I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry, Lily.
The flower was so close.
A breeze stirred the silver moss.
It was barely a whisper of wind, the first Revvyn had felt since entering this cursed garden. It drifted through the bone-white trees, carrying the faint scent of something clean. Something that didn't smell like rot, blood, or honey-coated death.
The breeze touched the Midnight Flower.
The glowing petals trembled. Then, slowly, impossibly, the bloom detached from its stem and rolled across the silver moss. It tumbled once, twice, three times, each rotation bringing it closer until it came to rest against Revvyn's cheek. The petals were cool and soft, pulsing with a gentle light. Up close, Revvyn could see tiny specks of silver drifting inside them like liquid stars.
He couldn't move his limbs, but he could turn his head. Just a little. Just enough.
His lips brushed against the petals.
The world brightened and became clear for him.
The Moonflower was not a gentle remedy neither was it a soothing herb meant to mend wounds. It was a violent, celestial fuel chunk of concentrated magic that didn't care if his mortal frame was ready for it. As the petals dissolved on his tongue, a surge of cold, silver fire roared through his veins.
It was forcing him together.
Revvyn's scream was a raw, throat-shredding sound that sent glowing spores scattering into the dark. He felt his shattered ribs grind together, the jagged edges scraping as they snapped into a crude, upright position. His collarbone knitted with a sound like cracking ice. The compound fracture in his leg,the bone that had been threatening to pierce the skin, suddenly pulled back the flesh, sealing over it, with a wet sickening squelch.
It was a battlefield patch-job held together by sheer magical pressure. Every breath felt like his lungs were being inflated with broken glass. Every heartbeat sent fresh waves of agony through his reconstructed skeleton.
But he could move.
[Consumable: Ancient Moonflower Eaten]
[Temporary Buff: Moon-Phase Surge Active]
[All Stats +20 for 120 Seconds]
[Warning: Forced Bone Knitting Incomplete — 40% Integrity]
[Duration Remaining: 119... 118... 117...]
Revvyn pushed himself up. His legs trembled violently, the bones screaming in protest, but they held. He looked at his hands, the same hands that had been useless and broken seconds ago. They were shaking, but they were his again.
Above him, the Serpent's massive head was still lowering, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow him whole. Its remaining eye, the one not shattered by Syll's acid, glowed with cold, predatory satisfaction. It thought he was dead. It thought the meal was served.
Revvyn's vision sharpened. The world slowed. He could see every scale on the Serpent's throat, every droplet of venom gathering on its fangs, every flicker of its forked tongue.
+20 to everything. For two minutes. That was all he had.
"I'm not... dying... here!" Revvyn roared, the sound thick with the copper taste of blood.
He lunged.
With his Agility temporarily skyrocketing, he was no longer a boy stumbling through a nightmare. He was a blur of silver light, a streak of motion that left afterimages in the air. The ground didn't just support him—it launched him.
He closed the distance in a single, heart-stopping heartbeat.
"Flicker Strike!"
He reappeared directly over the Serpent's head. Below him, the creature's massive skull filled his vision—the crystalline horns, the smoking wounds where Syll's acid had burned, and the glowing white eye-slits that flared with sudden, horrified awareness.
With a guttural scream, Revvyn brought his rusted cutlass down with every ounce of his temporary strength. He aimed for the ruined socket.
CRACK-SHATTER.
The blade sank deep into the ruined eye. The Serpent's socket first burst then it exploded, sending a fountain of black, steaming fluid spraying across the garden. But the rusted iron couldn't handle the raw power of the surge. The blade snapped in half, the top piece spinning away into the dark, leaving Revvyn clutching a jagged, broken hilt.
He landed hard, the impact jarring every poorly-healed bone. Fresh pain lanced through his ribs and leg. But he stayed upright.
The Serpent screamed. A high-pitched, vibrating wail that shook the very foundations of the garden. Black, oily ichor sprayed from its ruined eye like a geyser. The creature thrashed wildly, slamming its body against moonstone pillars and shattering them into rubble.
"Syll! Now!"
The purple slime didn't hesitate.
Syll surged forward from the fountain, his gelatinous body expanding with desperate speed. He didn't have the mass for a Boar form, but he had acid. And he had hunger. He wrapped himself around the Serpent's midsection like a massive, translucent sheet of violet death. His body sizzled and smoked as the acid began eating through emerald scales.
[Syll: Full Absorption Initiated]
[Warning: Target Size Exceeds Safe Limits]
[Success Chance: 34%]
The Serpent thrashed with primal strength, rolling across the garden and crushing statues beneath its weight. Syll held on, his violet form stretched thin as parchment. But the head was still free.
The Serpent reared back, coiling despite the acid. Its mouth opened wider than should have been possible, revealing rows of needle-teeth dripping with silver venom. It was preparing one final, crushing strike, a suicide move to take them both out.
Revvyn looked at the broken hilt in his hand. Jagged. Useless.
He channeled every remaining drop of the surge into his shoulder, his shredded, screaming, barely-held-together shoulder. He felt the bones grind. He felt something tear.
He threw the jagged broken sword
Llike a javelin.
The broken metal whistled through the air, a streak of silver. It tumbled end over end before straightening, guided by nothing but pure desperation. It disappeared directly into the Serpent's gaping, screaming maw.
The Serpent's throat hitched. The jagged metal lodged deep in its windpipe. A choked, gurgling sound escaped its jaws. It couldn't breathe. It couldn't strike.
That split second of hesitation was all Syll needed.
The violet slime surged upward, enveloping the Serpent's head and sealing the creature in a pressurized tomb of acid. The sound that followed was muffled, bubbling, and wet a death rattle trapped inside a cocoon of burning slime.
A final, heavy thud echoed. The serpent body went limp.
Syll held on for three more seconds before finally releasing. The slime slid off the corpse and collapsed onto the moss, reduced to a quivering puddle the size of a dinner plate. Its color was a pale, exhausted gray.
[Buff Duration: 12 seconds remaining]
Revvyn's legs finally gave out.
He collapsed onto the silver moss, his body feeling like it was being stitched together with hot needles as the Moon-Phase Surge flickered and died. The +20 stats vanished, leaving him with the raw reality of a broken body.
But he was alive. The Serpent was dead.
And then the screens came.
[Battle Concluded]
[Experience Gained: Level 5 -> Level 10]
[Rank Level Up: D-RANK REACHED]
A screen flickered in his eyes.
[Congratulations! You have defeated the Moon Serpent Guardian.]
[Reward: Moonstar Blade (Rare) Received]
[Legacy Prompt: Would you like to accept the Guardian's Essence for Skill Absorption?]
Revvyn stared at the screen. D-rank. He'd made it. And now, an essence, a skill that could change everything. This was the moment he stopped being prey.
His trembling finger reached out toward the glowing [YES] button. He could already feel the potential power.
His finger touched the screen.
Just as he was about to press it, his body gave a violent, involuntary shiver, a delayed shock from his broken ribs and the adrenaline crash. His hand jerked to the side.
Tap.
The screen turned a cold, dull gray.
[Notification: Absorption REJECTED. Essence Dissipating...]
Revvyn's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He watched in frozen horror as the silver light of the Serpent's soul began to drift away, beautiful, shimmering, and irreplaceable —scattering into the trees like morning mist.
"No," he whispered.
The light kept drifting.
"NO!"
He scrambled forward on broken limbs, his hand reaching for the fading glow. His fingers passed through empty air. The last spark of the Serpent's essence vanished into the dark canopy.
"WHAAAAAAA—NO! NOOOOOO!"
His scream echoed through the Moonlit Garden, bouncing off shattered statues. Even Syll let out a weak, confused chirp.
Revvyn collapsed face-first into the moss. He'd killed the Guardian. He'd reached D-rank. He'd gotten a rare sword. And he'd just accidentally rejected the most valuable power-up of his life because his stupid, broken body had twitched at the wrong moment.
He lay there, face-down, and seriously considered just staying there forever.
A few feet away, the Moonstar Blade materialized with a soft ping, landing point-first in the moss beside his head. It was a beautiful, single-edged silver blade that seemed to hold captured moonlight.
Revvyn turned his head just enough to look at it.
"Great," he muttered into the moss. "A sword. Fantastic. I'll put it right next to my shattered dreams."
Syll chirped weakly.
Revvyn closed his eyes. Through the bone-white trees, he could see the first hints of dawn. He had made it through the night. He was alive.
And he was never, ever telling anyone about the accidental rejection.