Chapter 8: Net Gain

Mio

“I know.” Mio pulled her back into a hug. “But I’m not. I’m here.”

Nana was trembling.

“What happened?” Her voice was muffled. “What happened to you?”

“I’ll tell you. Tomorrow. I promise.”

Nana pulled back. Eleven years old. Waiting.

“You promise? Actually?”

“I promise.”

Nana nodded. Wiped her face. The armor going back up.

“You smell like something dead.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re buying me breakfast. Somewhere nice.”

“Okay.”

She went to her room. The door closed.

Mio stood in the hallway.

After a long moment, she pulled out her phone. Opened the camera. Flipped it to face herself.

The mark had felt like a nail through bone. There should be something. A scar. A symbol burned into the skin.

Nothing. Smooth. Unmarked.

Whatever Gaian had done, she’d written it somewhere deeper than flesh.

Same face. Same black hair, matted with blood she’d need to wash out.

Her father’s eyes had deepened. Emerald now, not just green.

She tilted her head. Watched her reflection do the same.

Same face. Same cheekbones. Same jaw.

But the girl in the mirror looked like she’d survived.

The girl from yesterday had just looked tired.

Hungry.

She turned off the camera.

Her stomach growled.

But it wasn’t food she was hungry for. An ache in her chest. An itch behind her eyes.

She needed something.

She pulled up her status.

The Engine interface. Still strange, still new. A level where none had existed before.

[Status]

Name: Tamei Mio

Class: Biomancer

Level: 1 HP: 340/340

Reservoir: 0/12,500

The ache made sense now. The Reservoir was a void. Waiting to be filled.

She reached inward. Found Vitalize.

[Vitalize]

[Reservoir: 0 — Insufficient]

[Drawing from HP]

The pain was immediate—like something being ripped out through her chest. She gasped. The apartment blurred. Then the warmth came.

[HP: 340 → 306 → 340 (×2.13)]

[Excess → Reservoir]

[Reservoir: 38/12,500]

It flooded back. More than she’d lost, impossibly more, filling the wound and spilling over. The ache eased. And beneath it, deeper, the Reservoir stirred. Drinking in the excess like dry earth taking rain.

She stared at the number.

Thirty-eight. From hurting herself.

Again.

The pain. Sharper now, or was she just anticipating it?

The warmth. God, the warmth.

[Reservoir: 76/12,500]

Again.

[Reservoir: 114/12,500]

The hunger eased. Just a little. Like scratching an itch that had been building for hours.

She kept casting. The rhythm settled into her bones. The sharp bite, the flood of relief, the Reservoir drinking deep. Her head started feeling light. Pleasant.

The pain wasn’t fading. She was just starting to like it.

That should have bothered her. She waited for the disgust to come, for the part of her that was still the girl from before Integration to recoil.

Nothing.

After twenty minutes, she stopped. The Reservoir had crossed a thousand.

Not bad. But not fast, either.

At this rate, filling the tank would take hours. Days.

But there was another way. She checked her passives again.

[Life Bloom]

When a creature dies within 10 meters, a Bloom manifests.

Blooms last 60 seconds.

Absorb to fill Reservoir.

Death. That was the real source.

Her eyes drifted to the windowsill.

Nana’s plant. The little succulent she’d been trying to keep alive for three months. Brown at the edges, overwatered, barely hanging on.

Mio walked over. Touched the pot.

Cool. The soil was damp. But the leaves were soft. Dying already.

She squeezed.

The pot cracked. Soil spilled through her fingers. The roots came apart in her palm, fragile as wet paper.

The plant died.

She hadn’t expected anything to happen. Plants weren’t creatures. They didn’t have HP, not in the System’s eyes.

But the succulent had been alive. Barely. And now it wasn’t.

Maybe that was enough.

A tiny light appeared.

Hovering just above the broken stems. Faint green-white, no bigger than a firefly, pulsing steady.

A bloom.

She stared at it. It wasn’t fading. Not yet. The timer said one minute.

Her hand moved on its own. Reached out. Touched the light.

The bloom dissolved into her fingertips, and warmth rushed into the empty space in her chest.

[Life Bloom: Absorbed]

[Target: Potted Plant]

[Max HP: 3]

[+3 → Reservoir]

[Reservoir: 1,041/12,500]

Three points. From a dying succulent.

Not much. But it felt different than the Vitalize drip. Cleaner. No pain required.

And that wasn’t what made her stare.

It was the choice.

The bloom had been there. Waiting. A full minute to decide.

She could have let it fade. Could have watched it wink out and disappear.

But she’d reached for it. She’d wanted it.

She looked at the dead plant in her hands. Brown. Dry. Empty.

Then at her reflection in the window. Same face as always. The ache in her chest, quieter now.

A plant gave her three points. A goblin might have a hundred HP. An orc, five hundred.

A boss—

The space in her chest stirred. Something colder than hunger.

Potential.

She could stand in the middle of a fight. Let things die around her. And every corpse would bloom, and every bloom would feed her, and she’d use that feeding to make more corpses.

Biomancer.

The word tasted like iron.

The sun was coming up.

Orange light crept through the window, painting the apartment in warm stripes.

She looked at the broken pot. The spilled soil. The dead plant.

Nana would be upset. She’d tried so hard to keep it alive.

Mio would buy her a new one. A better one.

She pulled up her abilities one more time.

[Abilities]

Spark: Cost 50 Reservoir. Deals 50 + VIT damage. Applies Necrotic Blight.

Vitalize: Cost 100 Reservoir or 10% HP. Heals VIT × 3.

Fifty Reservoir per bolt. And anything it hit would start rotting from the inside.

She closed the screen.

She looked at her hands.

She wasn’t dead weight anymore.

Her phone buzzed. Bureau app again.

INCIDENT REPORT REQUIRED:

Location: Meguro Branch

Assignment Duration: 9h 25m

Expected Duration: 2h

Please confirm party status.

Someone was asking questions.

She found the incident report form on her phone. Mandatory fields. Checkboxes. A single text box for “additional details.”

Mio typed as little as possible.

encountered a nested incursion in a f-grade incursion. party wiped. sole survivor. escaped. got lucky.

The truth. Half-truths. The lies she could live with.

Her thumb hovered over the button.

Four girls went in. One walked out.

She could tell them. Could describe Shiori’s ice, Aoi’s dagger, Rin’s boot. Could explain that her friends had done the math and found her expendable.

The words wouldn’t come. Or maybe she just didn’t want them to.

Submit.

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