Mike returned to himself because Lumi refused to let him leave.
Her paws pressed against his jaw, withdrawing whenever he failed to respond and returning with greater insistence. A desperate yip reached him through the darkness, followed by the pulse of her heart through their bond. Warmth spread from that connection in small, uneven waves until breath scraped into his lungs.
He opened his eyes beneath a canopy broken by the Verdant Maw’s death. Green embers drifted among the branches, fading whenever they touched soil, while roots lay exposed in coils thick enough to crush a man. Lumi crouched on his chest with all six tails wrapped around his shoulders, her fur singed and her body trembling from the Lightning Veil she had forced into existence.
“Hey,” Mike whispered. The word hurt more than it should have. “You did enough. I’m here.”
Relief crossed the bond with such force that it made his eyes sting. Lumi shoved her face beneath his chin, then bit the edge of his collar as if punishing him for the inconvenience. Mike raised one hand to stroke her and discovered that his left arm refused to move.
Pain arrived everywhere else at once. Each breath caught against two damaged ribs, bruising wrapped his right side, and the channels beneath his skin felt lined with heated wire. The System responded to his request with a private assessment.
[Status: Michael Storm — Critical Condition]
Health: 8%
Mana: 0%
Stamina: 3%
Injuries: Two fractures, extensive contusions, superficial lacerations, internal bruising, post-discharge shock, and severe overdraw have been recorded.
Warning: Immediate combat is strongly discouraged.
“Strongly,” Mike said. “Good to know there is still room for negotiation.”
T-Guide_02471 rose from behind a fallen slab of rootwood. A crack crossed part of its shell, and its usual gold rings turned more slowly than before. “The recommendation reflects your demonstrated habit of treating ordinary wording as a challenge.”
“I appreciate the personalized service.”
Two delayed chimes sounded inside his head. Warmth settled through his bones, strong enough to stabilize the worst internal damage without erasing it. His ribs still ground when he moved, and his empty mana channels remained empty.
[Level Up: 5 → 6]
[Level Up: 6 → 7]
Attribute Gain: Twenty-four attribute points applied through your current class-growth distribution.
The increase reached him as structure rather than rescue. His heartbeat steadied, his vision stopped narrowing at the edges, and muscles pushed beyond the point where shock had tried to shut them down. The broken ribs remained broken; the level gains gave his body better tools and enough energy to keep using them.
Mike flexed the fingers of his working hand. Lightning answered somewhere beneath the pain, reduced to a faint vibration but still his. Two levels were the largest leap he had taken since entering the Tutorial, and for the first time the achievement produced no immediate hunger for a third.
The System followed with the outcome that had bought those levels.
[Verdant Maw of the Shattered Grove Defeated]
Michael Storm — Contribution: 62%
Sael — Contribution: 24%
Other Candidates — Combined Contribution: 14%
[Skill Acquired: Lightning Lunge]
Rank: G
Rarity: Uncommon
Type: Active
[Skill Upgraded: Chaotic Pulse]
Rank: G
Rarity: Uncommon
Type: Active
The System placed two useful rewards beneath the casualty record. Mike dismissed their descriptions without reading them. A new attack and a stronger pulse could wait; Sael’s name could not.
He stared at it until the pane blurred. Numbers could describe who damaged the boss and how much the System owed them. They could not contain Sael anchoring the focus against their forehead, choosing the road the Maw would take, or asking him to give that choice a future.
He forced himself onto one elbow.
Lumi protested with a frantic chirp and shifted her weight against his chest. T-Guide advised remaining still. Mike ignored both long enough to look across the ruined grove toward the place where green radiance had swallowed a Veilshaper.
The ground there had become glass. A pale outline marked where Sael stood, four-fingered hands raised around a focus that no longer existed. No body remained, and the breath weapon had burned every fragment of their veilwoven gear into the same smooth surface.
At the outline’s edge, fragments of reflected sky moved when nothing above them did. Sael’s final spell had left thin flaws in the glass, each one bending Mike’s image a different way. One reflection showed him standing; another placed him on his knees; a third carried no one at all.
Mike tried to stand. His right leg folded, and only a broken root kept his face from striking the ground. Lumi jumped beneath his arm as though a creature scarcely higher than his boot could carry a level-seven human through determination.
“Easy,” he told her, though he was the one shaking. “I need to reach them.”
He crossed the clearing one step at a time. The level gains made each movement possible; they did not make movement safe. By the time he reached the glass, his health had fallen another fraction from strain, and T-Guide had repeated its warning often enough to sound personally offended.
Mike lowered himself beside Sael’s final mark. He touched the fused earth with his good hand and felt residual mana arranged in a pattern Stormsense could almost follow. The imprint curved away from his own signature, a final false path still etched into the ground.
“Could I have stopped them?” he asked.
T-Guide hovered at his shoulder. “Once Candidate Sael anchored the copied imprint, every modeled attempt to break their concentration resulted in the Verdant Maw reaching all three of you before its breath cycle completed. Their action created the only surviving outcome detected after that choice.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“No available evidence shows a method you understood in time.” The guide’s rings dimmed. “This statement measures available actions. It does not measure the value of the person lost.”
Mike’s fingers curled against the glass. Sael had known him for less than a day and still trusted him with the future of their decision. Grief wanted a culprit simple enough to strike, while the System offered rules too vast to care and a dead boss already split across the grove.
He had helped create the threat. His Chaos imprint drew it beyond its range, his plan asked Sael to copy him, and his power finished what their sacrifice opened. Responsibility did not require pretending he had controlled every part of the outcome; it required carrying the parts that belonged to him.
“Record everything you observed about the copied imprint,” Mike said. “The way Sael fixed the copied spell's form, how the Chaos I supplied replaced Mana as its fuel without being captured by the imprint, all of it.”
“The relevant encounter data has been retained.”
“Then we study it when I can think without tasting blood. Sael found a way to redirect something stronger than all of us. I want that principle to survive them.”
T-Guide’s rings turned once in acknowledgment. “That objective is compatible with your development path, though reproducing the effect without a Veilshaper may require a different mechanism.”
“Good. Different means there is work to do.”
Lumi pressed against his side and released a weak spark into his torn sleeve. The current matched his rhythm instead of shocking him. His body answered with a faint acceleration of warmth around the fractures.
Mike remembered the last request beneath the roar. He rested his forehead against Lumi’s and managed the words without letting them break apart. “Sael wanted you to know that you frightened them less than you pretended.”
Lumi went still. A soft sound left her throat, and the bond filled with the memory of Sael’s focus scattering light for her to chase. She placed one paw against the glass outline before returning to Mike’s side.
Mike looked down. “Are you doing that?”
The rhythm strengthened when Lumi pressed closer, easing the static under his skin without touching the broken ribs. Mike understood enough. “Helping my body remember what to do.”
Lumi’s ears lifted at the praise she chose to hear. Mike rested his palm over her shoulders and let the current continue until her breathing became too rapid. Then he broke contact, tucked her against his chest, and turned back toward the battlefield.
His conductive blade had vanished during the explosion. Stormsense found the weak charge thirty paces away, buried beneath a root mass still twitching with residual verdant mana. Mike dug it free with one hand, cleaned the edge on wet moss, and discovered a dark crack near the guard that had not been there before.
The weapon remained usable. The same could be said of him if one accepted a generous definition.
T-Guide projected the First Selection timer when he asked.
[First Selection — Time Remaining: 56:31:44]
More than three hours had passed since the safe zone fell. The local field had changed while he lay unconscious: surviving candidates moved between the trees in wary pairs, stripping useful material from severed roots and watching one another more closely than the dead boss. Some glanced toward Mike and immediately looked away.
A man in dented leather did the opposite. He had carried a sword near the obelisk and fled before the Maw’s first breath reached him. Now he emerged from behind a shattered trunk with his weapon low and his attention fixed on Mike’s ruined arm.
“You took the main reward,” the man said.
Mike remained kneeling because standing would advertise more weakness than stillness. He set Lumi behind his right leg, rested the conductive blade across his thigh, and met the man’s gaze. “I took sixty-two percent of the contribution. Sael earned twenty-four, and they are dead.”
“Then their share went somewhere.” The swordsman’s eyes moved across Mike’s gear, T-Guide, and the place a loot notification might have appeared. “Drop what the boss gave you. I might let you keep the fox.”
The bond flooded with fury. Lumi’s tails rose despite her exhaustion, and tiny arcs snapped between them.
Mike had no mana for a real skill. He did have a class whose lightning sometimes answered intent before resources, a cracked conductive blade, and an opponent who could not see his private status. He let the smallest available spark crawl along the metal.
“You watched me kill the thing that made this crater,” Mike said. “If you believe eight percent health makes the remaining ninety-two percent harmless, come test the theory.”
The swordsman hesitated. Calculation replaced greed for one heartbeat, then embarrassment drove him forward.
An arrow struck his sword arm before his first step landed. He cried out and dropped the weapon. Three candidates rose from cover beyond him: the ice caster who had frozen the Maw’s roots, one of the archers who had pulled its shoulder open, and a healer holding a blue-glass focus.
“Leave,” the archer said. “You contributed nothing, and you are trying to rob someone who did.”
The swordsman clutched his arm. His gaze moved from the three standing candidates to Mike’s faintly charged blade, and self-preservation finally won. He retrieved neither sword nor dignity before disappearing between the trees.
Mike watched the ferns close behind him. The threat had been clumsy, but the lesson was not. Contribution granted rewards to the people who faced danger; visible weakness invited anyone willing to let others earn those rewards first. Levels could make him harder to challenge while also making every uncertain observer wonder what taking his place might be worth.
“Can candidates see my contribution result?” he asked T-Guide.
“Your result pane is private. Participants receive information concerning their own allocated share. Observers may infer outcomes from events they witness.”
The distinction explained the swordsman’s guesses. It also meant Mike could preserve uncertainty, provided he stopped narrating his exact condition to enemies.
Mike released a breath slowly. The spark died at once.
The healer approached with both hands visible. “I can close one fracture and stop the bleeding along your side. That is all I have left after the fight. May I?”
Consent mattered more when weakness made refusal expensive. Mike studied the candidates, saw no weapon ready behind the offer, and nodded. Lumi allowed the healer near only after sniffing both boots and growling at the blue focus.
Cool light entered Mike’s right side. One rib settled with an ache that made his teeth clench, while the shallow cuts beneath his torn shirt closed into raw pink lines. The healer withdrew before her mana emptied, leaving the second fracture and deeper channel damage untouched.
“You need hours, perhaps longer,” she said. “Our group is moving west toward high ground. You can travel with us.”
The ice caster glanced at the other survivors. “Anyone who received a contribution notice will assume the candidate who landed the final blow earned something worth stealing. Numbers discourage some attackers, but your condition invites the rest.”
Mike considered the offer. Their intervention had saved him from spending strength he did not possess, and their fourteen percent contribution had helped create the kill. That earned honesty without requiring immediate trust.
“I cannot match your pace, and I will not turn your group into a shield around my recovery,” he said. “I need water, concealment, and time to understand what the fight changed. If we meet again when I can stand without swaying, we can talk.”
The archer accepted that with a nod. “There is a stream northeast, beyond the split cedar. The ground beside it rises enough to keep you out of the lowest mist.”
“The grove is changing,” the ice caster added. Frost lingered around his fingertips even after he lowered his hands. “Small creatures started feeding on the broken roots. Some gained levels while we watched.”
The healer adjusted the strap around her focus. “The western rise has enough survivors to keep watch. If you change your mind, follow the white cuts on the north side of the trunks. We marked a route that avoids the deepest root beds.”
Mike memorized both routes. The three had offered information that remained useful even after he refused their company, which made the offer feel more genuine than a recruitment pitch. “If someone comes after you because of your share, the swordsman prefers the right shoulder before he commits. His first step will tell you when he has decided.”
The archer glanced at the abandoned weapon. “Then he should hope we never see that step.”
The healer left him a clean strip of cloth. They reclaimed the abandoned sword, divided its ownership without argument, and withdrew west while watching the forest. Their alliance might last an hour or the rest of the Selection; Mike had learned enough to value the difference between an offer and a claim.
He left the glass mark last.
Before turning away, Mike pressed two fingers to the curve of Sael’s final imprint. “I cannot promise your death fixes anything,” he said. “I can promise I will learn enough that the next choice has more than one survivable path.”
The words did not lessen the loss. They gave it direction.
Mike traveled northeast with Lumi cradled against his good side and T-Guide floating ahead. Stormsense found swollen roots before his weight disturbed them; Lumi warned him away from a burrow carrying three rapid heartbeats. At the split cedar, white cuts offered the safer company of the western group, but the stream whispered close enough to promise water and solitude. He chose northeast, intending to meet allies later with enough strength to choose honestly.
The final descent demanded care. Mike lowered Lumi ahead of him and used exposed roots as handholds until both feet reached level ground.
The water ran clear over black stones. Mike chose a shallow rise above it, checked Stormsense for nearby candidates, and lowered himself beneath the shelter of a cedar root. Lumi curled over his ribs and renewed the gentle resonance in careful pulses.
He drank, cleaned the cuts the healer had not reached, and used the last clean cloth. The bruised mana berry from the obelisk dulled the emptiness in his channels. He placed the remaining field cake beneath his good hand and settled back.
T-Guide settled beneath the cedar’s overhang. “Multiple reward notifications remain queued. Reviewing them while your cognition is impaired may lead to poor decisions.”
“You waited until now to develop concern about my poor decisions?”
“Your present condition makes them easier to distinguish from your ordinary ones.”
Mike almost laughed. His ribs converted it into a cough, but the impulse remained, a small piece of himself the Maw had failed to bury.
His last look at the timer showed more than fifty-six hours remaining. The System had given him two levels, a victory, and whatever loot it had secured while unconscious. Sael had given him the future in which any of those things mattered.
Mike closed his eyes without calling the battle worthwhile.
Far behind them, the glass at the center of the ruined grove darkened. A human outline peeled itself from the shadow beneath a broken tree and settled into the posture Mike had used before his final charge. Black-green current crossed its empty hands, failed to hold one shape, and tried again.
The figure turned toward the northeast.
Then it followed.
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