Harold leaned back against the spongy trunk of a pale mushroom, the adrenaline ebbing at last.
His hands trembled from the intensity of his work, but the woman still breathed, her chest rising and falling in fragile rhythm.
He forced himself to stay alert, watching her face, her pulse, the shallow motion of her ribs.
She was stable for now. Not safe, not healed—but stable.
And that gave him a window.
"Alright," Harold muttered, voice low, as though afraid the forest might overhear.
"Let's see what all that work bought me."
He focused inward, the way he'd learned, pulling up the screen that hung just behind his eyes.
It opened in a rush of light.
Status
Host: Harold Greene
Age: 17 (Life-expectancy of current species 300 years)
System Mode: Intern
Core Skills:
Stitching [Level 1] 22.3/100
Dressing [Level 2] 0.1/1000
Diagnosis [Level 2] 0/1000
Debridement (Wound Cleaning) [Level 0] 6.4/10
Splinting [Level 2] 0.2/1000
Harold's eyebrows shot up.
"One thousand experience?" He rubbed his temples. "It took me days to scrape together even a hundred. And now you want a thousand? Bloody hell… Just how many people are you expecting me to save here?"
He huffed a laugh, though it came out more bitter than amused.
It made sense, though.
Progress always cost more the further you went, and worse yet the simpler things he did would earn him less experience as well causing him to require dipping into more uncharted territory to continue his growth.
Back in his janitor days, every time they changed the cleaning procedures, it doubled his workload but gave him the same lousy paycheck.
At least here, the system was honest about what it demanded.
But the real shock was the change in his Title.
Novice no longer.
Intern.
Harold stared at the word, heart thudding strangely.
Intern.
He knew what that meant, in the old world.
A medical intern—lowest rung of the hospital's hierarchy, a doctor in training. He had never even gotten close.
He'd been the man mopping floors beneath them, invisible.
And now?
The system itself had acknowledged him.
He swallowed, his throat tight.
"Guess I'm not just a janitor anymore."
His eyes dropped to the skill list.
Each tool shimmered faintly in the air when he willed it into being.
First, the bandages.
A roll of cloth appeared in his hand—still gray, still faintly soiled, but the texture was tighter, the weave finer.
He tugged at it and nodded.
"Not good… but not useless. Three out of ten on the world's best bandages scale, huh?" He chuckled softly. "That's generous, but I'll take it."
Deeming it so since the skill had shown in his status a maximum rank of level 10, so with the tools getting better each increase the 10th level should provide some pretty amazing stuff.
He dismissed the bandages and summoned the Diagnosis tool next.
The stubby pencil he had carried since the beginning was gone.
In its place, a pen—cheap, ballpoint, the kind a doctor might stick behind an ear, along with the same old clipboard, but the paper form upon it was now of a thicker stock.
Harold clicked the pen experimentally.
The tiny snap was oddly comforting.
"Doesn't seem like much of an upgrade," he muttered. "But maybe it writes clearer? Won't smudge when I sweat?"
He twirled it in his fingers like he'd seen surgeons twirl scalpels in idle moments.
"Huh. Not bad."
Then came Splinting.
Instead of the flimsy tongue depressors he had cobbled together before, a pair of sturdier wooden strips appeared in his lap.
They were longer, broader—more like the paint stirrers he used back at the hospital whenever a paint job of the hallway walls was required.
He knocked one against the mushroom trunk, and it didn't snap.
His lips curved in something close to relief.
"Better. Much better. Won't stop a break from hurting, but it'll hold, better than those fingerling splints."
He dismissed the tools one by one, letting them fade back into the ether.
Then he sat in silence, staring at the unconscious woman before him.
Her stitched wound gleamed faintly in the dim bioluminescence, already crusting at the edges.
The bruises across her body looked no better, but at least they hadn't spread.
Her leg was bound tight, swollen but secure in its crude splints.
Harold sighed and rubbed at his face.
"Intern…" he repeated, trying to taste the word on his tongue.
It felt… right.
Like a step into a role he'd been denied his whole life.
He remembered the hospital hallways, the smell of antiseptic, the rush of gurneys as doctors shouted orders.
He remembered standing at the edge of it all, mop in hand, watching lives being saved just beyond the invisible line he was never allowed to cross.
But here—
He looked at her again.
Her skin glowed faintly, the strange tendrils of her hair twitching once, as if sensing something even in unconsciousness.
Here, he was the one who mattered.
The system wasn't mocking him.
It wasn't shutting him out.
It was handing him the tools, piece by piece, to finally do the work he had always been meant to do.
"Guess you're my first real patient," Harold whispered. "Not how I pictured it. Not in a place like this. But…"
He reached out, adjusting one of the compresses that had slipped slightly down her ribcage.
His hand lingered, making sure the cloth stayed damp against her bruises.
"…I'll see it through."
The woman stirred faintly, a soft hiss of breath escaping her lips.
Her head-tentacles twitched, curling inward.
But she didn't wake.
Harold sat back, exhaling slowly.
Exhaustion clawed at him, his limbs leaden, but he didn't dare close his eyes.
Not yet.
Not while her survival hung by a thread.
Instead, he opened the status screen again, eyes narrowing at the line that demanded one thousand experience points.
"That's a mountain," he muttered. "But I'll climb it. If it makes me better—if it gives me what I need to keep people alive—I'll climb it."
His gaze softened as it drifted back to her.
He had no idea who she was.
No idea if she would thank him or try to kill him when she woke.
But none of that mattered.
She was his patient.
And Harold Greene, Intern of the Medical System, wasn't going to let her die.