"Just hold her arms down," Hana commanded, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm, surgical tone as she forcefully slammed her personal doubts into a dark corner of her brain.

She had a clock ticking down on her screen, and she wasn’t going to let a psychological ghost cost her half a million points.

She grabbed a sealed tube of antiseptic spray and a laser-scalpel from the tray. Her medical knowledge sight flared, turning the rabbit’s skin completely transparent in her vision, highlighting the exact location of the three trapped kits and the deeply ruptured uterine wall beneath the fur.

The heart rate monitor was screaming now, a flatline tone creeping closer by the second.

> [FETAL DETECTED: 3 COUNTS]

> Maternal Heart Rate: 28 BPM.

> Time Remaining: 03:45.

"If she flinches even a millimeter, the blade will cut her main artery," Hana said, lining up the blue laser beam with the rabbit-kin’s lower abdomen. "So make sure to hold her down hard."

Caspian didn’t ask a single question. The sheer weight of her authority left no room for hesitation.

He shifted his massive frame, throwing his entire torso over the upper half of the table, his heavily muscled arms pinning the rabbit-kin’s shoulders and wrists into the cold metal with a crushing, immovable force.

​"She will not move," Caspian rumbled, his jaw set, his golden eyes reflecting the harsh blue light of the laser.

​Hana didn’t look up to check his positioning. Her eyes were locked entirely on the transparent grid mapping the female’s insides. In the ruins of her past life, she had done a few basic stitches—hastily patching up deep cuts on a scavenging member of a temporary party for a good price, of course, or securing a gaping wound with coarse thread while hiding from hordes. But a full cesarean section?

That was entirely out of her league. In reality, this rabbit female should be thanking whatever primitive forest spirits she prayed to if she made it off this table alive. Hana wasn’t a trained doctor; she was an end-world survivor just blindly following the system’s step-by-step directives to save her own skin.

​They say a needle in the hand of a rat is no different from a weapon of death, but Hana wasn’t a rat, and she had a full, high-tech manual hovering right in her line of sight.

She would just have to put her total faith in the text and her own steady hands so she didn’t get slammed with that half-a-million-point penalty.

> ​[MANUAL INITIALIZED: EMERGENCY ACUTE HYSTEROTOMY]

> Step 1: Incise lower abdominal wall along the indicated neon axis. Depth: 12mm.

> Warning: Avoid the left uterine artery highlighted in blinking orange.

​"Hold her tight," Hana muttered, her jaw locking as she pressed the activation switch.

​The laser-scalpel hummed a higher, sharper note. With her medical sight illuminating the transparent layers of the rabbit-kin’s abdomen, Hana brought the glowing blue beam down.

She made a swift, horizontal slice across the lower belly. The laser cut cleanly through the skin and muscle, instantly searing the minor blood vessels to prevent a messy spray, though the sharp, metallic scent of burnt fur and flesh immediately filled the sterile cave air.

​The unconscious female twitched instinctively against the intense heat, but Caspian held her down like a mountain of stone.

​"Womb exposed," Hana whispered to herself, completely drowning out the phantom echo of the Saintess that still lingered like a foul taste in her mind.

She tossed the laser-scalpel back onto the tray and grabbed a pair of sterile alloy retractors, pulling the incision open to reveal the severely distended, deep crimson wall of the womb. It was bruising rapidly, the tissue strained to its absolute limit from the two days of obstructed labor.

> ​[ALERT: CRITICAL TENSION UPON UTERINE WALL]

> Time Remaining: 02:14.

> Step 2: Make a shallow 5cm incision along the lower segment. Manually extract cargo units 1, 2, and 3.

​"The manual says manual," Hana grumbled under her breath.

​She picked up a traditional steel blade from the container, preferring the tactile feedback for the delicate internal tissue.

With a cold, steady hand, she sliced through the wall. Dark, stagnant blood immediately welled up, but Hana didn’t flinch. She shoved her gloved hands straight into the opening, her fingers brushing against a wet, furry mass.

​She gripped the first kit by its slippery hind legs and pulled it out cleanly. It was a tiny, wet lump of grey fur, completely still.

​"Kulu, catch," Hana ordered, passing the limp bundle backward without looking. "Use that blue rubber squeeze-bulb in the tray. Suck the fluid out of its nose and mouth. Quickly."

​Kulu caught the tiny creature with remarkable gentleness for a warrior. He did not know why he was doing that, but he was going to obey.

His clawed fingers instantly worked the suction bulb into the kits small muzzle. A sharp, tiny squeak echoed in the cave a second later, followed by the rapid, fragile breathing of the first survivor.

​Hana was already reaching back in. "Unit two, out," she muttered, pulling a second, slightly larger white-furred kit from the tear. This one was already squirming, letting out a weak cry the moment the cold air hit its skin.

​But as her fingers wrapped around the third and final kit, the fetal monitor let out a long, horrifying flatline tone.

> ​[FETAL STATUS: UNIT 3 STAT]

> Heart Rate: 0 BPM. Asphyxiation imminent.

​Hana’s jaw tightened. She dug deeper, her knuckles pressing hard against the mother’s internal organs as she realized the final kit was severely wedged against the pelvic bone.

The data was slipping away from her. If this one died, would the system consider the objective a failure? Would it still freeze her status report? It seemed likely. The system always followed its own words, after all.

​"No, you don’t," Hana hissed.

​Using raw, calculated leverage, she twisted her wrist, overriding the manual’s gentle guidance and forcibly popping the third kit free from the bone obstruction.

She yanked it out into the glaring fluorescent light, immediately grabbing the canned medicine spray with her other hand and dousing the mother’s heavily bleeding womb to keep her from draining out.

​The third kit wasn’t breathing. It lay limp in her bloody palm, its tiny chest perfectly still.

​Hana didn’t hesitate. She placed two fingers over its minuscule ribcage and delivered a sharp, rhythmic sequence of chest compressions, her eyes darting between the mother’s dropping numbers on the screen and the dead weight in her hand.

​"Come on," she muttered, her voice dropping into a dangerous, low growl. "I didn’t waste a high-tier kit for you to ruin my balance."

​With a sudden, violent gasp, the third kit’s mouth popped open, coughing up a glob of fluid before unleashing a loud, remarkably healthy wail that bounced off the metallic walls of the bunker gear.

​The flatline tone on the monitor immediately broke, returning to a steady, rhythmic pulsing as the mother’s vitals stabilized under the heavy dose of the fast-clotting spray.

​Hana let out a long, slow breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, tossing the crying kit toward Kulu and grabbing the surgical needle.

> ​[CORE OBJECTIVE: ACHIEVED]

> Maternal Survival Rate: 100%

> Fetal Extraction: 3/3 Units Live.

> System Override Deactivated. Balance Protected.

​The aggressive crimson warning glow in her vision faded, returning to its usual, calm neon blue interface.

Hana didn’t look at the screen for more than a second before taking out the placenta that would be later disposed, and then she began stitching the flesh together, her hands moving with the quick, unfeeling precision of a tailor fixing a ripped backpack.

While the heavy silence of the waiting beastmen was palpable outside the cave, inside, the crisp, loud cries of three new variables proved that old-world logic had just rewritten the rules of life and death in the Peak.

’So, I saved a life, huh!’ Hana thought as he sewed, hearing the kits wail in the corner and Kulu who was having a hard time handling all three. "Caspian, let go for the female and go help Kulu." she said and Caspian nodded, but he was also as much of a disaster.

He didn’t know what he was doing, his massive clawed hands hovering awkwardly over the three squirming, loud-mouthed kits while Kulu tried to keep them from rolling onto the stone floor.

​The rabbit-kin female was weak, but her vitals were alright. As Hana tied off the final knot and snipped the thread, she let out a long breath of relief.

At least now she wouldn’t get her balance deducted, and the little one in her belly—she looked down at the small bump in her abdomen—was safe too.

Hana had not yet realized it, but she had already begun to grow fond of her unborn child, looking forward to the day she birthed a strong, healthy dragon that would rule this world.

​She washed her hands in the sterile basin, scrubbing away the thick scent of blood, and wiped down the tray. This whole ordeal was way past her paycheck.

​Walking out to the mouth of the den, Hana stepped into the open. Her face was a mask of deadpan exhaustion, her voice sounding entirely tired and bored as she addressed the waiting crowd.

​"The female is alive," Hana announced flatly. "And all three kits are safe. They’re breathing."

​A wave of sharp whispering immediately rippled through the gathered beastmen. The foxes, the lurking leopards, and the boars shifted on their feet, exchange looks of utter disbelief.

​"Is that true?"

​"Three? A rabbit female surviving three blocked kits?"

​"I thought I heard baby whimpers coming from the cave... but the shaman said she was a goner."

​Some still doubted it, their slitted eyes narrowing as they tried to crane their necks to see past her into the dark cave structure.