‘Huh?!’

Leo’s body violently shook…

Or rather, it was supposed to twitch anxiously.

In the instant Leo’s consciousness returned, he followed the usual routine of pulling his eyes open and sitting up straight.

But when Leo’s body rushed to follow the usual list of rapidly waking up, with the adrenaline from the returning memory of the last he could still remember…

His body didn’t move.

‘I can’t feel anything blocking my movements. And how do you even go about stopping one’s eyelids from moving?’

Nothing stopped Leo from shaking awake… But his body just refused to do so.

He wasn’t restrained, his vision wasn’t blocked. It’s just, that whenever he would try to do anything, an opposing group of muscles and joints would suddenly act up, always coming to a perfect standstill with whatever Leo actually wanted to do.

By trying to open his eyes, Leo only made his cheek twitch painfully when his skin suddenly tensed up. As a result, distracted by the sudden bout of unexpected pain, he would give up on his attempt…

Only to get right back where he started.

Still.

Even with the nanites still coursing through his blood…

‘Wait, nanites?’

Leo wasted no time on idle, defeatist thoughts like, ‘Did I die?’ or ‘Is this what death looks like?’ He was obviously and painfully alive. And rather on pointless fears, he opted to focus on solving the mystery of his… paralysis?

Now, things slowly started to make sense.

His whole body refused to move. It was just like one of those infamous sleep paralysis episodes!

And since it was a first for the young man… what else could be to blame but nanites?

‘What are they trying to achieve?’ Leo asked himself in his thoughts.

The nanites weren’t a panacea. But they weren’t just an energy drink either.

They were a semi-autonomous swarm of microscopic bio-drones, actively altering the ways in which the human body could operate. And while it could help to heal minor injuries faster and decrease the lethality factor of the heavier wounds…

It was supposed to shine in a battle, something that those sword-flying monsters refused to let happen.

‘And even if, would we actually stand any chance against them?’

Surprise or not, those human-shaped demons moved too quickly for Leo or any of his late teammates to react. His survival was just a fluke. Nothing more but a weave of his innate sense of danger, random opportunity to spot the locals in advance, and a crapload of luck.

Still…

By taking his time to analyze the situation, Leo managed to quell his emotions and calm down.

This, in turn, greatly decreased his body resistance, acting just like a seatbelt, where pulling too strongly and too quickly would make the mechanism lock in place.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As the sense of such precaution engraved into the nanite code finally started to make sense, Leo found the right balance of strength and gentleness.

Finally, he managed to open his eyes

[DEATH]

Right before Leo’s eyes, there was a face. Undeniably beautiful, as if created by the hand of a divine artist and then granted life to commemorate its perfection.

A face on the level of what he only ever saw on the novel and manga covers. No human face in real life could even compare.

A face of a cold, jade beauty of every cultivation story out in the vast depths of the ancient web.

And the very same face Leo saw while she was busy teleporting around, murdering his teammates as easily as if she was swatting away flies.

The sense of the looming danger returned all at once, slamming into Leo’s consciousness like an oversized hammer straight out of Souls game series.

Regaining control over his body, Leo dashed back, turning sideways as he attempted to crawl away.

Every fiber of his being screamed danger.

Prompted by the nanites, his flesh exhibited its absolute peak performance, just to bring him away from this overwhelming danger. In the calculation of fight or flight, the former won by a landslide.

Yet, as some sort of barrier appeared to stand in Leo’s attempt at crawling away from the personification of death…

Something suddenly stumped him.

Like a pebble thrown into the vital gear of a machine, this one inconsistency that Leo innately noticed made him freeze on the spot.

Sure, it was the same, jade-beauty grade of adorable yet elegant face as the one he saw just before.

But that face was everything but cold.

As Leo’s churning stomach slowly calmed down and its insides no longer threatened to find the quickest possible way out, the dazed focus on the face in front of him finally started to give in, revealing the full picture.

And it instantly shattered Leo’s sanity, for it was so out of place, he simply couldn’t logically connect everything that happened recently.

A girl with exactly the same features as the jade beauty from before, with the only difference being in her much plainer robes, was currently leaning over Leo’s head while reaching out with her hand for his cheek.

Her face, full of nothing but warmth and concern.

Then, with an expression Leo would make while petting a stray dog, the girl carefully reached out…

Her fingers brushed over the very surface of Leo’s cheek, before she pulled her warm closer, resting it down on the side of the young man’s face.

(There, there,) the girl muttered something in a voice as soothing as the sound of flowing water and the wind gushing over the short grass over some highlands.

Just her voice alone stood leagues above the supposedly perfected AI software that compiled nearly endless source material from the ancient web to create the perfect, self-indulgent experience one could desire.

And when her fingers grasped at Leo’s cheek…

“Huh?”

Leo’s voice returned at the same time as his control over his body. Yet, stunned by the situation and its rapid development, he simply failed to produce a voice thus far.

(So you are awake.)

The song of a thousand birds once again filled Leo’s ears as the girl sang some sort of gibberish.

‘Well, I guess there was no point talking, to begin with,’ the young man thought, noticing the most obvious problem one could expect when hoping for an inhabited world.

The problem of language.

Still.

The girl’s fingers felt better than Leo even anticipated the female touch could be.

They carried a strange sense of warmth, and radiated relaxation, spreading it through Leo’s flesh and nearly forcing him to lower his guard.

‘Huh?!’

Leo, startled by the thought, nearly jumped…

Only to realize how stupid his worry was.

‘I was out for quite a while, wasn’t I?’ he self-reflected. ‘If they wanted to harm me, they had more than enough time for tha…’

Even Leo’s thoughts suddenly ceased when the girl gently retracted her hand. Still, she kept herself leaning over the young man, her face still full of concern mixing with… shame? Regret? Sense of guilt? Maybe all of them? Or maybe it was something entirely else?

Still overwhelmed by the developments thus far, Leo suddenly froze.

‘Wait, if she wanted to harm me… isn’t right.’

Leo lowered his eyes, suddenly drawing his attention to his own hands.

‘Just how did I get here?’ Leo asked himself before casting a quick glance at his surroundings.

Bare walls, a small opening in one of the said walls that served as a window and the only source of light for the room he was in. A simple bed underneath him, a thin blanket warming him up from above.

Taking in the big picture, Leo finally started to properly recall what happened before… and made him question just how he went from unintentionally taking his life by drowning… to resting in someone’s bed, under someone’s roof, and with the girl bearing the same face as the monster who massacred his team somehow appearing to care for him?

‘And rather than posing a danger…’ Leo raised his eyes on the girl and, for the very first time, looked back at her. ‘For me to be here, doesn’t that mean that she saved me instead?'

And then, the girl spoke again.

(It will be okay now. Let me help you get some more rest.)