The world vanished. The forest was gone. The goblin was gone. The pain was gone. Only absolute silence remained. Time itself seemed to have ceased to exist. Aiden floated in a white void, unable to feel his own body.
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Payment Accepted.
Option 2 Confirmed.
Memory Extraction in Progress.
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A sharp pain tore through his mind. Not physical pain. Something deeper. As if an invisible hand were searching through his soul. Aiden tried to scream, but no sound came out. Images appeared all around him. Hundreds. Thousands. Fragments of his old life. Streets. Buildings. Faces. Bursts of laughter. A bedroom. A window. The sky. Everything rushed past at an impossible speed.
"No..."
He reached out, as if he could hold on to those memories. They were already slipping away. Suddenly, the torrent slowed. One image remained suspended before him. Blurred. He could make out a silhouette. Someone. Someone important. His heart tightened. He knew. He knew this memory mattered more than all the others. He tried to move closer. The silhouette seemed to be reaching out to him.
"Wait..."
He took one step. Then another. Each movement became harder than the last. As if the memory were drifting farther away. The silhouette continued to fade. Its face remained hidden. Impossible to make out.
"I know you..."
Aiden felt tears welling up in his eyes. Why did it hurt so much? Why did his heart feel like it was shattering when he didn't even know who was standing before him? The silhouette slowly raised a hand. Then... it vanished. Completely. As if it had never existed. An immense emptiness immediately flooded his mind. Not pain. Absence. Something had disappeared. Forever.
Aiden remained frozen in place. He knew he had just lost something precious. But he couldn't say what. He searched. Again. And again. Nothing. Only the strange feeling that a part of himself had been torn away.
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Memory Extraction Complete.
Irreversible.
Emergency Soul Protocol Activated.
Emergency Effect Granted.
Duration: 1 Second.
Probability Window Open.
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The white void shattered. The forest returned in an instant. The goblin's knife was still suspended before him. Only inches from his throat. As if not a single second had passed. And yet... Aiden was no longer quite the same. Instinctively, he pressed a hand against his chest. Something was missing. He was certain of it. But he could no longer give it a name.
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No warmth spread through his body. No new strength filled his limbs. His wounds were still there. His shoulder was still bleeding. His arms were still exhausted. His breathing remained ragged. Nothing had changed. At least... on the surface. Then the world slowed. Or rather... his mind accelerated. The knife kept moving, but infinitely more slowly. A leaf drifted down from a tree. Every rotation was perfectly visible. A drop of blood fell from his shoulder. It seemed to hang motionless in the air. Even the goblin's muscles had become easy to read.
Aiden could see every muscle contract. Every shift in the goblin's weight. Every movement of its wrist. For the first time since the fight had begun... he could truly see. His gaze swept across the battlefield. The knife. The goblin's arm. Its footing. The position of its legs.
Bone continued rebuilding himself. Still far too slowly. But something caught Aiden's attention. The right arm. Still embedded in the tree. The fingers moved. Ever so slightly.
The Soul Link pulsed. Never had he felt it so intensely. It was no longer just an emotion. He could sense Bone himself, as though the distance between them had vanished. He felt the skeleton's will. His one and only purpose. To protect him.
Bone's arm trembled. The fingers curled around empty air. The young man held his breath. The system hadn't turned him into a warrior. It hadn't increased his strength. It hadn't handed him victory. It had simply given him... a possibility. A single opening. One chance. That tiny chance the system had calculated from the very beginning. 0.7%. Time was already beginning to return to normal. The knife started accelerating once more.
Aiden locked his eyes on Bone's arm. Then on the goblin. And for the first time since the battle had begun... he finally saw a way to survive.
The word never left his lips. It didn't have to.
Throw.
The command shot through the Soul Link like a surge of lightning. For a fraction of a second... nothing happened. Aiden's heart tightened. Had he imagined all of it? Had the system simply given him false hope? Then... the faint silver lights within Bone's eye sockets flared to life. The skeleton didn't move. His body was still unable to stand. But several meters away... the right arm embedded in the tree trembled. The bony fingers clenched. A sharp crack echoed through the forest.
Clack.
The arm tore free from the trunk. It hung suspended for the briefest moment, as if hesitating. Then it rotated. Ever so slightly. Just enough. The Soul Link pulsed harder and harder. Aiden no longer merely saw the arm. He felt it. As if it were part of his own body. He could sense its orientation. Its balance. Its weight. A strange sensation flooded his mind. For one second... the arm had become his own.
The goblin hadn't noticed a thing. Its entire attention remained fixed on Aiden. The knife continued its descent. The monster was convinced the battle was over. It wasn't even looking at Bone anymore. That was its mistake.
Aiden fixed his gaze on the goblin's temple. The one place the monster wasn't expecting an attack.
The Soul Link sent another pulse. The arm responded. It spun sharply through the air. Then it launched forward.
Whoosh!
It streaked across the clearing like a true javelin. The goblin heard the sound. Its ears shot upright. Too late. It turned its head just enough to catch sight of a white shape hurtling from the direction of the tree. Its eyes widened. The next instant...
CRACK!
Bone's arm slammed into the goblin's temple. A dull crack echoed across the clearing. The monster's head snapped violently to the side. Its body staggered. The knife was knocked off course. The blade passed only inches from Aiden's throat before burying itself in the ground.
The goblin stumbled backward, completely thrown off balance. Its gaze was vacant. It shook its head, as if trying to understand what had just happened. Green blood slowly trickled from its temple. A deep crack had split the bone.
Aiden remained frozen. He struggled to breathe. He hadn't won. The goblin was still standing. But... for the first time since the battle had begun... the monster was no longer in control.
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Emergency Effect Complete.
Survival Probability Updated.
12.4%
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At that very moment... the world returned to its normal speed. The wind swept through the trees once more. The leaves began falling again. Pain crashed back into every part of Aiden's body all at once. His legs nearly gave out beneath him. Yet, despite everything, he smiled. The system's calculation had been correct. It hadn't given him victory. Only... a chance to fight.