Lex stood in the hallway, watching Mirielle.
She didn't move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the food—like she didn't trust it. Cans, crackers, a few bruised apples, a half-empty bottle of water... and baby formula. All of it just sitting there in a pile in front of her.
Her lips were cracked. Every breath sounded dry. Her body was screaming for water, but she didn't reach for it.
She should've. Most people would have. But instead, she looked up at him. Her voice came out rough, barely more than a whisper.
"... Baby formula..."
Lex blinked once.
"...Don't tell me that you harmed a-"
"Shut up and eat," he cut in, voice flat. "Or I'll force it down your throat."
That seemed to land. Mirielle looked at him for a long moment, but ultimately, she couldn't resist her instinct anymore. She looked down and slowly reached for one of the bags. Her fingers trembled as she pulled it open, like she half-expected it to vanish.
Tears slid down her cheeks. Whether it was relief or guilt, even she didn't seem sure. "I will never forgive you," she said with her mouth stuffed with food.
"There's also a knife in there," he added, already turning away. "Cut your dress. Bandage your feet."
He didn't wait for a response. Just walked off, heading back up the stairs like she wasn't even there.
Upstairs, the light was dim and sour. The broken pipe near the far wall still dripped, forming a shallow puddle on the tile.
Lex stepped into the cold water without hesitation. He crouched, put down his sword, and splashed the water over his arms, chest, face, and body.
Blood came off in smears, quickly turning the puddle cloudy.
A mirror stood at the entrance of one of the numerous apartments with broken doors. After washing himself, Lex walked toward it and looked at his own reflection.
His skin was pale, almost white. His eyes were deep-set and dark. His shaggy hair hung past his shoulders, and his beard was unkempt.
No matter how you looked at it, he looked like a beggar.
"Hair this long isn't helpful," Lex muttered, running a hand through it. It stuck slightly, greasy from sweat and blood. "But whatever. No point cutting it now—it's almost time anyway."
Right on cue, it started.
Without warning, his nose started dripping first. Then his vision blurred, and a high-pitched hum filled his ears. His skin itched and burned all at once, and before he knew it, he started to vomit blood.
He was poisoned.
He didn't even sigh, as if this happened daily.
With one hand, he raised the sword. The other steadied the hilt. With a single swing, the blade sliced clean through his neck. His head fell, and his body collapsed as a pool of blood quickly started to form underneath his body.
The next moment, everything started pulling backward.
[Your blessing: Better Yesterday has been activated! You sense time rewinding... Your body has been restored by 24 hours. Cooldown remaining: 23h59m]
The blood on the floor lifted and slowly moved back toward his headless body. Then, like a ball, Lex's head rolled back to his body and attached itself back as the cut in his neck sealed shut. A second later, he was kneeling on the floor, sword still in hand, throat untouched.
His blessing reset his body to what it was a day ago.
"I guess that should be the price for rushing into the titan's corpse without any preparation," he muttered, standing up.
Even after escaping the rift, the titan's blood still poisoned Lex's body. Every day, around the same time, his body would start shutting down, and every day, he had to keep using Better Yesterday to survive.
Before, he had been able to temporarily slow the poison's spread with his poison resistance blessing and his Decay Worshipper set—but it was a temporary solution, and he knew that.
So now he was stuck in a cycle where he had to constantly use his blessing to stay alive.
Given his sheer number of coins, buying a cure was no issue. He could even opt for the most extravagant solutions coins could buy.
However, why should he waste precious coins even if he could afford it? It wasn't like he needed this blessing at the moment. Even without it, would it be easy to deal with Lex?
It was simply not worth the cost. Not when there's still so much left to buy.
"At least, thanks to this blessing, I don't need to eat, shit, drink, or sleep," he said, more to himself than anyone else.
Without wasting time, he checked a few unexplored apartments on the floor. It didn't take long to piece things together. The family that lived here had probably cleared out the entire floor. Most of the rooms were empty.
However, he did find some usable clothes, including a pair of jeans and a black shirt, along with some underwear, socks, and even fitting shoes. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.
When he came back down, Mirielle was asleep.
Empty cans were scattered beside her. One lay on its side, licked clean. The knife was tucked beneath her leg. Her feet were wrapped in torn strips of fabric, but tight enough to hold.
He stepped over the empty cans and leaned his back against the wall. His hands found the hilt of the sword again, resting it against his shoulder.
Lex didn't say anything. Just stood there, watching her.
"The aspect selection will end in about a few days, and from now on, players with aspects like her will start to appear. I have to use this opportunity to gather the remaining ingredients for the species selection before the next attack wave." Lex thought as he looked at the sleeping Mirielle.
There were multiple defining moments in the tutorial.
The first attack wave was designed to weed out the weakest—usually the too young, the too old, or the sick.
Then, there was the aspect selection in which a worthy player would be judged and given a fitting aspect. If the Aspect selection had been about choosing a foundation that would shape a player's future power, then the next phase, the Species selection, was the second half of that foundation. It offered a different kind of transformation that rewrote the player's nature entirely.
In gaming terms, the first attack wave was the equivalent of a tutorial's "first enemy"—just enough to check if the player was a bot, afk, or simply too stupid to play.
The Aspect selection was like a "choose your class" screen, granting a power tailored to the player's personality.
Finally, the Species selection was the "choose your race" option. The player would have the opportunity to become something other than human.
Lex had experimented with many species before—goblin-like creatures, ghostly forms, even Titans on rare occasions. Lex had experimented with countless species—some goblin-like, others ghostly, and even a Titan form or two. Each granted a unique racial trait, from iron wings to beam-like breath, diamond-hard skin, or the ability to phase through walls.
Each species came with a unique racial trait, and every species chosen during the tutorial could evolve later by completing a quest or meeting certain conditions. It wasn't a choice to make lightly, as changing species afterward would be tough.
Aspects were the foundation of any player, while blessings and traits built themselves around it and would enhance or expand its power. However, racial traits were different, as they could give supernatural powers independently of the player's aspect. In a way, they could be considered an additional Aspect.
But nothing was free.
Even if choosing a good species could give a player some powerful racial traits, choosing a non-human species always came with at least one curse.
Like two sides of the same coin, blessings amplify a player's strength—while curses erode it. And just as blessings could evolve into traits, so too could curses, meaning that not all traits were positive. Some were crippling.
"I was originally aiming for a Fleshspawn," Lex muttered, eyes distant. "Their final evolution into Abomination Hybrids comes with outrageous physical resilience and their cockroach-like bodies that just won't die. Either that or a Voidling. Starborn ascension grants space manipulation strong enough to bend battlefields."
His gaze drifted down to the sleeping Mirielle.
"But I'll have to adjust," he said quietly, as if making peace with the compromise.
"I will evolve into the same species as the feared master of the 91st floor. A Godkin."