The silence that followed the System’s admission stretched on. He looked at the cart where Rebecca slept, then back at the empty space where the blue screen had been, his entire body aching with broken arms and ruined plans, all because the god-forged entity in his soul was apparently just shy. ’This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my entire life.’ He looked down at his two swollen and completely useless limbs, unable to even make a proper fist, let alone apply a splint to the broken bones grating against each other. He walked over to the supply sacks on the cart, and located the small wooden box from Alfred. He nudged the small wooden medical box with his foot, then knelt and tried to jimmy the metal latch with the side of his hand, but a sharp, grinding pain shot up his arm without the latch moving in the slightest. ’This is ridiculous.’ Sighing, he picked up the box between his knees, leaned down, and clamped the small latch between his teeth, giving a sharp jerk of his head that opened it with a small click before he spat it out and nudged the lid open with his foot, revealing a roll of enchanted bandages and a clay jar of green healing salve. He awkwardly scooped some of the cool salve from the jar with his fingers and smeared it over his broken left wrist, the relief immediate but temporary, but the bandages were another problem entirely, and he was trying to pin one end under his foot while fumbling to wrap it with his teeth when a voice broke the silence. "Hey, what are you doing, your arms look like noodles." Rebecca was sitting up in the cart, blinking the sleep from her eyes. She hopped down from the cart, walked over, and snatched the bandage roll from where he was clumsily holding it. "You’re doing it all wrong, you have to pull it tight, or the bones will set crooked, here, give me your arm." He was quiet for a moment, then he extended his broken left arm. Rebecca took it, her touch surprisingly gentle as she began to wrap the bandage with a practiced, efficient motion. ’Where did she learn to do that?’ "My dad was a hunter," she said, not looking up from her work, "He got hurt a lot, so I had to patch him up so he could go out and get more money for booze." She finished with the first arm and moved on to the second, her small fingers expertly setting the splint in place before wrapping it just as tightly, and he just sat there while the ten-year-old girl mended his broken bones. When she was done, she tied off the final knot and patted his newly splinted arm. "There, good as new, almost." He flexed his fingers, the splints holding his wrists rigid, and asked how long the healing would take. The System, in its new voice, informed him that the minor fractures would be fully healed in twenty-four hours, but the more severe compound fractures in his right arm would require forty-eight hours to regain basic functionality. ’Two days, two days of being useless while a B-Rank hunter and his entire Syndicate are looking for us.’ He stood up, his gaze sweeping over the desolate canyon before he walked toward the crude map from his supply sack, his mind already formulating a new plan. "We need to move, staying here is suicide." "Move where, I thought we were hiding." He pointed to a dense patch of forest on the map marked with a single label, ’The Closed Labyrinth’. "There, the Syndicate won’t in there." "The closed Labyrinth, that sounds spooky, why won’t they ?" "Because according to this," he tapped the notes in the margin, "That forest is the nesting ground for D-Rank sound-based monsters called Shriekers, who hunt in packs, and their screams can liquefy a man’s brain inside his skull, so it is a place no sane person would ever enter." "So we’re going into a forest full of brain-melting screaming birds because we’re not sane?" "No," he replied, already climbing into the driver’s seat of the cart, "We’re going in there because Silas is a magic-user, and his greatest strength is his ability to watch from a distance, but the constant sonic vibrations from a sound-based monster’s territory will blind his magical senses, making us invisible inside that forest." She climbed up beside him. "Okay, so we hide in the brain-melter forest until your arms are fixed, that makes sense, but what about the Shriekers, won’t they melt our brains, too?" "That’s the problem we need to solve." He snapped the reins, and the cart lurched forward toward the distant line of trees. ’You can talk now, right, do you have a name?’ There was a long pause. [I... do not, I am the Negative Leveling System, that is my only designation.] ’That’s a stupid name, I’m calling you Lilith from now on.’ Another pause followed, filled with a sense of confusion. [Lilith, why that name?] ’For some reason, I think it suits you.’ Somewhere in the Northern Wastes, four figures rode on dust-colored lizards, members of the Gorgon Syndicate’s elite subjugation squad, dispatched to retrieve the man who had humiliated them. Jako, the team’s tracker, pulled his lizard to a halt and sniffed the air, his Path of the Scent Hound allowing him to detect the faintest trace of mana from miles away. Borris, the squad’s hulking leader, reined in his own mount beside him. "What is it, Jako, did you finally catch a whiff of a lady lizard you want to get friendly with?" "I’ve got them," Jako’s voice was a low rasp, "Two life signatures, faint, and two beasts of burden, horses by the smell of it, moving north, about five miles ahead." Misha, a woman with a staff strapped to her back, raised an eyebrow. "That’s it, just two, Silas made it sound like we were hunting a demon, are you sure your nose isn’t broken?" "I’m sure," Jako insisted, "One of the signatures is small, a child, the other is... strange, it feels like a man, but there’s no mana, it’s like an empty space." Borris let out a booming laugh that made his lizard flinch. "An empty space and a little girl, this is who took out ten of our men, hah, Silas is getting soft in his old age, this will be the easiest bounty we’ve ever collected!" He kicked his lizard’s flank, urging it into a sprint. "Let’s go, I want to be back at the mines in time for dinner!" Misha sighed and followed him. ’This idiot, he’s going to get us all killed one of these days.’