Our next fight is Oliver’s, but the bookmakers had another match scheduled to run before his.

We head up to the aerial bleachers, positioned strategically around the rim of the Oathring—at ground level, there’s only standing room for the crowd.

Veric and Rhayne are already deep in conversation, so I sit down next to Oliver to trade a few words with the man. Understanding him better will help us build a sharper team.

The first thing that comes to mind is that he spent his last year robbing passengers in a lost subway station outside the system. He probably has more Diver-versus-Diver experience than Veric and Rhayne combined.

But naturally, he was always a WaterStrand farmer. Despite the name, WaterStrand farmers don’t plant or harvest anything. They hunt. They search dungeons, monsters, artifacts. They chase rumors to recover a single Strand and head back to Earth with some money. His combat experience is field-built, not trained in theory and drills.

I open with something casual.

"Did you pull in many Strands before?"

"Got enough to keep my family comfortable for a while. But the money’s running out."

"Hard expenses?"

"Hard wife... and a hard kid."

I smile at him. He smiles back. He pulls out a large piece of seasoned jerky, tears off a chunk with his teeth, and hands the rest of the strip to me. The seasoning hits sharp—salt, something smoked, a pepper from Thirstfall I’ve never tasted on Earth.

I recovered very little WaterStrand in my last life. It’s slow money, but it comes in heavy. If you’re lucky enough to find an S-rank Strand, you can stay rich for years—provided you keep a controlled life. After all, on Earth a Strand generates rain, while down here it generates energy. Finding one is always a win.

"Women?" Oliver asks, the smile still on his face, chewing slow.

A sigh comes out, even after I tried so hard to hold it back. "One... a few years ago." The answer comes out on autopilot. The opening was so soft I let myself get carried.

Oliver lets out an honest laugh.

"Years ago? You messing with me, boss? You barely crawled out of diapers."

For a moment, the memories of my last life slipped past the filter, and I let myself get pulled along by Oliver’s easy conversation.

I just smile at him, letting the conversation die like it was a joke. But something in Oliver caught a nuance I’d rather he hadn’t.

"Boss." He calls me, and his face goes serious now. He glances sideways, checking whether Rhayne and Veric are watching, confirms they aren’t, and continues. "I already laid my cards down. But what about you? You calculate the way the rest of us breathe—but your numbers don’t add up."

"My numbers?" I tear a strip off the jerky and chew it slow, buying a second. "What are you talking about? My number is ’don’t die today.’"

"I saw how you looked after little Lola, how you tried to save her. I see how you look after Rhayne, and not one of your habits matches your age."

The crowd erupts over something that happened down in the Oathring, something we weren’t paying attention to.

"An old soul in the body of a young adult." Oliver continues, passing me a second piece of jerky.

"It’s... hard to explain."

Oliver is genuinely backing me into a corner now. I’ve lied so many times. But lying to him somehow feels wrong. I feel my heartbeat pick up its pace.

"You left someone behind on Earth, didn’t you? You’re already a father?"

So that’s his theory. Relief floods my chest, like drinking milk after an extremely spicy meal. He built the wrong story out of the right pieces, and the wrong story is one I can live inside.

"A baby sister... newborn... and my mother." I let a beat of honesty land before I cover the rest. "Since my father disappeared, I feel responsible for looking after her."

"I see. So that’s why you look after the girls. You had to grow up fast."

"That’s life." I work the jerky between my fingers instead of meeting his eyes.

The crowd goes wild again after a loud clang of metal—several strikes in a row, like someone chaining abilities together down in the ring.

"But your numbers still don’t add up," Oliver says. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

’Give up, Oliver, please...’

He has age on him. He’s lived. He knows people. I need to be careful.

"When Danton betrayed us, I thought I’d fall apart." Oliver’s voice drops lower, the jerky forgotten in his hand. "When Brendon died saving me, a part of me stayed behind in that sand. But you... you saw those Leviathans. You witnessed the horrors of that subway gate and the Lost Ark. And you just... keep walking."

A silence lands as if he were preparing to say the next phrase.

"Look at Lola and Rhayne. They were only reacting, following you. This is normal from a rookie. I was watching. Where do you pull that fuel tank from? The one that never runs empty of answers. A Rank F Diver, the way I met you, was never supposed to be like this."

As if blessed by fate, the narrator-judge shouts the name of the winner down below, sending the entire Oathring into a roar.

I let the noise cover the pause I need.

"Every man has his secrets, Oliver." I stand, getting ready to head down. I clap him once on the shoulder as I pass. "Mine just aren’t ready to be told yet."

Oliver stands too. He doesn’t push. He just looks at me, weighing whether to believe it.

"But you can trust me. I never abandon an ally. And when the time comes for you to know, you’ll know."

He holds my gaze for a moment longer. Then he nods—not fully satisfied, but willing to set it down for now. He tucks the rest of the jerky back into his inventory and rolls Motorhead off his shoulder into his grip, the big hammer settling against his palm like it belongs there.

"Come on," I tell him. "Time to pick a war name for you."