The Extra's Rise - Chapter 977

977: Denying the Pull 977: Denying the Pull Of course.

Here is the perfect rewrite of Chapter 7.

The next corridor looked harmless.

Smooth stone, soft lights set into the ceiling, and a faint, clean breeze, as if the building were breathing through its nose.

That alone made me suspicious.

A tower that has tried to kill you in six different fonts doesn’t suddenly become polite for your health.

“I’d like that embroidered on a pillow,” I muttered to myself.

“Don’t jinx it,” I answered back.

“I will,” Valeria said, her presence bright and sharp in my hand.

“This is a trap wearing nice shoes.” Erebus touched the pact-line from wherever his bone hall lived.

His voice came through like a quiet, final bell.

‘Proceed.’ We walked.

For twenty paces, the ceiling behaved itself.

The letters carved along the walls pretended to be purely decorative.

The air smelled of stone and old paper.

My boots made a steady, countable sound on the floor.

I moved like a man who trusts his footing but keeps all the receipts.

Then, a soft tug at my hip.

It was the tether.

Reika’s rope, the physical line back to the seam, back to the world.

The monitoring lead looped on my wrist warmed once, a little pulse that felt like her hand-competent, steady, and just a tiny bit bossy.

It was the feeling of home.

Two quick tugs came through the line.

Our code: You still with us?

I squeezed the lead once in reply, sending a single pulse back.

Still me.

We turned a clean corner.

At ankle height, the wall had written SAFETY LINE in tidy, helpful letters, which is exactly what a scam would say while selling you a bridge.

“That’s bait,” Valeria said.

“Please do not lick the bait.” “I wasn’t going to,” I lied.

The corridor narrowed to a sleeve.

The floor became so polished that I could see my own distorted reflection: my grip on the hilt, my focused expression, and a long list of poor life choices.

A hair-thin thread of black ink ran along the left edge, gleaming faintly, like a fishing line set for promises.

“Trip line,” I said.

‘Clause,’ Erebus agreed.

The rope at my waist tugged again.

But this time it wasn’t the clean, professional pull from Reika.

This one was a little… greedy.

It felt like an echo, a suggestion.

The ink line caught the light the way regret does in hindsight.

I stopped.

The hall hummed, pleased that I had noticed.

“Cut the reflex, not the string,” Valeria said, and the usual joke had dropped out of her voice.

She was serious.

The tug was designed to be ignored and answered.

It was a simple, animal-level stimulus.

Rope pulls, you pull back, or you follow.

It was a test of my most basic, unthinking habits.

I had spent the last hour silencing the tells in my muscles.

Now the tower was testing the tells in my instincts.

I raised Valeria.

The tower expected me to cut the ink thread, or maybe the tether itself.

I did neither.

I made a small, precise cut on myself-right under the ribs, a shallow line in the muscle where the polite, helpful urge lived.

The part of me that had been trained since childhood to answer a pull.

The cut was muscle and decision, not just air.

It was a physical anchor for a mental choice: I own my own reflexes.

The greedy tug slid off my awareness.

It tried to become a second, more insistent pull, and found nothing to grab onto.

It devolved into a weak, awkward twitch and then gave up.

The hall made the exact sound a bored clerk makes when you hand them the correct form.

A quiet sigh of unamused respect.

I stepped carefully past the ink line.

The real tether, the physical rope, brushed against it.

The ink wriggled toward the rope like a hungry cat toward a warm lap.

I wrapped a thin, firm layer of Lucent Harmony around the tether.

Harmony is very rude to parasites.

The ink recoiled as if I’d smacked it with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Good rope,” Valeria said, her good humor returning.

“No hallway snacks.” We moved on.

The floor sighed, as if it wanted more drama.

Then the pull hit, and this time it wasn’t polite.

It was a yank.

The coil at my waist bit hard through my jacket.

The wrist lead went hot.

I felt the seam anchor where Reika stood, miles away, hum back at me, a frantic vibration of alarm.

Then, the line lost its weight.

Ropes are heavier than ideas.

The tether was becoming an idea.

“Reika?” I asked the air, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me here.

‘Not Reika,’ Erebus said, his voice flat.

‘A vote.’ The hall was pushing a choice into my hands.

Agree with the line.

Agree to “come back.” The ink thread swelled, reaching for the rope, its true clause now visible, dressed in the language of concern.

‘This is for your safety.’ It wasn’t.

It was a leash.

I set my feet and refused.

The yank turned into a snap.

The tether went taut, then thinned, its physical substance running out of it like sand from cracked glass.

The rope stopped being rope and became the word “rope.” And words, in a place like this, are very easy to edit.

“Now,” Valeria said.

I cut where there was nothing to see.

The blade met a shape that existed only because a sentence said it did.

The cut landed because I told it why before I moved, grounding the action in my own will, not the room’s.

The rope parted.

There was no whip and sting.

No theatrical recoil.

No loud goodbye.

The coil at my hip just slumped, suddenly inert.

The lead on my wrist went cold.

Silence arrived and set down its luggage.

‘Acknowledged,’ Erebus said.

Valeria tried levity like a bandage on a fresh wound.

“On the bright side, no more tug bruises.” “I liked the bruises,” I said, and heard the raw honesty in it.

“I know,” she said, her voice gentler.

Then her grin came back.

“We can bruise you ourselves.

It’ll be a team-building exercise.” I took a breath.

Four in.

Six out.

The breath found a steady groove, fast enough to make me trust it.

“Alone,” I said.

“With us,” Valeria corrected, cheerful and sharp as ever.

“I’m at least three swords’ worth of personality.

Four on holidays.

Erebus is a very supportive filing system with excellent posture.” ‘Proceed,’ Erebus said, which is his version of a hand on the shoulder.

We walked.

The next room opened into a neat square.

The ceiling wavered, as if it kept reconsidering its contract but decided to stay up.

The floor was a grid of pale grays, tidy enough to pass an inspection.

In the center, glowing text: PLEASE CENTER YOURSELF.

“No,” I told the room.

“Edges first.” I walked the border.

Every third tile tried to feel important under my boot.

I stepped only on the humble ones.

The humble ones held.

Floors and people share that more than they admit.

“Drill?” Valeria asked.

“Drill,” I said.

I cut on the move.

Nothing pretty.

Broom-closet cuts, short, direct, exactly the size I could afford.

My steps landed on the boring tiles.

My pauses fell on ugly numbers.

My hip stopped trying to help.

My wrist stopped showing off.

The blade stopped where I asked it to, not where habit wanted it to.

Breath reached six without asking for applause.

The text on the floor updated.

CHOOSE A PATH.

“I choose not to choose,” I said.

“Not yet.” I let my breath pick the direction.

My feet followed my breath.

It felt like cheating, because a part of me still wanted trumpets and a cloud of smoke.

It wasn’t cheating.

It was competence without fireworks.

The far wall, apparently bored with my lack of drama, decided to be a door.

It just opened.

I appreciated the restraint and did not reward it with thanks.

‘Status?’ Erebus asked, his ledger-voice neat as always.

“Better,” I said, my own voice a low murmur.

“Less silly.

Small cuts are doing real work.

Harmony fits my size.

Mythweaver is pocket change.

Grey is a luxury brand I can’t buy yet.

Nine-circle is dots and lines.

Tether is gone.

Morale is… cereal without the sugar.” Valeria gasped like a wounded diva.

“Add raisins.” “Prison food,” I said.

“Banished,” she declared.

We passed through.

The next hall dropped the ceiling by the height of a bad joke.

I ducked early just to be petty.

The ceiling rethought its life and rose again.

The wall-letters leaned close enough to kiss.

I did not kiss them.

Standards are important.

“Talk to me,” Valeria said, keeping my head busy while my feet did the work.

“Favorite soup?

Least favorite demon?

Thoughts on naps?” “Tomato.

Lust.

Naps should be a law,” I said, my eyes scanning for the next trap.

“Dream big,” she said.

“Also, the wall is lying.” She was right.

The corner was faking a dead end.

I walked straight into the shadow.

The wall heaved a very dramatic sigh and became a seam.

It acted like it had always been there.

It hadn’t.

We all lie sometimes.

On the other side waited a training square with four round pillars and a single lamp that was just a rune in a hat.

The closest pillar carried fresh text: ACT BIG.

I acted small.

The room tried to make ‘small’ feel like ‘cowardice.’ I made ‘small’ feel like ‘craft.’ Cowardice runs a tab.

Craft pays in cash.

The difference is whether you still owe someone at the end of the day.

Far behind me, at a seam that is no longer mine, a rope lies on the stone.

I will miss the tug.

I will also be fine without it.

Both can be true.

“Onward?” Valeria asked.

“Onward,” I said.

And the slit at the end of the hall finally decided to be a door.