```
[Hostile Detected: Frost-Bite Direwolf (LVL 10)] x3
[HP: 580/580]
[Target Detected: Aria Bloodspear (LVL 12 - Crippled/Sealed)]
[HP: 45 / 850 (Bleeding / Mana Exhaustion)]
```
The elven girl collapsed into the snow, her silver-white hair spilling over her blood-flecked armor. Her breath came in shallow, rattling gasps as the three massive direwolves circled her like shadows in the blizzard. Their icy breath hissed against the frozen ground, jaws snapping in anticipation of an easy meal.
"Don't... look at me..." Aria wheezed, her trembling fingers clutching her shattered bow as she tried to drag herself backward. Her violet eyes, though dimmed by exhaustion, flared with a fierce, desperate pride. "Run, human... they'll tear you apart."
Leo didn't run. He stepped calmly out of the warm cave, his high-density oak branch resting casually over his shoulder. The glowing blue pixels of his system overlay cast sharp, digital shadows across the snow.
"I don't do running," Leo said, his eyes scanning her broken status sheet. "But I do do bug fixing."
His developer console immediately flagged a massive anomaly on her profile:
```
[Detected Attribute: Aria Bloodspear]
-> Status: 'Elven Royal Bloodline' (Sealed)
-> Class: 'Arcane Archer' (No Mana Access)
-> Active Debug Flag: [Link_Port_Available = TRUE]
```
"An open port," Leo muttered, his eyes widening.
In network programming, an open port was an invitation. Because her elven royal mana core was sealed by some high-level curse, she had plenty of raw physical capability but zero fuel to fire her spells. She was a high-performance engine with an empty gas tank.
Leo, on the other hand, was a walking nuclear reactor with a busted fuel line.
"Hey, Elf," Leo said, stepping between her and the lead direwolf. The beast growled, its massive paws kicking up frozen turf. "Do you want to live?"
"What...?" she gasped, her vision blurring.
"I'm about to send you a system request," Leo said, his fingers flying across his virtual interface. He dragged her local player ID into his Sandbox workspace, linking her network node directly to his overflowing mana buffer. "Accept it."
```
[SYSTEM INTRUSION DETECTED]
-> Establishing Local Peer-to-Peer Protocol...
-> Warning: Unsanctioned Data Transfer.
-> Do you accept the 'Synergy Link' from Player: Leo Vermis? [Y/N]
```
Aria stared at the translucent screen flickering in her fading vision. She didn't understand the strange, runic language of the system, but she felt the sudden, terrifyingly warm pull of raw magic radiating from the human youth. With no options left, her soul screamed a silent *Yes*.
```
[Synergy Link: ESTABLISHED]
[Data Bridge: OPEN]
-> Routing Overflow Buffer (Leo Vermis) -> Mana Receiver (Aria Bloodspear)
-> Transfer Rate: 10,000 Mana/Sec
```
The moment the bridge closed, Aria’s eyes snapped wide open.
The suffocating weight of her sealed core was instantly bypassed. A titanic, roaring river of pure, unfiltered sapphire mana flooded her empty spiritual pathways. The snow around her feet instantly vaporized, turning into a cloud of warm steam. The cracks in her shattered bow glowed with a blinding, neon-blue light as the wood began to knit back together, reinforced by the raw power of Leo's glitched buffer.
```
[Aria Bloodspear: Overcharged]
[Mana: 10,000 / 150 (Buffer Overflow Active)]
[Active Buff: Glitched Archer (Arrows Ignore Physical Collision)]
```
"What... what is this power?" Aria whispered, her voice echoing with a double-layered, digital resonance. The sheer volume of mana rolling off her was enough to bend the surrounding trees.
"That's my spare bandwidth," Leo smirked, pointing his high-density branch at the lead direwolf, which had suddenly frozen in pure, primal terror. "She's got the ammo now. Show 'em how an elf shoots."
Aria stood up, her movements fluid and entirely free of pain. She drew back the string of her newly repaired bow. An arrow of solid, crackling blue light materialized on the cord, humming with the force of ten thousand units of raw, glitched magic.
The direwolves didn't even have time to turn and flee.