Mio
[0:00]
[Trial of Genesis: Complete]
The jaws stopped.
Mio waited for the crunch. The pain. The nothing that ca after.
It didn’t co.
The Husk released her. Almost ceremonial, like a dog dropping a toy on command.
The pressure vanished. The weight lifted.
Then they dissolved. All of them. Fell to the floor in wet chunks of bone and rotting vine.
Dead.
She was alive.
[HP: 1/106]
One.
No mana. No potions. No friends.
I’m sorry, Nana. I tried. I really—
Hands cupped her face. Slling faintly of turned earth and sothing sweet.
Her eyes wouldn’t focus. The world was gray and fading. But she knew that warmth. Nine months since the Overflow, and her mother had co to bring her ho.
Mom?
The word didn’t make it past her throat.
The hands withdrew.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
"You did it!"
No, the voice was wrong.
Mio’s vision sharpened. The Entity stood over her, head tilted, smile stretching too wide.
"Sixty-four candidates." She clasped her hands together. "A year of watching. Waiting. And you’re the fourth to make it this far."
Mio tried to speak. Managed a wet cough instead.
"What..." The word broke in her throat. "What are you..."
"Shh." The Entity crouched, pressed a finger to Mio’s lips. Her skin was warm. Faintly sweet, like rotting fruit. "Don’t talk. You’re dying. We’ll fix that."
"Fix..."
"But first." She leaned closer. "Don’t you want to know why you survived?"
Mio didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
"That defect of yours. Overheal." The Entity’s smile widened. "I gave it to you."
The words landed sowhere far away. Her brain was too busy keeping her heart beating.
"Rember when you got sick? During Integration? Three days of fever. Thought you were going to die."
"That was a fragnt of my power settling in."
Mio rembered.
The status screen glowing in her peripheral vision. Blood on her tongue.
"You..." She coughed. "You made weak. Made everyone think I was broken."
"True."
"And you killed my friends."
"Ah." The Entity wagged a finger. "That’s where you’re wrong."
She stood, circling Mio. Where she stepped, the stone flinched.
"I told them three could leave if one died. I never said which one. I never said they had to kill anyone."
She examined her fingernails.
"They chose you. They did the math. They decided you were expendable."
Tank. DPS. Buffer.
A useless healer was optional.
Mio rembered Shiori’s voice. She’s F-grade. A healer who can’t even cast twice without falling over.
She rembered Aoi’s face. The mont her eyes went flat.
She rembered Rin’s boot on her wrist.
We’ll take care of Nana.
"They were my friends," she whispered.
"Were they?" The Entity didn’t blink. "Friends don’t do math, Mio. Friends don’t calculate who’s worth saving."
Sothing hot pressed behind Mio’s eyelids. She didn’t have enough blood left for tears, but her body tried anyway.
"And you know what the funny part is?"
The Entity crouched again, close enough that Mio could count the petals in her hair without looking up.
"The whole thing. Three may leave, one must die. I made it up. Entertainnt." She watched Mio’s face. "But the trial was real. The Trial of Genesis. I built it for you, Mio. Just for you."
She leaned closer. Inhaled.
"You have a sister." Her voice dropped to sothing almost tender. "I rember her. White hair. Brown eyes. Nothing like you."
Mio’s blood went cold.
"If you touch her—"
"Shh." The Entity pressed a finger to her lips again. "I’m not interested in her. I’m interested in you."
Her voice dropped.
"They were never ant to leave. They were ant to show who you really are."
They killed for nothing.
Mio wanted to tear her throat out. Her hands twitched against the stone, nails dragging through her own blood, but her body wouldn’t move.
Couldn’t do anything but lie there and bleed.
"Anyway." The Entity clapped her hands once more. "Ti to hold up my end of the bargain."
"Bargain..."
"I said if you survived, I’d consider marking you." She smiled. "Consider it considered."
She flexed her fingers.
Light gathered at her fingertips. Not green like the vines, but sothing older. Gold and white, with edges that hurt to look at.
"The others have already found their champions. I’m late to the ga." She tucked a strand of Mio’s hair behind her ear, almost tender. "But you were worth the wait."
Her smile slipped. The flowers in her hair wilted. Just for a second, petals curling brown at the edges.
"I needed soone who won’t break when the Seventh reopens."
She reached toward Mio’s forehead.
"Wait—"
Her thumb pressed against Mio’s skin.
Then she drove it in.
Like a nail straight through bone. Mio felt the crack. Felt the intrusion punch through flesh and cartilage and keep going, carving deeper, burning a shape into the at of her brain.
She scread.
Her back arched off the stone. Her hands clawed at nothing. Eyes rolling back until all she could see was white and the ghost of a symbol searing itself into her vision. A circle, a spiral, a root system spreading through her thoughts.
The Entity whispered sothing.
Not Japanese. Not English. Sothing older. Sothing that tasted like dirt and growing things.
Mio’s heart stopped.
Started.
Stopped.
Started.
[Class Change Initiated]
[Current Class: Healer]
[New Class: Biomancer]
Sothing fundantal shifted. Like a key turning in a lock she didn’t know she had.
[System Override]
[Engine Initialized]
A new interface layered over the old one. Sharper and more imdiate.
Where the System had always felt like a mirror, static, showing her what she was, this felt like a road.
A path forward.
[Level: 1]
[HP Restored: 340/340]
She stared at the notifications.
Level.
That word had never existed in her status. The System didn’t have levels. You were born with a Grade, assigned a Class, and that was your ceiling forever.
Everyone knew that.
But there it was. A number that could go up.
[Ability Forgotten: nd]
nd left her. Pulled out like a splinter.
[Defect Removed: Self-Healing Penalty]
And the weight went with it. The one she hadn’t realized she was carrying.
Gone.
[New Ability Acquired: Vitalize]
Cycles life into healing.
Cost: Reservoir. If empty, costs HP.
She understood it the way she understood breathing. Take from one place. Give to another. The Reservoir or herself. Either way, sothing paid.
[New Ability Acquired: Spark]
Cycles life energy into a devastating bolt.
Overcharged life energy makes it toxic. Applies Necrotic Blight.
Cost: 50 Reservoir
She understood it the way she understood anger. Point. Fire. Watch them rot from the inside.
[Passive Inverted: Overheal]
All healing received ×213%.
The curse that had ruined her. Inverted. What drained her would feed her now.
[New Passive Acquired: Reservoir]
Stores harvested life. Fuels Biomancer abilities. Capacity: 12,500 × Level
A space opened in her chest.
[New Passive Acquired: Life Bloom]
When a creature dies within 10 ters, a Bloom manifests.
Blooms last 60 seconds. Absorb to fill Reservoir.
Death would feed her now. Every kill within range. A flower waiting to be picked.
[Resource Change]
You no longer gain Mana. Your abilities now consu Reservoir.
The stagnant pool of mana she’d carried since Integration, the one that had never been enough, evaporated.
In its place: nothing. A void where power used to be.
But also: potential.
[Mark Received: Gaian]
The words burned themselves into her understanding.
Gaian.
That was her na. The thing that had made her weak.
The thing that had just made her sothing else.
Overheal, the passive that had made her dead weight.
It wasn’t a bug anymore.
It was the entire point.
Mio pulled up her status. The new one. The real one.
[Status]
Na: Tai Mio
Class: Biomancer
Level: 1
HP: 340/340
Reservoir: 0/12,500
VIT: 13
STR: 2
AGI: 3
INT: 3
SPR: 7
[Abilities]
Vitalize: Cycles life into healing.
Cost: 100 Reservoir or 10% maximum HP
Spark: Cycles life into devastation. Applies Necrotic Blight on tissue contact.
Cost: 50 Reservoir
[Passives]
Overheal: All healing received ×213%.
Reservoir: Stores life. Cap: 12,500 × Level.
Life Bloom: Death within 10m creates Bloom. Absorb to fill Reservoir. Lasts 60 seconds.
[Special]
Mark of Gaian
Two abilities. Three passives. Simple.
She let the screen fade. The words stayed burned into her vision.
Gaian’s face filled the dark. That smile. All teeth.
"There you are."
Mio’s mouth opened. Nothing.
Gaian rose, her silhouette swallowing the erald light.
"Make it interesting for , Tai Mio."
She snapped her fingers.
The world began dissolving.
Mio let it.
She had a sister to get ho to.
[Mark of Gaian: Active]
Reviews
All reviews (0)