Hope.
The word lingered in Harold's mind as he stretched, staring up at the rough stone ceiling.
He hadn't realized how badly he'd needed that flicker of reassurance—proof that his skills were more than just cruel tricks of some alien system.
He rolled to his side, pulling the glowing interface back open.
His eyes lingered on the lone weak link among the list of tools he now wielded:
Acupressure [Level 1]
Everything else had grown.
Stitching was cleaner.
Dressing more reliable.
Suction had leapt ahead into actual machines.
But Acupressure?
Still a clumsy, neglected footnote.
Harold frowned.
"Guess I can't keep ignoring you."
The problem was, he hadn't really used it.
Not properly.
His first patient—the tentacled girl—hadn't exactly been in the mood for a massage.
The alien certainly hadn't been either.
And in the chaos of surgery, when organs were spilling and blood was everywhere, there hadn't been time to sit down and gently press a pressure point.
But maybe…
A thought sparked.
Harold's eyes flicked across the interface, noticing something he hadn't before.
His experience ... just how had he gained any experience in Acupressure at all?
He hadn't heard any of the chimes when his skills had leveled.
No satisfying pings, no bright banners, popping up to announces the gained experience or the levelling up of the skills themselves.
Just the aftershock, when he woke, and suddenly everything was stronger upon checking the system.
"Wait a sec."
He narrowed his eyes.
"Did I… mute it?"
He remembered.
A while back, when he'd nearly jumped out of his skin from the system's sudden announcement, he'd grumbled something about shutting it up.
And maybe it had listened.
If that was true, then every ding, every surge of progress since then had been silent.
Only one way to test it.
Harold sat cross-legged on the bed, placed his left hand palm-up on his thigh, and pressed the thumb of his right hand into the base of his palm.
Slowly, deliberately, he rotated in a circle, applying pressure to the fleshy muscle there.
A faint shimmer blinked on his status bar.
His eyes widened.
No sound.
But the numbers shifted.
A sliver of light crawled forward.
"…Holy crap. I can farm this on myself."
Harold grinned, shaking his head in disbelief.
He shifted to the webbing between thumb and finger, kneading with care.
He felt tension there, stiff from hours of holding tools and clenching in panic.
As he pressed, a ripple of relief travelled up his arm.
The numbers nudged forward again.
"Unbelievable," Harold muttered. "All this time I've been waiting for patients, when I could've been my own damn guinea pig, not that im a fan of the idea about cutting myself only to stich it closed."
The discovery lit a fire in him.
He pressed along each finger, knuckle by knuckle.
He rotated his wrist, finding sore points, pressing them until the ache melted.
His body was riddled with tension anyway—every muscle sore from dragging bodies, bending over stone slabs, running on no sleep.
Acupressure wasn't just training; it was therapy.
Hours slipped by in quiet rhythm.
Pressure.
Release.
Breath.
Shift.
The experience bar ticked forward, slow but steady, like water filling a basin.
By the time Harold had worked both hands, his forearms, even his temples and jaw, his body felt lighter than it had since arriving in this nightmare world.
Then, finally—
[Acupressure has reached Level 2.]
A bright prompt flared across his vision.
For the first time in days, the system's voice chimed, clear and ringing in his skull after he'd recinded the mute against specific system actions:
[System Rank Up — Intern ➝ Resident]
Harold froze.
His heart kicked against his ribs.
"I was right."
The pieces clicked into place.
His system rank wasn't tied to total experience, or the number of surgeries performed.
It rose only when every skill reached the same floor.
At level one across the board, he'd become an Intern.
Now, with every skill at least level two—Resident.
He slumped back against the cave wall, staring at the glowing words until they faded.
"Goddamn. I actually called it."
The weight of it sank in.
This wasn't random progression.
It wasn't arbitrary.
the system had structure, logic.
He could plan around it.
Grind deliberately.
Improve with direction instead of just stumbling forward.
Harold let out a shaky laugh.
"Resident. Hah. Guess I just got promoted."
At the same time as his rank up the room he sat within began to twist and reshape itself once more.
Last rank up the room got slightly larger, spawning a table and chairs into being, only this time, the room once more enlarged, with a partition wall rising up from the floor and in the new space a second stone bed also rose up from the floor.
His simple exam room had ranked up to become a simple small clinic of sorts.
All it was missing was a proper doctors office, and a reception area.
He he harold chuckled to himself at that thought, Harold Greene Alien Doctor with a clinic or maybe even a hospital sponsored by the system to cure this world of its ails and receive alms in return.
Taking a look around the new space, his new shelter greatly expanded.
Even thinking selfishly about how even if another patient were to arrive he'd be fine since with two beds one could be for the patient while he could relax on the other.
Though... thinking that, along with his current luck he was more liekly to run into two patients who needed care resulting in him sleeping on the table or floor once more.
Was the system pulling the strings of fate to mess with him or was his luck really just that shit?
Shaking his head to rid himself of unessessary thoughts, Harold decided to first refill the waterskin with water, since his food stores had gained a day or two of rations rather than simply dropping while water a lifesource had all but been used up in the surgury.
Meanwhile the warrior who'd left had forgotten their knife, though unless they'd searched for it probably thought it lost in the field rather than taken by their savior, at least Harold had a method of close combat to attach with beyond just hurling of stones.