The world was a blur of pain and panic. Leo stumbled through the undergrowth, his body a symphony of fresh bruises and the deep, resonant ache of spiritual energy depletion. Every branch that snagged his jacket felt like a claw, every snap of a twig behind him the footfall of the Warden. The roaring and concussive booms from the ridge were fading, but they were seared into his mind.
He didn't know how far he ran. He only stopped when his legs finally buckled, sending him crashing to his knees beside a gurgling, half-frozen creek. He vomited into the icy water, his body convulsing, expelling nothing but bile and terror.
"Leo!"
Mira erupted from a thicket, her face streaked with tears and dirt. She fell beside him, her hands fluttering over his back, his bleeding finger, his heaving shoulders. "You're alive. You're alive," she sobbed, the words a mantra of relief.
He couldn't speak. He could only gasp, spitting the foul taste from his mouth. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the grey, uncaring sky. The ring on his finger was cold again. Vessel integrity: 32%. Cooldown initiated. The words echoed in the hollowed-out space of his mind.
"What was that?" Mira whispered, her voice trembling. She was looking at him not with awe, but with a kind of horrified fascination, as if he were a bomb that had gone off and she was checking for shrapnel. "Your eyes… the blue light… you moved like… like the wind. You fought that thing."
He closed his eyes, the image of the Warden's ruined eye socket flashing behind his lids. The wet pop replayed in his ears. "I told you," he rasped, his throat raw. "A miracle."
"That wasn't a miracle, Leo! That was… possession!" Her voice rose, edged with hysteria. "You were you, but you weren't! You were smiling! You were talking to it! You called it a 'furball' while it was trying to kill us!"
"It saved us," he croaked, the defense sounding weak even to him.
"Did it?" she shot back, her fear turning into a sharp, desperate anger. "Or did it just paint a bigger target on our backs? What if those hunters hadn't shown up? What would have happened when that… that feeling wore off? You collapsed! You were just lying there!"
She was right. He knew she was right. The ring had given him the power to fight, but it had also drained him to the point of absolute vulnerability. It was a loan with crippling interest. A deal with a devil he didn't understand.
"The voice," Mira pressed, her eyes boring into his. "The one that said 'adequate.' Was that… was that the thing that gave you that power?"
Leo gave a tiny, exhausted nod.
"What is it, Leo? What is the ring connected to?" Her voice broke. "Please. You have to tell me. I can't… I can't watch you turn into someone else again. I can't watch you die for a secret you won't share."
The dam inside him, already cracked and strained, finally broke. Lying there on the frozen ground, surrounded by the evidence of his own catastrophic failure, the weight of the secret became unbearable. He was tired. So, so tired.
He held up his left hand, the silver ring looking deceptively simple and innocent.
"It's the ring," he whispered, the confession feeling like a surrender. "I found it in the river. That day we went fishing. It… it gives me power. But it's random. It pulls heroes from other worlds, lets me use their abilities for one hour. But only three times a day, and only if I have the mana to pay for it."
Mira stared at the ring, her jaw slack with disbelief. "Other… worlds? That's impossible."
"I know," he said, a hollow laugh escaping his lips. "But it's true. In the dungeon, with the wyrm… it gave me the power of a sniper named Usopp. That's how I killed it. In the alley, it was a boy named Shinji Ikari. And just now…" He took a shaky breath. "Just now, it was a spirit detective named Yusuke Urameshi."
He told her everything. The random selection. The one-hour time limit. The way it drained his mana as a cost. The voice, its cold assessments. The way it felt to have another consciousness sharing his mind, moving his body.
Mira listened in stunned silence, her initial shock slowly giving way to a dawning, terrifying comprehension. This wasn't a cursed relic or a simple mana battery. It was something far beyond their understanding.
"And the voice… it said the 'connection is deepening,'" Leo finished, his voice barely audible. "It said a 'true test' is coming."
For a long moment, the only sound was the creek and their ragged breathing. Mira finally reached out, not to touch the ring, but to gently close her hand over his, hiding the metal from view.
"Leo," she said, her voice now quiet and deadly serious. "This is bigger than dungeons. Bigger than hunter ranks. This thing… it's using you. It's testing you like a lab rat. You can't control it."
"I know," he admitted, the truth a bitter pill. "But without it, I'm nothing. I'm a blank. I'd be dead three times over."
"Without it, you wouldn't have been in those situations to begin with!" she countered, but the fire was gone from her voice, replaced by a weary logic. "You charged a D-Rank team because you had hope. You came north because you had a secret weapon. The ring isn't just saving you, Leo; it's leading you into danger. Making you reliant on it."
He had no answer for that. She had put words to the gnawing fear he'd been carrying since the wyrm's dungeon. The ring was both his salvation and his curse.
"We have to go back," Mira said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Not to the outpost. To New Arcanis. Now. You need to get away from here, from the dungeons. You need to learn about this thing somewhere safe, where you're not forced to use it every other day."
"But my training—"
"Your training almost got us killed by a C-Rank monster that shouldn't have been there!" she snapped. "Forget your training, Leo! This isn't about being a hunter anymore. This is about surviving whatever that ring is really for."
He knew she was right. The northern journey was over. The dream of grinding his way to strength in the dungeons was a fantasy shattered by the reality of the Six-Armed Warden and the chilling sentience of the ring.
He tried to push himself up, but a wave of dizziness and nausea washed over him. His body felt like it had been run through a rock crusher. The "32% integrity" wasn't just a number; it was a physical state.
"Can you walk?" Mira asked, her anger softening into concern.
"I… I don't know," he admitted, shame heating his face.
She slung his arm over her shoulder, grunting under his weight. "Come on. We'll find somewhere to hide for the night. We can't go back to the main camp. If Jorgen's team survived, they'll have questions. Questions we can't answer."
They moved slowly, painfully, away from the creek, deeper into the woods, leaving the sounds of the distant battle and the shadow of the Warden behind. They had escaped with their lives.
But as Leo leaned on his friend, each step a fresh agony, he knew the cost had been higher than any guilders could pay. He had traded a piece of his autonomy for power, and the collector was just beginning to call in the debt. The ring was silent on his finger, but its presence was heavier than ever. The true test, it had warned, was approaching. And Leo was more afraid of it than he had been of any monster.