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Taylor wasn't quite sure how things had ended up here.
Well, no, that wasn't true. She knew exactly how she'd ended up here. After all, she'd deliberately snuck out of her room, abused the hell out of the System to avoid the hospital night staff, and successfully found the 'lock' to the Instanced Dungeon in the Parking Garage. Unfortunately for her, she'd been so distracted reaching over the railing to open the secret Gate that she'd entirely missed Amy Dallon herself charging out of the shadows and grabbing her just as she'd turned the key.
Now here she was, standing in some strange, post-apocalyptic version of the parking garage, with one of the greatest healers in the world screaming at her.
"…kidnapped me! I don't know where we are, but you'd better let me out of here right fucking now, goddamnit!" the mousy brunette finished her rant, breathing heavily, and Taylor glowered at her.
"Hey, I didn't kidnap anyone, alright? I was minding my own damn business when you came out of nowhere and grabbed onto me!" she retorted, and Amy rolled her eyes with a sarcastic scoff that was a thing to behold from a girl so revered for being the Perfect Healer.
"Well excuse me for thinking that my probably-traumatized, recently-maimed patient might be suicidal when she climbs onto a balcony and grabs the railing to jump off!" she snarled, and Taylor winced, because honestly that was a fair assumption on the other girl's part. She'd been pretty damn anxious herself about where she had to go to find the 'lock' for her key, and she'd known what the System intended. From the outside looking in, as it were, and given what she'd been through not so long ago, she could definitely understand where Amy was coming from.
"Alright, fine, I'm sorry. That's…that's a fair point, I guess. But I'm obviously not suicidal." she sighed, running a hand through her hair and gesturing back towards where the still-glowing key stood. "Just…maybe you should head out, okay? You shouldn't be here, and…"
"Neither of us should be here, wherever the fuck 'here' is, so why don't we go back to the hospital before I spell your dumb ass back to sleep and handcuff you to your bed?" came the growled interruption, and Taylor was considering how best to -relatively politely- tell the other girl to fuck off when three things happened simultaneously.
First, System windows popped up.
[Unknown Variable has entered the Instanced Dungeon.]
[Unknown Variable possesses Unique Skill System.]
[Unknown Variable may now perceive the System HUD.]
[Unknown Variable must submit to Player authority and join their party.]
[If Unknown Variable does not submit, Unknown Variable will be deemed Hostile and her intrusion will be neutralized.]
Second, two wolves -strange, oddly-thin and long-limbed, but clearly wolves all the same- padded growling out of the darkness.
Thirdly, the glowing key-and-lock hovering in the air beside the balcony vanished, replaced by an additional System message.
[You have entered an Instanced Dungeon. The Dungeon is now sealed. You will not be able to leave until the Dungeon Boss has been slain or you acquire a teleportation stone.]
Amy gaped at the floating blue text, her eyes widening in shock as she stumbled backward. "What the actual fuck?" she whispered, then whirled on Taylor. "What is this? What did you do? Is this…did you make a Dungeon Break?!"
Taylor opened her mouth to answer, but the two wolves chose that moment to howl and charge forward, slavering jaws and jagged teeth bared as clawed feet tapped and scratched on the concrete floor.
"Yes-no-fuck! Explanations later!" Taylor hissed, dropping into a fighting stance and eyeing her oncoming enemies. "Can you fight?"
"I'm a healer, not a combatant! I don't fight! I don't even go on raids that often!" Amy protested, backing away from the approaching canids, her back hitting the same balcony balustrade she had dragged Taylor off of not minutes ago. "What are those things?!"
"Wolves, obviously!" Taylor replied, reaching into her inventory and pulling out the Asarakam, their shining blades casting a dim glow across the approaching enemies.
"Wolv--" Amy's voice choked off, eyes widening further at the sight of Taylor seemingly pulling two gleaming, curved, sickle-like crystalline blades out of thin air, and she swore that she could hear them sing as they moved through the air. "How did you--"
"Party invite!" Taylor barked, lunging forward to meet the first wolf, Tanha sliced through the air with a resonant hum before connecting with the creature's flank. The blade bit deep, blood spraying across the concrete, and she swore as she was forced to parry awkwardly with Gilati as the other tried to attack her from the side, scoring a blow across its face. "Accept it, now!"
A blue window appeared in Amy's vision, hovering insistently:
[Taylor Hebert has invited you to join their party. Accept/Decline?]
"Why? What is this? What the hell is happening?" Amy stammered, her fingers instinctively reaching toward the 'Decline' button even as her mind reeled.
"Just do it!" Taylor shouted, planting her -fortunately now shod- foot in the first wolf's face and sending it reeling, hissing in pain as the second struck again and scored a hit across her hip, dropping her HP by 10 points. "The System said if you don't it will deem you hostile and neutralize you! I don't know what -ungh!- I don't know what that means, but it could be bad, so fucking accept already!"
Amy's fingers hovered over the blue window, her mind reeling with questions, but Taylor's desperate tone and a growing sense of impending dread convinced her to obey all the same. With a trembling hand, she pressed "Accept."
[Amy Dallon has joined your party!]
[Party Status: Taylor Hebert (Level 2) | Amy Dallon (Level 70)]
[WARNING: Due to significant level disparity between party members, Amy Dallon will receive 0% of Experience Points from defeated enemies]
[WARNING: Non-combatant party member detected in combat zone. Healing efficacy of high-level support class reduced by 85% to maintain dungeon balance]
"Level 70?" Taylor gasped, momentarily stunned by the windows that popped up before her. She'd known Amy was powerful, obviously, she was an S-rank, but seeing the actual number compared to her own paltry level was jarring.
The momentary distraction cost her dearly.
The first wolf lunged forward again and this time its attack struck home, its jaws closing around Taylor's calf with a sickening crunch and a squelch. She screamed as its teeth punched straight through her jeans and into the flesh of her thigh, the pain immediate and shocking.
"Shit!" Taylor swung Tanha down hard, severing the wolf's spine. It collapsed, its jaws slackening enough for her to pull free. Blood soaked her pant leg, the wound throbbing with each heartbeat. "That's what I get for gawking at status windows, fuck!" she muttered, limping back a couple of steps to stand between the second, wounded wolf and Amy as it prowled towards them both.
"Oh my god!" Amy rushed forward instinctively, her hands already glowing with healing energy. She grabbed Taylor's shoulder, channeling her power with a familiar gleam of shimmering green…only for it to sputter weakly, barely sealing the wounds. "What the hell? I can't heal you properly!"
"The System said your healing is reduced! To keep things fair!" Taylor grunted, finally managing to drive Gilati into the wolf's temple as it attacked one final time, the creature thudding to the ground as it died instantly, leaving her swaying slightly on her feet.
"Fair? FAIR?!" Amy's voice rose to a near shriek, her eyes a bit wild as she continued to pour magical energy into Taylor's wounds. "What about any of this is fair? I don't understand what's happening!"
Taylor watched as several windows popped up in front of her eyes, telling her what she had looted from the two enemies that she had just killed. Which wasn't much, given it was just the two of them.
[Wolf Fang x2]
[Wolf Pelt x1]
[Minor Health Potion x1]
"Look, I know this is confusing, and I'm sorry that you got caught up in all of this." Taylor said, flicking her blades slightly in an effort to shake the blood off of them. It didn't really work, but it made her feel a bit better. "But we need to keep moving. There will be more of them, and I can't fight properly in a small space like this."
Amy stared at her, mouth agape, past outrage and well into bemused shock at this point. "More of…Taylor, what the actual fuck is going on? What are these...windows? What is 'the System'? And how did you pull those weapons out of thin air? And why aren't you in your fucking hospital room?!"
"It's complicated, okay?" Taylor sighed heavily, stepping forward and looking around carefully, before beckoning for Amy to follow with a wave of Tanha's blade.
"It's complicated doesn't begin to cover it, not by a long shot!" Amy hissed, reluctantly following, not remotely interested in trying to fight wolves like that by herself, and determined not to let Taylor run off and get herself killed either. "You're supposed to be recovering from nearly dying, not... whatever this is!"
Taylor moved cautiously toward the ramp leading down to the next floor, weapons still at the ready. "Look, I know this is crazy, but I promise I'll explain everything once we're somewhere safer. Those wolves were just the beginning."
"The beginning of what?" Amy demanded, keeping close behind Taylor while scanning the darkened garage nervously, wishing that she had learned any spells besides healing so that she could give them a little light.
"The dungeon, obviously." Taylor replied simply, sounding almost like she was confused by the question, and Amy resisted the urge -barely- to roll her eyes. "This is an Instanced Dungeon. It's like... a pocket dimension, I guess? Connected to our world but separate. With monsters and challenges and—"
"I know what a dungeon is, everyone knows what a dungeon is!" Amy snapped, unable to resist the urge a second time. "What I don't understand is how we're in one without going through a Gate, or how you seem to have turned out lives into some sort of…I dunno, fucking video game or something! So explain already!"
Taylor hesitated for a moment, weighing her options as they reached the bottom of the ramp, wondering just how honest to be. The parking level below was dimly lit, with only a few emergency lights casting long shadows across abandoned vehicles. Most were rusted hulks, their windows shattered and tires deflated, looking nothing at all like the pristine cars that were parked here in the real world.
"Remember the Double Dungeon Incident you mentioned? When I was brought in?" Taylor finally said, gesturing for Amy to stay close, deciding that the girl she had unwittingly dragged into danger deserved at least a little bit of honesty. "Something happened to me in there. I... gained access to this thing that calls itself 'The System'. It's like an interface that lets me see stats, levels, skills, an inventory I can store stuff in, all exactly like a video game. That's where my Asarakam came from. I started seeing screens like this when I woke up yesterday, and the first thing it did was give me a directive, a quest that I had to complete or suffer a Penalty. Completing the quest gave me the key to this dungeon, so I decided to clear it out tonight and get stronger."
Amy stared at her, expression cycling through disbelief, confusion, and finally settling on a mixture of horrified fascination and anger.
"So you're telling me you have some... magical video game interface that no one else can see, and it made you sneak out of your hospital bed in the middle of the night to fight monsters by yourself? And you thought that was a good idea?" Amy's voice rose with each word until she was practically shouting, only for her shouts to turn into muffled sounds of outrage when Taylor slapped a hand over her mouth.
"Shh! D'you want to bring the entire dungeon down on us?!" Taylor hissed, glancing nervously around the garage, and Amy abruptly fell silent as she did the same. Her point made, Taylor pulled away and nodded tiredly. "Yes, okay? And until you grabbed me and got pulled in here with me, no one else could see it. It was just my thing."
"Your thing?" Amy repeated flatly, her expression telling the ravenette just how unimpressed she was with that particular phrasing. "Your magical video game powers. That you got from almost dying and getting a couple of limbs chopped off. That I can now see too because I tried to stop you from jumping off a balcony to your death in a fit of suicidal depression."
Taylor winced, a blush staining her cheeks. "I wasn't jumping, I was…look, the keyhole for the dungeon wasn't in the most convenient place, okay? I had to get creative! And I'm not suicidal, really…"
"That's not exactly reassuring, but fine." Amy muttered, glancing around the desolate garage, wrinkling her nose a bit cutely at how run-down it all looked. "So what now? We fight our way through this... dungeon, kill some boss monster, and then we can go home? Is that how this works?"
Taylor nodded, relief washing over her that Amy seemed to be accepting the situation, however reluctantly. "Pretty much. The System said we need to defeat the dungeon boss or find a teleportation stone to get out. And I have no idea if we'd need two stones since there are two of us, which means we need to assume that we're going to have to kill the boss."
"And how exactly are we supposed to do that when I can barely heal you and you're only..." Amy squinted at the floating blue text still visible in her vision, Taylor's name and the number beside it a gleaming white. "Level 2? Whatever that means."
"It means I'm not very strong yet. Those wolves had red names, which means that they're a much higher level than I am. If there had been more of them or we'd been in a more open space, I'd have been in trouble. Fortunately, they're not very tanky." Taylor explained, before elaborating further at the annoyed huff that passed through Amy's lips. "Tanky is just like it sounds, it means something can absorb a lot of damage. As for the name colors, it's pretty standard across most games. Red for stuff you really shouldn't fight, orange for things that are tough but beatable, yellow for the same level, green for below your level, white for easy to beat, and grey for trash that won't give you any rewards. The fact that these mobs have red names already isn't a great sign."
"Because if even the regular monsters are red, what will the boss end up being?" Amy guessed, and Taylor nodded a bit grimly. "With my healing reduced, too…"
"Exactly. Now, I should be able to grind out a few levels, hopefully, as we make our way through the garage to wherever the boss is sitting around. We just need to move slowly and make sure that we clear out every floor before we move on, for both our sakes." Taylor sighed, before a thoughtful look creased her face. "Speaking of which, how many floors does the parking garage have? Since the dungeon seems to be using it as a framework, literally, I'm going to guess it's an exact copy, more or less."
"Five floors of parking, but I think there are a few basement levels too, with generators and stuff like that. I've never really been in the garage for all that long before, I normally get dropped off at the front door or at the ER, depending on what's going on that particular day." Amy shrugged, before barking a harsh laugh and running a hand through her hair, yanking on a fistful of brown locks with a frustrated expression. "This is insane. I'm supposed to be inside wasting time on my phone and making my rounds, not trapped in a nightmare dimension playing dungeon explorer with a patient that should be in bed."
"I'm sorry, Amy." Taylor apologized, and she meant it wholeheartedly, looking rather down. Justifiably so, Amy felt, even if she wasn't going to keep beating the other girl up over it. "I never intended to drag anyone else into this, and especially not a healer that doesn't dungeon dive."
"Yeah, well, here we are." Amy sighed, rolling her shoulders and folding her arms. "So, we clear out the dungeon, kill this boss thing, and get to go home, yeah?"
"That's the idea. Either the door will open again, an exit will open in the boss room, or we'll just get teleported out instantly. Not sure which." the taller of the two confirmed, taking a moment to check out her leg. "Fuck, how am I going to explain the damage to Mom and Dad?"
"Sounds like something that you should have thought of before you walked into the dungeon."
"Cute, I…wait, do you hear that?"
Amy froze, her next scathing remark dying unvoiced on her tongue. At first, she heard nothing beyond the faint drip of water and the occasional groan of settling metal in the decrepit garage, undercut by the sound of two girls breathing heavily. Then she caught it, the sound that had drawn Taylor's attention. A soft, rhythmic clicking sound, like claws tapping on concrete.
"Y-yeah, yeah." she whispered, instinctively moving closer to Taylor and her protective swords. "More wolves?"
"Probably, sounds like their claws. Get into that corner behind the car, keep your back against the wall so nothing can get behind you. I'll draw them away before they can spot you." Taylor ordered, and Amy hesitated. Not only would they be splitting up by several yards, which was really dumb, but the idea of Taylor using herself as bait didn't sit well at all. She didn't have much of a choice to comply when Taylor pushed her into cover, though, and she held her breath as Taylor walked for several more feet and let out an ear-splitting whistle before clashing her swords together, sending a clear, ringing crystalline chime lashing through the air.
The effect was immediate. A cacophony of howls and snarls erupted from the darkness, and Amy watched with growing horror as not two, not four, but six wolves came bounding around abandoned vehicles, their eyes gleaming with an unnatural hunger and vicious intelligence in the dim emergency lighting. Their movements were unnervingly coordinated, suiting that intelligence, and as she watched they started spreading out to flank Taylor from multiple angles.
"Shit." Taylor hissed, low and bitter, backing up slightly while keeping her blades at the ready. "This is going to be trickier than I thought."
Amy pressed herself deeper into the shadows of her cover, heart hammering in her chest and her hands over her mouth to stifle any sound. Taylor's plan might have drawn the wolves away from her, but now the other girl was hopelessly outnumbered. The rational part of her brain screamed that this was suicide. After all, Taylor was only level 2, whatever that meant in practical terms, and these creatures had nearly taken her down when there were only two of them! Now there were three times as many, and they didn't have to come straight at her like the last time, either!
All she could really do is watch in mute horror as the wolves began to close in on Taylor, who was backing up steadily with her crystalline blades held defensively before her, humming slightly as she wove them through the air in a warding gesture. She couldn't just hide here while Taylor got torn apart, could she? But what could she do? Her healing was severely nerfed by whatever this "System" was, and she had no offensive capabilities to speak of.
One of the wolves lunged forward suddenly, forcing Taylor to parry with Tanha, the blade's gouging a brutal line across the creature's snout and neck, hitting something vital and sending blood spraying. It yelped and retreated, slumping to the ground a moment later, but the attack had been enough to distract Taylor from the others. Two more wolves were already darting in from opposite sides, forcing Taylor into an awkward spinning defense that left her back exposed to a lunging fourth attacker.
"Taylor, behind you!" Amy screamed, her warning instinctive and immediate.
Taylor whirled just in time, but not fast enough to fully evade, only save her life. The wolf's jaws clamped down on her forearm instead of her throat, and she screamed as teeth punctured flesh and scraped bone.
"Fuck!" Taylor shrieked as she drove Gilati into the wolf's eye socket with her free hand, the blade making a sickening squelch, the curved nature of the blade and the momentum of the blow hooking the beast by the skull and hurling it aside. It was dead when it hit the ground, but the damage had already been done. Blood flowed freely down her arm, which she could barely feel, and her HP had dropped precipitously. Worse still, she barely had time to register the pain before another wolf was on her, this one going for her already injured leg. She twisted, bringing Tanha down in a desperate arc that caught the creature across its shoulder, sending it tumbling away with a yelp. But the maneuver left her off-balance, and two more wolves seized the opportunity, rushing in from different angles.
"No!" Amy shouted, abandoning her hiding place without a second thought. She couldn't just watch Taylor get torn apart, not when the other girl had put herself in this position in an effort to keep Amy safely out of the fighting. Running on instincts older than time, she grabbed a rusted metal pipe from the ground and charged forward, swinging wildly at the nearest wolf. The creature turned, startled by her sudden appearance, and Amy's makeshift weapon connected with its skull with a sickening crack. Blood and brain matter cover the ground and her feet as the virtually-headless beast was driven into the pavement.
Amy stared at her trembling hands in disbelief, the blood-slicked pipe suddenly feeling impossibly heavy, the blue window hovering before her eyes:
[Congratulations! You have unlocked the Combat skill tree]
[New skill acquired: Improvised Weapons (Level 1)]
"Holy shit," she whispered, her mind reeling at what she'd just done. She'd never killed anything before, not even in training exercises or the few dungeons that she had ever participated in. As a healer, especially one as valuable as she was, she was always kept safely behind the frontline fighters with dedicated defenders.
Taylor didn't give her time to process the shock, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the wolves didn't give either of the time that was needed. "Behind you!" she shouted, lunging past Amy to intercept another wolf. The beast's jaws snapped inches from Amy's face as Taylor's blade sliced through its neck, nearly decapitating it and spraying blood all across Amy's white clothes.
Amy screamed, in shock and fear as much as disgust, stumbling backward as warm blood spattered across her face and clothes. The metallic tang filled her nostrils, and she felt bile rising in her throat as her stomach churned. This wasn't like working in the hospital, even in the ER. This was raw, violent, and immediate. God, it was as 'in your face' as it was possible to get, and her throat burned as she swallowed heavily.
"T-Taylor! We can't…you can't…!" she started to plea, though what she was going to end with she couldn't begin to guess, but she didn't get the chance to figure it out.
"No choice!" Taylor panted, spinning to face the two remaining wolves, her expression a vicious and determined, but agonized grimace. "Stay behind me, I won't let them hurt you!"
Her injured arm hung awkwardly at her side, blood dripping steadily onto the concrete floor, the curved blade barely gripped in near-nerveless fingers. Amy could see Taylor's health bar hovering above her head, now less than half full and flickering ominously, as well as an icon next to it that was shaped like a person, one arm blinking a violent crimson. She wasn't much of a gamer, but she'd seen a few things, and she could guess a few more, and putting those together told her that Taylor's injured arm was badly injured.
"Taylor, please, you're badly hurt. Let me try to heal you!" Amy said, moving closer and reaching for the other girl's injured arm.
"No time, it takes too long!" Taylor hissed, keeping her eyes fixed on the circling wolves. "Just stay back!"
The wolves seemed to sense their advantage, smelling the blood, the intelligence of a predator making it all too clear to them that their prey was injured. prowling in a tightening circle around the two girls. One feinted forward, causing Taylor to flinch defensively and nearly lose her balance on her injured leg, stumbling aside a few steps as she tried to keep her footing. That left an avenue open that was just large enough for its companion to dart right towards Amy and make a claw-and-fang-filled leap for the healer.
Reacting on pure instinct, Amy swung her pipe again, the wide, baseball-bat-like arc catching the wolf across its flank with a meaty thud and a few sharp cracks. The creature yelped and retreated, limping slightly as it snarled furiously, but it didn't go down and it didn't die.
"Nice hit!" Taylor gasped, sweat beading on her forehead as she slowly shuffled from side to side, making sure that she was keeping herself between her opponent and Amy, and trying to keep the now-injured wolf at least partially visible in her peripherals. "We need to take them down one at a time. Can you keep yours busy for a few seconds so I can finish mine?"
"I…I'll try…" Amy's tone and words made it quite clear, even to someone that couldn't see her face, just how anxious she felt about what she was being asked to do. But anxious or not she settled in to defend herself, hefting her pipe higher and planting her feet in what she hoped was a decent stance. She'd seen Victoria do this a thousand times during training, but hadn't done much of such training herself. Actually doing it in a genuinely life or death situation would have been terrifying if she'd had the time to think about it, or had any choice but to succeed. Oddly enough, despite the fear and adrenaline holding her tightly in their collective grips, she felt…almost excited.
Taylor didn't wait for further or firmer confirmation than that. Instead, she hurled herself at her opponent with a speed that could only be called shocking, given her injuries. Tackling it to the ground, she started stabbing at every inch of it that she could reach even as it's foot-claws scratched and tore at her clothing and skin, their mutual snarls and screams of pain and fury mingling with one another as each tried to kill the other.
Not that Amy could do anything to help Taylor, because the moment Taylor was further away from her, her own enemy decided that it was time to kill the thing that had hurt it so badly, claws scratching on the ground as it blitzed towards her, somehow faster than it had been before she had struck it the first time. Driven by pain, rage, or hunger, it was impossible to say, but it was faster than Amy had expected and her eyes widened, stance faltering. Desperate, she swung the pipe in a panicked arc, but this time the wolf recognized the threat for what it was and ducked under the swing as it lunged for her legs, jaws snapping. Amy screamed as teeth grazed her calf, tearing through her scrubs and drawing blood.
Pain lanced up her leg, sharp and immediate. It wasn't deep, but it hurt like hell. Stumbling backward, she swung the pipe again, this time connecting with the wolf's skull. The creature yelped, momentarily dazed, shaking its head and stumbling itself, if only slightly.
"Amy! Again!" Taylor's voice cut through her panic, strident and commanding, and Amy obeyed without thinking, reeling her makeshift weapon back and hammering it down on her disoriented opponent with all of her strength. The pipe connected with a sickening crunch, splattering more blood across Amy's already stained scrubs as the wolf's skull caved in beneath the force of her blow. The creature collapsed in a heap, twitching violently several times before finally going completely still.
Amy stood frozen, panting heavily, the blood-slick pipe still clutched in her trembling hands and her heart hammering in her chest, each beat sending a fresh pulse of pain through her injured leg as it pounded in her ears. She'd just killed two living creatures with her own hands. She, Amy Dallon, who had sworn to do no harm, who had dedicated her life to healing, had just beaten two living things to death. The fact that they were Dungeon Beasts was a cold comfort in this moment, and without a second thought she hurled the pipe aside and stared down at her bloodstained hands.
Blood. So much blood. On her hands, on her clothes, and some of it was even hers. For all her years as a healer, for all the wounds she'd repaired and lives she'd saved, she'd never been covered in it like this. Never been the cause of it. Never stank of it.
"Amy! Amy, are you okay?" Taylor's voice broke through her spiraling thoughts, and shee looked up to see the taller girl limping towards her, both crystalline blades dripping crimson, her own wounds still bleeding freely. The other girl's health bar had dropped even further, now barely a quarter full and still flashing ominously.
"I... I killed them." Amy whispered, her voice hollow, her eyes burning and suspiciously damp. "I've never killed anything before. Never even hurt anything."
Taylor reached her, placing her good hand on Amy's shoulder, squeezing as firmly and reassuringly as she could. "You did what you had to do. You saved both our lives." Her face was pale from blood loss, but her eyes were clear and focused as she squeezed Amy's shoulder again. "I'm sorry you had to do that. I'm sorry I got you into this, but I promise, I promise, that I'll die getting you out of it if I have to."
Amy swallowed hard, blinking back tears as she forced herself to look at Taylor's injuries rather than dwell on what she'd just done, or what the other girl had just said. The ravenette's forearm was mangled, deep puncture wounds revealing glimpses of bone, and her leg wasn't much better. Blood continued to soak through her jeans, and her face was growing paler by the second. The fact that she was still on her feet was frankly insane, and the fact that she was spending her energy trying to comfort Amy was as heartwarming as it was bizarre.
"You're going to bleed out if we don't do something, so…" Amy muttered, professional instincts finally kicking in, one arm gently wrapping around Taylor's chest. "Sit down before you fall down."
Taylor complied without argument, sliding down against a nearby concrete pillar with a pained grunt. Amy knelt beside her, freed hand already glowing with healing energy as she pressed it between her barely-there breasts. For her part, Taylor hissed through clenched teeth as the green glow spread from Amy's palm, seeping into her chest and flowing through her body. The sensation was strange, different from other healers that had used their magic on her in the past. Warm but tingling, like pins and needles combined with the feeling of sinking into a hot bath. She watched with fascination as her health bar started to refill steadily, and wondered somewhat absently if this was what recovering from near-frostbite felt like.
"It's not enough, this is…" Amy muttered, frustration evident in her voice, and Taylor blinked at her in surprise. "This stupid fucking System is limiting me! I should be able to heal this in a literal heartbeat, not... whatever this is!"
"It's better than nothing," Taylor replied, wincing as the bone in her forearm began to knit back together, clicking softly in a way that she was pretty sure would leave her with nightmares for a week or two. "The System said your healing was reduced by 85%, right? That's still 15% of an S-rank healer's abilities. That's more than enough for a place like this, even if it takes longer."
Amy snorted, not taking her eyes off her companion's health bar, then she frowned. "Hey…Taylor? What's the chevron with the plus sign under it next to your name mean?"
"Huh? Oh, right, I totally forgot about that. I was going to decide what stats to increase from leveling up last night, but by the time my parents left and I had privacy again, I was completely exhausted and just slept until my alarm woke me up to come here. I should probably do that, huh?"
"I guess now's as good a time as any," Amy said, her hand still glowing with healing energy as Taylor's HP continued to creep back towards full. "But what does that even mean, 'stats to increase'?"
Taylor voiced the words 'Player Status', causing a new window to appear before both of them:
Name: Taylor Hebert
Class: Not Applicable
Level: 2
HP: 250/250
MP: 800/800
STR: 5
DEX: 6
CON: 4
INT: 15
WIS: 12
CHR: 3
LUK: 12
Available Stat Points: 6
Available Skill Points: 0
Reward Stat Points to Be Distributed: +3 STR, +3 DEX, +3 CON
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that too. The quest rewards." she muttered to herself, before gesturing and addressing Amy directly. "See, each of those statistics decide different things about me, just like a game. Strength is how much damage my attacks do, Constitution is how much Health I have, that sort of thing. I really should have paid more attention to this earlier, but…well, like I said, I forgot. Here, hold on."
A moment later, she'd distributed her points, leaving Amy gaping at the updated numbers.
Name: Taylor Hebert
Class: Not Applicable
Level: 2
HP: 550/550
MP: 850/850
STR: 10
DEX: 9
CON: 10
INT: 15
WIS: 12
CHR: 4
LUK: 12
Available Stat Points: 0
Available Skill Points: 0
Reward Stat Points to Be Distributed: None
"Taylor…are you telling me that you could have had more than twice as much health as you did when we came in here, when you almost died, if you'd written yourself a fucking note?!" Amy didn't shout, or snarl, or glare and glower. No, she spoke with a perfectly calm, even tone of voice, and Taylor -whose pallor had just started to look healthy again from the healing- paled dramatically as she recognized the great danger that lay not in her forgetfulness, but instead in the wrath of the girl holding her.
"Yessss….?" she hazarded, and Amy took a deep breath, nodded, smiled…and promptly slapped her across the face.
"IDIOT!"