Mio
The Shinjuku incursion was three train stops and a ten-minute walk from the apartment.
Mio found it through the Bureau app—a list of active incursions, sortable by rank and distance. The C-Grade was marked in amber. Dangerous. The kind of content that required full parties, coordination, hazard pay.
The Engine didn't care.
[ENGINE: OBJECTIVE]
Clear C-Grade Incursion: 0/1
Time Remaining: 6:42:03
Failure: Reservoir locked for 48 hours
She stared at the timer. Six hours. Solo. C-Grade.
The old Mio would have called this suicide.
She wasn't sure what the new Mio called it.
The entrance was in an alley behind a convenience store. A shimmer in the air, like heat rising off summer pavement, except it was December and the temperature had dropped to single digits.
Two delvers waited by the shimmer. Geared up. Checking weapons.
One of them looked up as she approached. His eyes swept over her—faded hoodie, worn sneakers, the F-Grade badge she hadn't bothered to remove.
"Wrong incursion, kid. This is C-Grade."
She didn't stop.
"Hey—"
"Let her go." The second delver. Already turning back to his gear. "Crazy bitch wants to die, that's her problem."
She walked past them. The shimmer swallowed her whole.
Inside, the incursion was a parking garage. Three levels. Concrete pillars. Buzzing lights casting everything in sickly yellow.
Water dripped somewhere in the distance.
[INCURSION: Shinjuku-7]
[Grade: C]
[Type: Swarm]
[Objective: Eliminate the Core Entity]
[Hostiles Remaining: 347]
Three hundred and forty-seven.
The display was new. Before the mark, incursions had only shown two lines—Entering Incursion and the grade. Now there was a name, a type, an objective. A kill count ticking down in real time.
Information she could use.
She checked her status.
[HP: 340 / 340]
[Reservoir: 4,576 / 12,500]
The first slime dropped from the ceiling.
It landed in front of her. Translucent green, wobbling, the size of a basketball. Eyeless. Mouthless. A membrane holding acidic gel together.
[Acid Slime — F-Grade]
[HP: 56/56]
F-Grade. Fodder.
But three hundred of them made a C-Grade swarm. And somewhere in the swarm, the mothers that spawned them.
She raised her hand.
[Casting: Spark]
[Cost: 50 Reservoir]
[Reservoir: 4,526 / 12,500]
Green-white lightning arced from her fingertip. It hit the slime dead center.
The membrane blackened where the bolt struck. Then the black spread—veins of rot racing through the gel like cracks in ice. The slime shuddered, tried to pull away from itself, and burst.
[Hostile Eliminated]
[+15 XP]
A bloom manifested where the corpse had been.
She stopped breathing.
It was bigger than the succulent's. That tiny spark she'd crushed from Nana's dying plant—three HP, barely visible, a firefly in the dark.
This was a lantern.
Faint green light. Pulsing. Hovering over the puddle like a heartbeat made visible. Bigger than the plant. Bigger than the Vitalize drip. Bigger than the math that had buried her for a year.
Bigger than Mend.
She stared at it.
One year. One year of being the broken healer who couldn't keep up. One year of watching her mana drain for nothing. One year of dead weight whispered behind her back and screamed in her own head.
She reached out.
The bloom dissolved into her palm.
And something rushed in.
[Life Bloom: Absorbed]
[+56 → Reservoir]
[Reservoir: 4,582 / 12,500]
Oh.
Not the painful warmth of Vitalize. Something cleaner. Flowing into the hollow space in her chest, filling the void, feeding the ache she'd carried since the cathedral.
The hunger sighed.
More, it said. More.
Fifty-six Reservoir. From a slime. From one kill.
One Spark cost fifty. One kill gave fifty-six back.
Net positive. Barely. But the fodder weren't the real prize.
This is what I was supposed to be.
The second slime dropped from the ceiling. She raised her hand—
It spat.
Acid sludge arced through the air. She twisted sideways, felt heat sizzle past her ear, heard concrete hiss behind her.
[Spark]
It popped. She spun, fired again—
[Spark]
—and the second one burst mid-lunge.
Two blooms. She absorbed them walking forward.
More.
The second floor was carpeted in them.
Slimes. Dozens of slimes. Clustered in pools of standing water, clinging to pillars, hanging from pipes. Bodies wall to wall, translucent membranes catching the dim light.
[Hostiles Remaining: 312]
They noticed her at the same time.
The carpet rippled. Started moving. A tide of gel rolling toward her.
Three of them reared back. Spat in unison.
She dove left. Acid splashed across the pillar where she'd been standing, eating into concrete. She came up firing—
[Spark]
—hit the nearest. It popped. The burst caught the slime beside it, and that one popped too. Chain reaction through the cluster. Three. Four. Five.
[Hostile Eliminated]
[Hostile Eliminated]
[Hostile Eliminated]
[Hostile Eliminated]
[Hostile Eliminated]
She rolled under another acid stream—
[Spark]
[Spark]
—two more clusters. Eight dead. Twelve.
[Hostiles Remaining: 289]
Blooms everywhere. She pulled them in without stopping.
A slime dropped from a pipe overhead. She sidestepped, let it splatter on the floor, fired point-blank into the membrane before it could reform.
Another lunged from the right. She kicked it—sneaker melting on contact—and put a Spark through its core while it tumbled.
The swarm pressed in. Acid flying from six directions.
She stopped dodging.
[Spark]
The shooter burst. She took a hit on her arm—
[-23 HP]
[HP: 317/340]
—and fired twice more before the burn registered.
[Spark]
[Spark]
Blooms. Absorb. Vitalize.
[HP: 340/340]
The damage closed before it mattered.
Oh.
She could tank the hits. As long as she kept killing, the blooms kept coming. As long as the blooms kept coming, the Reservoir stayed full. As long as the Reservoir stayed full—
She walked forward.
The same pace she'd use on a sidewalk. The same rhythm she'd carry through a convenience store.
[Spark]
A slime burst.
[Spark]
Another.
They spat. She let them hit. Absorbed blooms. Vitalized. Kept walking.
The swarm began to thin.
She wasn't thinking anymore. The rhythm took over—point, fire, reach, take. Point, fire, reach, take.
The slimes kept coming. She kept walking.
[+15 XP][+15 XP][+15 XP]
Blooms spawned and dissolved in the same breath. The light flowed into her without pause.
The Reservoir climbed. She didn't count.
Something larger blocked the ramp ahead.
Not a slime. A mass. Translucent green membrane stretched over a body the size of a car, smaller slimes budding off its surface like blisters. Eyeless. Pulsing.
[Mother Slime — D-Grade]
[HP: 890/890]
The fodder scattered as she approached. Making room.
The mother didn't move. Just sat there, spawning, its bulk blocking the path forward.
Mio raised her hand.
[Spark]
The bolt hit center mass. Blackened a patch the size of her palm.
Then the black spread.
Not fast. Not slow. The pace of mold on bread, of frost on glass. Veins of rot racing through the membrane, branching, multiplying. The mother shuddered. Tried to move. Couldn't—the Blight had reached its base, anchoring it to the concrete.
[HP: 712/890]
She watched it die.
The membrane split first. Then the gel inside began to curdle, green turning grey turning black. The smaller slimes budding off its surface dropped away half-formed, already rotting before they hit the ground.
[HP: 445/890]
The mother made a sound, like air escaping a balloon. Wet. Final.
[HP: 89/890]
Mio stood there. Patient. The hunger patient with her.
The mother burst.
Gel flooded the ramp. A wave of acid that hissed against concrete, eating through the paint on abandoned cars, dissolving the fodder too slow to flee.
Mio stood in the tide. Felt it eat through her sneakers, her socks, the skin underneath.
[HP: 289/340]
She didn't flinch.
The bloom that rose from the mother's corpse was the size of her head.
[Greater Life Bloom: Absorbed]
[+1,200 → Reservoir]
There it was.
The hunger purred.
The lights above her flickered. Died. Flickered again.
In the dark between, her eyes held their own glow. Faint. Green. Her father's eyes, but lit from somewhere deeper.
The slimes in her path stopped moving.
Not fleeing. Not attacking.
Waiting.
[Hostiles Remaining: 247]
[LEVEL UP: 2]
[+5 Stat Points Available]
[Allocate now?]
The notification pulsed. Waiting.
She dismissed it. Another slime lunging. Another Spark.
[Auto-allocating per needs.]
[Reservoir Cap: 25,000]
She walked through them.
Point. Fire. Reach. Take.
Gel coating her sneakers. Blooms orbiting her for half-seconds before she pulled them in. The swarm parting ahead, closing behind, thinning with every step.
Another mother on level two. Another on the ramp to three. Each one a thousand-plus bloom, each one feeding the hollow in her chest.
[Hostiles Remaining: 178]
[LEVEL UP: 3]
[+5 Stat Points Available]
[Reservoir Cap: 37,500]
The survivors fled.
Not toward the entrance.
Deeper.
She stopped.
The slimes weren't retreating. They were migrating. Flowing toward the ramp to the third floor like water finding a drain.
She'd seen this before. In Meguro. The way the corrupted shelves had pulsed with faint light, the way the incursion had a center that everything orbited.
Something was calling them.
Something was calling her too.
[+15 XP][+15 XP][+15 XP]
[Hostiles Remaining: 94]
[LEVEL UP: 4]
[+5 Stat Points Available]
[Reservoir Cap: 50,000]
[HP: 700/700]
[Reservoir: 10,128 / 50,000]
Just over ten thousand. From fodder.
But there had been so many of them.
Mio followed.
The third floor was different.
Darker. The lights had gone out—most dead, shattered, glass crunching under her feet. The ones that remained cast thin pools of yellow that didn't reach the walls.
The slimes had gathered here. The survivors—sixty, maybe seventy—clustered in a ring around something in the center of the garage.
Not attacking. Not moving.
Waiting.
She saw it now. The pools of dark liquid spreading across the concrete. Not water. Not slime residue.
Blood.
Old blood. Black and thick, seeping from the figure kneeling at the center. The slimes drank from it, membranes flushing darker as they absorbed the corruption.
This was why the incursion was C-Grade. Not the swarm. The swarm was just the symptom. The knight was the disease—and everything in here was feeding on its rot.
And in the center of the ring—
A knight.
Kneeling. Head bowed. Gauntlets clasped around something at its waist—a hilt, she realized. Just a hilt. The blade that should have extended from it was gone, shattered, reduced to a jagged edge no longer than her finger.
A broken sentinel. Guarding nothing. Waiting for nothing. But waiting anyway, because that's what it was made to do.
Then its head moved.
Slowly. Grinding. The sound of rust on rust, joints that hadn't shifted in years remembering how to function.
It looked at her.
And rose.
The first time in centuries. Maybe longer. Not because she was a threat. Not because she was worthy.
Because someone had finally come. Because the vigil was over.
Plate armor, rusted and black. Fused to the flesh beneath—where metal met skin, the boundary had rotted away into something hybrid. Gauntlets that ended in points, fingers long since merged with steel.
No weapon. Not anymore.
No face. The helmet was solid, featureless, except for the thin gap where something red and wet gleamed in the darkness.
[PUTRID KNIGHT — C-Grade Elite]
[HP: 15,000/15,000]
Fifteen thousand HP.
[FEAR EFFECT DETECTED]
The pressure hit. Cold and heavy, pressing against her chest, trying to freeze her lungs, trying to lock her legs, trying to trigger the response that kept prey alive long enough to run.
[Status: —]
She waited for the terror. The animal panic. The voice screaming run run run until her legs obeyed.
It didn't come.
She'd felt pressure before. In a cathedral that shouldn't exist, watching an Entity descend from a ceiling that went up forever. Flowers blooming in stone. A smile too wide for a human face.
Sixty-four candidates. A year of watching.
The Putrid Knight was ten feet tall. Radiating death. Ancient and wrong and hungry.
Gaian had clapped when Mio survived.
[Status: Resisted]
The knight's gauntlet flexed. It had expected her to run. They always ran.
She didn't.
Something inside it began to turn.
A sound first—low, grinding, metal on metal. Then deeper. A hum that started in the knight's chest and spread outward, vibrating through the concrete, rattling the dead lights, shaking dust from the ceiling in thin curtains.
Ancient machinery waking. Calibrating.
Her jaw clenched. She lifted her palm.
[Casting: Spark]
The bolt punched through the falling dust as the knight's armor began to glow. Purple flames bleeding from the gaps between plate and flesh. Filling the joints. The helmet brimming with light, spilling from the visor.
It struck rusted plate. The bolt crackled against metal and dispersed—Loss of Anchor, nowhere to ground.
[Hit: 2 damage (Armor)]
Two.
Fuck.
The hum peaked. Steadied. The purple glow locked into place—constant now, a heartbeat made visible.
The knight regarded her.
Slimes were F-Grade for a reason. This thing was C-Grade for one too.
It raised one gauntlet, fingers splayed, and spoke.
Syllables that scraped against her ears and left something oily behind.
[FINAL VIGIL]
Twenty meters between them. Close enough to see the rune forming. Far enough to run—maybe.
A rune formed in the air before its palm. Lines first—thin, precise—then geometry blooming outward, shapes connecting to shapes, the whole structure humming as it built.
Quiet at first.
Then louder.
An inevitable crescendo.
She wasn't looking at the knight anymore.
Cracked beam. Six meters to its left. Concrete sagging above it, rebar visible through the fractures.
Load-bearing.
The knight's gauntlet blazed purple.
Her fingers splayed toward the beam.
[Spark]
The beam groaned.
[Spark]
Dust rained.
[FINAL VIGIL: READY]
[Spark]
The beam shattered.
Final Vigil fired at the same instant—but the knight staggered, arm jerking, and the beam of purple death went wide. Two meters to her left. Close enough to feel the heat sear her cheek.
It carved through the concrete wall behind her, sheared through rebar, and vanished into the dark where the ceiling should have ended but didn't.
The floor above came down.
Rubble first. Concrete chunks the size of refrigerators, crashing down on rusted armor. A support column followed, slamming across its shoulders.
Then the SUV—black, expensive, someone's pride parked one level up—dropping like a guillotine blade onto something that used to be human.
[Crushing Damage: 580-620]
Dust. Silence. Rebar settling. Concrete groaning.
[PUTRID KNIGHT: 14,400/15,000]
She stared at the number.
Six hundred damage. I dropped a sublevel on it and that's—
The rubble shifted.
A gauntlet punched through. Fingers flexing. Finding grip.
It stood.
Concrete sliding off its shoulders. The SUV crumpled behind it, frame bent in half. Purple light still bleeding from the gaps in its armor, brighter now, angrier.
Fourteen thousand HP.
And it was looking at her.