Divine Milking System

Chapter 406: 406 | Contemplating Mortality and Drop-Tile Ceilings

The first thing I noticed was the ceiling.

White. Textured. The kind of industrial drop-tile bullshit that every hospital in America uses because someone in the 1970s decided that sick people needed to stare at acoustic foam while they contemplated their mortality. There was a water stain in the corner shaped like a duck. Or maybe a rabbit. The kind of thing that would keep you occupied for hours if you were bored enough, which I apparently was, because I’d been staring at it for a solid thirty seconds before my brain caught up with the rest of my body.

I was alive.

That seemed wrong.

The System flickered into existence at the edge of my vision, and I immediately wished it hadn’t.

LIFESPAN: 1D 6H 14M

One day. Six hours. Fourteen minutes.

I’d burned through almost two weeks of lifespan killing that guardian. Divine Overflow had chewed through my reserves like a fat kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and now I was back to square one. Worse than square one. I’d started this whole nightmare with seventy-two hours on the clock, and that had felt like a death sentence. This was somehow worse because I knew exactly what I’d traded those days for.

Belle was alive.

Naomi was alive.

Blair was alive.

Everyone except Charles fucking Leone was alive, and honestly, the universe had done us a favor on that one. I felt bad for maybe half a second before remembering the way he’d almost taken Belle’s head off with that backswing in the ravine.

My body reported in with a full damage assessment. Chest hurt. Arms hurt. Everything hurt, actually, but in that distant, floaty way that meant someone had pumped me full of the good drugs. Mana-enhanced painkillers, probably. The kind that cost more per dose than most people made in a week. I could feel the bandages wrapped around my torso, the IV line snaking into my arm, the steady beep of medical equipment monitoring vital signs that had no business being as stable as they apparently were.

The room was private. Nice. Someone with money had decided I deserved better than a ward bed, which meant either the academy was covering expenses or one of my extraction targets had pulled strings. The walls were that inoffensive beige color hospitals use to avoid lawsuits, decorated with a single piece of abstract art that probably cost more than my entire lottery scholarship. Sunlight streamed through blinds that hadn’t been closed properly, casting stripes across the bed and the floor and the chair in the corner where someone had left a jacket.

Pink and black fabric.

Naomi’s jacket.

Something warm uncurled in my chest that had nothing to do with the painkillers.

The door opened.

My brain, operating on approximately three functional neurons and whatever mana-enhanced opioids were currently flooding my system, processed exactly three things about the woman who entered.

First: nurse uniform. The white kind with the little cap that nobody actually wears anymore except in anime and porn, which meant this hospital either had a very specific dress code or I was hallucinating. The fabric stretched across curves that made me reconsider my position on healthcare as a profession.

Second: legs. Long ones. The kind that went all the way up and then kept going, showcased by a skirt that stopped several inches above the knee and stockings that hugged every inch of calf and thigh with the dedication of a religious convert. White fabric against pale skin. Someone in hospital administration had made choices, and I respected every single one of them.

Third: face. Pretty in that girl-next-door way that porn directors love. Brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Warm eyes behind wire-frame glasses. A mouth that curved into a professional smile when she noticed I was awake. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. The kind of woman who probably got hit on by every conscious male patient in the building and had developed coping mechanisms accordingly.

Snake Eyes activated before I could stop it.

[SCANNING]

Name: Unknown

Bust: 34D

Rank: Unranked (Civilian)

Current Attraction: 8%

Eight percent. Baseline. The polite interest you might have in a moderately attractive stranger before conversation revealed whether they were worth your time. Not much to work with, but I’d started from worse.

"You’re awake," the nurse said. Her voice was warm and professional and carried the exact tone of someone who’d repeated the same words to hundreds of patients without ever meaning them personally. "How are you feeling?"

"Like someone put me through a meat grinder and then apologized by giving me the good drugs."

Her smile twitched. A real reaction, not the customer-service version. "That’s... actually a fairly accurate description of your condition when you arrived. You’re at Verano General’s Hunter Care Wing. Do you remember what happened?"

"Void Gate. Monster that shouldn’t exist. Made the extremely questionable decision to punch it until it stopped moving." I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. Pain flared through my chest like someone had replaced my ribs with hot coals. "Ow. Fuck. Okay. Not doing that again."

The nurse moved to the side of my bed, her heels clicking against the tile floor in a rhythm that my drug-addled brain found unreasonably pleasant. She reached for my arm, checking the IV line with fingers that were cool and soft against my skin. The contact sent a small jolt through my nervous system that had nothing to do with medical procedures.

"You’ve been unconscious for eighteen hours," she said. "Your friends have been rotating shifts in the waiting room. One of them fell asleep in the chair about six hours ago and we didn’t have the heart to move her."

Pink and black jacket. Naomi.

"The short one with the pink hair or the one who looks like she’s calculating something every time she talks?"

"Both, actually. They’ve been taking turns." The nurse’s eyes flickered with something that might have been amusement. "The pink-haired one cried when we told her you were stable. The other one asked for a detailed breakdown of your projected recovery timeline and then made notes in a small book."

Belle. That was absolutely Belle.

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