Online Game: I Turn Monsters Into Food 10,000x Buffs

Good question. He didn’t have an answer for that, but he felt in his chest, like it was burning, he reached into his inventory and pulled out a health potion, held it out to her.

"I’m fine," she said. "Save it."

"I have three."

"Then save three."

He kept holding it out. She kept not taking it; the dust drifted between them in the dim blue-grey light. Elizabeth’s pink hair was coated in a fine layer of pale grit, and a shallow cut ran along her jaw where a piece of debris must have caught her. Her cat ears were flattened, twitching every few seconds at sounds he couldn’t hear.

"Liam."

"Hm."

"I said I’m fine."

"Okay." He didn’t lower the potion.

Elizabeth exhaled through her nose. Hard. She snatched the potion, uncorked it, drank half, and shoved it back into his hand. "Are you happy?"

He looked at the half-empty bottle. Looked at her HP bar. 79%. Better. Not full, but better. He put the potion away.

"Yes," he said.

Elizabeth opened her mouth. Closed it. Turned back to the loot pile with a slightly aggressive sorting

Liam sat down against the far wall. The stone was cold through his shirt. He stretched his legs out; the chamber was small enough that his boots almost reached the opposite side.

Elizabeth stood up from the loot pile. Two Naga fangs and a minor defence gem. She pocketed them and turned toward him, and he watched her gaze land on his shoulder. The one he’d just been rotating.

She crossed the small space in three steps. Crouched in front of him. "Let me see."

"It’s fine."

"You literally just made me drink a health potion for being at sixty-eight per cent." She was already reaching for the edge of his shirt collar, pulling it aside to check the shoulder plate underneath. "Sit still."

Her fingers hooked under the armour strap. She had to lean close to see in the low light, and the gap between them compressed to almost nothing. He could smell the mineral dust in her hair

She unclipped the shoulder plate. Set it on the stone beside him with a careful clink. The shirt underneath was torn at the seam, and the skin beneath showed a dark, spreading bruise rendered in purples and blues. Game damage. Cosmetic, mostly. But her fingers touched the edge of it, and Liam’s breath caught.

Not from pain.

Her fingertips were cool against his skin. The game’s haptic feedback translated the pressure as a light, precise sensation — each point of contact distinct. Her thumb traced the outer edge of the bruise, testing the boundary between damaged and undamaged tissue with a focus that suggested she’d done field medicine before, or at least played a class that required it.

"Does this hurt?"

"A little."

She pressed slightly harder. "Here?"

"Yes."

"And here?"

His jaw tightened. Not from the ache. Her face was close enough that he could count the dust particles caught in her eyelashes. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and the tip of her tongue pressed against the corner of her lip the way it did when she was working through a problem. Her cat ears had rotated forward, angled directly at him, tracking the sound of his breathing.

"It’s a bruise," he said. "It’ll fade."

"The armor strap dug in when the Naga hit you. There might be a debuff." She was still touching his shoulder. Her fingers had stopped moving, but she hadn’t pulled them back. They rested against his collarbone, light and unmoving, and she was looking at the bruise like it had done a thing she couldn’t forgive.

Her hands were shaking.

Not much. A fine tremor in her fingers, visible only because they were pressed against his skin. The kind of tremor that came from adrenaline burning off, or from holding a heavy sword through a fight and then trying to do fine motor work immediately after. Or from a feeling she didn’t have a name for yet.

Liam noticed.

He looked at her fingers. Looked at her face. She hadn’t realised he’d caught it. She was still focused on the bruise, jaw set, brow tight, and her breathing had gone shallow in a way that didn’t match the physical exertion of their fight. They’d killed one elite.

It was just her hands, trembling against his bare shoulder, in a dark chamber where nobody else could see.

He reached up. Slowly. Covered her hand with his.

Her fingers went still under his palm. The trembling stopped like a switch had been thrown. She looked down at his hand over hers. Looked up at his face. Her lips parted, and a flush crept up her neck, visible even through the dust and the low light. Her cat ears went flat, then straight up, then flat again in rapid succession, cycling through some emotional frequency he couldn’t decode.

"Your hands are shaking," he said. Simply. Like he was reading a status effect aloud.

Elizabeth’s mouth worked. No sound came out for a full two seconds.

"They’re not."

His hand was literally on top of hers. They both looked at the point of contact. His massive, pale hand engulfed her smaller one against his collarbone. The contrast was stark, his albino skin against her fair complexion, the bruise blooming dark underneath like a frame around both their hands.

"They were," he said.

"That’s... adrenaline, from the fight."

"Okay."

He didn’t move his hand. She didn’t pull hers away.

The chamber hummed with distant dungeon ambience. Dripping water somewhere. The faint groan of settling stone. Liam’s tail shifted against the floor, curling slightly closer to where Elizabeth crouched. His ears, the soft, white, fluffy ones that contradicted everything about his build, tilted toward her.

"You should let go of my hand," Elizabeth said.

"You should stop checking a bruise that doesn’t need checking."

Her flush deepened. He watched it spread from her neck to her cheeks, a colour that clashed with the dungeon grime in a way that made his chest do a strange, compressive thing he filed under "investigate later."

Her eyelashes were dusted with the same pale powder that coated everything, but they were longer than he’d realised. They cast tiny shadows across her cheekbones when she looked down at their hands. Her face was angled, sharp in a way that suggested both strength and fragility, a contradiction that made something in his chest tighten.

The bridge of her nose had a slight bump where she’d probably broken it in some fight he hadn’t been there for. Real or in-game, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.

"I was being thorough," she muttered.

"You were."

"Because you took a hit."

"I did."

"For me." Her tone shifted. Dropped. The bluntness was still there, but something underneath it had gone raw, and she was looking at the bruise again instead of at him. "You pulled me behind you. Before the elite attacked, you didn’t even think about it."

Liam kept his eyes on her. Her collarbone was visible through the gap in her shirt, delicate and defined, and he found himself wondering if it would feel as sharp under his fingers as it looked.

"Liam," she said. His name in her mouth sounded different. Softer. Her voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper, and the sound of it vibrated through the space between them like a physical thing.

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His hand was still on hers, and her fingers had curled slightly against his collarbone, not pulling away but not quite gripping either. Her nails were short, practical, with dirt under them from digging through the loot pile. There was a small scar across her knuckles that he’d never noticed before.

She was beautiful.