[Reward: Elixir (x1)]

  Shane stared at the notification floating in the dark alleyway.

  ...An Elixir?

  His eyes widened slightly.

  There were no healers in this game. Hunters lived and died by their evasion stats and the random, lucky drop of a health potion in a dungeon reward.

  But an Elixir? That was in a different league entirely.

  It was a consumable item that could drag someone back from the very brink of death.

  This was basically an extra life.

  A slow, tired grin spread across his face. He quickly opened his inventory, needing to see it with his own eyes.a small, crystal vial filled with swirling golden liquid, glowing softly against the dark grid of his storage.

  He closed the window, feeling a weight lift off his chest. With this, he had a safety net.

  His mind drifted back to the people he’d left behind in the dust.

  He’d already absorbed Henry’s side wound earlier, so the pup was fine. The rest of his impromptu party members also seemed to have had all their limbs attached, at least from what he’d seen.

  And Luke?

  Shane snorted. Luke had been running over with enough energy to conduct an interrogation, so the rogue was obviously in peak condition. Besides, the guy was the head of the info guild. He had enough money to buy his own private hospital if he really needed it.

  It had even looked like Whitley was still breathing under that pile of rubble, though he was definitely unconscious.

  Shane looked at the blood staining his fingers.

  The biggest victim of this dungeon breach was not going to be the Hunter Assocation or the civilians. It was probably the insurance companies for those destroyed apartment blocks.

  This might go down in history as the A-rank dungeon breach with the fewest casualties.

  He had fled the scene like a criminal making a getaway, leaving the glory and the questions to someone else. He was bruised, bloody, and exhausted to his very marrow.

  But strangely... as he leaned back against the wall, listening to the distant sirens on the news feed...

  For the first time in a long time, he was fine with it.

  ***

  Click.

  The door to the studio apartment shut behind him, the mechanical latch deafening in the sudden quiet.

  Shane kicked his boots off at the mat, wincing as he bent over. And walked stiffly across the cheap linoleum, leaving a trail of bloody footprints from the entrance to his bed.

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  “—Live from the site in Brooklyn, recovery continues after the A-rank dungeon breach—”

  The news feed on his phone was still playing, the reporter’s voice breathless with hype.

  “—for the first time in history, an A-rank breach has ended with no casualties, an outcome experts are calling a miracle—”

  Shane scoffed, scrolling through the news feed on his phone then tossed it onto his bed.

  “Miracle, huh,” he muttered into the empty room.

  He started peeling off his blood-soaked clothes. The fabric was stiff with dried blood and stuck to his skin in patches, acting like a second scab.

  He hissed through his teeth as he tore the shirt away from his left shoulder.

  Fresh blood was still welling up from the puncture wound, sliding down his bicep in warm, thick rivulets.

  Shane grabbed a first-aid kit from the shelf and ripped open a sterile bandage package with his teeth. He started wrapping the shoulder, pulling the gauze tight, winding it around and around the injury to stem the flow.

  But before he could even tie it off, the white fabric stained a dark, blossoming red.

  He stopped and watched the spot grow. It was useless. He could feel the warm blood soaking through the layers almost immediately. A hole this deep couldn’t just be covered up; the pressure wasn’t reaching the source.

  “Dammit.”

  With a grimace, he unwound the sodden bandage and dropped the wet pile on the floor.

  Staring at the steadily weeping hole in his own body, he knew what he had to do. It wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  He grabbed a fresh roll of gauze, unspooled a long section. He bunched it up between his fingers, took a deep breath, and began to systematically shove it directly inside the wound.

  Shit.

  Pain flared up his neck, blinding him for a second. But he ignored it, forcing his fingers deeper, to plug the artery. It was a crude method, but it was the only way to handle a puncture like this without a proper medic.

  He held his hand over the packed wound, applying firm pressure, and waited.

  An ordinary person would have passed out from the shock. But Shane wasn’t ordinary. And besides, Awakened physiology was a different beast entirely.

  As long as his regeneration outpaced the bleeding, he wouldn’t die.

  Infection wasn’t really a concern, either. He didn’t bother with alcohol or antibiotics.

  The simplest explanation he’d seen on the hunter forums was that monsters and this world were like oil and water. They occupied the same space, but they were fundamentally separate states of matter. A bullet or a germ belonged to the ‘water’ of this world, so it couldn’t affect the ‘oil’ of a monster.

  Becoming Awakened was like being drenched in that same oil.

  It coated him on a cellular level he couldn’t see, making him immiscible with the world’s minor threats. Sickness, viruses, and common infections just slid right off him.

  Of course, the theory had holes. Monsters could still tear regular people to shreds, but a normal person’s bullets barely seemed to scratch them in return. It wasn’t a perfect metaphor.

  But Shane wasn’t a researcher. Since the day he learned that this world wasn’t a game and he wouldn’t die from a staph infection, he hadn’t dug in any further.

  He checked the wound again.

  The gauze was already saturated. The bleeding was still seeping around his fingers, heavier than he liked.

  Not a good sign.

  If his passive regeneration couldn’t outpace the bleeding soon, he’d have to get creative.

  His eyes flicked over to the desk drawer. He didn’t need to open to know what was inside. Nestled next to a couple of pens was a stapler.

  He imagined pinching the skin of his shoulder shut and driving the metal staples in. It would hold the skin together long enough for the clotting to take over. It would also hurt like absolute hell.

  Shane sighed, looking around the room.

  The little studio looked like a crime scene. There were smears on the floors, bloody handprints on the desk, and a pile of red-soaked rags in the corner.

  Great. Just great.

  At times like this, he really missed the hyper-regeneration he used to have in his past life. Back then, he could regrow a limb in seconds without even thinking about it. Now? This whole manual labor part of staying alive was a drag.

  Shane decided to give the gauze another minute before resorting to office supplies. Just in time to distract him from the throbbing pain, the raid results came up.

  30% gave you a high reward. He’d gotten a 50% in the last monster wave because of [Mana Hypersensitivity].

  Shane expected the worst and assumed he’d be getting the same contribution score as last time.

  [Dungeon Breach Raid Contribution]

  [1. Shane Ashwell: 80%]

  [2. Henry Stone: 16%]

  [3. Luke Hinton: 3%

  [4. Other: 1%]