Chapter 726 --726

Chapter 726: Chapter-726

"You are a menace!" the System wailed. "You just scammed a kind-hearted doctor with a piece of scrap wood!"

"It is called budgeting," Heena corrected coldly.

Without waiting for Ren to recover from his shock, Heena stepped over the threshold and walked out of the clinic, disappearing into the cold, bustling labyrinth of the lower market district.

.

.

.

Ten minutes after executing her flawless, incredibly dramatic exit from the clinic, Heena came to a complete, agonizing standstill.

The adrenaline of her performance was beginning to wear off, leaving her fractured ribs to throb in rhythm with her heartbeat. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the crushing realization of her current predicament. She was standing in the middle of a freezing, pitch-black alleyway, entirely surrounded by shadows.

The golden lion cub manifested beside her, its glowing blue interface casting a faint, pathetic light on the damp cobblestones. It looked around the desolate space in absolute disbelief.

"Host," the System sighed, its voice dropping into a tone of profound exhaustion. "Where exactly should we go?"

Heena leaned heavily against the damp brickwork, her fragmented memories stubbornly refusing to provide a map of the lower market district. "Right?"

"Host, the right side is a solid brick wall," the System deadpanned.

Heena frowned, rubbing her throbbing temples. "Then how about left?"

The golden lion cub literally lifted a digital paw and facepalmed. "Left is also a wall."

Heena gritted her teeth, her patience officially snapping. "...In front."

"In front is also a wall!" the System shrieked, throwing its paws up in the air. "You walked us into a literal box! It is a dead end!"

Heena squeezed her eyes shut, a headache blooming right behind her eyes that threatened to split her skull in two. It wasn’t entirely her fault. The fragmented memories of the original host were like a shattered mirror; she had the broad concepts of the world, but the minute details—like how to navigate this miserable city—were completely missing.

To make matters worse, ancient city planning was a literal nightmare. The back alleys of the capital weren’t built on a grid; they were a chaotic, sprawling puzzle of dead ends, winding paths, and sudden courtyards. Every time she thought she was walking toward a main road, a random house would jut out and force her into another labyrinth.

And the most infuriating problem of all?

There was absolutely no light. In her past lifetimes, even in less advanced worlds, there were usually torches or magical luminescences. But here, oil and wax were expensive commodities. The commoners of the lower district certainly weren’t going to waste their hard-earned copper lighting up a back alley for stray dogs and lost transmigrators. The bustling main markets might have lanterns, but out here in the residential slums, it was practically a void.

If it weren’t for the faint, silver moonlight slicing through the narrow gaps between the tiled roofs, Heena would have been completely blind.

"Where the fuck are we?" Heena muttered, her composure finally slipping. She kicked a stray pebble, instantly regretting the motion as a sharp spike of pain shot up her side.

"We are standing in the dark, injured, and entirely lost," the System summarized unhelpfully, floating higher to try and peek over the walls. "And to think, you just gave away our only free shelter for the sake of looking cool."

"Shut up," Heena snapped, though she was secretly beginning to realize the sheer absurdity of her situation.

Heena snapped at the golden lion cub to shut up, but underneath her freezing, stoic exterior, a cold knot of genuine, undeniable worry was beginning to tighten in her chest.

She was physically wrecked. No matter how much bitter, boiling herbal sludge Ren had poured down her throat, shattered ribs and deep internal bruising did not magically heal in a single afternoon. Every breath she took felt like inhaling broken glass.

Normally, in a desperate situation like this, she would simply open the Bureau’s shop interface and buy a premium healing elixir. But that was entirely impossible. Her Nexus point balance was currently sitting in the deep, abyssal negatives. The massive point payout she had earned from her flawless SSS-Plus rating in the last world had instantly been drained to cover mandatory temporal extraction fees and the administrative penalties for the dimensional collapse that dropped her here.

She couldn’t even afford to buy a basic, bottom-tier blood-clotting pill from the System’s emergency store, let alone a magical panacea to fix her broken bones. She was completely, utterly broke in both universes.

And that presented a massive, lethal problem.

This was the lower market district. In any ancient society, the unlit, neglected back alleys were the absolute absolute dregs of the capital—a prime hunting ground for thugs, cutpurses, and desperate vagrants.

Heena pressed her back flat against the cold brick wall, her dark eyes scanning the pitch-black shadows stretching across the dead end. She was a peerless killer in her mind, but this battered vessel was terrifyingly fragile. If she were attacked right now, her usual brutal, calculated lethality was completely out of reach. If she tried to throw a proper punch, the torque would likely snap her bound ribs entirely and puncture her own lung before she even connected with her target’s jaw.

She simply did not have the physical strength to protect herself.

And if a group of robbers cornered her in this void? They wouldn’t just beat her. They would search her. If she lost the five silver coins and the damp property deed currently tucked into her waistband, she was truly, unequivocally done for. Without that miserable sum, she couldn’t buy food, she couldn’t secure the spice shop, and she would slowly starve to death in the gutters of a society that had already discarded her.

A sudden, sharp scrape of a boot against loose cobblestones echoed from the mouth of the alley.

Heena instantly stopped breathing. The golden lion cub hovering beside her immediately extinguished its glowing blue interface, plunging them both into complete, suffocating darkness.

"Host," the System whispered through their mental link, its digital voice trembling with pure static. "Someone is coming."

Heena’s hand instinctively crept toward her waistband, her fingers brushing against the cold, hard edges of the silver coins. She forced her screaming muscles to tense, her analytical mind rapidly calculating the absolute worst-case scenario.

Whoever was walking down that pitch-black alley was not someone she could afford to cross paths with right now.

She looked up at the brick wall enclosing the dead end. It was just slightly taller than her own head. In a modern city, it would have been capped with iron spikes or broken glass, but here, it was just crumbling, weather-beaten stone topped with slippery clay tiles. She had absolutely no idea what was on the other side—a wealthy merchant’s private estate, a guard dog’s kennel, or just a garbage pit—but it was her only way out.

"Host, no! Your ribs!" the System shrieked in her mind, realizing exactly what she was about to do. "If you tear those bandages, your lungs could collapse!"

"Dying of a punctured lung tomorrow is better than being robbed and killed tonight," Heena snapped back mentally.

She took a single, shallow breath, locking her jaw so tightly her teeth ached. She took two quick, staggering steps forward, planted her bare foot against a slightly protruding brick, and launched herself upward.

Her hands clamped onto the cold, damp top edge of the wall.