Luck Stat Broken: Rise of the Khan
Chapter 115 - 111: Spellcasting disabled
The Tier-1 Medical Bay ran on an isolated backup generator, drowning out the chaos of the rebellion below with a terrifying, quiet hum.
Blinding white LEDs cast no shadows across the brushed steel and immaculate ceramics. The air was freezing, kept at a strictly regulated fifty-five degrees to preserve biological assets. The sharp, chemical sting of industrial bleach and synthesized anesthetics actively burned the lungs, a sterile environment utterly devoid of dirt, grit, or humanity.
Zeraya kicked through the reinforced poly-glass doors of the intensive care wing. She had abandoned her ornate "Golden Savior" armor miles below. Wearing only a dark, sweat-stained kinetic undersuit, she wielded the rusted, chipped iron sword she had kept since her first week in the Tutorial. Covered in ash and soot, she looked like an infection breaching a cleanroom.
Three Type-2 Automated Orderlies drifted out from the triage counter to intercept her. They were not combat golems. They were floating medical units equipped with hard-light scalpels, bone-saws, and chemical restraints, entirely governed by algorithmic mandates.
Hidden ceiling speakers crackled, emanating a soft, melodic, synthetic voice. "Warning. Unregistered biological presence detected in Harvest Suite Three. Please submit to immediate sanitization protocols to preserve the sterility of the assets."
Zeraya spat a mouthful of blood onto the flawless white ceramic floor. The nearest drone’s optical sensors instantly tracked downward, locking onto the biological stain.
Zeraya didn’t hesitate. "Mop this up," she grunted.
The Orderlies did not attack with military tactics; they attacked with surgical precision, aiming to sedate and dissect.
Zeraya fought back with pure, unrefined brawling. She didn’t trigger glowing sword-arts. She ducked under a sweeping hard-light scalpel, grabbed the hovering drone by its sterile IV-rack, and brutally drove the rusted iron of her sword directly into its central battery housing.
The drone sparked and dropped, leaking a pool of dark, oily coolant onto the tiles. Zeraya ignored the remaining drones, using the destroyed chassis as a stepping stool to vault over the counter and sprint for the harvest tables.
[Entity Defeated: Type-2 Medical Drone.]
[Warning: Contamination Level Critical. Area Lockdown Initiated.]
The rhythmic thumping of an industrial centrifuge echoed through Harvest Suite Three, underscored by the terrifying, flatlining beep of a heart monitor dropping dangerously low.
Lariya was strapped flat to a bolted steel table. Transparent tubes ran from her arms and chest into a towering, glass-encased centrifuge. The machine was actively pumping a sickening mixture of dark crimson blood and glowing, volatile blue mana, separating the raw magic to package into single-use [Tier-4 Elixirs] for the Platinum-tier elites.
Zeraya dropped her sword. She didn’t have time to hack the computer terminal. She grabbed the transparent tubing pumping Lariya’s life away and hauled backward, attempting to physically tear it out of the machine.
Her bare hands slipped on the smooth synthetic casing. "Lariya! Wake up! Come on, you stubborn idiot, open your eyes!"
The centrifuge groaned, resisting the pull. Lariya’s eyes fluttered open. Her pupils were blown wide from the synthesized sedatives. She stared at the blinding ceiling, blindly disoriented.
Her voice was a dry, rasping whisper, barely audible over the hum of the machinery. "Ceiling’s too clean. Where’s the dirt?"
Zeraya couldn’t break the reinforced tubing. She snatched a discarded medical laser from a nearby tray, cranked the heat dial to maximum, and sliced directly through the primary feed line.
Sparks erupted. A mixture of scalding synthetic coolant and glowing blue mana-blood sprayed across Zeraya’s face and chest.
With the pressure lock broken, Zeraya grabbed the thick bio-shunts bolted into Lariya’s forearms and savagely tore them out. Lariya convulsed, gasping for air as the raw, unmedicated pain shocked her nervous system awake.
The ruined centrifuge sputtered and whined as it shut down. Lariya rolled off the freezing steel table, her legs buckling instantly. Zeraya caught her, taking her full weight, lowering her to the ruined tile floor.
Lariya coughed, wet and ragged, wiping a streak of her own blood from her chin. She stared at her hands.
The internal warmth was gone. For years, she had lived with the physical sensation of mana burning like a low fire in her chest. That fire was dead. She felt a hollow, freezing void where her core used to sit.
Desperate, she raised her trembling right hand. She attempted to summon a basic [Light-Mote], a spell she had performed effortlessly since her first days in the wastes.
Her fingertips sparked faintly, casting a pale, sickly grey light for a fraction of a second, and then fizzled out entirely. There was no backlash. There was no pain. There was just absolute, dead emptiness.
Above her, the LitRPG interface rendered not in a triumphant blue box, but in a harsh, corporate crimson error message.
[Harvest Interrupted. Asset Yield: 88%. Processing Halted.]
[Warning: Biological Core Irreparably Damaged by Centrifuge Extraction.]
[System Status Updated: Permanent Mana-Atrophy applied. Spellcasting disabled.]
Zeraya read the red text floating above Lariya’s head. Her tough exterior finally cracked. She knelt in the spilled coolant, her voice trembling. "Lari... I’m so sorry. I was too late. The machine... it took the core."
Lariya stared at her shaking hands. Her breathing was ragged but steadying. She curled her fingers inward, clenching her fist, testing the physical knuckles. "It took the math. It didn’t take my hands."
The metallic slide of the lockdown doors sealing the medical wing echoed down the hall.
Zeraya braced for the emotional breakdown. She expected Lariya to cry over the lost progression, to mourn the identity of being a mage.
Lariya did not cry. She looked at the floating red text of the [Mana-Atrophy] debuff. With a sharp, dismissive flick of her wrist, she physically swiped the UI box out of her field of vision, closing the notification entirely.
She turned away from the surgical table, her bare feet sticking to the bloody floor. She bypassed the sterile trays and walked toward a floor-level ventilation grate in the corner of the room. Reaching through the slats, her fingers wrapped around a two-foot-long, solid iron kinetic wrench.
A Tier-4 maintenance worker hadn’t left it behind by accident. They had deliberately wedged it into the duct to permanently jam the sterile air-circulation baffles open—a tiny, invisible act of working-class rebellion ignored by the medical AI because internal ducts fell under "Maintenance Jurisdiction." The handle was wrapped in thick, frayed friction-tape, permanently stained with deep-earth grease. Crudely scratched into the iron were a set of faded initials.
When Lariya gripped it, the physics of the un-networked metal took hold. Solid iron is a thermal conductor. Without her internal mana-fire to warm her blood, the rusted iron felt like a block of ice, actively leeching the remaining body heat from her bare palms. Gripping it didn’t just require muscle; it physically hurt, making her reliance on the analogue weapon a constant, freezing sacrifice. She accepted the active baton from the people the Silo pretended didn’t exist.
Zeraya watched her, utterly bewildered, slowly retrieving her own rusted sword from the floor. "You just lost ten years of magical progression. Are you going into shock?"
Lariya rolled her shoulders, planting her feet firmly on the cold tiles, testing the swing of the iron. "If I go into shock, we die in this room. The Warlord is waiting. I’ll mourn the blue boxes tomorrow."
The synthetic wail of the Tier-1 lockdown alarms blared from the corridor. The reinforced poly-glass doors had slid shut and magnetically locked, sealing them inside the ruined suite.
Zeraya approached the door, raising her sword, but hesitated. The blade wouldn’t break reinforced glass; it would just snap the steel.
Lariya stepped past her. She didn’t have a spell to melt the lock. She didn’t have a rogue’s skill to bypass the keypad.
She raised the industrial wrench over her shoulder, her jaw set, her muscles screaming from the sudden exertion. "Stand back. I don’t have the dexterity stat for this."
Lariya swung the solid iron with everything she had left.
Crack. The rusted head slammed into the dead-center of the reinforced poly-glass. The kinetic recoil shuddered entirely up her arms, vibrating her teeth, but a thick, white fracture appeared in the flawless door.
She swung again. Crack. The sudden, brutal exertion was too much for her drained body. The torn, unstitched shunt-wounds in her forearms ripped wide open. Fresh, dark blood flowed freely down her wrists, soaking the paper hospital gown and making the iron grip slick and treacherous.
As the crimson pooled on the floor, a small, disc-like automated sterilization unit dropped from the baseboard. It flatly ignored the fact that a human was bleeding to death. Instead, it frantically swarmed around her bare feet to mop up the fresh blood, beeping a persistent, apathetic "Contamination Alert." The Silo didn’t care that she was dying, only that she was staining the tile.
She didn’t stop to rest. She didn’t wait for a cooldown timer. She relied entirely on raw, analogue human exhaustion.
Crack. Crack. The spiderweb of fractures spread across the entire frame.
On the fifth swing, Lariya let out a ragged, primal shout, throwing her remaining body weight behind the iron. The wrench crushed through the center of the door. The poly-glass gave way, collapsing outward into the hallway in a glittering, chaotic cascade of shattered corporate geometry.
The sheer mechanical exertion destroyed Lariya’s remaining stamina. The exact second the glass shattered, her legs buckled. She barely caught herself, jamming the head of the rusted wrench against the floor and using it as a literal walking cane just to stay upright.
Zeraya instantly stepped in, wrapping her arm around Lariya’s waist to physically support her ruined shoulder.
The Game Master’s System, utterly obsessed with digital math and strict classes, could not process the analogue grit. A flickering, unstable blue box rendered over Lariya’s head, desperately trying to categorize the mechanical force:
[Class Shift Attempted: Unregistered Laborer...]
The notification glitched out entirely into red static, vanishing. The clinic speakers crackled, the AI’s melodic voice stuttering into a confused mess.
"Error... Asset exhibiting uncalculated mechanical force. Magic signature not found. Does... does not compute. Error."
Zeraya tightened her grip on Lariya’s waist, her boots crunching over the glass. "Keep your eyes open. Don’t drop the iron."
Lariya spat another streak of blood onto the sterile hallway floor, her knuckles white around the freezing, grease-stained tape of the wrench. She wheezed out a single, exhausted directive. "Get me to Will."