Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 141: Nothing Too Special

I turned my head.

And my heart instantly jumped straight into my throat.

Standing in the doorway was a woman in sleek, form-fitting leather armor with a silver-hilted rapier resting effortlessly on her hip.

She had piercing green slit eyes, smooth pale skin, and absolute pitch-black hair.

And twitching right near the top of her head were two perfectly real, velvet-black feline ears, matching the long, sleek tail casually swaying behind her boots.

[Cat girl!] My brain completely short-circuited, instantly forgetting... just about everything.

I’d seen cat-girls back in Shinkotsu from a distance, watching them walk through the bustling markets or guard the passing merchant caravans.

But this was the very first time I was actually standing within speaking distance of one.

Jian, beside me, immediately puffed out his chest like a pigeon.

Straightening his posture, he dropped a hand to rest casually on his sword hilt, clearly trying to project the aura of a hardened veteran in front of her.

"Miss Selene," Jian greeted, lowering his voice by a full octave in a painful attempt to sound suave. "I was just educating the rookie on the harsh realities of the coming Full Moon."

Selene didn’t even blink in his direction. Her sharp, feline eyes locked directly onto my face, completely ignoring the martial idiot’s pose.

Jian’s manufactured smirk physically wilted.

"So, you’re the F-Rank replacement," she simply stated.

"Nico," I nodded in reply, desperately trying to keep my eyes fixed on hers and not let them dart up to the twitching ears. "Just got processed by the manager."

"Good," she said, her crisp tone softening just a fraction while her tail gave a slow, rhythmic flick. "You just arrived from a long trip from the capital. You must be incredibly tired."

My heart did a little flutter.

[Oh my god, she’s beautiful, deadly, and considerate?] I thought, practically ready to name on my arm right then and there. [Ahh... I’m gonna fall in love!] 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"So..." Selene continued seamlessly, her eyes narrowing into a completely merciless glint. "You can take the night guard duty at the basin entrance. The crisp evening air will help you stay awake."

My internal romantic monologue crashed directly into a brick wall.

"Wait, what?" I blinked, the painfully enthusiastic rookie smile faltering on my lips.

"First watch," she ordered, turning on her heel with absolute authority. "On to it. The sun’s setting soon. And don’t let anything eat you."

With that, she walked right back down the hallway as her tail gave one final, dismissive swish, leaving in her wake a long, agonizing silence across the table.

Toris let out another short, muffled snort, going right back to testing the tension on his bowstring without offering a single word of comfort.

"Don’t worry, Nico!" Elara offered a bright, entirely unhelpful thumbs-up. "The basin entrance is super safe on normal nights! Mostly!"

"A true warrior embraces the night..." Jian sighed, shaking his head with a look of profound pity as he patted my shoulder. "Try not to let the shadows frighten you, Junior. My peerless blade will be here if you need to scream for help."

I just stared at him for a long second, absolutely speechless, before sighing deeply, getting up, and walking right back out the door without another word.

Leaving the warm quarters behind, I stepped back out into the basin.

The sky above the mountain was already bleeding into deep shades of orange. I trudged past the central dirt path, walking all the way down to the southern edge of the clearing where the dirt road spilled out from the dense tree line.

The designated guard post was right there, waiting for me in the fading light, which was literally just a rickety wooden stool sitting next to a dying campfire.

Letting out a long, exhausted sigh, I dropped my rear onto the uncomfortable wood before pulling the shotgun off my shoulder and resting it across my lap as I stared out into the darkening forest.

Letting out a long breath, I watched the last slivers of sunlight bleed out behind the dense forest canopy.

Sitting out here completely alone on a rickety wooden stool gave me way too much time to think.

And the first thing my mind drifted back to was the conversation I had with the System last night.

I had been perched twenty meters in the air on a massive, flat-topped root that I had erupted directly from a cliffside, making it my roof treehouse for the night.

It was up there, right after checking the party ledger, that I had dropped the question that had been on my mind for the past few days.

"That makes me wanna ask..." I had whispered to the empty air. "How powerful or potentially powerful am I compared to your ex, the strongest hero, aka Arlen Hale?"

I had fully expected the System to hype up my ungodly potential or something.

What I got instead was –

-Ding!

{Nothing too special.}

I remembered sitting there, staring out at the trees in complete bafflement.

I literally had the concept of infinity shoved inside my soul. A world-ending concept that took every single ounce of the System’s power to contain and bind to my mana recovery.

And the same System was telling me I was nothing special compared to his ex?

"So you think he was better?" I had shot back, fully prepared to argue the semantics of infinite scaling.

Probably sensing my bruised ego, the System’s voice returned, carrying that strange, complicated mix of deep hatred and undeniable respect it always held whenever it brought up Arlen.

-Ding!

{It is pointless to compare to him, Host. What makes you or him better is subjective if we ignore his past deeds. All I can provide is an opinion.}

Before I could even process that, the System kept going, completely twisting the knife.

{Host, Arlen Hale, once killed a Tier 5 Wyvern with his core’s integrity at seven percent. Just like you, he had initially allocated all his early stat points into MP, meaning his physical parameters were baseline human. And he was fifteen years old at that time.

While you, a full adult with Infinite MP Regen and Cloak Of Flight, got eaten by one within ten seconds of it spotting you.}

I physically cringed on my stool at the memory of that verbal beatdown. But the System still wasn’t done. It went on to say -

-Ding!

{You are even alive because your infinity started leaking and evolving the wyvern from the inside out, forcing me to step in.

If that wyvern wasn’t Nom-Nom, a half-wendigo with an eternally endless hunger, that leakage would’ve evolved her into something unimaginable.

Host, point is, what made Arlen Hale was neither me or any Affinity. It was his own sheer will and nothing else.}

I let out a soft sigh and kicked a loose pebble into the dirt, pulling my jacket a little tighter around my neck.

The System definitely hadn’t minced words. Arlen Hale was a monster of pure skill and sheer, terrifying willpower.

And I was just a guy who survived by the skin of his teeth because my cheat code accidentally broke the Wyvern that ate me.

[Yeah, alright...] I thought, casually resting my thumb against the safety of the Boomstick as I stared out into the darkening tree line. [Point taken, my guy.]

I settled in on the uncomfortable wood, letting the silence of the forest wash over me as I shook the memory off my mind. After all, I had more pressing matters to deal with.

Tomorrow night, the Full Moon would rise, and the basin would go into total lockdown, and if the assassins from Entropy were actually tracking me, that chaos would be the absolute perfect time for them to make their move.

And now that I know Iron Vanguard’s plan, I see no way they will not get roped in if Entropy does strike.