Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 419: Inland Gig

"Thank you for coming."

Damon grasped Eastiel’s hand and shook it with a firm grip. He had been negotiating with contractors long enough to know exactly how valuable a willing specialist was. "I’m lucky. They said you refused offshore work for the next year. What happened?"

Eastiel chuckled as they walked through the dam’s operating and maintenance base, a labyrinth of concrete corridors and humming machinery that smelled faintly of river water and industrial lubricant.

His steel-toed boots clanged against the metal grating with each step, his bright yellow hard hat tucked under one arm. "My girlfriend is pregnant. So I decided to stay inland for a year. At the very least."

"Oh!" Damon’s face broke into a surprised smile. "Congratulations, Mr. Edengold." He sighed in wonder. "Wow. Are we going to meet the next heir of the Edengold line?"

Eastiel scoffed. "Well. Maybe in the next three to four years, yeah." He ran a hand through his golden hair, his lion ears twitching. "Pray for my seed, man. They have serious competition."

"What?" Damon blinked, his stride faltering for just a moment.

Competition? What kind of competition could possibly exist for see—?

"Don’t worry." Eastiel waved off his confusion. "I will still go offshore for the Association if an emergency happens. Just give me a call."

They entered the control room, a dimly lit space lined with monitors and blinking consoles. Eastiel’s phone rang the moment they stepped through the door and he glanced at the screen. "Ah. Must be the boys with our equipment."

His eyes found the nearest CCTV monitor as he lifted the phone to his ear. The camera showed a section of the dam’s interior, massive concrete walls, dark water, and a small, almost innocuous stream of black filth bleeding into the reservoir like ink into clear water.

It spread slowly, tendrils of corruption reaching outward, dying everything they touched.

"It will be a small dormant rift under there, right?"

"Yes. And the damage in the dam itself is nearby." Damon pointed to another screen, this one showing a different angle, closer to the structural supports, where hairline cracks were visible in the concrete. "If the contamination spreads into the foundation, we could be looking at a full breach."

"Prepare for a small team. I will lead. Swanson as backup." Eastiel spoke into the phone. He ended the call and turned back to Damon. "Have you called the purification team?"

"The Saintess is being escorted here as we speak. She needs to re-purify this area since the dam is compromised."

"Hm." Eastiel hummed. "Didn’t know I would meet my brother today."

Damon chuckled. "It’s still weird that you call that wolf your brother."

"Oh." Eastiel’s golden eyes flicked toward him. "You know about us?"

"I kinda guessed you went way back." Damon shrugged. It wasn’t a secret that he made it his business to know everything about everyone. "Aro Industry’s leading man and the heir of Nevaeh Group. Not at all surprising."

"Nice guess." Eastiel nodded.

He turned toward the door, ready to meet up with his team, when Damon’s hand shot out and grabbed his shoulder. "Hey."

"What’s up?" Eastiel turned back, his brow furrowing.

Damon’s expression had shifted. The easy, professional charm was gone, replaced by something more serious. Worry? "Man. Talking about your pregnant girlfriend before a mission is such a death flag. Be careful out there."

"Pff—" Eastiel scoffed dismissively. "Don’t jinx it."

"I’m serious."

"Yeah." Eastiel’s voice softened. "Thanks."

As he walked away from Damon, his mind drifted to the morning. It had been as normal as mornings ever got in their apartment these days, which was to say, not normal at all, but settling into a new kind of rhythm.

Him and Arkai, grabbing their gear, shuffling toward the door. Cecilia had been there, of course. She was always there now, and it still sent a secret small thrill through his chest every time he remembered it. She saw them off as usual, and they kissed her cheeks before they left.

Arkai had mentioned, in passing, that a lot of outbreaks had been happening inside infrastructures lately.

The worst had been not long ago, the incident at one of the largest purification chambers that connected to thousands of smaller, functional purification chambers in the world. A rogue rift had opened practically on top of the Saintess herself.

Arkai had been there and pulled her to safety, which was a stroke of luck.

After that, the three brothers had spent an evening discussing it at the dinner table, while Cecilia had sat beside them, saying nothing.

Eastiel remembered the way she had been so quiet and still. Her eyes flicking between the three of them as they talked, her lips slightly parted.

She was so cute... so adorably quiet when she was trying her best not to interrupt when trying to absorb everything with that brilliant, terrifying brain of he—

Huh?

Eastiel’s stride faltered.

Why would he know that? Cecilia could have been thinking about anything. She could have been daydreaming or zoning out, exhausted from the pregnancy, thinking about pickles or pineapples or the latest bizarre craving her body had thrown at her.

She could have been a million miles away.

Why did he assume—no, why was he sure that she had been quietly absorbing everything they said?

Did he... know her that well...?

He pushed it aside for now.

Eastiel met up with his team and did his routine preparation. He stood at the edge of the dive platform, the dam’s interior stretching around him, just concrete and steel.

The air was cold and damp, heavy with the smell of river water and the faint, acrid bite of corruption that had begun seeping through the sluice gate’s damaged seals.

The black filth was visible even from here, thin tendrils of darkness bleeding into the reservoir, spreading like ink through the clear water below. It was a much darker contrast, even though the rest was already dark.

He was already halfway into his dive suit, the thick neoprene hugging his shoulders and torso, the heavy weight of his helmet resting under one arm.

His team moved around him efficiently since they had done this a hundred times. They were checking seals, testing oxygen flow, running through their pre-dive checklists, knowing how much danger that always surrounded them.

"The rift breach is dormant," Eastiel said among the low hum of machinery and the distant rush of water. "Not the usual outbreak. No active spawns or movement. Just corruption bleeding through the structural damage."

He pulled on his gloves, flexing his fingers to test the seal. "That means the contamination is passive, but it’s still concentrated. The filth has been pooling down there for a couple of hours now."

"The moment your suit integrity drops below ninety percent, you abort. No ’just one more minute.’ Surface and pass the baton to backup."

His golden eyes swept across his team.

"Remember. The moment your hand feels numb, or your eyebrow strains, it’s time. Don’t wait for the headache. Don’t wait for the dizziness. If your eyebrow strains, you are already absorbing contamination. You surface immediately. Understood?"

"Copy, boss." Swanson, a grizzled Wereswan with twenty years of underwater welding experience, nodded once.

"Hey, boss," one of the younger divers, a wiry kid named Reyes who had only been on the team for six months, raised his hand slightly. "Are you going to just cover, or are you also taking care of the repair?"

Eastiel shook his head. "If something strange happens you will see it from up here first, before we do down there."

He gestured toward the control room monitors, where the CCTV feeds showed the slow, oozing spread of black contamination through the dam’s lower infrastructure. "It will help if you can tell us to look out."

"Are you sure the main thing is just the corruption?" Reyes pressed, his young face creased with concern. "No spawns?"

"Yeah. I’m sure." Eastiel said steadily. "The gate breach is small. It’s leaking, not tearing. Whatever is on the other side is not trying to come through."

He paused, sighing a bit. "I’m more worried about the support, though. The concrete cracks. We are going in blind for that part, at least. We know the gate damage, but the structural failure could be anywhere. Could be hairline, could be catastrophic."

"Come on, it’s a dam. In the worst case scenario, it won’t collapse on us," Swanson shrugged, making the rest laugh.

Eastiel smiled, and turned to face his team fully. "Alright, stick to the plan. Gate repair first. The longer we let those filth go down the mountain, the more we see ecological damage and corruption poisoning."

"We are in and out in forty minutes, max."

"Copy, boss."

"Understood."

Eastiel pulled his helmet over his head, the seals hissing as they pressurized. The world outside the visor shrank to a narrow, focused tunnel. The distant rush of water became a muffled roar. His own breathing filled his ears.

He had done this a hundred times. He would do it a hundred more. And tonight, he would go home to Cecilia and kiss her forehead.

Maybe sing a different song for her?

Let’s see.