Chapter 70: Special Gift

The harsh smell of antiseptic and disinfectant struck Mark’s nostrils, jolting him awake as he sat bolt upright, taking in the bright, clinical interior of the ward around him.

Sunlight poured in through the windows, washing the room in warm light, the school grounds faintly visible beyond the curtains separating each individual bed.

Samantha’s expression shifted the instant she registered Mark sitting fully awake, a confused, disoriented look settling over his face, entirely natural for someone only just regaining consciousness.

Shock crossed her features first, as though she genuinely hadn’t expected him to come around this soon, quickly replaced by a flood of visible relief as she pressed both hands to her chest with a heavy sigh.

Mark frowned faintly at the reaction. He still hated hospital settings, especially surrounded by that same sharp, stinging medical scent, the one that always dragged his thoughts straight back to his mother’s condition and the countless hours she’d spent confined to a sickbed of her own.

"Can you tell me what time it is?" he asked, shifting to sit properly upright on the bed.

Samantha hesitated a beat too long before answering, and something twisted uncomfortably in Mark’s chest at the delay. He already suspected exactly why she was stalling.

"Um, you’ve actually been out for sixteen hours straight, which puts us right around noon now. Today’s been genuinely wild around here, chaotic even, so there’s honestly not much left of it," she informed him carefully.

Mark’s eyes darkened, fingers tightening hard around the blanket bunched in his lap. A faint tremor ran through his body as the full weight of her words finally landed. It meant he’d missed the competition entirely. Worse still, the final round along with it.

Just then, the door swung open, and Derek stepped inside, arms loaded with several packages, whistling some idle tune under his breath.

The tune died the instant he registered Mark sitting up, fully conscious. Their eyes met for a beat.

"Well, would you look at that. Perfect timing on the wake up."

Mark raised an eyebrow. "You mean for the competition?"

Derek shook his head, setting the packages down on the nearby table.

"Yeah, let’s just say you missed the whole thing entirely. Even if you’d woken up a little earlier, honestly, the competition had already moved too far along by then for it to matter much, so..." He never finished the thought, cut off as someone else stepped through the doorway behind him.

Mark’s eyes widened at the sight of Hermione.

She wore a fitted blue tracksuit, the color striking sharply against her red hair and ruby eyes, the cut of it accentuating her lean, athletic frame. Her gaze snapped immediately toward Derek, who flinched again despite himself before gritting his teeth in obvious frustration.

"Did you actually give him what I told you to?" she asked sharply.

Derek shrugged. "Hey, I wasn’t about to rush it, alright? I was working my way up to it. Was planning on giving him those exclusive smoothies made from the new fruit stock."

Mark’s eyes lit up briefly at the mention of smoothies. Better still, flavored with that particular new fruit variant. Smoothies of nearly any flavor had ranked among his favorite drinks since childhood, but ever since that fruit entered the picture, his enthusiasm for them had become genuinely unmatched.

The fruit in question was called Gammy fruit, formed originally during the earliest days of the Mana Age’s arrival, a byproduct of the sweeping magical changes that had reshaped the world back then. Ever since, it had held real, lasting value worldwide, prized both for its rarity and its distinctly sweet flavor.

It grew most commonly across the natural, untouched regions of Wland, treated there almost like a genuine national treasure. Its value had even drawn serious interest from overseas, with America reportedly offering major contracts and trade partnerships in hopes of securing a meaningful share of its production for the wider global market.

Hermione shook her head, arms crossing over her chest.

Mark blinked as sudden realization struck him. If Hermione was standing here now, that meant the competition had either paused for a break or, far more likely, wrapped up entirely. The second option seemed considerably more probable, since ordinary breaks rarely allowed contestants to travel this far from the arena, not unless they’d already been eliminated from their match or granted special permission to leave.

"So what exactly is going on? What happened while I was out cold?" he asked, leaning forward eagerly.

Samantha fidgeted slightly with the clipboard still in her hands. Her body language already told most of the story on its own, though Mark clearly wanted to hear it spoken aloud, directly from one of them.

Derek let out a heavy sigh while Hermione’s gaze dropped briefly toward the floor. The silence between them spoke louder than words ever could have, the answer already painfully obvious.

Mark’s eyes sharpened further, until Hermione finally broke the silence herself.

"You were absent for the rest of the competition, so you ended up placing fourth overall, based purely on the points you’d already banked from the earlier rounds. I took first place. Kai came in second. Mia landed third."

"Do you even know who’s responsible for this? Who left me stuck in here the entire time?!" Mark snapped, rising sharply to his feet.

Hermione nodded. "From what I heard, Jack was involved, along with a couple others."

"That’s not even the worst part. Now that you’ve told me the top three, something’s clicking into place. I remember Jack now, and Victor, and that other one, Roman. They must have pulled this off for their respective masters, Kai and Mia. Neither of those two ever made peace with me, and honestly, they’ve never made peace with each other either. This whole setup..." Mark’s jaw clenched hard, the sentence trailing off unfinished.

Derek looked genuinely startled by the sheer intensity radiating off Mark, though he understood it well enough underneath the surprise. Had this happened to him instead, had his own shot at the spotlight been stolen out from under him this cleanly, he doubted his own reaction would have looked any different.

For Mark, this competition had represented one of his only real chances to accomplish something meaningful for his family, a genuine shot at rising among the sophomore class and claiming the privileges that came bundled with that kind of recognition. Instead, that opportunity had been ripped away entirely, the direct result of a carefully orchestrated ambush he’d never even seen coming.

Hermione’s expression softened, caution and genuine concern shading her features as she motioned for Derek to hand over the package bag, which he did without hesitation.

She dug through it briefly before pulling free a gleaming silver dungeon core, its polished surface catching and scattering the diffused sunlight filtering through the room.

Mark’s eyes widened at the sight, while Derek couldn’t help but admire it openly, practically gawking at it like some rare, precious gemstone.

Hermione nodded warmly.

"This one’s mine, technically. First place reward, the most valuable of the bunch. Gold went to second place, copper to third. Nothing formal for anyone below that, aside from a class rank bump and a bit of encouragement. But as far as my own personal encouragement goes, my own compensation and gift to give, I’m giving this one to you instead."

She pressed the dungeon core into Mark’s open palm, gently folding his fingers closed around it with both of her hands, a warm smile settling over her face.

Mark blinked hard, momentarily frozen in place before he finally managed to shake himself back into focus.

"Wait, what? No, this is yours. You earned this fair and square, you won. You need this more than I do right now. I really can’t accept it."

Derek raised an eyebrow at the exchange, while Samantha quietly excused herself from the room, giving the three of them a little privacy to work it out.