Divine Milking System

Chapter 425: 425 | The Angry Rabbit on the Ceiling

I read the warning three times.

The System would auto-terminate at twenty-four hours. Meaning I could never burn below a single day of life using Divine Overflow, because the System valued its own continued existence enough to pull the plug before I could spend the last of myself. That was simultaneously reassuring and deeply fucked up. The System had built a kill switch into my suicide button. Like installing a safety net on a rooftop jump, it wouldn’t stop me from wanting to leap, but it would keep the mess contained.

The math painted a picture I didn’t want to examine too closely. With five days of lifespan, I could sustain Divine Overflow for approximately four minutes and thirty-six seconds before hitting the auto-terminate threshold. Four and a half minutes of god mode followed by mandatory shutdown and one day to find someone willing to let me drink supernatural breast milk before I died for real.

Against the dimensional guardian, I’d used roughly three minutes. Three minutes that burned through eleven days of lifespan and left me with wounds that should have killed any Bronze or Silver-rank hunter outright. Three minutes that cracked through volcanic armor, matched an entity that dismissed S-rank Hellflame like a warm breeze, and ultimately ended with my hand inside a creature’s chest cavity pulling its heart apart from the inside while golden light poured from my skin bright enough to blind everyone in the clearing.

Three minutes of being the monster Vale wanted me to become.

I closed the Divine Overflow window and stared at the ceiling again.

The angry rabbit on the ceiling hadn’t moved. Comforting, in its own dysfunctional way. The world around me continued falling apart in spectacular fashion, with people trying to kill me through gate manipulation, Diamond-tier investigators asking uncomfortable questions, and my body held together by Silver-tier breast milk and willpower. But the water stain on the hospital ceiling maintained its absolute commitment to looking like a pissed-off lagomorph, and there was something deeply reassuring about that level of consistency.

My phone sat on the bedside table where Addison had tossed it. I grabbed it and opened the group chat.

The scroll of messages was extensive. While I’d been unconscious for eighteen hours and then occupied with Addison for forty-five minutes in a pocket dimension classroom, the people in my life had been doing what they do best: worrying loudly and managing my existence through a group chat I never asked for and couldn’t leave.

BELLE (3:47 AM): Complete injury assessment compiled from attending physician notes and personal observation. Four lacerations across anterior torso. Partially collapsed L lung. Blood loss est 30 pct. Mana corruption x8 sites. Second degree burns bilateral arms. Three fractured ribs. Unknown cellular damage consistent with accelerated metabolic event. Prognosis: survivable with Gold-tier healing intervention scheduled 1900 hours tonight.

NAOMI (3:49 AM): Please let him be okay.

AURORA (3:51 AM): I’m going to kill someone

AURORA (3:51 AM): I don’t know who yet

AURORA (3:52 AM): But someone is dying

AURORA (3:53 AM): Why is nobody answering

AURORA (3:54 AM): BELLE

AURORA (3:54 AM): NAOMI

AURORA (3:55 AM): IS HE ALIVE

BELLE (3:56 AM): He’s alive. Stable. Unconscious. Stop yelling in the chat.

AURORA (3:56 AM): \[voice note - 2:47\]

I didn’t play the voice note. I’d been told it contained crying, and I could handle a lot of things but Aurora Fitzgerald crying into a phone at four in the morning because she thought I was dead wasn’t one of them. Not right now. Not while I could still taste Addison on my lips and the Silver essence sat warm in my chest converting grief into points and points into days I hadn’t earned through anything resembling merit.

ADDISON (4:12 AM): 💀

ADDISON (4:12 AM): if he dies i’m killing him again

ADDISON (4:13 AM): aurora says she’s coming. guild won’t let her leave.

ADDISON (4:13 AM): i’m going to fight that guild leader

ADDISON (4:14 AM): with my bare hands

ADDISON (4:14 AM): and my scythes

ADDISON (4:14 AM): and whatever else is available

JORDAN (6:30 AM): won the bet. 40 credits. he owes me.

MISATO (7:15 AM): Training Monday. Don’t be late.

HIKARU (8:02 AM): .

That single period from Hikaru. A full stop at the end of a sentence that contained everything she couldn’t say in a group chat where her cover identity required her to be a man who didn’t care about anyone. One punctuation mark carrying the weight of a secret I’d held in a blood-soaked bathroom while pressing a towel against her side and promising to protect a truth that could destroy everything she’d built.

I started typing.

JACE (current): Alive. Hungry. Someone bring a burger before I start eating the IV tubing. Also Addison you still owe me a hair dyeing session and Aurora I can hear you screaming from here even though you’re in a gate.

The responses came so fast my phone vibrated three separate times before I finished putting it down.

BELLE: 😢

NAOMI: ❤️

JORDAN: 🖕 you owe me 40 credits

AURORA: \[voice note - 0:04\]

I played that one. Four seconds of Aurora Fitzgerald laughing through tears and saying "you absolute bastard" with more affection than the words deserved.

ADDISON: 💀💀💀 three coffee jellies. non-negotiable. also i’m dyeing your hair tuesday not monday because monday i have training and i refuse to touch your stupid head while sweating

MISATO: Monday. 0600. No excuses.

HIKARU: Good.

One word from Hikaru. Not a period this time. An actual word with an actual letter count above one. Progress, in the language of someone who communicated through the spaces between sentences rather than the sentences themselves.

I put the phone down and leaned back against the pillows. The monitors continued their steady confirmation that my heart still worked. The IV drip continued feeding fluids into veins that the Silver essence had already begun repairing from the inside. Outside the window, California existed in that specific golden late-afternoon light that made everything look like a movie about people whose lives were simpler than mine.

Five days and fourteen hours.

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