My brain, currently hovering somewhere between a medical coma and complete exhaustion, stared at the three holographic options floating above my hospital cot.
The medical staff was still somewhere down the corridor looking for high-grade stabilization wraps and possibly a priest. I had less than two minutes before my eyelids permanently shut down for the day.
Think fast.
I dissected the list using the absolute last dregs of energy in my system.
Option Three. Magic. Tsukuyomi Raiden was a multi-attunement prodigy. Frost, Wind, and Lightning. Her emergency spells were highly effective. But biologically, they were useless to me. Magic requires a natural elemental affinity. My unclassified circuit doesn't have an attunement for ice, storms, or electricity. Attempting to cast her magic wouldn't produce a lethal projectile or a lightning strike—it would just burn a catastrophic amount of mana to produce a light, chilly breeze and a pathetic static shock.
Rejected.
Option One. Trait. A passive physiological law. Her flawless martial conditioning. A trait that automatically eliminated wasted movements and forced the skeletal structure to perfectly stabilize its center of gravity, even when ambushed or thrown off-balance. A high-tier survival mechanism. But I didn't need another defensive tool right now. I already had INHERITANCE to keep me breathing. What I desperately lacked was a way to actually attack and kill things.
Perfect balance doesn't mean anything if you don't have the means to hit back. Rejected.
My eyes dropped to the middle option.
Option Two. Technique. Her legendary sword arts. The Sankei no Ken.
A dull ache throbbed in my ribs just thinking about it. In the game, this was one of the most game-breaking, overpowered End-Game skill trees you could possibly acquire. Unlocking its base foundation required enduring a soul-crushing, three-month reputation grind with the Eastern Sovereign Alliance faction, doing brain-dead fetch quests for arrogant clan elders.
And the system was handing it to me for free.
"Fuck the grind," I rasped quietly.
I raised my trembling hand, pointed at the empty air, and tapped the second option.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ CATEGORY SELECTED : (2) TECHNIQUE ]
[ Extracting conceptual property: Legendary Eastern Sword Art (Sankei no Ken) ]
[ ⚠ SYSTEM ADVISORY: Incomplete Host Capacity Detected ]
[ Requirement for Complete Standard Extraction: Strength D, Agility C, Mana Control C ]
[ User's Current Stats: Strength F, Agility F+, Mana Control F+ ]
[ ERROR: User's physical parameters CANNOT sustain the complete architectural weight of the stolen Art. ]
[ You must specify a downgraded extraction parameter. ]
▶ OPTION A: [ LINEAR MASTERY ] Extract the complete combo sequence and Final Strike of ONE (1) Scenery. High elemental damage output. Massive stamina and mana cost.
▶ OPTION B: [ HYBRID FOUNDATION ] Extract only the Initiation Movements (First Strike) of ALL THREE (3) Sceneries, including the Kyōkei-gi (Bridge Techniques). Negligible elemental output. High versatility.
[ Awaiting User Sub-Selection... ] ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The physical bottleneck. Of course. A frail E-Rank circuit cannot download a legendary sword art without cutting corners.
My exhausted brain ran the calculus.
Option A was a trap.Linear Mastery.
Taking the full combo of one stance—like the Frost Scenery—meant I would get the devastating Sōnagi (Frost Scythe) finisher. But chaining a full sequence required an exponential amount of mana and muscular torque. My current skeletal structure didn't even come close to the stat requirements. The kinetic force would be heavily scaled down, the stamina drain would be catastrophic, and without an actual Ice attunement, the damage output would be pathetic.
Worse, locking into one stance made me a predictable target. To any veteran PvP player on Odia-Prime, a level-one Sankei no Ken user swinging a single, linear combo was the easiest thing in the world to read. I had literally just proven how easy it was to break this technique if you had the frame-data memorized.
But Option B? Hybrid Foundation.
I wouldn't get the devastating finishers. No massive explosions of ice or lightning. I would only get the very first move of each stance.
But those first moves were exactly what I needed.
Hakuiki (White Breath) from the Frost stance: a slow, claiming motion that establishes a defensive perimeter and controls space.
Senkōkyaku (Flash Step) from the Lightning stance: a blinding lateral footwork initiation that leaves a static corona to disrupt visual tracking. Pure mobility.
Ranki (Disrupted Air) from the Tempest stance: a wide sweep releasing compressed atmospheric pressure to stagger the opponent before the blade even arrives. Ranged disruption.
Defense. Movement. Offense.
All three bases covered. And the true prize wasn't the strikes—it was the Kyōkei-gi. The Bridge Techniques. The fluid transitions are used to connect the stances.
If I had the bridges, I didn't need to finish a combo. I could initiate a heavy Frost swing, use a bridge to instantly cancel the animation midway, and seamlessly transition into a Lightning flash step. It was the ultimate, stamina-efficient, broken glitch build. A moveset designed purely to confuse, stagger, and infuriate an opponent.
I will pull a muscle every time I swing. But they will never know which direction the swing is actually going.
I tapped Option B.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ SUB-SELECTION CONFIRMED : (B) HYBRID FOUNDATION ]
[ Plagiarism Complete. The structural blueprints and Bridge Concepts have been integrated into the user's motor nodes. ]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The golden interface shattered into pixelated dust, sinking directly into my chest.
There was no explosive surge of power. No blinding light.
Instead, a white-hot spike of pure, structural agony shot down my cervical spine. My vertebrae popped with a sickening, wet crunch.
This was my second systemic integration since arriving in this world. When I absorbed the Chief of Surgery at Outbound Ward 04, the reward had rewritten my Palm nodes with the freezing, sterile precision of a scalpel. This was entirely different. This wasn't surgery. This was blunt-force demolition.
The frail E-Rank circuit violently rewired my central nervous system, forcing muscles that had never held a sword to instantly adapt to the exact center of gravity required for a flash step.
Sweat stung my eyes as a cold, sharp, and intensely precise understanding of weight distribution carved itself directly into my muscle memory. It felt like being hollowed out and rebuilt in the span of three seconds.
I gasped, my fingers digging into the stiff mattress as the physical backlash finally subsided. It left behind a terrifyingly clear geometric awareness of my own limbs.
Right above my chest, the Native System flickered, confirming the survival of the integration.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ SKILL REGISTRY UPDATED ]
SKILL : Trinity Sword: Sankei no Ken [ Hybrid Foundation ]
Rank : F (Growth Type)
Forged by the ancestors of the Tsukuyomi Clan to prove a singular, violent truth—every technique has a counter, and no stance is absolute. It is the art of reading the enemy's death before the blade is even drawn.
Description : The initiation movements and Bridge Concepts (Kyōkei-gi) of the Legendary Eastern Sword Art, "The Three Sceneries of Death".
User can execute the primary physical forms of the three sceneries:
▶ Frost (Sō-kei) : Hakuiki (White Breath)
▶ Lightning (Rai-kei) : Senkōkyaku (Flash Step)
▶ Tempest (Ran-kei) : Ranki (Disrupted Air)
[ ⚠ EXECUTION FLAW DETECTED ] Host's current stats (STR: F, AGI: F+) cannot fully absorb the kinetic recoil of the Bridge Concepts. Executing more than TWO (2) consecutive stance-transition under one minute will result in severe muscle tearing and joint dislocation. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
There is the catch.
Hakuiki. Senkōkyaku. Ranki. Without Raiden's elemental attunement, no frost perimeters or static coronas will manifest. Just raw, unadulterated kinetic force. And if I chain them together, the sheer torque will literally rip my shoulders out of their sockets.
A strict three-hit combo limit. This legendary sword art is just a highly efficient self-destruct button.
Though from a purely biological standpoint, receiving a system reward is an absolute biological hazard. If I had tapped that extraction button while standing upright, the sudden, violent rewiring of my center of gravity would have shattered my kneecaps and folded my spine in half. I would have literally died from my own power-up.
Thank God I am already hospitalized and lying flat on a trauma cot. Institutional foresight at its finest.
My core temperature was finally dropping. The medics were probably down the hall, mixing my painkillers right now.
I let my head sink completely into the stiff hospital pillow. My eyelids felt like they were tethered to ship anchors. The rhythmic humming of the brass Odic monitors around the infirmary began to sound like a lullaby.
Sleep. I just need to sleep, and Day Two is officially ov—
SKRRRRT.
The harsh, metallic scrape of iron rings violently sliding across a metal pole severed the quiet.
The white privacy curtains surrounding Cot Four were yanked shut with a sharp, aggressive jerk. The ambient light from the rest of the trauma ward was instantly blocked out, isolating me inside a cramped, white fabric box.
My eyes snapped open.
Standing right beside my bed, gripping the edge of the curtain with white-knuckled intensity, was Nova Celestine Melody.
Her clear magitech oxygen mask was gone. Her usually immaculate silver-blonde hair was an absolute mess. She didn't look like a pristine aristocrat anymore. She looked like a cornered operative who had just watched her entire mission brief catch fire.
She didn't speak. She raised her left hand.
A pristine, sapphire-cut Shard materialized directly over her shoulder. Pale silver-white Vein-light instantly flooded down her arm, illuminating the cramped space.
She is manifesting her Shard inside the infirmary. That is a massive conduct violation.
Her index finger frantically traced the air. A Layer-2 Gesture Cast.
A Flow Script isn't just a drawing; it is a basic grammatical sentence written in math and light. Her finger traced the Subject of the spell—a heavily distorted, geometric sequence spelling 'B-O-U-N-D-A-R-Y'. Her wrist flicked, attaching the primary Verb with an unnecessarily complex 'B-L-O-C-K', and chaining the Object—'S-O-U-N-D'. Without breaking the flow, her finger hooked into a secondary modifier: 'B-L-U-R' and 'L-I-G-H-T'.
BOUNDARY BLOCK SOUND. BLUR LIGHT.
The golden rune ignited, expanding outward and wrapping seamlessly around the fabric of the curtains.
Instantly, the background noise of the infirmary—the nurses' frantic footsteps, the groans of injured students, the hum of the brass monitors—vanished completely.
Simultaneously, the stark white fabric of the privacy curtains warped. The crisp, clinical lighting bleeding in from the ward outside fractured, turning the fabric barrier into a thick, frosted interference field. Anyone looking at Cot Four from the outside wouldn't see our faces or our exact movements. They would only see two vague, shifting silhouettes trapped behind a murky, indistinct haze.
A Layer-2 isolation rune doesn't just cut the audio. It censors the visual.
We were absolutely, securely isolated.
Above her disheveled silver-blonde hair, my Native System instantly flagged the violent shift in the room's atmospheric pressure.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ANNOTATION UPDATE — Nova Celestine Melody ]
◈ [GREEN] [MASK] ➔ [YELLOW] [MASK]
◈ [GREEN] [EYE] ➔ [RED] [EYE]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Yellow Mask. Red Eye.
The condition is critical. The aristocratic facade is cracking, leaving only the real person hiding underneath it.
Nova let out a sharp, breathless laugh. She ran a pale hand through her messy hair, her posture completely dropping the high-class, melodic grace of House Glyphron.
"Ha," she exhaled, her voice sounding rushed and desperately casual. "God... finally. Finally, we're alone."
She stepped closer, gripping the cold iron rail of my hospital bed. Her knuckles turned bone-white, but a brittle, triumphant smirk forced its way onto her lips. She looked down at me like a detective who had just cornered her prime suspect.
"You really thought you could keep playing dumb, didn't you?" Nova whispered, her sapphire eyes burning into mine. "Dropping hints since yesterday, surviving lethal poison like it's absolutely nothing... You messed up. You made it too obvious."
She leaned in, the pale light of her Shard reflecting in her eyes.
"Now I know exactly who you really are."