Chương 198: Chapter 189 - Nominal

When I woke up the next morning, my entire body protested loudly about the fact that I was still alive—or at least that's what it felt like. Every joint had a very vocal opinion, every muscle a complaint, and my spine was apparently filing a formal grievance about the last forty-eight hours on behalf of the entire collective.

"Ugghh," I groaned, as I started the deeply unpleasant process of trying to get upright. Getting to sleep in the first place had been… a massive challenge, to put it mildly. I'd tossed and turned for easily two to three hours, despite my body being so thoroughly done with being awake that it had essentially been begging for shutdown.

My brain, however, had not agreed with that assessment in the slightest and had instead decided that two in the morning was the perfect time to replay every bad decision I'd made in the last two days on a loop, with thoroughly unhelpful commentary along the way.

'I really need Mr. Shori to help me fix this Anima Network stuff today. I need my damn Rest Function back…' Even just two nights without it, I was already craving its sweet, sweet embrace of nothingness. It was easily the best thing that had come with the whole G. E. M. A. System—and I would die on that hill without hesitation.

Like, yeah, getting a bunch of muscle mass and definition, knowledge about all kinds of Skills and muscle memory to go along with it, [Polyglot] and its entire repertoire of insane bullshit, even Perks that could bend the very laws of physics… All great. Wonderful. Downright life-changing, even. But absolutely nothing —not a single thing in the entire catalogue of System-granted miracles—could hold a candle to the Rest Function's one-click instant-sleep feature.

'My kingdom for the Rest Function…' Once I had finally rolled out of bed and dragged myself into the shower—the hot water doing slow, merciful work on muscles that had apparently decided overnight to fuse into a single, absolutely furious knot—I threw open my cerebral interface to check for messages I might have missed. There were a surprising number of them. Surprising mostly because nobody ever messaged me. My inbox was usually the digital equivalent of a ghost town—tumbleweeds, silence and all that.

But apparently today had decided to be the exception; or rather, the last two days. At least two of the messages were not from the last few hours, but from yesterday, that I simply hadn't checked yet. One from Higgins, one from Cryo, one from Tom and one from Kenzie—the latter two being the older ones.

"I'm real damn popular, huh?" I muttered to myself, water running down my face as I stared at the notification list with a heavy sigh. Not that I wasn't glad to see messages from people I considered at least somewhat friendly presences in my life—but each one came with the unspoken promise of some level of commitment and further energy investment that I was going to have to conjure up from somewhere.

Neither of which I had much of a reserve for right now, given that the reserve had been thoroughly drained over the last two days and hadn't exactly been topped off by the fitful excuse for sleep I'd just had.

'But then again, we don't always get what we want or need, huh?' I knew that better than most. I opened Higgins' message first.

"Yep, alright. Good," I nodded to myself, satisfied with what I read. He'd basically thanked me for the information I'd sent over last night before passing out—Valeria's rundown on the OPN reimbursement claims. He'd apparently already been working on a few of them himself, but the"breach of duty of care" angle hadn't even crossed his mind, so the heads-up had been more than welcome.

I'd made sure to note, when I'd sent it, that the advice hadn't been my own idea but came from an acquaintance—didn't want the guy thinking I'd been sitting on useful legal knowledge the entire time the crew had been hashing things out and just hadn't bothered to share. Either way, he was grateful and I was glad I'd sent it. Cryo's message was up next. [" Heard about the gig from Higgins. Listen… Sorry that shit happened to ya. Feel kind of like a blank, recommendin' the crew and then stuff goin' down like that. If ya need anythin', just holler. Ya got a favour good with me. Seriously glad to hear ya made it out alive. And… Thanks. For keeping 'em alive and all. Higgings had only good things to say about ya. I'll hit ya up when I got another gig, cut ya in with a good split, if yer willin'." – Cryo] I couldn't help but feel a slight bit of warmth rise in my chest at the message. I hadn't even considered that Cryo might have heard about what happened, much less that he'd care enough to reach out.

But then again, he did strike me as a bit of a softy where I was concerned, when it came down to it—he hadn't zeroed me during that gig despite my fuck-up, after all. I quickly sent back a message. ["Just the life of an Operator, really. All good. I'll reach out if I need anything, promise. Looking forward to the gig!" - Ela] I wouldn't mind hanging out with Mouse and Pina again—and one could never have enough potential gigs lined up.

I wasn't forced to accept any of them after all; just having them available was already a massive gain. Finally, it was time for the dojo crew's messages, which I wasn't particularly expecting to contain any grand revelations—just more obligations and time limits. ["One day after the next session, we will meet at my place. Exact time to be determined during said session. Details are attached." - Thomas] My heart rate spiked slightly at the sight of his full first name, and the baggage that came with it from the game.

'Not the same person, Sera…' I consciously reminded myself. Whatever kind of monster Thomas Erius Laken had been in the game's timeline, he was not the same here. I was aware of that fact. I knew it, fundamentally. Yet —when I opened the attached details and his full name appeared as a residential marker on the Megabuilding's 144th floor, I felt another brief, sharp pang of fight-or-flight kick through me as memories of the questline surfaced unbidden. The mutilated bodies. Dozens upon dozens of them.

Operators torn apart like ragdolls, limbs ripped from torsos with a raw, animal brutality that had nothing mechanical or calculated about it—just overwhelming force applied by something that no longer understood or cared what it was doing to the things in front of it. Civilians who'd been in the wrong hallway at the wrong time, smeared across walls and floors, crushed into rockcrete hard enough to leave nothing but wet impressions behind.

NAPD officers who'd responded thinking it was a standard call and had been scattered across multiple rooms in pieces, body armor shredded like wet paper, torn open by hands that had long since stopped belonging to anything human. One image in particular—a screenshot someone had posted on a wiki page that I'd never managed to fully scrub from my memory—of a young Operator's upper half, dragged halfway down a stairwell by something that had apparently lost interest partway through.

Anyone who had tried to stop what Thomas Erius Laken had mutated into by that point—the experimental bionics rejecting, fusing and rewriting him into something that was less a person and more a frenzied, biomechanical animal operating on nothing but broken impulse—had met an end that wasn't so much violent as it was indiscriminate.

The thing he'd become had simply moved through them, the way a natural disaster moved through a building, and what was left behind was the kind of aftermath that lingered in crime scene footage and hollowed out the investigators who had to catalog it.

'You can make it so this never happens. Just keep a close eye on him. Maybe even get closer to him — like a friend. That way you can stop it all before it has any chance of happening… Or at least catch it early and convince Valeria to get us the fuck out of here before it all goes down.' Either way, Tom was not that. Tom was just Tom. A guy—if extremely rich and undoubtedly well-connected—in a dojo group who sent slightly too-formal messages and had a competitive streak wider than the Megabuilding itself.

That was all he was right now, and I was going to keep treating him accordingly—as best as I could, anyway. I sent back a message confirming I'd received the details and was looking forward to the extra session, then moved on. That left Kenzie's. ["Managed to talk my family into it! You can come by pretty much whenever, but… Well my sister is using the family-dojo almost every day. So… I managed to 'reserve' it for tomorrow, by asking really nicely (and quite a lot until she said yes!). Does… Does that work? Let me know asap!" - Kenzie] My eyes widened slightly and I checked the time — still early. The message had been sitting there since last night, which meant Kenzie had probably been checking her inbox every fifteen minutes since sending it, knowing her.

'Not too late then… Maybe.' I wrote back immediately. ["Sorry for the late reply, I had so much work to do yesterday! Seriously, so sorry! I'd love to stop by, if you're still down for later today?" - Sera] I didn't even get through washing my hair before the reply came in. ["Yes! It's still totally good! How about… around 14: 00? That would leave us at least a few hours to figure things out, yes? Doesn't have to be that time though! I can do just about any time, really. My sister's ready to make room for us whenever." - Kenzie] I could practically hear the excited tail-swishing and ear-flapping through the text.

'14: 00. That leaves me around six hours to deal with the Anima Network, get that fixed up, collect my experience, handle whatever Level Ups need leveling—if I can even handle them right now…' I ran through the mental checklist, water drumming against my shoulders.

'That should be fine. Assuming the injection fix is quick, at least.' You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. I mulled it over for a bit longer, still not fully sure whether to commit. I had no real idea how long the whole Anima Network injection thing was truly going to take—could be five minutes, could be an hour, could involve me lying on Mr. Shori's kitchen floor twitching while he stood over me with that disappointed grandpa expression.

Any of those felt equally likely at this point. But I also didn't want to blow off Kenzie on our first real meeting outside the dojo. She'd clearly gone out of her way to secure the space, badgered her sister until she'd caved, and sent a message that had more nervous energy packed into it than most people managed in an entire conversation.' Do I even really need Anima for this, though?' I thought.

'The experience from training isn't going to go to waste either way, whether the Network's fixed or not. Like yeah, it would obviously be better to have it—give Kenzie the full sparring experience she's probably expecting—but I doubt she'd be mad if I'm not at a hundred percent. She'd probably just worry about me, honestly, which is almost worse, in a way...'

I thought it over for a few more moments, then nodded to myself and committed, figuring that the first session was likely about as much just getting to know each other on a bit more of a personal level, as it was about actual sparring. I quickly ran through my daily workout regimen as well, then headed down toward the 16th floor—as Sera, today. Mr. Shori let me in through the back as usual, the door giving its familiar resistance before the lift-and-push got it open.

The kitchen smelled the way it always did—broth, algae, warmth—but the prep counters were still mostly clean and the burners were off. He hadn't started fully diving into his work yet. He had clearly been waiting for me. That alone told me he'd been up early dealing with this nonsense, which produced a complicated knot of gratitude and guilt that I elected to process later when I had more brain to spare.

"{Got it,}" he said, by way of greeting, and nodded toward the back of the kitchen.

"{Thank you,}" I said, and genuinely meant it.

"{Seriously. I can't even imagine how—}" He waved it off in the way he always did, the motion carrying the same energy as a door closing on a topic that had already been resolved. I let it go, knowing that I wouldn't make any headway on this with the old man. He leaned against the counter across from me and folded his arms, his expression settling into the instructional mode I'd come to recognize.

"{This is not going to be pleasant,}" he said.

"{The injector works by cauterizing the damaged Network. That is the simplest way I can describe it.}" He held up a hand, anticipating my question.

"{Right now, your Network is bleeding. Not in the way you would bleed from a cut—more like a million tiny lacerations across the entire structure, all of them leaking simultaneously. Small enough individually that none of them are dangerous on their own, but together they are draining you constantly. It's why you can't really use Anima right now.}" I nodded slowly, the image landing with an uncomfortable clarity.

"{After the injection, those lacerations will be sealed, forcibly. Hence, cauterized. The Network will still be wounded, still weakened—but it will no longer be losing what it cannot afford to lose.}" He fixed me with a look.

"{It should resolve the issue you are experiencing with your functions. That is what I was told by the person I consulted with.}" I raised an eyebrow at that—"the person I consulted with" —and let it hang there for a moment, giving him the opening to explain further. I was very interested in who Mr. Shori confided in about this sort of stuff. He did not take it.

"{However,}" he continued, as if I hadn't done anything at all, "{you must not—under any circumstances short of genuine, immediate threat to your life—push significant Anima through the Network for at least two weeks.}""{Two weeks,}" I repeated slowly.

"{Better would be a month.}" He looked at me.

"{But I am aware that patience is not among your more developed qualities.}" I opened my mouth to protest, caught myself, and settled for a mild pout instead, because I couldn't exactly deny that, could I. He'd known me for longer than practically anyone else in this world. He knew exactly how I handled"waiting" for things.

"{The Technique especially,}" he continued, his tone hardening slightly.

"{Anima Razor is completely off the table until the Network has properly healed. No exceptions beyond the truest of emergencies. The cauterization will hold under light use—small amounts, ambient flow, the diagnostic Sigil we practiced. But heavy channeling through freshly sealed pathways?}" He shook his head once.

"{You will undo everything the injection accomplished and be far, far worse off than you started. Seriously, girl. Do not mess with this.}" I thought about that for a moment. Two weeks minimum without [Anima Razor] was—not ideal. But the larger question was whether the restriction extended to the System itself. Could I still Level Up? Still download Skills and Attributes?' The System would probably warn me,' I reasoned, turning it over.

'It basically has to, right? The whole thing is built around wanting to be used—it literally forces upgrades on me, throws timers at me, practically shoves choices down my throat at every opportunity. There's no way it would just silently let me fry my own Network by accepting a download it knew I couldn't handle.' The most likely scenario was that it would simply tell me what was available and what wasn't. A Rank up for Reflex from 7 to 8?

Probably not happening until the Network was fully healed—that kind of Attribute upgrade drew deep as I'd recently, very painfully, learned. But a Skill going from Level 3 to 4? That might need less juice, so to speak, and just function normally. The System would probably sort it out. It had to, to make any sense. Ultimately, I'd deal with the exact specifics when I actually got there.

"{Understood. Two weeks minimum, a month ideally, no [Anima Razor] unless I'm about to die. Light use only. Got it.}" I looked at him.

"{How do we do this, exactly?}" Mr. Shori reached under the counter and produced a clean, folded towel. He held it out to me. I simply looked at it for a few moments.

"{For your mouth,}" he said.

"{I'm told this is not pleasant.}""{Ah. Right.}" I took it, grateful for the heads-up while simultaneously recalibrating my expectations for the next few minutes in a direction I didn't entirely love. He guided me toward the singular chair tucked into the far corner of the back room, near the black mirror panel. I sat down and tried to project the energy of someone who was definitely, completely fine with what was about to happen. Mr.

Shori moved to the mirror panel, triggered the hidden compartment with the same sequence of drawer-clicks as before, and reached inside. The injector he withdrew was—surprisingly mundane. Just a standard auto-injector, the kind you could find in any Ripper's supply cabinet or halfway decent trauma kit… Like mine. I literally had like two of those exact same looking ones—almost.

The liquid inside was a pinkish hue, but not even dramatically so—not neon, or glowing, or even swirling with some visible Anima energy or anything remotely impressive like that. Just a slightly off-color fluid that looked like someone had diluted blood about ten times over and called it a day. I stared at it for a second.

'That's it? That's the Anima Network repair tool? It looks like watered-down cough syrup…' I was, admittedly, a bit disappointed. Something that was going to cauterize an entire internal energy network could have at least had the decency to look suitably dramatic about it—then again, it probably would with Anima Sight… But that wasn't available right now. I put the towel between my teeth and held out my arm. Mr. Shori shook his head.

"{Your neck.}" I looked at the injector. Then at him. Then back at the injector. My stomach did a small, unhappy flip at the mental image of an aggressive needle going into the side of my neck, which was—objectively—one of the parts of my body I least wanted aggressive needles anywhere near. But getting the Rest Function back was worth it.

Getting the Rest Function back was worth having my neck pierced by ten aggressive needles, honestly, and anything beyond that was negotiable depending on how bad the previous night had been at the time. I tilted my head to one side and tried not to think about it. Mr. Shori stepped in close, positioned the auto-injector against the side of my neck with the steady, practiced hand of someone who had done this plenty of times before, and pressed the trigger. I felt a quick, sharp prick. Then fire.

My entire body lit up—not from the neck outward, but everywhere, simultaneously, as if the injection had bypassed all intermediate steps and just set the whole system ablaze at once. Every nerve, every muscle, every inch of skin from my scalp to the soles of my feet suddenly decided that they were on fire and needed me to know about it immediately and in great detail. I bit down hard on the towel and let out a muffled grunt that I would generously describe as particularly displeased with the situation.

It was—honestly okay. Like it was bad, don't get me wrong. Genuinely, properly bad, in a way that made my jaw clench and my hands grip the sides of the chair hard enough that my already-damaged fingers screamed in protest. The burning didn't let up, didn't ebb, and just sat there at a consistent, deeply unpleasant intensity that seemed content to stay exactly where it was for as long as it damn well pleased. But —and that was an important but—!

I'd already been atomically reconstructed by a System-mandated overhaul not that long ago. I'd had NeuroCorpse running through my veins twice in the last few weeks—once courtesy of Valeria's idea of a lesson and once during the Nyxstalker incident. I knew what real, soul-deep, make-you-wish-for-actual-death-many-times-over pain felt like. I'd been there. I had the damn frequent flyer miles to prove it, even. This was still very much in the category of bad. No question. But comparatively?

Comparatively, this was something I could actually handle in a fairly reasonable manner, as long as I kept my teeth in the towel and my eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel. The light being all my System functions coming back online. The experience gains I had stacked up and were just waiting for me to collect them. The loot from the gig that I still hadn't collected either. And the Rest Function… Mostly the Rest Function.'

Almost there,'I told myself, breathing hard through the towel as the burning continued its deeply unwelcome occupation of my entire nervous system.' Just ride it out. You've had worse. You've had so much worse. This is nothing. This is a Tuesday. This is—' It was still really, really fucking bad, actually. But I was handling it without too much muffled screaming. Just a little bit of it. As a treat.

It took what felt like forever but was closer to seven and a half minutes—I'd pulled up the clock on my cerebral interface when Mr. Shori had first pressed the trigger, and checked it again as the burning finally started to ebb, receding in slow, uneven waves like a tide that didn't want to leave but was running out of reasons to stay. Then I heard it: The familiar System chime. It rang inside my head for the first time since the ERROR messages had appeared.

I threw the interface open so fast I nearly bit through the towel, and couldn't help the satisfied grunt that came out as I read the notification. [System]: NOTICE - Anima Network has reached minimum viable level. Re-engaging G. E. M. A. System… G. E. M. A. System successfully re-engaged. [System]: NOTICE - Anima-related functions have been re-enabled.

[System]: NOTICE - The following function(s) have been re-enabled: Ego (Active), Blademaster's Slice, Blademaster's Throw, [Manifestation], [{Anima Razor}] (Anima-portion of Skill), [Anima Razor] (Ability), [Serenity], [Homing Beacon], [Sharpen], [Lightfoot], [Wall Runner], [Resourceful Chef], [Spectral Scanner], [Lethal Flow], [Vital Sense], [Appraisal] (Ability), [Flow] (Ability), Rest Function, Inventory Function, Detailed System Interface. [System]: INFORMATION - Anima Network still below optimal level.

Certain features might not be fully available until further repairs have occurred. Features affected will be marked in the interface itself.

'Welcome home, Rest Function. I missed you so much, babygirl…!'