Divine Milking System

Chapter 408: 408 | The Only Trade That Mattered

"Honestly?" He pulled a tablet from his coat pocket, swiping through screens of information I couldn’t read from this angle. "It’s miraculous you’re alive at all. When they brought you in, you had four lacerations across your torso that had penetrated past the muscle wall. Your left lung was partially collapsed. You’d lost approximately thirty percent of your blood volume. You had mana corruption in eight distinct locations, second-degree burns covering both arms, three fractured ribs, and cellular damage consistent with..."

He paused. Frowned at his tablet. "Something we’ve never actually seen before. Like your body had been running on a form of energy that accelerated cellular processes far beyond normal parameters and then abruptly stopped."

Divine Overflow. The System’s emergency protocol. The thing that had let me punch through a dimensional guardian’s shell with my bare hands.

"What’s the prognosis?"

"With standard treatment? Six to eight weeks of recovery. You’d need physical therapy for the muscle damage, ongoing treatment for the mana corruption, and monitoring for any delayed effects from whatever caused the cellular acceleration." Dr. Hayashi set his tablet down. "However, you’re not a standard patient. You’re a registered hunter with academy affiliation, which means you have access to accelerated healing options."

"How accelerated?"

"Miss Davenport’s family made arrangements before she left." Something crossed his face. Professional neutrality covering personal opinion. "They’ve arranged for a Gold-rank healer to visit this evening. With her abilities, you could be walking out of here within twenty-four hours."

The Davenports.

Johnathan Davenport. The man Blair was terrified of. The man who’d turned his daughter into a weapon through years of abuse disguised as training.

He’d arranged for a healer to fix the lottery student who’d survived a gate with his daughter.

Wrong.

That word arrived in my brain without conscious thought. The whole scenario felt wrong. Too convenient. Too clean. Kindness didn’t flow from men like Johnathan Davenport without calculation behind it. Gratitude didn’t manifest as expensive healing without strings attached.

This was either reconnaissance or recruitment. Probably both.

"When does the healer arrive?"

"Approximately 1800 hours." Dr. Hayashi checked his watch. "Four hours from now. Until then, rest. Don’t aggravate your injuries. And no, before you ask, you cannot leave the bed. The moment you put weight on that leg, those sutures will tear and you’ll be back where you started."

He started gathering his equipment. Preparing to leave.

"One more question."

"Yes?"

"Who paid for all this?" I gestured vaguely at the monitoring equipment, the IV rig, the entire private room setup. "The standard academy coverage wouldn’t include this level of care."

Dr. Hayashi paused at the door.

"The Davenport family covered your immediate treatment costs." His voice stayed carefully neutral. "All of them."

"Why would they do that?"

"I don’t ask questions above my pay grade, Mr. Monroe." Dr. Hayashi picked up his tablet again. "What I can tell you is that you have visitors who’ve been waiting to see you since you were admitted. Should I send them in?"

Naomi. Belle. Maybe others.

The smart play was to rest. Conserve energy. Wait for the healer and then figure out my next move from a position of strength rather than weakness. The strategic play was to avoid emotional conversations while hopped up on painkillers and operating on less than full capacity.

"Yeah," I said. "Send them in."

Dr. Hayashi nodded and left.

The System pulsed at the edge of my vision.

LIFESPAN: 1D 5H 58M

I watched the minutes tick down and waited for the people I’d almost died for to come tell me I was an idiot.

The door burst open approximately seven seconds later.

Naomi hit me like a guided missile. Not the gentle, careful approach of someone visiting a hospital patient. The full-body impact of someone who’d been holding themselves together through sheer willpower for eighteen hours and had finally run out of restraint. She threw herself across the bed and wrapped both arms around my neck, and the pain that shot through my chest was absolutely worth it because she was warm and real and alive and her hair smelled like strawberry shampoo and hospital waiting room.

"You stupid, reckless, incredible idiot," she said into my shoulder. Her voice was thick with something that might have been tears or exhaustion or both. "You burned through years of your life. I watched the light around you get brighter and brighter and I knew you were killing yourself and I couldn’t do anything to stop you."

"Hey." I brought one hand up to rest against the back of her head. The movement hurt. Everything hurt. I did it anyway. "We’re alive. All of us. That was the point."

"The point?" She pulled back far enough to look at my face, and yeah, she’d been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and her makeup had run in tracks down her cheeks and she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. "The point was supposed to be surviving together. All of us. Including you."

"I’m still here."

"Barely." Belle’s voice came from the doorway. I looked past Naomi’s shoulder and found her standing at the threshold, arms crossed, blue hair pulled back in a messy ponytail that suggested she hadn’t slept properly in days. Her amber-brown eyes swept across my bandaged form with the clinical assessment that meant she was cataloging every injury for future reference. "Your vitals dropped twice during transport. The medical team had to restart your heart."

"Only twice?"

"This isn’t funny, Jace."

"It’s a little funny." I grinned at her, and watched something complicated happen behind her eyes. "Come here, Specs. I’m not going to bite."

Belle hesitated for exactly two seconds. Then she crossed the room with quick, efficient steps and sat on the edge of the bed, her hand finding mine with the same precision she applied to everything else. Her fingers were cold. She’d been sitting in an air-conditioned waiting room for hours, probably, reviewing notes and calculating probabilities and refusing to let herself feel anything until she knew I was going to make it.

"Your recovery timeline is concerning," she said. "The cellular damage Dr. Hayashi mentioned suggests an ability we haven’t documented. Something that trades lifespan for power. Something dangerous."

"It is dangerous." I squeezed her hand. "It also killed the thing that was about to kill everyone else."

"That’s not a good trade."

"It’s the only trade that mattered."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!