I almost fucking died.
The thought hit her like a slap. The emotion underneath wasn't what she expected.
Euphoria.
Her heart was hammering. Her hands were shaking. Every nerve ending lit up, screaming, alive alive alive.
She started laughing.
Couldn't stop. Couldn't breathe. Just lying there in the blood pool, next to the thing that had almost killed her, laughing until her ribs ached and her eyes watered and the sound echoed off the concrete walls.
[HP: 48/820]
Forty-eight. One more Final Vigil and she'd have been paste on the concrete.
And she'd won.
The laughter died. Slowly. Leaving something else behind.
The hunger. Quiet now. Satisfied.
Again, it whispered. More.
She lay there. Staring at the ceiling that wasn't a ceiling. Feeling her heartbeat slow. Feeling the high fade into something colder.
She'd almost died. And the first thing she'd felt was disappointed it was over.
What am I becoming?
The bloom that manifested was enormous.
Not green-white. Deeper. Richer. Heavy with everything the knight had been.
She reached for it without thinking. The hunger pulling it in.
[+15,000 Reservoir]
The surge hit her like a wave. Fifteen thousand from one bloom. More than she'd gotten from a hundred slimes combined.
She'd killed maybe fifty slimes on the way in. Another thirty during the fight. Each one filling the tank by scraps.
[Reservoir: 23,000/125,000]
Full. Whole. The aches fading, the bruises dissolving, everything that had been broken knitting back together.
Her body felt different. Remade. Stronger. Faster. Like she could punch through the concrete if she wanted to. Like she could outrun anything that tried to chase her.
But she wasn't looking at the notifications.
She was looking at the knight.
At the empty hand. The one that had finally let go.
The broken hilt lay in the blood pool where it had fallen. The blade that was no longer a blade at all, just a jagged edge, waiting for a grip that would never come.
It had knelt there for centuries. Guarding nothing. A sentinel whose sword had shattered and whose purpose had rotted away.
And when she'd entered, it had risen. Because that's what it did. Because it didn't know how to do anything else.
She knew that feeling. The getting up when there's nothing left to get up for. The going through the motions because the alternative is admitting you're already done.
Dead weight. Both of them.
[ELITE SLAIN: Putrid Knight]
[Would you like to claim this entity?]
[Chimera]
Cost: 20,000 Reservoir
[Yes / No]
She checked.
[Reservoir: 23,000/125,000]
Enough. Barely.
But she didn't press Yes. Not yet.
She knelt beside the corpse. The armor was cold now, the purple light faded. Just rusted metal and rotting flesh and an empty hand that meant nothing anymore.
She reached out. Touched the gauntlet. The fingers that had been trying to kill her a minute ago.
It had fought without a blade.
For so long, it had guarded this place with nothing but its fists. A broken blade. A duty it couldn't remember and couldn't let go.
And it had still gotten up. Had still fought. Had still spent its last blood trying to take her with it. Not out of spite, but because that's what it was. A thing that fights. A thing that doesn't stop.
She understood that.
She understood that better than anyone.
Her hand moved to the fallen hilt. Wrapped around it. Cold metal. Dead weight.
"One more time," she said. "Get up one more time."
[Yes]
Twenty thousand Reservoir. More than the knight was worth. The difference came from the slimes, every one she'd killed on the way in, every bloom she'd absorbed during the fight.
Just enough.
It left her.
Painless. Almost pleasant. A tide going out. A breath she'd been holding without knowing.
The light poured into the corpse.
Her light. Green-white. The Engine's color, not the knight's.
Finding every gap in the armor, every crack in the rust, every hollow where flesh had rotted away. Filling the knight the way mercury fills an ant nest. Inexorable, patient, claiming every passage and chamber until nothing remained unfilled.
[Reservoir: 3,000/125,000]
The corpse drank it all.
And then it collapsed.
Condensed. Shrank. The armor folding inward, the body compressing, everything that had been ten feet of rusted death pulling down, down, down into something that fit in her palm.
What emerged was six inches tall. Armored in rusted plate, but miniature now. Gauntlets that ended in points. A visor with nothing behind it.
A broken hilt at its waist. Still shattered. But there.
It was standing.
It looked up at her.
And it saluted.
Not the lazy gesture of a subordinate. A soldier's salute. Arm across the chest, fist over the heart it didn't have anymore. The kind of salute you give to someone who earned it.
[CHIMERA ACQUIRED: Putrid Knight]
Dormant Form: Companion
Active Form: — Trait:
Ironblood — Attacks inflict Necrotic Blight
[LORE: Putrid Knight]
Seneschal of the Seventh Threshold. Last of eight. Its blade shattered. It did not leave.
The tiny knight held its salute. Waiting.
For purpose. For whatever came next.
Mio stared at it.
Seconds ago, this thing had been dying in front of her. Reaching for her with a hand that couldn't close. Spending its last blood to take her with it.
Now it was six inches tall. Standing on the stain where its body used to be.
She'd told it to get up one more time. And it had listened.
"...okay," she said. "Okay."
She reached down. Let it climb onto her palm. Its weight was barely there, a few ounces, maybe less.
It found its way to her shoulder. Settled into place.
Two dead weights. Still standing.
The notifications stacked. Loot drops, quest rewards, XP bonuses. She dismissed them without reading.
[Status Updated]
Level: 10 HP: 1,420/1,420
Reservoir: 3,000/125,000
VIT: 67
STR: 11
AGI: 12
INT: 12
SPR: 16
Level 10. Forty-five stat points across nine level-ups. All of them in VIT. Every single one.
She didn't remember choosing that. The Engine had asked once, at Level 2. She'd been too busy killing to answer.
Auto-allocating per needs.
The rubble was still there, but the gap was wider now. Something had shifted when the knight fell.
She climbed through. Three floors back up, past everything the fight had broken. The corruption was gone. The damage wasn't.
The shimmer was waiting. She let it swallow her.
✦✦✦
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