The oppressive dark of the Weeping Woods dissolved into the familiar, murky gray of his bedroom ceiling. Dev didn't jolt awake. He simply… returned. The transition was becoming smoother, less like a punch and more like a tide pulling him back.
He lay still for a moment, his soul-form settling back into his physical shell. The first thing he always noticed was the pain. Waking up was an inventory of agony. The phantom aches of his soul-form from the Nexus, and the very real, very physical agony of the beating that had killed him.
Except this time, something was wrong. Or rather, something was right.
The screaming, bone-deep throb in his ribs was... dull. The fire in his back was a low ember. He sat up, slowly, not because he had to, but because he was testing the limits. He took a deep, full breath.
His ribs didn't wince. They didn't send a spike of white-hot pain through his chest.
He threw off the thin blanket and looked down. His body was still a pathetic map of bruises, but the angry, deep purples and blacks had faded. They were now a sickly, yellowish-green, like old fruit. They were healing. Healing at a rate that was frankly impossible.
'The 2% Sync Rate...' he thought, his mind latching onto the only possible explanation. 'My (CON) stat... it's working.'
It wasn't regeneration. It wasn't magic. It was just... efficient. His broken body was finally repairing itself, fueled by the tiny fraction of power he'd bled for in the Nexus.
He stood. His (AGI) stat, though barely Synced, translated not as speed, but as balance. He didn't feel clumsy. He felt... stable.
He walked to the small, cracked mirror in his bathroom and flicked on the light. The skinny, bruised kid was still there. No new muscles. No sudden height. He was just as physically pathetic as he'd been yesterday. The 2% was internal, invisible.
But his eyes...
He leaned closer. The fear was gone. The haunted, victimized terror that had lived in his reflection for as long as he could remember had been scrubbed away. Staring back at him were the cold, patient, analytical eyes of the thing that had spent a night methodically ending the lives of monsters. He was looking at the hunter, and the hunter was looking back through his own face.
The disconnect was deeply unsettling. He touched his cheek. 'Whose eyes are those?'
He got dressed in his school uniform, the fabric scraping over his fading bruises. As he walked, the 2% Sync from his (SPI) stat was at work. His new [Spatial Awareness] was functioning in the real world.
In the Weeping Woods, it was a thrum of danger. Here, it was a low-level hyper-awareness. The chatter of the morning crowd wasn't just noise; it was data. He could feel the proximity and general direction of people around him without looking. The rumble of a bus felt like a vibration in his bones, not just his ears.
He saw Devis and his crew from half a block away.
The old Dev would have felt a jolt of pure, paralyzing terror. His stomach would have clenched, his body instinctively trying to hide, to run.
The new Dev felt... nothing. His heart rate didn't even spike. He registered them. 'Hostile entities. Level 0.' He analyzed their position, their numbers. Four of them, blocking the school gate. He didn't alter his path. He just kept walking.
He reached the gate. He didn't try to go around them. He just walked forward, his eyes blank.
Devis, who lived on the fear of others, was baffled. This was wrong. The prey wasn't cowering.
"Hey, trash," Devis sneered, stepping directly in front of him to block his path. "Forgot how to bow? Or did I not hit you hard enough?"
Dev stopped. He just... stopped. And looked at him.
Devis, enraged by the lack of any reaction, did what he always did. He shoved Dev. A hard, two-handed shove to the chest, meant to send him sprawling onto the pavement in a familiar display of dominance.
"I'm talking to you!"
The impact was hard. It hurt.
The old Dev would have collapsed instantly, his (CON: 2) body folding like wet paper.
The new Dev, with that tiny 2% boost to his core (STR), his balance (AGI), and his durability (CON), was slammed back.
He stumbled. One, two, three clumsy, staggering steps. His bag slid off one shoulder, his feet scuffing loudly on the concrete.
But... he didn't fall.
He caught his balance on the fourth step. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't strong. But he was, for the first time in his miserable life, still on his feet.
A pocket of silence fell over the students at the gate. Devis and his two cronies were frozen. The script was wrong. He was supposed to be on the ground, whimpering.
Dev slowly straightened up. He didn't fix his bag. He didn't rub his chest, which stung from the impact.
He just looked at Devis.
His eyes were empty. Cold. Analytical. He was looking at Devis the exact same way he had looked at the Blood-Sappers in the woods. There was no fear. There was no anger. There was nothing.
This... this broke Devis. He understood fear. He loved tears. This nothingness? This was the ultimate defiance. This was contempt.
"What?" Devis roared, his face turning a blotchy purple. "You bastard. You think you're tough now just because you can stand?"
He pulled back his fist, his arm tensing for a real punch, a blow to smash that empty, insulting look right off Dev's face.
"What is going on here?"
Mina's voice. Crisp, clear, and cold.
She stepped into the frozen scene, her eyes sweeping over the tableau. But she wasn't looking at Devis with her usual annoyance.
She saw Devis, fist cocked, face twisted in rage. And she saw Dev, standing, his bag half-off, looking completely, utterly, inhumanly calm.
She didn't see a victim to be saved. She saw a problem. Her eyes narrowed, her gaze fixed entirely on Dev, a flicker of something new in her expression. It wasn't just confusion. It was suspicion.
What she was seeing made no logical sense.