Kellin woke up from his blackout sometime later in pain and serious need of water. His skin felt musty, his body was worn, and he felt like he was suffocating.

He opened his eyes and glanced around, nothing having seemed to have changed since he'd gone under. His suit was still as damaged as it had been, but a strange silvery ichor was oozing out of the many punctures in it. When he looked toward his stomach, he saw a small pool of the silver liquid where the plate had been torn off earlier. Soon after, a metal finger on his barely functional right hand touched the strange, sticky liquid, a dull stinging pain throbbing from the contact.

Looking away from the state of his suit as questions began to pile up, Kellin focused back on his environment once again. The first thing he noticed were the trees absolutely dominating his immediate area. Wooden trees. Massive, and healthy. The only other place he'd seen so many large and healthy trees was back on Sector Five, and it was a highly restricted area. He'd gone once with his mentor on the man's whim but wasn't invited again when he'd accidentally stepped on and crushed a sapling.

Gardens were plentiful there—entire Domes dedicated to farmland. But trees... they could never seem to get them to grow quite right in a Dome.

This was beautiful.

"Anni would have loved to see this, eh Gyps?" he mumbled, shutting down the train of thought leading to his daughter.

Kellin spent another five minutes ogling the gigantic miracles of nature, then turned his attention back to himself and his condition. He felt a faint... knowing that his gun was behind the downed tree he was resting against, and slightly to his left. He didn't understand why he knew; he just did. It was there, and he knew without a sliver of a doubt that is where it had fallen. Exactly five feet, and... several inches behind him and to his left.

He'd never upgraded an ability tied to his rifle that should inform him of that, and a general allocation of [Credits] never chose a new Branch for you. That tug on his mind toward the rifle brought him more unease than his unknown surroundings. Still much less than the immense pain he was in though, yet another situation that brought no small amount of unease to his mind. With the paltry few [Credits] he had gotten from that fight, he was almost certain that there was a zero percent chance he'd be able to recover fully within the next week.

Still, he wanted to check. Needed to. Being thorough and knowing every ounce of information available to him had been the only way he'd lived through so many newly found death zones, including the last one he'd barely gotten extracted from alive.

"So, Gyps, how much do you think it'll cost us this time?" he mumbled to himself, dreading to ask the [System] in case it went into another error spree.

'Current state compared to past instances gives an estimated cost of two thousand [Credits] for an instant heal, one thousand for one hour, seven-hundred for six hours, four-hundred for-'

"Stop, stop," Kellin interrupted, baffled at the familiar voice.

She never responded when he spoke to himself, only when directly addressing the suit. That coupled with the breakdown she'd began bought him no small amount of unease, knowing he held barely 1 [Credit] after the life and death fight.

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He grunted to himself, thinking back on the fight as well. Wherever they'd thrown him, he'd be struggling his ass off to survive. Any creature capable of shredding through his suit like that and giving such minuscule amounts of [Credits] did not bode well for him. Something that started out with strength like that while being at the base of its evolutionary process... It pointed to this being a Leviathan Planet, and that terrified him more than other options.

"Might as well get it over with..." he muttered, speaking next to the System in a way that no one else would be able to hear regardless of how loud he was, like he'd changed frequencies with his vocal cords. "How much for a two-week heal?"

The single panel that appeared in his vision brought him a small amount of relief, the lines upon lines of text he'd half expected not showing up again. He did note the ominous 999+ messages tab in the upper right corner of his mind's eye, and did everything he could to ignore it.

However, what was actually written was not that much better as his heart rate quickened and he sat up straighter despite the pain.

[...Current threat level: 0]

[Health depleted: 58%]

[Status condition: Bleed, Minor Poison]

[Calculating...]

The tense few seconds after the last words were like a taunt by the [System] itself as a cold sweat developed on his back. He once again shut down the train of thought wanting to parse through those notifications but focused on the present. It had never taken longer than half a second to calculate prior to any of this.

[Unable to use 'Slow Heal' category healing]

"Well, shit," Kellin sighed out as it finally popped up with an answer. "Then, how-

[Cheapest healing category available: Fast]

[Available healing under category-Fast: Two Minute]

[Two Minute heal cost: 1 Credit]

When the text stopped appearing in his vision, he had had enough. Breathing out slowly as his heart pounded in his chest, he once again read through the several lines, taking in their meaning a few more times, his breaths becoming quicker with each subsequent read-through. Eventually, he never made it past the first line as he began to hyperventilate.

"Zero? What?!" he growled, fists clenching tightly. "Why?! What the hell is this?"

His breathing rate continued to increase and looking down at himself, he could see the metal suit he was inside of expanding and contracting with his own rate of respiration. Something it had never done before, and something that added to the shock once again. Soon, he was beginning to see black spots as his arms braced him against the ground.

'Carbon Dioxide levels below warning thresholds,' Gypsy's voice reported, monotone as ever and eerily clear.

He barely registered it as he continued to try and steady himself against the ground that had begun to swim all around him. Despite knowing he needed to slow his breathing in some primal way, his brain kept telling himself to take in more oxygen. He felt like he was sliding around the strange needle-like plants beneath him and log-

'Carbon Dioxide levels below emergency thresholds. Kellin, calm down.'

Again, his mind heard but failed to understand as his head began to droop forward, eyes staring at the silver ichor not supposed to be on his suit-

A dull pain began to emanate from his chest as it suddenly stopped rising and falling altogether, despite his muscles straining against it.

Twenty seconds passed as his brain finally came back in control of his body and stopped straining against what he realized was his own suit constricting his diaphragm's ability to function. After around forty seconds, it began to slowly expand and contract, forcing air into his lungs via his nose since his mouth was closed.

He began choking almost immediately, body falling sideways as he flailed slightly against the ground.

"Stop- Manual overr-" he got out before he felt his suit go slack and his breathing returning to normal.

Kellin lay on the ground sideways for the next ten minutes catching his breath with his helmet tilted at an upward angle, light trickling down through the dense canopy in a thousand different spotlights to illuminate the area all around him.

He hated being planet-side.