Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

Chapter 289

Zaeryn gave her a dry look. "Worse than getting hit by Mireille?""No." A real smile this time. "But that’s a genuinely unfair standard to hold anything else to."

She placed her palm flat against his side, and her eyes lifted to his instead of staying on the wound the way they had the first time. The resistance was impossible to miss, pressure building from somewhere inside him outward, as though his own Vitae had risen to meet hers and was weighing whether she carried enough behind her to earn passage through. For a long second nothing happened, her light straining against whatever was holding the line in him, and she held his gaze through all of it, not out of nerves, but like she wanted to be watching him when it finally gave.

Then it sharpened, gathering into something denser, and the resistance broke.

Warmth flooded through his ribs, and Zaeryn sucked in a breath as the ache that had settled there eased, bone and muscle and strained tissue pulling themselves quietly back into place under a force too controlled to be careless and too strong to keep arguing with. Emeline’s breath caught along with his, soft and involuntary, her eyes still on his face rather than the ribs her hand was actually working on, and for a moment the whole room narrowed down to the two of them and whatever she was feeling that he wasn’t.

Emeline exhaled hard when she finally stepped back. "That one earned its keep."

Zaeryn flexed experimentally, testing the spot where the bruise had been.

Nothing. No pain at all.

"Thanks," he said.

Emeline laughed, short and genuine. "You’re very welcome, Zaeryn." She folded her arms, studying him with open fascination now that the actual work was done. "I do have one more question, though."

"Go for it."

Her gaze flicked briefly to Annalise, then settled back on him.

"What exactly," she asked, "made your body decide ordinary healing wasn’t even worth acknowledging?"

Zaeryn opened his mouth to reply, already spinning a carefully calculated half-truth in his head, but the sharp chime of an incoming alert on Annalise’s personal terminal cut him off before the first word could form.

Annalise glanced down at the flashing glyph on her wrist comm, her brow furrowing slightly as she read the high-priority summary. "I have to leave," she said, looking up with a genuinely apologetic expression. "I’m required on the upper dais immediately. Council matters."

"Go," Zaeryn said, offering a reassuring nod. "I’ll be perfectly fine here."

Annalise’s expression softened into a warm, lingering smile. She stepped closer, leaning down to press a soft, affectionate kiss against his cheek. "Be good for Emeline," she murmured under her breath, before turning and gliding out through the frosted-glass door, which hissed shut behind her.

The quiet of the lab had barely settled before Zaeryn’s own wrist comm began to buzz. He tapped the interface, and a blue holographic projection sprang to life, displaying Daphne’s face.

"Checking in," Daphne said without a greeting, her blue hair slightly disheveled as she looked directly into her transmission pickup. "Did the Tier 2 interface establish a proper baseline?"

"Yeah, I’m fully healed," Zaeryn replied, flexing his shoulder experimentally to prove the point. "Not a scratch left on me."

Daphne exhaled a heavy breath she had clearly been holding since she left. "That’s a relief. And it also means you were right, only a certain tier can heal your cuts."

Zaeryn narrowed his eyes, studying the background flickering behind her hologram. Even through the blue tint of the projection, he could make out the imposing silhouette of High Commander Lysara, alongside a stern-looking Councilor Zia and a tense gathering of upper-echelon tactical officers.

"Where exactly are you?" Zaeryn asked, tilting his head. "Looks crowded."

Daphne’s eyes flicked off-screen for a fraction of a second before returning to him, her expression turning carefully flat. "Just a typical council meeting. Anyways , see you later, I have to go."

The projection snapped off before he could even fashion a sarcastic retort.

Zaeryn lowered his wrist, the silence rushing back into the workspace. He turned his attention back toward Emeline, who was leaning back against her primary console. Her arms were crossed over her white lab coat, her short, vivid emerald hair catching the bright overhead lights, and those warm brown eyes hadn’t left his face for a second.

"Thanks doc," Zaeryn said with a smile. "I think I’ll leave now."

"Not yet," she said, a hint of an amused smile playing at the corner of her lips. "You still haven’t answered my question?"

Zaeryn stopped by the door and turned toward her. "Right. I honestly don’t know," he explained.

After that he left.

★★★★

That evening, by the time he made it home, the sky outside had gone full dark.

The house was silent as usual.

He found Marceline curled up on the long cushion in the main lounge room, one arm draped along the back of it, a glass of something dark red balanced loosely in her other hand.

She looked up the moment he crossed into the room, and her whole face changed, the particular warmth she reserved just for him settling into place.

"Hey Zae, you’re back home." She patted the cushion beside her without breaking eye contact. "Sit, and tell me how was your day?"

He dropped onto the settee next to her.

The moment he sat down on the comfortable settee, he realized immediately that he was very tired in a full-body way that he had never been before. "It’s been a long one. I sparred with Mireille, I don’t think I’ve been this exhausted." He said.

"Mm." She reached over and brushed her fingers along his jaw. Leaning in, she kissed his cheeks and said, "If you’re that exhausted, you should take a nap honey."

"Yeah, I think I will now." Zaeryn stood up and walked toward his room.

Upon getting to his room he lay on the bed on his stomach. He let his eyes fall shut. But before letting sleep take him, he called up the interface. He knew he had leveled up after his spar with Mireille, he could feel it.

► RANK-UP DETECTED

► Hyper-Cognition: Class B → Class B (stable)

► Vitae Weaving: Class C → Class B

► Kinetic Acceleration: Class C → Class B

► Kinetic Repulsion: Class F → Class C

► Concussive Blast: Class F → Class C

► Kinetic Rupture: Class F → Class C

► Sensory Jolt: Class F → Class C

► Cause: Sustained extreme combat exposure (Mireille, Warlady-Tier engagement)

He stared at the readout for a long moment, the numbers not quite landing the way they should have. But not in a disappointing way, he had moved a lot, more than he had in the past weeks in just one intense sparring session, if that was how fast he improved in one session then he could only imagine that when he starts getting trained by instructors, then he would reach Class A in a day.

After that Zaeryn also looked at his bonds and potential bonds, just in case something changed, and indeed something had.

► Source: Ysmeine Noctis - Tier: Unknown. Abilities: Known.

► Status: Bond synchronization complete.

► Source: Daphne Virellith - Tier: 3. Abilities: Known.

► Status: Bond synchronization complete.

► Source: Ravena Noctis - Tier: Unknown. Abilities: Known.

► Status: Bond synchronization complete.

► Source: Ingrid - Tier: 2. Abilities: Known.

► Status: Bond synchronization complete.

► Source: Genevieve - Tier: Unknown. Abilities: Unknown.

► Method: Ongoing.

► Status: Synchronization stalled at 97%.

[Bond Potential: Mireille — High]

Confirmed abilities observed: Concussive Blast (Class A), Geokinesis (Class A), unclassified flight.

[Bond Potential: Emeline — High]

Confirmed ability observed: high-output regenerative Vitae. Note: bond would resolve Host’s current regenerative deficiency.

[Bond Potential: Arya — Moderate]

Tier 3. No combat data recorded.

[Bond Potential: Annalise — Moderate]

No combat data recorded.

[Bond Potential: Kira — Low]

No Vitae signature detected.

Zaeryn stared at the translucent text lingering in his vision, his mind looping over the implications.

Genevieve was sitting right at 97%. So close, yet completely stalled. He was going to have to find a way to bridge that final three percent gap, whatever it took, just to clear the queue and understand what full synchronization with her actually unlocked.

But it was the entry below hers that kept drawing his eye.

► [Bond Potential: Emeline — High]

The system’s footnote wasn’t subtle. Her high-output regenerative Vitae was exactly the silver bullet he needed to bypass his body’s ridiculous new "screening" habit. If he could establish a connection and adapt her signature into his own, he wouldn’t be completely helpless on a battlefield without a Tier 2 specialist hovering over him.

He could patch himself up on the fly. Heck, if he got good enough at it, he might even be able to project that energy to heal others during a deployment.

The practical utility of it was massive. But the mechanical hurdle was even bigger.

’How am I even supposed to do that?’ he wondered, a quiet sigh slipping past his lips. ’Just walk up and ask to befriend her?’

Up until now, his most successful, high-grade synchronizations had been forged in the absolute deepest, most intense vulnerabilities of the bedroom.

The thread tied both ways; intimacy bred resonance. But as he looked at the growing roster of women already deeply tangled in his life—Ysmeine, Daphne, Ravena, Ingrid, and effectively Genevieve—reality started to catch up with him.

He was running a dangerous gauntlet. He already had an absurd number of highly possessive, incredibly powerful intimate bondmates. If he kept adding to the collection like a man hoarding rare artifacts, he was going to cross a line. At some point, the scales would tip from affection to genuine resentment.

There were only so many hours in a day, and he couldn’t divide himself a dozen different ways without running himself ragged or making the women he genuinely cared about feel abandoned.

He needed to find another way to handle the system. He needed to prove to himself that synchronization could be achieved through pure companionship.

No chemistry, no whispered things in the dark, no sexual tension. Just mutual respect, solid teamwork, and getting along like normal people. Professional, platonic camaraderie.

It was a perfect, completely rational, ironclad strategy.

Except for one minor flaw.

Zaeryn let his mind picture Emeline for a split second. He recalled the sharp, elegant curve of her features, the way she carried herself, and the undeniable fact that she was, by any human metric, spectacularly attractive.

In her unique way, she was completely, effortlessly hot. In a world practically engineered to throw stunning, powerful women directly into his orbit, keeping things strictly professional was a lot easier to plan on a blue screen than it was to execute in person.

He rubbed his face with both hands, the sheer weight of the day finally pressing down on his eyelids. The bruising might have been completely erased by Emeline high-tier Vitae, but his body was still tired. Not to mention the mental exhaustion of surviving Mireille’s relentless assault and undergoing a massive neural overhaul couldn’t be fixed by magic.

His brain was officially running on empty.

’Later,’ he thought, allowing himself to sleep. ’I’ll worry about the logistics of platonic bonding tomorrow. Right now, I just need to sleep.’

★★★

The next day, after his afternoon classes finally ground to a halt, Zaeryn went looking for Leia.

Tracking someone down in the sprawling expanse of the Citadel wasn’t difficult if you actually knew the layout. The problem was that Zaeryn usually didn’t, and half the people who did were either far too busy, incredibly annoying, or highly likely to corner him and demand to know why he was looking for her in the first place.

Fortunately, he caught a break. As he navigated the crowded academy terminal, he spotted Ingrid near the edge of the main corridor. She was leaning casually against a massive stone pillar, one shoulder propping her up while her thumb lazily scrolled through an encrypted data array on her wrist display.

Zaeryn shifted direction and walked over.

"Hey," he said, stopping a couple of feet away. "Do you know where I can find Leia?"

Ingrid’s thumb froze instantly. Slowly, she lifted her head, her gaze drifting up from the holographic screen to settle squarely on him.

"What the fuck?"

Zaeryn blinked, caught off guard by the immediate drop in temperature. "What?"