Soren woke like he had been dragged out of drowning.
Air tore into his lungs in a sharp, ugly gasp, his fingers clawing at the blanket before his mind even caught up, the motion pure reflex, the same panicked scramble as that first morning in this world when he had bolted upright in a strange bed and thought for one mad second that he was still on Earth.
Only this time his ribs punished him for it.
"Gh—!"
Pain lanced across his side and shoulder, bright enough that his vision flashed white at the edges, his body folding in on itself before it could sit up properly, and he dropped back against the mattress with a rough exhale that tasted like iron, staring at the ceiling while his heart slammed like it wanted out.
Soft light, pale blue curtains, the faint sway of fabric as if the room was breathing, and beneath it all, that clean sting of disinfectant and herbs.
An infirmary bed.
Not the forest.
Not mud, not smoke, not the sound of wet giggling in the dark, not the heavy stomp that made the ground feel too small.
His hands were shaking anyway.
He pressed the heel of one palm against his sternum like he could physically hold his heartbeat down, then swallowed, throat clicking, and forced his eyes to stay open despite the instinct to squeeze them shut and pretend he could rewind time.
'…It's okay.'
The words came out inside him like a lie he was practising.
He counted his breaths the way people did in cheap advice posts.
In through his nose until it burned, out through his mouth until the tremor in his shoulders eased by a fraction.
His chest was still tight, his skin was still cold with sweat that had no right to be there in a warm room.
He turned his head, slow, careful, and saw the sun coming through the window.
That detail, stupid and mundane, grounded him more than the curtains did.
His breath hitched again, smaller this time, and he stared at the ceiling as the thought finally, belatedly, pushed through the panic.
'I actually survived.'
It didn't feel triumphant, it didn't even feel real, it landed like something heavy set down in his lap, something he didn't know what to do with.
His mouth was dry, tongue stuck to his teeth, and when he tried to shift his leg he discovered the ache ran everywhere, deep and pulsing, like bruises layered under bruises, his body keeping score in places he hadn't noticed during the fight because adrenaline had done its job too well.
He remembered… pieces.
Mud sucking at ankles.
The hobgoblin's grin, wide and wrong, the way it waited like it had all the time in the world, and how the timer had been a cruel little joke hovering in his vision, counting down minutes like they were a mercy.
He remembered the moment he had leapt at it, not brave, not noble, just furious and desperate, and the knife sinking into its belly, the sound it made when it realised he had actually hurt it.
And then, closer, sharper, like someone had reached into his skull and twisted a knob.
His unique skill stirred.
[Library of Memories] didn't give him the mercy of blur, it didn't let the worst moments stay soft around the edges, it did what it always did, it pulled everything into crystal clarity, every sensation filing itself neatly into place as if he had asked for it.
The smell of burnt fabric.
His own singed eyebrows.
The way his palm had felt when the flame burst, the heat greedy and violent, and then the immediate aftermath, the hobgoblin's rage, the kick, the tree, ribs detonating, breath vanishing, the wet taste that wasn't spit.
The last minute.
The sword rising.
The certainty, cold and absolute, that he was going to die.
A clash of steel.
A flash of pink.
Then black.
Soren's stomach lurched so suddenly he barely had time to react.
He twisted, clutching his side with one hand as his other fumbled for the bin, vision tunnelling, a strangled sound catching in his throat, and then he retched, hard, the motion yanking pain through his ribs as his body tried to eject something that wasn't food, wasn't poison, just fear and blood and smoke that existed now only in his head.
The first wave was mostly bile, sour and burning, and the second was worse because there was nothing left but his stomach still insisted, contracting violently while tears sprang to his eyes from sheer force.
He kept his forehead against the edge of the bed, knuckles white around the bin, trembling so hard the wood knocked softly against the floor.
It went on long enough that he lost track of time, breaths turning into broken gasps between heaves, his throat raw, saliva stringing unpleasantly at his lips when he finally stopped.
He sat there for a moment, frozen in that hunched posture, listening to his own breathing.
No laughter.
No timer.
Just the hush of curtains and the distant, muffled quiet of a building that was meant to keep people alive.
When he lifted his head, there was a small smear at the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand without thinking, then immediately regretted it because the smell clung, sharp and humiliating.
He swallowed carefully, tasted acid, and forced himself to breathe again, slower now, steadier, even as his hands still trembled like they hadn't been told the danger was over.
'Don't do that. Don't be an idiot.' he told himself, not gently, not cruelly either, just practical, the way he had learned to speak to his own panic.
The problem was that the spiral had already happened, it had just happened quietly inside him instead of out loud.
He leaned back against the pillow with the sort of careful movement that suggested his body might fall apart if he stopped respecting it, then stared at the pale ceiling again, eyes stinging, lashes damp, throat aching.
'It's okay,' he repeated, and it still sounded rehearsed.
His gaze drifted to his left, and that was when he noticed the translucent window hovering near the bedside, patient, bright, absurdly clean.
"Right…" he murmured, voice rough from vomiting, the sound scraping out of him like he hadn't used it in a week. "The system."
Even thinking that word, system, made his stomach twist again, because the timer had been part of it, the cruel little countdown, the way it had turned his life into a challenge, but the window itself didn't care about his feelings, it hovered with the same cheerful neutrality it always had.
.
▶ Quest Complete! [Survive] ◀
[Reward: Store Ticket, 50 Points.]
.
He stared at it for a few seconds, waiting for relief to arrive the way it should have now that everything was over, but it didn't, not really.
There was only a distant, numb recognition that yes, the quest was over, yes, he had lived, and yes, a part of his brain wanted something to latch onto that wasn't the image of a greatsword descending.
This, at least, was concrete.
He exhaled shakily through his nose, then winced at how much that simple breath pulled at his ribs.
'Fifty points,' he thought, and the number felt insultingly small compared to what it had cost him, but he forced himself not to sink into that bitterness because it was a waste of energy, and he didn't have much of that left.
His eyes slid over the words again, slower.
'Store Ticket?'
In the game, a store ticket had been a premium shortcut, a "here, have something nice" reward that players received through events, the kind of item you hoarded because it felt rare, but he wasn't playing anymore, and the idea of a premium store existing in a real world was, frankly, ridiculous.
Still, the system had been ridiculous from the start, and yet he was here.
Soren swallowed, then lifted his trembling hand and focused.
He needed something to do.
He needed his thoughts to have rails.
.
[Receive Reward?]
[Yes] [No]
.
[Yes]
The window chimed softly, and another panel slid into place.
.
[Information]
.
[Store Ticket]
[Can be exchanged for any skill worth 10,000P or less in the store.]
.
"…Really?"
The word came out before he could stop it, quiet and hoarse, like his voice didn't quite belong to him yet.
For a moment his brain didn't compute it, then it did, and the shock hit like a delayed wave.
A skill.
Any skill.
Up to ten thousand points.
That wasn't just "nice," that was obscene, especially for him, especially now, a Class F nobody with stats that had only just clawed their way out of the pit, someone who had been forced to learn, very quickly, how fragile his skills were when pain and fear got involved.
His stomach still felt unsettled, but something else sparked under the exhaustion, not joy, not excitement, more like… a thin thread of determination, because this meant he could reduce the chance of ever being pinned in the mud with a timer laughing at him again.
'It's okay,' he told himself, and this time it felt less like a lie and more like a decision. 'Let's use this properly.'
"「Store」."
The store window opened, familiar in shape, alien in implication, and he began to scroll.
.
[Cooking] → 250P
[Gardening] → 250P
.
[Swordsmanship] → 500P
[Archery] → 500P
.
[Language] → 1000P
.
[Mana Mastery] → 5000P
.
[Concentration] → 10,000P
.
He stared at the list as if it might rearrange itself into an obvious answer.
A part of him wanted to laugh, not because it was funny, but because his life had almost ended in the woods and now he was shopping in bed like this was normal, like vomiting into a bin was just another checkbox before you spent a priceless item.
His hands were still shaking faintly, and he could feel dried tears on his cheeks when he blinked.
He scrolled anyway.
More skills appeared, some mundane, some tempting, and the more he looked the more he realised that ten thousand points wasn't "infinite," it was a very sharp boundary that forced him to choose, and he hated choosing, because choosing meant committing, and committing meant responsibility.
He rubbed at his forehead with two fingers, careful of his ribs, then let his hand drop.
'Most of these will be useless right now,' he thought, trying to be clinical, trying to sound like a strategist instead of a traumatised teenager in a sickbed.
There were skills that sounded incredible, [Spiritualism] and stranger things that hinted at paths he couldn't even comprehend yet, but they came with invisible prerequisites, the same way flashy builds in games always did, and he didn't have the baseline for them, he had learned that lesson the hard way in the forest when "I'll just cast" turned into "I can't breathe."
Even the "safe" options were complicated.
[Mana Sensitivity] and [Mana Control] were obvious investments, skills that would help him long-term, skills that would probably matter more than any single active skill, but he couldn't shake the nagging thought that using a seemingly once-in-a-lifetime ticket on something worth two thousand points was, mathematically, a waste.
He swallowed again, throat still sour, and forced his eyes to stay on the screen.
"This is harder than I thought," he muttered, the confession slipping out on a tired breath.
Not because the choice was intellectually complex, but because his mind kept trying to drift back to the wrong things, the way the hobgoblin's laughter had filled the dark, the way the timer had felt like a judge.
He needed a skill that addressed that.
He needed a skill that let him function when his body was screaming, because his magic required a kind of focus that pain didn't respect.
His gaze snagged on one line again.
[Concentration] → 10,000P.
It sounded almost laughable, bland, like the sort of thing a game would give you as a minor passive bonus, but the forest had shown him exactly how important it was, not in theory, not in a tooltip, but in the moment his water sphere had shattered because a branch snapped, and in the moment his circle had failed because his arm had burned, and in the moment he had realised that a "mage" who couldn't maintain his spell under pressure was just a victim with extra steps.
He closed the store window, then opened it again, then scrolled away, then scrolled back, as if trying to prove to himself there wasn't a better answer hiding further down.
His stomach rolled once more, milder this time, and he paused, breathing slowly until it passed.
He was so tired.
Not sleepy or comfortable, just drained, like his thoughts were moving through syrup.
Still, he kept going, because if he stopped, his mind would have space to replay the last minute again, and he didn't want that, not right now.
————「❤︎」————