's no way they're alive. We were all ascending the rope when the cave started to come down. It's a miracle that I was able to survive the fall." I wasn't sure why I left out the detail of the fighter dying prior to that. I supposed it was due to feeling guilty and awkward about the whole thing.

…

We all spent the next hour catching up and sharing our respective stories. I glossed over the details of Streya, explaining that it was a strange rune at the end of the cave that had allowed me to teleport to the boss room.

Upon hearing the story of the bearing golem, I felt remorseful that I couldn't have been there. It sounded like a great target for fire spells.

Having our fill of conversation, we all had some food before setting up a watch and resting for the night. According to the watches, it was almost midnight.

Six hours later, we all were awake and relatively well-rested.

"So, no one showed up overnight." I said the thing on everyone's minds. "The sooner we clear the boss, the sooner everyone can get out of here. If someone is trapped under a pile of rocks or cornered by monsters, we can save them by killing the boss as soon as possible."

Sera countered, "Which is a nice dream, but in reality we'll need more than 3-and-a-half people to defeat the boss."

"I'm not crippled," I complained. "But yeah, I agree. We need at least one more group to show up before we can confidently go for the boss. The issue I want to bring up, though, is that after how long do we go in regardless?"

My question left the others silent for a few moments before Alton spoke up. "We'll call it 24 hours from now. How about that? If no one shows up by then, we'll take a group vote with Maddy's being worth 2."

"I can't argue with that."

We seemed to come to an agreement easily, and thus the long wait started.

I spent most of my downtime circulating my mana to stay brisk. Aside from that, I napped frequently. Whatever horrible damage I had done to my leg, it was starting to take its toll on me. I probably had caught some degree of fever, not that I could feel it.

About 10 hours into the wait, we finally heard the sound of footsteps echoing from one of the openings. I let out a sigh of relief as I stiffly got up to see who it was.

However, only a single person strode through into the cavern. He looked exhausted and paranoid as he bored holes into us with his eyes.

"You!" he shouted, pointing at Maddy. "You got them all killed!"

"Stop." With a wave of my hand, a wall of fire surrounded the belligerent man. If he was dumb enough to try to jump through it, that was his grave.

"I'll kill you all!" He didn't seem to be suicidal, but his raw screams broke through the flames, echoing throughout the cavern.

Annoyed, I looked over to Maddy. "Firstly, it's not your fault. Don't forget that. Secondly, what are we supposed to do with him? He's clearly deranged and I can't keep this up forever."

"Wait!" Sera grabbed me. "I can help him. Don't hurt him." She jumped up and started casting a spell.

I let her approach the fire before dropping my magic. The deranged man lashed out at her with a short sword, but she was able to get the spell off before it contacted. A brilliant white light flashed around the man, sinking into his flesh. Immediately, he dropped to the ground, murmuring softly.

"All right." I looked back at Maddy. "Who's that?" She looked pretty shaken up by his raw ire, but I hoped she'd still be able to think rationally.

"That's… that's Dan. He was with 3 others." She looked haunted, the reality seemingly sinking in.

I took a deep breath, accepted that they were gone, and spoke. "If they were eradicated, we need to take some risks. How strong is he? If Sera gets him into a good headspace, can we rely on him for the boss fight?"

"Yeah, for sure. He's pretty strong. If he wasn't so haggard, Sera wouldn't have gotten him down nearly as easily." Maddy shook her head and lightly slapped her cheeks.

I walked over to Sera and checked on Dan's condition. He seemed to be inebriated, or something akin to such an effect. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes weren't focused on anything.

"Is he going to be good to fight?" I asked Sera.

"Yes. Just, give me an hour to get him fixed up. He's exhausted, delirious, dehydrated, and low on HP." She seemed to continue to earnestly focus on her work as she replied to me.

"Okay. I can give you an hour. However, that's when we're going in." I projected my voice loud enough to let Alton and Maddy hear my declaration. If they protested, I might have relented. However, their silence let me know that they at least partially agreed with me.

Too many lives were at stake. Clearly, these passages were too difficult for the average group. We had to do what we could.

…

An hour later and Sera had Dan up and jogging around. To me, he seemed to be in good form, without a speck of his prior exhaustion to be seen.

After his warm-up, he came over to me.

"Hey, Mr. Eaton, I'm terribly sorry about earlier. I'll cooperate. It's just…" He looked down and couldn't finish his sentence. Whatever excuse he was thinking, I didn't want to hear it.

"Apologize to Maddy. It has nothing to do with me." I shrugged and gestured toward her.

Of course, under my gaze, Dan went over and asked for her forgiveness for his words.

With that, our team of 5 was ready to delve into the final room of the subspace. I gave the participants a lookover. We had a swordsman, an archer, a spear-user, a utility mage, and a pyromancer. It wasn't the best party composition, but it would have to do.

Maddy led us all to the massive stone doors watching over the entire cavern. With a grunt, she shoved them open and we walked through and into the boss chamber.