Before the last word leaves her mouth, I stroll into Clara's room at a leisurely pace.
Eli's eyes shift. He pivots instantly and turns on me. "How dare you show your face here, Ash. If you hadn't been so stingy with the jade spirit mushroom in the first place, Clara would never have gone out to harvest one for me, and she wouldn't have ended up like this."
The clueless disciples nearby nod along like clockwork. But Clara, flat on her bed, is not buying it this time. She screams at the top of her lungs. "Eli, I went there for you. Don't you dare try to pin this on Ash."
Eli finally has the opening he's been waiting for. He turns on Clara completely. Tears appear on cue.
"Clara, how could you accuse me like this without even thinking? If it wasn't for Ash, would any of this have happened to you? I'm done with you."
He slaps his hands over his face and runs out, sobbing. A crowd of disciples chase after him immediately, eager to comfort their idol.
The narrow little room falls quiet with just the two of us left. We stare at each other.
Clara drags herself through her pain and drops to her knees in front of me with a heavy thud. She looks up, crying. "Ash, you have a way to get jade spirit mushrooms, don't you? You wouldn't just let me die, would you?"
I watch this broken woman in front of me with quiet interest. Something becomes very clear to me.
In this world, nobody's brain was ever actually switched off by the script. They all have functioning minds. When they called me cruel and heartless, it was never about the truth, just a convenient excuse to step on me while winning Eli's favor. I was a stepping stone, and they used me with practiced ease. Whether I was actually cruel or not, nobody cared enough to ask.
But when the walls close in and there's nowhere left to turn, even Clara knows the only person who can save her is me, and she will get on her knees to prove it.
This so-called beloved of theirs, it's just a group of people with too much time on their hands picking someone pretty to fawn over for entertainment. The moment things actually fall apart, all that beloved nonsense means absolutely nothing. People will always save themselves first. Every single time.
The system is bouncing around inside my head, practically giddy. "Player, this is your moment. You've got dozens of jade spirit mushrooms sitting in that storage ring. Just hand one over. Play the good guy for once. By the time we reach the final chapter, Clara will be sobbing her eyes out with regret. That's the mission."
My storage ring does, in fact, have several dozen jade spirit mushrooms just sitting there, courtesy of my mech suit, which basically shaved off half a mountainside and swept them all up in one pass. Effortless doesn't even begin to cover it.
I turn to face Clara. "Actually, I do have something good I'd like to give you."
A desperate, hungry light floods into Clara's eyes.
I casually pull out a massive pile of jade spirit mushrooms, along with spirit stones, artifacts, and even a few drops of healing serum. I let the drops fall onto the back of my own hand, where a nasty wound seals shut instantly without leaving so much as a scar. Interstellar era technology, at least five thousand years ahead of anything in the cultivation realm.
Clara's eyes go wide enough to fall out of her head. Pure, desperate joy spreads across her face. "Thank you, senior brother. Thank you. From this day forward, whatever you need, I would give my life for you without a second thought."
The words are barely out of her mouth when I reach into a corner and pull out a few copper coins. I set them down in front of Clara. Then, right in front of her eyes, I sweep every last treasure back into my storage ring.
"Who said any of that was for you? Here. A few copper coins. Call it charity. The master's orders were clear. You're useless now. Pack your things and go sweep the outer sect."
The system shrieks inside my head. "Player, I am begging you. Just be a decent person for once. Can we please just complete the mission?"
"I am doing the mission. As long as I have enough firepower, surviving to the end is no problem at all. And as for the regret you keep talking about, tell me, does Clara regret it right now? Does she hate herself?"
The system crashes. Complete shutdown.
In a world gone wrong, the first thing you kill is your inner saint. The very first rule I learned in my last apocalypse. There is no version of me that plays the selfless martyr. Ever.
The light in Clara's eyes dies instantly. What replaces it is pure, absolute terror. She claws at the hem of my robe and cries like something inside her is being torn apart.
"Ash, please. You have so many mushrooms. Just one. That's all I'm asking. Please, just one. And that medicine, that miracle medicine you have, it could fix my tendons. I know it could."
The dark mouth of the particle gun swings toward Clara's hand and fires. At this range, her right hand is blown straight through. Bone fragments scatter across the floor. The air fills with the smell of charred flesh. She writhes on the floor, clutching what remains of her hand, screaming in agony.
I blow across the barrel of my particle gun and calmly tuck it back into the warehouse.
"So your spirit root is gone. Not that big of a deal, right? You love Eli more than anything. And Eli is everyone's darling. Surely someone that beloved can get you a mushroom. I'll leave that to him."
Clara, now truly and completely powerless, has no future left to speak of. Clara's family will discard her without hesitation and redirect their resources to some other daughter worth investing in. And Clara herself, once a proud inner sect disciple who looked down on everyone, has fallen all the way down to sweeping floors in the outer sect. That kind of gap is enough to haunt her for the rest of her life.