Divine Milking System

Chapter 424: 424 | The Price of Golden Fire

The door clicked shut behind Addison, and the room went quiet in that specific hospital way where silence isn’t really silence at all. The monitors kept their steady rhythm. The AC unit continued its death rattle. Somewhere down the hall, a cart with one squeaky wheel rolled past like it was auditioning for a horror movie sound effects reel.

I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

The angry rabbit stain stared back.

Then I pulled up the System.

◆ DIVINE MILKING SYSTEM ◆

│ JACE MONROE │ Height: 6’1" | Weight: 205 lbs │ Age: 18 | House: Obsidian

SYSTEM STATUS

Level: 6 (450/6000 XP)

Lifespan: 5D 14H 22M

Points: 8,930

HEALTH STATUS: RECOVERING (Severe)

├─ Mana Corruption: 6 sites (decreasing)

├─ Rib Fractures: 3 (healing)

├─ Soft Tissue Damage: Extensive (healing)

├─ Cellular Stress: Moderate (stabilizing)

└─ Divine Overflow Afterburn: Present (fading)

The numbers sat in front of me like a report card from God’s least sympathetic math teacher.

Five days. Fourteen hours. Twenty-two minutes.

I let that sink in. Really let it marinate. Five days ago, I’d been lying on the floor of a canyon with Blair Davenport’s body pressed against mine in a stone coffin, kissing a woman who wanted to destroy me while a centipede the size of a school bus tried to eat us through solid rock. Three days ago, I’d punched my fist through a dimensional guardian’s chest and watched my lifespan counter hemorrhage like a slashed artery, eleven days evaporating in three minutes of golden fire that the System would never give back.

And now. Five days, fourteen hours. From thirty hours of borrowed time to five full days of breathing room, courtesy of a goth girl in a trench coat who walked through a hospital lobby wearing nothing but lingerie and spite.

I laughed. The sound came out rough and wrong and hurt my ribs in places that the Silver essence hadn’t finished repairing, but I laughed anyway because the alternative was confronting the reality of my situation with the sobriety it deserved, and sobriety has never been my strong suit.

Five days. That was enough. That was a lifetime compared to the seventy-two hours I’d woken up with six weeks ago in an amphitheater full of teenagers who didn’t know they were extras in someone else’s story. Five days meant I could survive the healer’s visit tonight, get discharged tomorrow, train with Vale on Monday morning, and figure out the rest from there. Five days meant Belle could stop taking notes about my recovery projections and start taking notes about our next gate strategy instead. Five days meant Naomi could stop crying.

Five days meant I got to keep existing in a world where Addison Baxter had a stuffed bat named Vlad and a secret poetry collection and brown eyes that the whole academy would never see because she’d buried them under violet contacts and enough eyeliner to qualify as structural engineering.

I scrolled down.

PHYSICAL STATS

Strength \[C\] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ (10/10) READY TO RANK UP

Endurance \[C\] ▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ (1/10)

Agility \[D\] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ (10/10) READY TO RANK UP

Perception \[D\] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱ (9/10)

Magic \[D\] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱▱ (8/10)

SOCIAL STATS

Charisma \[C\] ▰▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱▱ (1/10)

Technique \[B\] ▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰ (10/10) READY TO RANK UP

Three stats maxed and waiting to rank up. Strength at C-rank ten out of ten, ready to break into B. Agility at D-rank ten out of ten, ready for C. Technique at B-rank ten out of ten, ready for A.

A-rank Technique.

The implications of that number would have made past-life me laugh until he choked. Six weeks ago, Jace Monroe couldn’t run a mile without his lungs filing for divorce. He couldn’t do a single pull-up. He weighed two hundred and forty pounds and his most impressive physical achievement was eating an entire pizza in one sitting while watching a mediocre isekai anime and leaving a three-paragraph comment about how the author clearly had never touched a woman.

Now I had A-rank Technique knocking on the door. A-rank. The tier where the System’s own description read "Sex god, partners addicted after one session." The tier that apparently rendered all future intimate encounters so overwhelmingly good that the recipients would be fundamentally ruined for anyone else.

I mean. That tracked. Based on recent evidence. Addison Baxter had walked through a public building in her underwear to find me. Naomi had carried my unconscious body out of a collapsing dimension while crying. Belle had taken clinical notes about my recovery at three in the morning, which was her love language, and if that didn’t say "ruined for other people" then I didn’t know what the hell did.

Aurora had literally threatened to burn down a guild headquarters.

I scrolled further.

ACTIVE ABILITIES (3/3):

├─ Wave Motion \[Bronze\]

├─ Sensory Hijack - Dual Stream \[Bronze\]

└─ REAPER’S EDGE \[Copper\]

STORED ABILITIES (2):

├─ Treasure Sense \[Bronze\]

└─ (Duplicate) Reaper’s Edge \[Copper\] - CANNOT STACK

STORED ESSENCE

└─ 2/6 Cups (Silver-tier)

Two cups of Belle’s Silver essence left in the vault. I’d burned through two during the gate, one for the Overclock against the leopard alpha and one to heal myself in the canyon. Addison’s session had filled me with enough fresh essence to push my lifespan past the danger zone, but the vault itself remained dangerously low. Two cups represented my entire emergency reserve. One Overclock and one emergency healing dose, or two emergency heals and zero Overclocks, or one Overclock and one dose of "please God don’t let me die" liquid courage that tasted like butterscotch and the love of a girl from rural Oregon who sent two thousand dollars home every month.

I needed to refill. Soon. Preferably before Monday, when Vale would inevitably attempt to murder me through calisthenics and call it education.

The notification banner at the top of the display caught my eye. I’d been ignoring it since waking up because my brain had been occupied with more pressing concerns like breathing and not dying and Addison’s thighs in those goddamn stockings.

◆ ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED ◆

Title Earned: "Reckless Gambler"

Description: Activated Divine Overflow in combat and survived.

Reward: +500 points

◆ TITLE UPDATED ◆

Active Titles:

├─ First Blood

├─ Reckless Gambler

└─ Vale’s Heir Apparent

◆ DIVINE OVERFLOW ◆

Classification: Emergency Protocol

Type: Active (Manual/Auto-Trigger)

Rank: N/A (Unique)

Activation: Critical health + emotional catalyst OR manual activation

Duration: Variable (limited by remaining lifespan)

Cost: 1 day lifespan per 10 seconds of sustained use

Effect: Temporarily elevates ALL physical stats by +2 ranks. Grants enhanced cellular regeneration, supernatural reflexes, and overwhelming combat output.

WARNING: Extended use will result in permanent death. Maximum sustainable duration is directly proportional to remaining lifespan reserves. The System will auto-terminate at 24-hour lifespan threshold to prevent total depletion.

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