Chapter 72 — Diagnosis of a Sleeping Warship
1. The Warship's Assessment
The explosive silver-white radiance that had flooded the Medical Bay ebbed like a receding tide and gradually stilled.
The brilliance that had threatened to blind gave way to a flat, cold emergency medical light that admitted no shadows — and under that light, the room was remade.
The more sharply i-Minerva's holographic form came into focus, the more the mechanical sounds of the warship's interior found their place within a precision that bordered on the uncanny.
Chiik—. Click.
With each engagement of a support brace, the liquid inside the pod trembled — barely, imperceptibly.
As though a vast machine were recalibrating its own center of gravity around a single human body.
This was not simply laying someone down.
It was a physical alignment, driven by the full precision of Archeon's technology — adjusting for the optimal horizontal plane to account for the damage to Mujin's spine and the distorted flow of his meridians.
The sharp metallic sound that rang out each time a brace engaged scraped mercilessly through the silence of the warship.
Then i-Minerva's full analysis began. A blue scanning beam extended from her eyes and moved from Mujin's pale forehead downward — slowly, and with relentless thoroughness.
Wherever the beam passed, the state of Mujin's muscle tissue, his ruptured meridians, and his failing core were projected in stark detail across the transparent holographic screens.
[Precision analysis of Administrator's physical condition in progress……]
[Warning: Core energy stability at 11%. Below critical threshold.]
[Report: Full-body meridian damage rate at 89%. Natural recovery not possible.]
[Diagnosis: Biological energy depletion and nervous system collapse in progress.]
The red warning text filling the air proved with numbers and symbols, without mercy, how desperate Mujin's condition was.
Baekri Hyun, the Heavenly Demon, could not parse the figures — but what the red light flooding the screen signified, he understood intuitively. It bordered on death.
His heavy brows narrowed, just barely. The hand that commanded the Central Plains tightened.
Soha could not bring herself to look at the screens directly.
She held Mujin's cold hand in both of hers, trying to share a warmth that could not pass through. His fingers hung slack and without strength. Seol, keeping watch at the side of the pod, had curled his body low beneath it, and fixed his gaze on i-Minerva — breathing slow and even.
Even a divine beast felt it instinctively — that whatever came from the lips of this formless woman held Mujin's life in its hands.
At last, i-Minerva finished her calculations and raised her head. Her gaze remained fixed on Mujin. Her voice came cold and stripped of feeling as she delivered her conclusion.
[Administrator survival probability: 17.3%.]
That single brief line froze the air of the Medical Bay solid.
The Heavenly Demon's black robes rippled with a tremor of killing intent. Soha's shoulders began to shake visibly.
But i-Minerva paid no attention to their distress. Her only criterion was the Administrator's survival.
As long as the probability was not zero, the warship's systems would not stop.
i-Minerva swept her fingers through the air — and from the depths of the sleeping warship, a greater vibration answered.
[Recovery feasibility assessment complete.]
[Activating Emergency Recovery Protocol.]
In the silence that lay over the Medical Bay like death, that declaration was the only sound still alive with hope.
2. Recovery Protocol
i-Minerva swept her fingers through the air, and the devices inside the pod lifted their heads all at once.
Jiing—
The moment a low, sharp mechanical tone drove itself into the ear, silver-white liquid began rising from the floor of the pod where Mujin lay.
Nano-Restoration Fluid.
The silver-white liquid — incomprehensible to any mind formed by the Central Plains — writhed like a living thing as it swallowed Mujin's feet, then his calves, then his thighs in sequence.
Neither cold nor warm, carrying only the cool of metal, the liquid spread rapidly up to Mujin's torso.
Soha held her breath at the sight.
Terrified that her brother would disappear into that cold silver water and never return, she tightened her grip on his hand without thinking.
The Heavenly Demon did not move.
He felt the Archeon seal carved into his own veins resonating wildly with the vibration emanating from that liquid — and pressed his lips firmly together.
Then a device descended from above the pod. It was a neural connection apparatus fitted with dozens of fine metal needles.
The device pressed into the space behind Mujin's back, then aligned itself in a row along the length of his spine.
Chiik—
Instead of the sound of burning flesh, a sharp crack of nerves being forcibly reconnected broke the silence. The metal needles drove into each joint of Mujin's spine and began fusing the severed neural network by force, circuit by circuit, to Archeon's systems.
[Neural realignment and meridian bypass pathway construction: initiating.]
At i-Minerva's declaration, the metal arms moved in a flurry.
Click— Archeon's micro-particles were injected into Mujin's body.
In that instant, Mujin's body — motionless as something already dead — lurched violently, as though struck by a current.
"Brother!"
Soha cried out and tried to throw herself forward — but the Heavenly Demon's heavy hand pressed down hard on her shoulder and held her in place.
His eyes were fixed only on Mujin's chest.
Inside i-Minerva's eyes, red warning lights blinked with sharp urgency.
[Cardiac restart attempt in progress……] [Insufficient output. Initiating second attempt.]
Jiing—
High-frequency sound flooded the Medical Bay.
The core inside Mujin's chest — still until now — was pushed by the powerful energy wave injected from outside, forced into a wrenching rotation against its own resistance.
And then.
Doom—
A sound like a vast drum striking resonated from somewhere inside Mujin's chest, loud enough to feel as though it shook the entire cavern.
It was not a simple heartbeat.
It was the signal of Archeon's engine igniting for the first time — and silver-white radiance erupted across his entire body in its wake.
Mujin's chest rose in one great heave, then fell.
Soha's eyes flew wide with shock and hope at once.
In the moment that drumbeat sounded, every light inside the warship shuddered simultaneously.
But the relief was brief. i-Minerva's voice remained cold.
[First heartbeat confirmed. However, the output is unstable.]
The lighting around the pod began to flicker uneasily. The collision between the will to live and the insufficiency of energy sent a strange tension moving through the warship's interior.
3. The Warship's Limit
A single heartbeat — one extraordinary signal of life.
Before the echo of it had even faded, red warning lights screamed to life across the entire Medical Bay.
Beep— Beep—
A sharp alarm tore through the silence, and the silver-white lights pouring from the ceiling bent and dimmed, losing their brightness as the power failed them.
i-Minerva's gaze did not turn toward the Heavenly Demon or Soha.
Inside her eyes, only the vast torrent of biological data being output above Mujin's chest poured like a waterfall. Who stood nearby, what expression they wore — to i-Minerva, these were unnecessary information outside the scope of calculation.
[Warning: Primary warship power source lost.] [Report: Auxiliary battery reserve approaching critical threshold.] [Alert: Full Recovery process suspended.]
i-Minerva's holographic form flickered — blue static crackling across her image as it swayed, unsteady.
The precise mechanical arms that had been reconnecting Mujin's meridians one by one lost power, stuttered, and froze in mid-air.
Even the soft light of the neural connection device running along Mujin's spine faded and went dark.
The fear that the strong heartbeat of a moment ago might have been Mujin's final declaration pressed heavily down upon the cold interior of the machine room.
"Explain."
The Heavenly Demon's heavy voice reverberated through the cavern — the commanding pressure of an absolute sovereign seizing a space in an instant. i-Minerva did not so much as turn her head.
The Heavenly Demon could not understand the numbers on the screens. But the atmosphere alone — the entire warship holding its breath — was enough to tell him how precarious the situation was.
[Energy reserve: 20.2%.]
[Energy required to rebuild Administrator's body and core: 62%.]
[Logical conflict arising from insufficient power. Reconfiguring pathways.]
Soha gripped Mujin's hand and wept in despair — but inside i-Minerva's eyes, there was not a fragment of feeling.
She required no one's agreement, no one's consent. She executed the most efficient conclusion her system had reached on its own.
[Full Recovery mode: forcibly abandoned.]
[Highest priority: sustain survival.]
[Switching to alternate Protocol 'Immortal'.]
Chiik—! Click!
The medical pod's devices, which had stalled, resumed their motion — letting out strange sounds as they constricted around Mujin's body with greater force.
It was a cold choice that only a machine intelligence could make: abandon complete healing, and instead wring out what insufficient energy remained to delay death.
i-Minerva swept her fingers roughly through the air again. From the pod floor, silver-white Nano-Restoration Fluid surged upward once more.
The cries of those around her, the killing intent of the Heavenly Demon — none of it reached any circuit within i-Minerva's calculation.
Only the cold, vast computation of a system working to anchor the existence called Mujin to this world continued without pause.
4. Thirty Percent
Within i-Minerva's eyes, tens of thousands of pieces of data converged in a single direction.
Her fingers seized through the air — and every device in the Medical Bay screamed awake.
Jiing—
High-frequency sound filled the room to its edges. From deep in the warship's core, a vibration transmitted itself outward — the sensation of wringing out the very last of its power.
The silver-white light inside the medical pod burned more intensely and sharply than before.
The nano-restoration devices writhed within the fluid. They breached the surface of Mujin's skin and threaded themselves into the spaces between muscle and blood vessel and bone.
Archeon's particles began forcing open a path — cutting bypass routes through the ruptured, devastated meridians.
As i-Minerva murmured, the core embedded at the center of Mujin's chest poured out a blue light, so intense it seemed on the verge of detonation.
And in that moment.
Doom—
A wave far heavier and more massive than before shook the entire Medical Bay.
Soha, who had been holding her breath near the pod, was pushed back a step by the force of it. Through tear-filled eyes she looked at Mujin's chest.
Doom—
Again. A direct, powerful heartbeat.
Like a stopped clockwork mechanism being wound roughly back into motion, Mujin's chest began to rise and fall at steady intervals — one strong beat at a time.
The pulse of a life that had been severed had returned to the surface of the world, borrowing an engine made of steel.
[Administrator recovery progress: 30%.]
i-Minerva's voice filled the Medical Bay.
[Minute electrical response detected in nervous system.]
And then.
The tip of Mujin's index finger — submerged pale and still within the silver-white fluid — moved.
Just barely. A single small twitch.
[Administrator biological stability: 31%.]
i-Minerva updated the figure.
The red warning lights that had been blazing in a frenzy began to quiet. The Medical Bay settled once more into mechanical calm and cold air.
Within i-Minerva's eyes, complex equations continued to run in columns.
She observed the shift in Mujin's brainwaves — and her lips moved, barely.
[Full awakening not possible with current power reserves.]
The Heavenly Demon watched all of it from one pace back, without moving.
He gave the Demonic Heavenly Guards who had carried the palanquin a silent command with his eyes — hold your positions — then turned toward Mujin inside the pod and murmured, very low.
"……Hold on."
The Heavenly Demon's low voice sank into the cold Medical Bay.
A moment of silence.
And then —
the eyelids of Mujin, submerged in the silver-white fluid,
trembled.
Barely, barely —
but without question.
And in that instant:
[Administrator Mujin — Executor authority confirmed.]
17.3%.
I've been thinking about what it means to work with a number like that. Not to feel hope or despair about it — just to keep working, because the number isn't zero.
i-Minerva doesn't comfort anyone this chapter, and she doesn't try to. She abandons Full Recovery without asking permission, switches to Immortal without explanation, and keeps going. There's something about that kind of ruthless, single-minded focus that I find more honest than reassurance would be.
Thirty percent isn't a lot. But Mujin's finger moved.
See you next chapter.
