The rat writhed weakly on the stone desk, its breaths shallow and rapid, eyes flickering with panic.
Harold hovered over it, the tools heavy in his hands despite their faint shimmer.
His palms sweated, the weight of the moment pressing down on him.
"Diagnosis," he whispered.
At once, the creature's body glowed faintly white, as though some invisible light had been poured into its veins.
Harold gasped.
Every nick, bruise, and wound was suddenly illuminated, sharp against the dim backdrop of the room.
Then the glow shifted.
The torn flesh of the head wound pulsed brighter, shining like a beacon.
But as Harold focused, another color bled through—deep blue, swirling within the skull.
"Cerebral hemorrhage," Harold breathed. His throat went dry. "You've got bleeding in the brain."
A ding echoed in his ears, soft but undeniable.
Skill Used: Diagnosis.
Condition identified: Cerebral Hemorrhage.
+0.5 Experience
Harold's heart thundered.
His very first step.
His very first success.
The glow faded, but the memory of it lingered in his mind.
"I can see it," he whispered, wonder and dread mixing in equal measure. "I can actually see what's wrong, even if i dont know what exactly it is thats going on just yet."
The rat twitched, dragging his attention back.
There was no time to bask in the discovery.
The animal was bleeding.
He needed to act.
"Debridement," Harold said, summoning the tweezers.
They shimmered into his hand, heavy and corroded.
He grimaced but leaned closer.
The rat squealed as he pinched the jagged edges of torn skin, tugging away clotted blood and tiny shards of bone.
The smell of iron and rot filled his nostrils.
His stomach lurched, but he didn't stop.
He forced himself to work methodically, the way he had seen surgeons do from the shadows of operating rooms.
Minutes crawled by, each one filled with squeals and the soft scrape of metal against flesh.
Finally, the wound was as clean as he could make it, fresh blood welling instead of the sticky clot.
Another ding.
Skill Used: Debridement.
Wound cleared of contaminants.
+0.1 Experience
Harold sagged back in his stool, panting.
"So little?" he muttered. "All that, and barely a scratch's worth of progress."
But even as frustration gnawed at him, he felt a spark of pride.
He had cleaned a wound.
He had done something.
The rat's movements slowed.
Its life was bleeding away with each shallow breath.
Harold forced his hands steady and summoned the needle.
It appeared in his palm—crooked, rusty, threaded with the stiff, discolored string.
He swallowed.
It would have to do.
"Alright, sutures," he said softly, as much to himself as to the creature. "Small bites, Harold. In, out, tie."
He pushed the needle through one side of the torn skin.
The rat squeaked sharply, but its resistance was feeble now.
Harold pulled the thread across, then pierced the other side, fumbling with the knot.
His fingers shook, clumsy and slow, but eventually the ragged edges met.
A ding.
Skill Used: Suturing.
Wound stabilized.
+0.2 Experience
The glow around the wound dimmed, fading back into the rat's trembling body.
The system offered no encouragement, no praise—only numbers.
Harold frowned.
The wound was too small, too shallow to push his skills further.
He knew that instinctively.
The system wanted more.
More challenge.
More life-or-death.
But to carve a bigger wound into the rat just to practice—no.
His newly created and sworn oath rang in his ears.
I will harm if harm teaches me how to heal, but never more than I must.
Instead, he set about suturing again.
He removed the crude stitches, reopened the shallow tear, and stitched it once more.
His hands grew steadier, his movements cleaner.
Each pass of the needle grew smoother, knots quicker.
At first, the system rewarded him.
Tiny increments of experience trickled in—fractions of a point.
0.1.
0.05.
But soon, the numbers dwindled.
By the fourth repetition, there was no chime.
No glow.
Harold froze.
"What?"
He tried again, carefully unpicking and restitching.
Nothing.
The rat lay still now, its chest no longer rising.
Somewhere along the way, the fragile creature had slipped into silence.
The message to him from the system was clear, just like the simulated training it had provided at first, practice upon a corpse would yield nothing more than hands on training.
Harold sat back heavily, the needle falling from his hand.
His heart sank.
He stared at the limp little body, guilt twisting inside him.
"I killed you," he whispered. "And for what? A handful of scraps."
He rubbed his face with his palms.
The thrill of discovery, the pride of progress—it all felt hollow now in the quiet.
He had sworn not to waste this chance, but the system was merciless.
It demanded he walk a razor's edge: practice enough to learn, but never so much that it was meaningless.
He glanced down at the rat, stitched and restitched until its tiny frame gave out.
He reached out and closed its eyes, murmuring a soft apology.
"This was supposed to teach me to heal," Harold said bitterly. "Not to pile up bodies."
The silence of the stone room pressed in again.
His hands trembled as he forced the tools back into the ether.
They vanished with a shimmer, leaving him alone with the corpse of his first patient.
He stared at it for a long time before finally whispering:
"I won't waste you. I promise."
Harold rose from the stool, his legs unsteady.
He felt no satisfaction from the day's work, only the weight of responsibility.
The system had given him a path, but not a gentle one.
Each lesson carried a price—sometimes in blood, sometimes in conscience.
Still, he had learned something invaluable.
Diagnosis could show him what lay hidden.
Debridement could clean the path for healing.
Sutures could close the wounds of flesh.
Together, they were the first bricks in a foundation.
And though today had ended in death, Harold knew tomorrow would demand more.
He could not stay in this room forever.
If he wanted real experience, if he wanted to level his skills beyond these meager sparks of progress, he would need more than vermin.
He would need patients who could survive, who could fight alongside his efforts instead of fading beneath them.
His eyes drifted to the window slit, where the fungal forest glowed faintly in the alien twilight.
Beyond that, the city shimmered, alive with movement.
People waited there.
Beings who bled, who ached, who might one day need him.
But he was not ready.
Not yet.
Harold clenched his fists, forcing strength into his voice.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow I'll find another. I'll do better."
The dead rat lay silent on the desk, its tiny body the first casualty in Harold Greene's long, painful education.
And for the first time since waking in this world, Harold understood the true weight of the path he had chosen.
Healing would not come without cost.