The fire alarm was still blaring.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
“Turn it off already!”
Bow shouted.
Thanwa pointed at himself. “I’m the one who turned it on. I’m not a technician!”
“Then should we just burn it down?”
“Ma’am, this is a hospital.”
“I was being sarcastic!”
Phod raised a hand to his head.
Great...
The world had fallen apart, ghosts had invaded, and monsters had dropped from the sky.
But the thing killing him first was the alarm.
One of the staff members ran over to shut down a subpanel on the wall. At last, the noise fell silent.
The silence that remained felt even heavier.
One section of the window had shattered, and hot wind from outside blew the smell of smoke inside.
Several undead corpses and the black remains of the Sound-Hunting Demon lay across the floor.
All around them were people who were still breathing.
Some were sitting and crying.
Some stared at the remains on the floor as if their brains still refused to accept that they were real.
Then a voice rang out.
“Where’s the healer!”
Bow froze.
A middle-aged man helped a woman out of the room next door.
“I saw it just now! This woman healed a security guard!”
Dozens of eyes turned toward them at once.
Bow slowly turned to look at Phod.
“We’re screwed.”
Phod nodded.
“Congratulations, Sis. You’re famous now.”
“Shut up.”
People started coming over.
“Please, help my husband!”
“My son’s bleeding!”
“I can’t feel my leg! Can you help me?”
“Miss, my mom hasn’t been able to see since the Selection!”
The voices overlapped until they were almost impossible to understand.
Bow took a step back.
[Remaining energy: 21%]
She looked at the number, her expression tightening.
“Everyone, stop for a second!”
No one stopped.
Then a woman in a white coat strode over and shouted,
“Enough!”
That single voice silenced the hallway.
The doctor was a woman in her late forties, with her hair hastily tied back and bloodstains on her sleeve.
Her name tag read:
Dr. Kanchana
“Anyone bleeding heavily, lie down first. If you can still walk, move back!”
A man hurriedly spoke up. “But my mother—”
“If she’s still breathing and isn’t bleeding heavily, wait!”
Her tone was so firm that no one dared argue right away.
Phod looked at her.
[Human]
Name: Kanchana Selection: Refused Status: Severe fatigue Ability: None
[Notable Skills]
— Emergency medicine — Patient triage — Decision-making under pressure
Phod raised an eyebrow.
No powers.
And yet she was more useful than half the people with powers around here.
Dr. Kanchana turned to Bow.
“What level can you heal?”
Bow answered honestly. “I don’t know. I just got it.”
“How many times have you used it?”
“Once.”
“And how did that go?”
“I almost face-planted.”
The doctor nodded immediately.
“Then don’t use it recklessly.”
Another man cut in. “But there are injured people everywhere, Doctor!”
Kanchana turned to him.
“That’s exactly why you can’t use it recklessly.”
She pointed at Bow.
“If she passes out, we lose one healer and can’t help anyone else.”
Bow looked at the doctor.
That one sentence was like someone saying out loud what she had been thinking but hadn’t dared to say.
Phod slowly pushed himself into a more upright sitting position.
“Doctor.”
Kanchana turned toward him. “Lie back down first.”
“I understand that, but I might be able to help triage.”
The doctor frowned.
“How?”
Phod looked over the injured people one by one.
Information flowed into view before him.
[Internal bleeding: Minor]
[Torn tendon]
[Left lung damaged]
[Shock beginning]
He pointed to the man lying in silence by the wall.
“Him first.”
A nurse looked over. “But he isn’t even crying.”
“Because he’s already going into shock.”
Dr. Kanchana immediately went to examine him.
Less than ten seconds later, her expression changed.
“Rapid pulse, falling blood pressure. Get him over here!”
The nurse hurried to wheel over a stretcher.
The doctor turned back to Phod.
This time, she wasn’t looking at a sick kid in a hospital bed.
“What do you see?”
Phod shrugged slightly.
“A lot.”
“How accurate are you?”
“Don’t know yet.”
That answer made the doctor pause.
Phod continued.
“My system doesn’t know everything, either. Sometimes I have to see something first before I can learn it.”
Kanchana stared at his face for a moment.
Then she nodded.
“It’s good that you know what you don’t know.”
Phod smiled faintly.
He liked this doctor.
“Then help me triage.”
The people around them started looking at Phod again.
He swept his eyes over them one by one.
“The man in the gray shirt. His external injuries aren’t severe, but he’s having trouble breathing. Bring him over first.”
“The little girl over there has a broken ankle. She can wait.”
“The older man whose arm has gone numb...”
Phod stopped.
The information read:
[Damage from the Selection]
[68% of the nerves in the right arm destroyed]
[Not immediately life-threatening]
He drew a breath.
“It’s not life-threatening yet. He can wait.”
The old man nodded slowly.
But his son spoke up.
“What about my father’s arm!”
Phod looked at him.
“If we treat your father’s arm right now, someone else might die.”
“But that’s my father!”
“I know.”
“Who the hell are you to decide that!”
The hallway fell silent.
Phod went still for a moment.
The question hit dead center.
Who the hell was he?
A sixteen-year-old kid who had just woken up after hitting his head, and still couldn’t walk on his own.
But now everyone was waiting to hear what he would say.
Dr. Kanchana was about to speak.
Phod gently raised a hand to stop her.
“I didn’t say your father wasn’t important.”
He looked the man straight in the eye.
“I said he can wait.”
Then he pointed to the man breathing faintly on the stretcher.
“But that man can’t.”
The other man clenched his teeth.
He didn’t answer.
Phod didn’t feel like he had won.
This wasn’t something to win.
Bow walked over and placed her hand above the chest of the man in shock.
“Where?”
Dr. Kanchana pointed.
“Support his circulation first. Don’t try to heal everything.”
Bow closed her eyes.
A pale green light appeared.
[Energy: 21% → 14%]
The man’s pulse began to steady.
The doctor let out a breath.
“That’s enough.”
Bow immediately pulled her hand away.
This time, she didn’t collapse.
Phod smiled.
“Look at you, getting smart.”
Bow turned to him.
“Want to go back into a coma?”
“Sorry.”
A quiet laugh came from somewhere nearby.
It was faint, but it was the first laugh anyone had heard since the world fell apart.
Then the system window before Phod changed.
[Foundation Quest]
Survivors in the area: 47 → 46
Phod’s smile vanished.
Someone had just died.
At the same time, the hospital’s emergency announcement came over the speakers.
“Everyone still inside the building is strictly prohibited from going outside...”
The announcer’s voice trembled.
“At this time... a large number of unidentified creatures have been spotted on the road in front of the hospital.”
Phod turned toward the shattered window.
Far beyond the city of Khon Kaen, the rift in the sky continued to widen.
And the black specks falling from it—
weren’t getting any fewer.