Chapter 316:Healing.

Chapter 316: 316:Healing.

For almost an entire day, Silver did not move.

Buried beneath the lowest reaches of Death Row Valley, underneath layers upon layers of stone and earth that had collapsed during the destruction of the worm nest, his body remained exactly where it had fallen.

Blood covered much of his clothing, several sections of his armor had been torn apart, and the wounds left behind by the Rank Six queen should have been enough to kill an ordinary Rank Two Contractor several times over.

Even with the emergency rewards provided by the system, his breathing had become so shallow that it was almost impossible to notice, while his heartbeat had slowed to the bare minimum necessary to keep his body alive.

The queen had remained nearby for far longer than Silver would ever know.

It had searched the broken cavern after the collapse, occasionally dragging its enormous body across the stone as it investigated what remained of the intruder who had irritated it enough to pursue him this far from its nest.

Its eyesight had never been particularly good, and its sense of smell was surprisingly poor for a creature of its Teir, but it could still recognize movement, vibration, and the presence of living prey.

Silver gave it none.

Part of that was simply because he was unconscious. The other part came from something far less natural.

The system couldn’t directly control the Rank Six creature, nor could it simply erase Silver from the world around him, but while his body remained inside the emergency recovery state, the faint spatial fluctuations surrounding him had been suppressed almost completely.

His breathing remained shallow, his heartbeat weak, and even the traces of energy that normally distinguished a Contractor from a corpse were reduced as much as possible.

It was not invisibility or protection, just merely enough to encourage the conclusion the queen had already begun reaching on its own.

The human wasn’t moving or fighting and the strange spatial energy had disappeared; so... the human was dead, which was good.

Eventually, hunger, instinct, and concern for its damaged nest became more important than the corpse lying among the rocks.

The queen left.

Its enormous body disappeared into one of the few surviving passages, scraping against stone as it crawled upward through the tunnel system until even the distant vibrations eventually faded.

Silver remained alone and hours passed. Nothing disturbed him.

Then, sometime later, a translucent blue screen appeared above his unconscious body.

[Emergency Recovery Assessment Initiated.]

[Host vital functions: Stable.]

[Major hemorrhaging: Controlled.]

[Skeletal trauma: Stabilized.]

[Internal damage: Within survivable threshold.]

[Mental capacity recovery: 19%.]

[Spatial reserves recovery: 7%.]

Several seconds passed, the another notification appeared.

[Emergency Recovery Threshold Reached.]

[Host condition has stabilized sufficiently.]

[Forced unconscious state no longer required.]

[Consciousness restriction removed.]

Silver’s fingers twitched. Nothing happened for several seconds, then his breathing suddenly deepened.

Pain arrived before consciousness did.

It wasn’t the overwhelming agony he remembered from the final moments of the collapse, when his body had been torn apart and his spatial reserves had been squeezed nearly dry, but it was still enough to make every muscle in his body feel as though someone had spent hours beating him with a metal bar.

Silver slowly opened his eyes but was only met with darkness. His first instinct was to move but his second was stronger.

’Don’t.’

Silver remained perfectly still. He didn’t know where he was, whether the queen was still nearby or whether the cave had finished collapsing.

So he lay there, listening. His breathing remained controlled despite the pain but nothing happened. He waited for a whole minute but the familiar clicking of the worms could not be heard.

He slowly moved his fingers, they responded. Then his toes, also responsive. He carefully rotated one wrist and felt pain but it was manageable.

Silver finally released a slow breath.

"Still alive."

His voice sounded horrible; dry and weak, barely louder than a whisper.

Silver swallowed and immediately regretted it when he realized just how dry his throat was.

He slowly lifted his head.

The darkness remained almost complete, but there was enough faint illumination from several mineral deposits along the distant wall for his eyes to gradually begin adjusting.

The memories slowly returned. Silver’s eyes widened.

"Ravenna."

He tried sitting up too quickly. Pain tore through his side.

"Fuck!"

Silver immediately dropped back against the stone. His hand moved toward his ribs. Nothing seemed broken anymore, but that didn’t mean his body had recovered completely.

He stayed still until the pain subsided.

"Alright." He breathed slowly. "Not doing that again."

He began checking himself properly; arms first, then shoulders, chest, ribs, stomach, and legs. His body was in terrible condition, but nowhere near as terrible as it should have been.

Silver remembered enough of the queen’s final attack to know some of those wounds had been fatal. The system had saved him.

Again.

He looked toward the floating interface.

"Status."

A screen appeared.

Silver barely glanced at most of the numbers. His attention went immediately toward his condition.

[Physical Condition: Severe Recovery]

[Mental Capacity: Critically Depleted ~ Recovering]

[Spatial Reserves: Critically Depleted ~ Recovering]

[Mobility: Limited]

Silver stared.

"Could be worse."

Silver slowly rolled onto one elbow. This time he moved carefully.

His surroundings gradually became clearer. He was in some kind of cavern.

The ceiling above him was uneven and fractured, with enormous roots breaking through sections of stone. Rubble covered most of the ground, and one side of the cavern had completely collapsed into a wall of rock and dirt.

Silver couldn’t immediately see the queen which was good for him. He searched for his weapons. His rifle was gone or buried. He couldn’t tell. But several feet away, something metallic reflected the faint light.

His handgun.

Silver stared at it.

"Thank God."

He crawled toward it. Every movement hurt. By the time his fingers closed around the grip, sweat had already formed across his forehead.

He pulled the weapon toward himself; checked the magazine, chamber, and slide. It was all dirty and scratched but functional.

Silver almost kissed it; instead, he held it close while searching for his sword but he couldn’t find it. He looked around, still nothing.

"Don’t tell me I lost that too."

Then something above him moved slightly.

Silver froze.

His gun immediately rose but nothing attacked. He stared upward to see something hanging several meters above him.

Silver squinted.

It was his sword.

The weapon had somehow become tangled in one of the roots hanging from the fractured ceiling, the strap wrapped around a smaller branch while the sword itself dangled ridiculously above his head.