Chapter 149: The Temptation of Homecoming (Patreon)

After Yukinoshita Yukino left, only Isac and Kaguya remained in the room.

The fireplace in the master bedroom was burning strong — probably out of worry that Isac would catch a chill, they'd kept it running at full blast the whole time.

"How long was I out?" Isac asked.

Kaguya glanced out the window at the sky, already fully dark, and answered, "About a full day, give or take."

"After you passed out, Hayasaka Ai bandaged your wounds as best she could, then carried you straight back home on her back. We left most of the gear behind — just grabbed the important stuff. Figured we'd go back for the rest once you woke up."

"Did you find my handgun?" Isac asked. He remembered trying to shoot the cougar — but the thing had been too fast, as if it knew the gun was a threat, and knocked it out of his hand in an instant.

"Found it. Right there on the nightstand." Seeing Isac wince and grit his teeth just from turning his head — the movement pulling at his wounds — Kaguya got up, walked to the cabinet by the bed, picked up the Glock 17 to show him, then set it back down.

"Good, that's a relief." Isac didn't dare move again — even turning his head hurt. Was that oversized housecat really that vicious?

He lay in bed, head propped on a pillow, blanket pulled up over him, unable to see his own body — so he had no way of knowing how bad the damage actually was.

But Isac clearly remembered the glowing cougar only biting his right forearm once, and clawing his chest and stomach a few times. Yet right now it felt like every muscle in his body had been shredded — the kind of pain where even the smallest movement hurt.

Had his brain's limiter switched off while he was fighting the cougar?

Wasn't there a theory like that?

Something about the human body having limitless potential, but the brain deliberately capping it to prevent injury.

Sounded like a stretch, sure — but glowing green, zombie-like wolves, bears, and cougars were already a thing, so a brain limiter didn't seem all that far-fetched anymore.

Might as well throw in a magnetic pole shift while they were at it and complete the set.

At that point, forget the cougar — even the mutant grizzly from the lakeside cabin would seem as harmless as a kitten next to him.

"How bad are my injuries?" Isac asked, watching Kaguya, who sat in a chair preparing to change his bandages.

Kaguya scooped the ground beard lichen into a bowl to have ready, and answered, "Well, according to the terminal, you're out of danger."

"Terminal... what terminal?" Hearing the word gave Isac the same disoriented feeling as waking up to someone telling him, 'The surgery was a success — you're a beautiful girl now.'

Had he missed some crucial plot development while he was unconscious?

Did that mean he'd skipped a chunk of his own life? (lol)

"It's that program that suddenly appeared on Hayasaka's phone before — full name, the Survivor Terminal System."

"System?"

Isac's heart skipped. Don't tell him this was the classic 'system' every world-crossed protagonist was supposed to get.

"So this Survivor Terminal System," he asked, "what exactly does it do?"

"It can monitor a survivor's physical condition," she answered. "And... I think it can also boost your physical stats and skill proficiency? But that costs survival points. Remember those aurora wolf carcasses that vanished? Once the aurora ended, they got automatically converted into survival points."

"That sounds exactly like grinding monsters for XP in a video game," Isac muttered. The aurora wolves they'd run into were basically mobs — kill them, get experience, spend the experience on stat points.

"The terminal's developer field does list 'Survival Game,'" Kaguya added, picking up on the word.

There were so many things wrong with that, Isac didn't even know where to start. He held it in for a long moment before finally forcing out two words.

"...Well, damn."

"Oh, right — how are you feeling now? You lost a lot of blood back there. We were worried you might not make it, so we spent our survival points on a low-tier physical enhancement for you."

Don't let the word "low-tier" fool you — it wasn't cheap at all. It took nearly every survival point the three of them had between them just to scrape together enough.

"Fine as long as I don't move. The second I do, everything hurts." Isac described the sensation. "Feels like every muscle in my body's been torn apart."

Kaguya thought it over. "I've heard building muscle works by tearing it first and repairing it after. There's a term for it too — supercompensation, I think?"

She glanced at Isac, pinned helplessly in place, and said, a little uncertain, "Maybe you're growing a lot of muscle this time, and that's why it hurts so much?"

Isac: ...

So that was why getting mauled once by a cougar hurt this much — he'd been enhanced.

Then again, more tearing didn't necessarily mean more muscle gained... whatever. There was a system now — why was he even sweating the details?

But seriously, could they maybe throw some painkillers into the next enhancement? If a low-tier one hurt this much, what would mid or high-tier feel like — pass out from the pain?

"Can I see this terminal you're talking about?" Isac asked. Unable to move, he had no choice but to ask Kaguya for help.

But to his surprise, Kaguya shook her head, sounding almost regretful. "Can't. The phone only turns on during aurora nights."

Isac was stunned. So this so-called survival system only worked during aurora nights?

What a garbage system.

Was this thing even reliable?!

"All right, I'm changing your bandages now. Save the questions for later." Kaguya stood up from her chair, medical bandages and gauze in hand.

"Let's see... by the book, I should take off the old bandages first..."

Listening to Kaguya's steady stream of "should," "maybe," and "probably," Isac started to feel distinctly uneasy.

"Wait — Kaguya, do you actually know how to change a bandage?"

Kaguya tilted her head, as if puzzled by the question, but answered anyway.

"I learned it before."

"Good, that's a relief."

Isac's heart settled — he did trust Kaguya's ability to learn things.

"Though this is probably my first time doing it on an actual person."

"—!"

How was that any different from a hospital nurse casually mentioning, mid-injection, that her practical exam scores back in school hadn't exactly been stellar?

"So — uh, where's Hayasaka?" Isac blurted out.

"Downstairs, sorting through the intel we gathered on this trip."

Kaguya answered while carefully pulling back the blanket covering Isac.

Underneath, Isac's upper body was bare, bandages wrapped around his right arm, shoulder blade, and chest, faint red seeping through. The worst was his right forearm, where the cougar had bitten him — it had bled the most, and during the first bandage change the wrapping had turned almost entirely red.

With that much blood loss, no wonder Yukinoshita Yukino and the others hadn't bothered verifying whether the Survivor Terminal System was even real before spending their survival points on a physical enhancement package for him.

Come to think of it — if this was a survival system, why did it only offer physical enhancements and not medical treatment?

Even the crew of some wilderness survival reality show knew to send in a medical team for regular checkups.

Kaguya had barely gotten the words out when Hayasaka Ai materialized at the bedroom door.

Isac lit up like he'd just seen his savior. "Hayasaka Ai! You're here!"

Baffled by his enthusiasm, Hayasaka Ai still nodded. "Yeah. I'm here."

Seeing what Kaguya was doing, she asked, "Getting ready to change his bandages?"

"Yep." Kaguya nodded, then added, "Perfect timing, actually. Help me hold this guy down."

"Wait, why do you need to hold me down?" Isac couldn't help but ask.

Kaguya smiled — a lovely smile — but what came out of her mouth sent a chill straight through him.

"To stop you from thrashing around and tearing the wound open, obviously."

"Wait, why would I be thrashing around?"

"People thrash when it hurts. Obviously."

She said it as naturally as if she were stating a scientific fact.

"How much is this going to hurt, exactly?"

If Isac had been able to move, he'd have already made a run for it.

"Don't worry, it's normal to hurt." Kaguya tried to soothe her patient.

The patient wasn't buying it, and turned instead to the intern's supervisor.

"Hayasaka, say something!"

Hayasaka Ai thought it over. "I'll do my best."

Best at what, exactly?!

"All right, time to change the bandages. Patient, please refrain from interfering with medical staff at work." Kaguya kicked off her shoes, climbed onto the bed, and knee-walked over to Isac's side.

Seeing this, Hayasaka Ai followed, carrying the beard lichen already ground into paste.

The two of them flanked him, one on each side.

As if resigned to his fate, Isac stared blankly up at the ceiling.

"One last request — can I bite down on a stick?"

"Sorry, no sticks available."

"Oh, we've got one."

"Tch, so many demands from this patient."

With that, Intern Doctor Kaguya stopped entertaining Patient Isac's requests and got straight to work.

Unwrap the old bandage, clean the wound, reapply medicine, wrap on a fresh bandage.

Isac had braced himself to black out from the pain again, but to his surprise, sharp-tongued as she was, Kaguya's hands were remarkably gentle. She was especially careful unwrapping the bandages, worried that too rough a motion might tear the wound back open.

Whenever she wasn't sure about something, she had Hayasaka Ai help from the side.

So this was what they meant by "sharp tongue, soft heart."

"Huh... that didn't really hurt?"

Finishing the last wound, Kaguya let out a quiet, invisible sigh of relief. At Isac's comment, she wiped a bead of sweat off her forehead and said, a little peeved, "Consider yourself lucky you're hurt — otherwise I'd have given you a hard time."

Then, almost wistfully, she added, "The wounds are already scabbing over. That's fast healing. I guess the Survivor Terminal really does work."

Given how bad Isac's wounds had been, even with proper medical equipment, there was no way they should have scabbed over this fast.

Clearly, the system was doing its job.

"You told him everything?" Hayasaka Ai asked.

"Some of it. Haven't gotten to the rest yet," Kaguya answered.

The cryptic exchange left Isac confused. "What do you mean?" he couldn't help asking.

Hayasaka Ai remembered what Yukinoshita Yukino had told her — but looking at Isac now, it was obvious he wouldn't rest easy without an explanation.

Kaguya, who hadn't been given any such instructions, spoke up first. "About that Survivor Terminal System — besides enhancing your physical stats and skills, it also shows that if you meet certain conditions and pay enough survival points, you can return to our original world."

"We can go back?!" That got Isac's full attention. Just hearing about the chance to return to modern society made the pain seem to fade a little.

"What are the exact conditions?" he pressed.

"Don't know." Kaguya admitted honestly. "The terminal doesn't say. It just mentioned it'll give more guidance next Aurora Week."

Hayasaka Ai picked up the thread. "Given that the only known source of survival points right now is killing aurora creatures during aurora nights, we're probably in for a lot more fighting going forward."

Ever since the crash landing, the survival squad's strategy had always been to avoid conflict — unless something genuinely threatened their lives, they generally didn't go looking for trouble with dangerous wildlife.

After running into those frenzied animals on aurora nights, Isac had said they should never go outside during an aurora again — but clearly that wasn't an option anymore.

After all, the only known way to earn survival points was by hunting aurora creatures, and returning to their original world required both meeting certain conditions and turning in enough points.

With guns in hand and proper preparation, the aurora creatures weren't much of a threat — but the problem was, their ammunition was limited.

Without bullets, a gun was no better than a fire poker.

On this Radio Tower trip alone, the squad had fought two battles and burned through half their entire ammo reserve — practically back to square one overnight.

At this rate, it wouldn't take many more encounters before they'd be forced into hand-to-hand combat with these creatures.

That was simply not acceptable.

Even Hayasaka Ai couldn't guarantee she'd walk away unscathed against animals glowing green all over, aggression maxed out, utterly fearless of death.

Even a cornered rabbit will bite — and here they were dealing with wolves, cougars, and bears.

So the squad needed to find a solution before the next Aurora Week.

Whether it was finding more ammunition or crafting new weapons, one thing was certain — hand-to-hand combat wasn't an option.

The bandages wrapped around Isac's body were proof enough of that.