Chapter 361: What Stays

The message is still waiting in front of my eyes.

[Reveal your name before the Goddess.]

I ignore it.

Veric is a few yards behind me.

Crossing the hall to him feels harder now that Drifter Mode is gone. My body is still sending me the bill for the OXI I burned against the laser, but that’s a simple problem. A few candies or an LDP, rest, and food would fix it.

Veric’s arm won’t.

Zhang Xi has already finished what she could do by the time I reach them. The laser cauterized the wound in the same instant it pulverized the limb, so there isn’t the pool of blood that would normally come with an amputation. Suzanoo’s Love repaired the tissue around the shoulder, stabilized the shock, and closed anything that could still threaten his life.

Physically, Veric is out of danger.

The word "physically" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

He’ll be able to fight again. Thirstfall has solutions for almost everything, as long as you have money, connections, and time. A good bionic prosthetic can give back strength and movement. A Rank S healer who specializes in homunculi can build something even closer to a real limb.

I know someone who went through it.

’A very close friend.’

My arm was rebuilt with flesh, bone, and tendon shaped by healing, but the original nerves never came back. It was functional because OXI did the job electrical impulses were supposed to do. I learned to control that thing like a puppet attached to my own body until the movement became almost natural.

It was always an almost, though, and I never got past Rank A.

That truth is still too inconvenient to hand to certain people.

And the problem was never only about getting another arm.

A young fighter grows fast in Thirstfall. You refine OXI circulation, change your stance, find new uses for your own skills, build muscle memory on top of a body that’s still developing. Losing a limb in the middle of that means trading part of that progress for months or years of functional recovery.

You come back.

The others just don’t stop while they’re waiting.

Veric starts getting up before I reach him.

Undertow is lying to his right, the hole the laser opened still there at the center of the shield. He looks at the weapon and reaches out for it.

Or tries to...

The shoulder moves, but rest of the limb doesn’t exist.

Veric stays in that position for a moment, as though his body is waiting for a hand to appear where it always was. When he realizes what he did, he tries to correct his balance too fast.

He drops to his knees.

His remaining hand touches the floor, and he ends up almost on all fours, head down, breathing hard through his nose.

I stop a few steps away.

Veric tries to pull himself together.

But we know... He can’t.

The tears start falling onto the stone between his arms. Between his arm and the space where the other one should be. He doesn’t sob and he doesn’t shout. He just stays bent over, teeth clenched while his shoulders shake as little as he can allow.

The anger looks worse than the crying.

I sit down next to him.

For a few seconds neither of us says anything.

"I know what you’re thinking," I say.

He lets out a short, empty laugh without lifting his head.

"I doubt it."

"I could start by saying there’s a solution. Rank S healers can grow homunculus arms. There are bionic prosthetics that would let you hold Undertow again. I have a very close friend who lost an arm and got one of those homunculi."

Freya gives me a sidelong look when I mention a "very close friend" to Veric under my breath.

Maybe she already understands who that "friend" is, and that he’s nobody but me.

Veric finally lifts his eyes.

I keep going before it can sound like cheap comfort.

"It worked. Flesh, tendon, bone. It just never went back to being really his. There were no original nerves. He controlled the arm with OXI, like a puppet connected to the shoulder. After a while, from the outside, you almost couldn’t tell the difference."

He wipes his face with the hand he has left.

"So you’re trying to tell me I’ll be fine."

"No."

Veric frowns.

"I’m telling you that you’ll fight again. That’s a different thing."

His face hardens.

I look at Undertow on the floor before continuing.

"You know as well as I do what this means. While other people our age spend the next few years raising their Rank, refining technique, and building skills on top of their own bodies, you’re going to spend part of that time learning balance again. Guard. Weight distribution. OXI. How to use a weapon without the limb your brain has spent its whole life expecting to find there."

The tears come back to his eyes.

This time anger comes with them.

"Did you come over here to mock me?"

"Veric—"

"Are you happy now, Dryden?"

His voice comes out loud enough to carry across the room.

Rhayne, sitting further off, lifts her head immediately. Her face is clean after Zhang’s healing, but she’s still pale and she’s carrying an expression I don’t need a Link to read.

’Guilt...’

I turn back to Veric.

I put a hand on his good shoulder.

"The opposite. I came to tell you I’m on your side."

He tries to turn his face away, but I keep the hand there.

"I’m going to help you get out of this. With a homunculus, a prosthetic, or something we don’t know about yet. I told all of you I’d take care of everyone."

Veric closes his eyes, and he doesn’t answer.

I squeeze his shoulder once and stand up.

I’ve taken a few steps when his voice comes from behind me.

"The way you took care of little Lola?... bullshit."

I stop.

My body goes still.

For a few seconds the whole hall feels far away.

I look back over my shoulder.

Veric is still on the floor.

Our eyes meet.

I don’t feel anger, but I want to. It would have been easier.

What comes instead is that old pain that keeps finding different ways back, along with the memory of a small girl in a place where I should have been able to save her.

Veric sees it.

His face changes almost immediately.

Maybe he understood he went too far.

I stay silent and just start walking again.

Behind me, I hear light steps approaching him. It’s Rhayne.

"Come on," she says quietly.

"I can get up."

"I know... just..."

She stays anyway.

After a few seconds, Veric accepts the support. Rhayne ducks under his remaining arm and helps him find the new balance. The movement is strange because his body is still trying to compensate for a weight that isn’t there anymore.

Veric manages to get the Gladius into his belt with some difficulty, then crouches to pick up Undertow with his good hand.

The hole goes through the shield from one side to the other.

He looks at it for a moment.

"Even you look like shit."

Rhayne lowers her face.

Veric notices and breathes out.

"Don’t start."

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face is saying it."

She stays quiet.

"Rhayne."

Veric tries to settle Undertow under his arm.

"I jumped in front."

She finally looks at him.

"I know, but..."

"So stop making that face."

It doesn’t work, but she nods anyway.

"Dryden!"

Freya’s voice comes from the other side of the hall.

She’s near the golem’s remains, crouched between two blocks that used to be part of the torso.

"There’s something here."

I head over without hurrying.

"What?"

Freya points.

"Loot."

I stop mid-step.

"What?"

The word comes out louder than I meant it to.

I pick up the pace.

The Ferryman’s Toll doesn’t drop loot. Well.... not normally.

In the other life this dungeon was cleared thousands of times. Small groups, guilds, exploration teams, and rich idiots chasing the Pearls recorded practically everything in there. Some teams died at the first puzzle. Others reached the Goddess.

No account ever mentioned a drop from the guardian.

The reward came after the offering.

Always.

I reach the wreckage.

Freya pushes a piece of stone aside with her boot.

The first thing I see is blue.

A sapphire gem is set between the remains of the golem’s chest, big enough to fill my palm. The color is deep, almost liquid, with small currents of light circling inside the crystal.

I touch it.

The identification answers.

[Heart of the Ocean]

My eyes narrow.

I know this item.

A Heart of the Ocean works as a core for establishing a secure outpost in hostile territory. Once it’s installed and fed, it creates a Safe Zone barrier around the point, letting you set up a temporary base—or, with enough resources, something far more permanent—in places where resting without constant watches and defenses would normally be impossible.

That isn’t equipment.

It’s infrastructure.

For Safe Harbor, it’s worth more than most combat items I could find.

"There’s another one," Freya says.

I follow her finger.

Between two stone plates there’s something tiny.

It looks like a crystallized tear.

I pick it up carefully.

The system answers immediately.

[Tear of the Goddess]

[Rank: SS]

[Consumable Enhancement Relic]

[Raises the Rank of one eligible upgradable item.]

I stare at it for a few seconds.

SS.

Inside a Rank C dungeon.

My hand closes slowly around the tear.

I don’t have to think hard about where that came from.

Chaos Theory.

The passive always carries both sides.

Curse.

Blessing.

Amplified disaster and amplified result. The Heart was rewritten, the guardian nearly wiped out the group, and Veric left an arm in this hall.

The other face answered too.

A Heart of the Ocean and a Tear of the Goddess shouldn’t exist in that loot table, because there is no loot table.

In the other life, that guardian never gave up anything.

Freya is watching my face.

"Bad?"

"The opposite."

I show them both.

Zhang Xi comes closer with Rhayne and Veric right behind her. I explain quickly what they are, and even Veric seems to forget about his own arm for a few seconds when he hears "Rank SS."

I keep both in my hand.

"I’m holding on to these for now."

I look at each of them.

"If anyone has a problem with that, when we get back to Azure Prime I’ll put both up for auction and we split the value five ways."

Zhang Xi answers first.

"You can have it. No objection."

Freya shakes her head.

"Keep them."

I look at her.

"Everyone took part."

"And you just put a sword in front of a laser to stop that thing from finishing us off."

Rhayne nods.

Veric takes a little longer.

He’s holding Undertow against his side, still working out the best position to carry the weight with one hand.

"Keep the damn loot, Sands."

Close enough to unanimous.

I nod and put both items away.

I don’t feel the satisfaction that would normally come with finding something at that level.

Maybe later... When Veric isn’t learning how to stand up again.

The white light is still coming down from the ceiling.

I turn to the statue.

The six arms stay open in that posture of redemption. The figure’s serene face seems to watch the whole hall, indifferent to the guardian’s wreckage spread out in front of it.

The message is still waiting.

[Reveal your name before the Goddess.]

I take a breath.

The guardian part is over.

Now comes the reason we came into this dungeon.

The offerings.

And this time I know exactly what to do.