SSS Gacha Master: I Can Only Gacha Bikini Warriors-Chapter 48. You Shouldn’t Have Had to Carry That Alone
Lucian walked toward her. She heard him coming and flinched slightly, just a shift of her shoulders, the involuntary movement of someone bracing for something they expect to be unpleasant.
"Octavia."
"Please don’t, Master..."
He put his hand on her shoulder, and then she stopped moving just to look at him smiling.
’Even though some people will think this is weird, I... for real... dig it for sure!’ Lucian thought. ’A MILF with tentacles is rather unique and hot at the same time!’
"Why are you saying sorry for...?" he asked.
He genuinely wanted to know the answer, because from where he was standing, she had just saved all of them from a difficult fight and done it at the cost of something she’d clearly been protecting. "You just saved us."
Octavia turned around. She was trying very hard not to let something fall, and her eyes were bright with it.
He had never seen that look on her face before. It was not the familiar half-smile, the warm teasing, or even the serious, fighting look, but something older and less polished.
"You’re not... disgusted at it...?" Her voice broke up a little at the end.
"W-what...? No!" Lucian shook his head. "No, I’m not."
"You’re not scared of it?"
"Of course not! I saw you kill twenty wolves in thirty seconds," he said. "That’s not something I’m scared of, but it’s something I’m thankful for."
"And, uh..." Lucian starts, scratching his cheek, trying to look away. "Those looked unique to me, and I’m glad you can show something as cool as that to me..."
The thing she was keeping from her eyes gave way, and she cried, properly and without the elegant theatrical quality that older, composed people sometimes bring to visible emotion.
She pressed one hand over her mouth, and Lucian, without particularly planning to, pulled her into a hug; she grabbed onto the back of his armor and held on with the desperation of someone who hasn’t been allowed to be held in a very long time.
"Thank you so much, Master... I’m glad I could hear those beautiful words coming from you..."
When she could talk again, she told them about the Thiren. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚
It came out in pieces over the next several minutes, with the party gathered in the cleared ground while the forest settled around them. Her mother had been human, a coastal fisherwoman from a village that no longer existed.
Her father had been an Elder Kraken, something ancient and vast from the deep. The Thiren were a rare product of such unions, people who carried both forms and could move between them, never fully belonging to either world.
She said, "The surface only accepts things it can easily categorize."
She had calmed down, and her voice was steady, but it still had a raw quality to it. "I learned to stay in the Abyss because down there, no one could see what I was..."
"The deep water accepted me, but... everything else... didn’t." Octavia looked ashamed of herself.
"When I was called into the system," she went on, "I thought I would hide it for as long as I could."
"Every master I heard of wanted beautiful human warriors... I thought if you saw the tentacles, you’d send me back to the summoning realm..."
"And I couldn’t..." she stopped. "I couldn’t be in there by myself again... not for a long time, being alone."
Lucian then starts to think about this ’summoning realm,’ and her loneliness seems to be the exact same as Glacielle’s. But then again she looked at Marshal, where she seemed fine about it, but again... he started to think that every bikini warrior probably had a different origin of their own.
When he was about to comfort her again, Lucian noticed Glacielle moving forward because it was slow and careful. She stopped in front of Octavia and looked at her hands for a moment before looking up.
"I’ve been jealous of you since the day you got here..."
"That means I’ve been keeping a close watch on you since you got here, and I haven’t been very nice about it," she said.
"But now that I know about your story more..." She held out her hand. "You’ve been carrying that by yourself, and... you shouldn’t have had to."
"In the end... we’re almost exactly the same, huh?" Glacielle showed a genuine smile at her.
Octavia looked at the hand that was being offered. "Glacielle..." and then she took it.
"You’re a member of this family." Glacielle said, "With tentacles and all."
Marshal had her arms crossed in a way that made her look like she was both at ease in the military and trying to hide that she was being moved.
She said, "In my legion, I commanded humans, beastfolk, and two members of a demon-affiliated clan."
"The only thing that mattered when choosing was how they fought. And for me, of course... you proved that you’ve fought well as a water tank." She stopped. "And that’s a big compliment from me."
"I know," Octavia said, and the warmth in her voice came back slowly, like the sun rising instead of a lamp being turned on. "Thanks... all three of you."
The system notification appeared quietly at the edge of Lucian’s vision.
[Bond Level Increased: Octavia 1.5 to 3.0 Hearts.]
[Relationship: Devoted Family Member.]
[New Ability Unlocked: Tentacle Arsenal.]
[Combat Effectiveness +40% when using true form.]
He dismissed it and offered her the water flask.
...
That night, they set up camp in a clearing next to a wide, shallow river, which was perfect for Octavia. Without being told, she made a water barrier around the camp’s edge.
She moved around the camp’s edge and let the river water flow through a series of patterns that were both beautiful and clearly useful as an early warning system.
Marshal was the first to watch. Glacielle and Lucian sat near the fire, close but not too close, in a comfortable way.
Octavia sat by the river for a while, doing something with the water that could have been training or the kind of quiet activity that beings that have been around for centuries do to deal with hard days.
Lucian stared at the fire and thought about the merchant’s story, the father’s story, the way the wolves had been moving in formation, and the purple seals on their sides.
He thought about Corvus’s crazy smile as he watched from his crystal orb and then about a mythical beast that was as big as a building and killed fifty soldiers in thirty seconds.
"You’re not going to sleep, Master?" Glacielle asked.
"Not yet."
"You’re making plans right now?"
"More like thinking of something," he said. "And also... planning means I know more than I do right now."
She put her head on his shoulder. The fire made a soft crackling sound.
"Lucian," she said after a while.
He looked at her by turning his head. "Hm?"
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me," she said.
"Always."
She took a breath. "Do you feel something for the others? For Marshal, or Octavia? The way you feel about me?"
He had half-known the conversation was coming because the soul bond gave him an idea of how she was feeling, and he had been trying to figure out how to be honest about it without being mean. He thought about the question for a moment before answering.
He then took a deep breath before preparing for an answer.
"Yes," he said. "I feel something... but it’s not the same as what I feel for you..."
"You’re my first and my soulmate, and that won’t change or fade." He then looked at the sky. "But I’m getting closer to them... and I think I’ll love them too, in a different way."
Glacielle was quiet. He could feel her processing it through the bond, not pain exactly, but more the sensation of something being acknowledged that had already been known and simply hadn’t been named yet.
"I thought so," she said. "I can feel it through the connection..."
"Your heart is growing." She stared at the fire. "But... I won’t ask you to stop."
"I don’t think I could even if I wanted to."
