Chapter 52: The Last Time You Close Your Eyes (II)
*Whoever Marren has as a healer will cure her. The fruit is going to work. She’s going to survive. She’s going to wake up. She’s going to ask questions. Someone is going to have to answer her.*
*She’s going to cry, probably.*
*She’s going to be angry with me for what I did.*
*She’s going to be angry for a while.*
*But she’s going to live.*
*And she’s going to make it to Aelthoren.*
*Even if I don’t take her there. Someone from Marren will arrange a new guide. Selene will coordinate. The network will activate. She’ll reach the tree house. She’ll see the view from her room again. She’ll breathe the air of the forests that remember.*
*She’ll be a noble again.*
*She’ll have her very long life—enough time to forget me.*
*And that life is what I came here to secure.*
*That’s what I did.*
*And honestly. Honestly. Considering where I come from. Considering how long I spent carrying boxes in the warehouse without thinking my life would make a difference for anyone bigger than the owner. Considering all those years when I was simply Nathan Voss, son of minor merchants from the Crossing, unimportant and weightless.*
*Considering all of that.*
*Dying here after having saved someone.*
*After having truly mattered to one specific person.*
*That’s a good way to go.*
*It’s better than I expected.*
One of the feet stomped on his broken hand.
Nathan coughed blood.
*I’m sorry, Sprout.*
*I’m sorry I couldn’t take you all the way home. I’m sorry I couldn’t see your room. I’m sorry I couldn’t meet your father and accept the diplomatic dinner worth six or eight cities. I’m sorry I left the promise half-finished.*
*But I fulfilled the most important part.*
*You’re alive.*
*And we did that together.*
*Let’s call it a shared victory.*
*You like keeping score of favors. I’m going to take one with me too.*
Another stomp.
*Mira was right.*
*She said it from the first day. That it was statistically suspicious. That there was something strange behind everything I did. That things don’t happen that way. That no F-Rank should be accepting these missions.*
*She was right.*
*I should have listened to her. I should have found a normal job like any unmarked person. I should, honestly, not even have taken the Seal from the man in the alley.*
*I should, perhaps, have stayed at the Crossing. After my mother died. I should have gotten a job in the village. A normal laborer. A normal life. Without a Seal, without a Class, without Grim Reaper, without two hundred mana remaining at the moment of the final stomping.*
*I should have been a normal laborer.*
Another stomp.
*No.*
*No.*
*I shouldn’t have.*
*Because if I hadn’t accepted the Seal, I wouldn’t have been in Greywall when Brenwick needed a disposable F-Rank Hunter. And that Hunter would have delivered the package. And Sprout would have reached the southern noble. And everything she is would have ended under conditions I don’t want to imagine.*
*And she would have died.*
*Or worse than died.*
*Worse. Worse. Worse.*
*And I would have kept carrying boxes in the new warehouse. Without knowing there existed an aristocratic elf with green hair who would have called me by my name and taught me the real name of her kingdom and told me she wanted to show me the view from her room.*
*No. I shouldn’t have been a laborer.*
*I should have been exactly what I was.*
*And here I am.*
*Dying with the knowledge that Sprout is safe.*
*Good.*
*Good.*
His head fell slightly to the side.
In his field of vision, the System appeared.
Weak. Flickering. With lines of text that appeared and dissolved before Nathan could read them fully.
```
CALCULATING...
CALCULATING...
BEARER LEVEL: 5
POISON STATUS: 78%
FUNCTIONS...
FUNCTIONS...
CALCULATION FAILURE
CALCULATION FAILURE
RECALIBRATING...
CALCULATION FAILURE
```
Nathan looked at the System with detachment.
*The System is dying too.*
*It’s trying to save me. Trying to calculate some response. But the poison is interfering with the mana channels, and it can’t process. There’s no answer to give.*
*It’s okay, System.*
*Rest too.*
*We both did what we could.*
Another stomp. This one landed on his chest. The air escaped him completely.
Nathan took one last breath.
Very small.
His eyes began to close.
The passage walls grew blurry. The oil lamp, which had rolled a few meters away and was still lit against the wall, became smaller and more distant. The creatures became diffuse shadows around him. The leader’s face became barely a vague shape above him.
*Goodbye, Sprout.*
He closed his eyes.
---
And at that moment—exactly in the instant Nathan’s eyelids fully touched his skin—the System did something it had never done before.
It stopped the normal calculation.
Abandoned the regular processes.
And entered a state that in all the historical documentation of the seventeenth god appeared described with a single phrase.
**Emergency Mode.**
The System lines in Nathan’s darkened field of vision changed color. From pale blue to deep green. From flickering to steady. And they appeared with a clarity that Nathan—even with his eyes closed and his consciousness dissolving—could perceive in the part of his brain the Class had reserved for itself from the very first moment.
```
EMERGENCY MODE ACTIVATED
BEARER IN IMMINENT VITAL FAILURE
OVERRIDING STANDARD PROTOCOLS
EVALUATING PRESERVATION OPTIONS
ANALYSIS:
· Current level: 5.
· Mana reserve: 100.
· Minimum transformation threshold: 4.
· Requirement met.
AVAILABLE RESOURCES:
· Active hostile enemies: 10.
· Harvestable souls: 10.
· Estimated extractable energy: sufficient.
SELECTED PROTOCOL:
Bearer Emergency Transformation.
Using Class Root Essence.
Real-time energy recovery through harvesting.
INITIATING TRANSFORMATION
BEARER STATUS: IN PROGRESS
```
A voice echoed through the entire dungeon.
"After all, this is the Grim Reaper."
"It can kill anything."
The Dungeon trembled from the echo generated by the mysterious voice emanating from Nathan’s body.
Even the creatures and their Leader felt a sepulchral cold—as if death itself were drawing near.
Nathan didn’t consciously process the lines.
But something in him—at the deepest level where the Class had installed itself since the day of the alley—felt the change.
A warmth.
Familiar.
Like something that had been waiting for a long time for the exact opportunity to awaken.
And on his right wrist, hidden beneath the torn sleeve of his jacket, the door mark began to glow.
Not in its usual dark tone.
In an intense green. Deep. With the specific color of the forests that remember.
