SL: Chapter 734 – Day 5,930 – You Were Supposed To Save…

“Michael,” Clarissa said as I was about to leave. Both me and Young Michael looked over at her.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Would you speak to Doctor Katz, before you leave? I have tried, but nothing has worked. He has just collapsed and gone comatose. I brought him inside, but mentally he is completely broken,” Clarissa said. I could see the plea in her eyes.

“Very well. We will leave shortly,” I told Young Michael who nodded. I respected Clarissa enough to speak to the good doctor. He had also helped out quite a bit. Fixing Young Michael’s eyes and reversing the worst of the damage with Michelle. She still hadn’t woken up yet, but her complexion had gotten better. Only time would tell if she would wake up and fully recover.

I wasn’t going to wait around. It was time to get back to grinding. But I could spare a few minutes for Clarissa.

I followed her to a spare room in the base. Doctor Katz was lying on a bed, clothes still on, looking blankly up at the ceiling. He was barely even breathing.

“Giving up already?” I asked while I leaned against a wall on the opposite side of the room. Clarissa was watching from the doorway.

“I am a failure,” Doctor Katz said quietly. So quietly I could barely hear him.

“Well, shit happens,” I said and he didn’t reply. “She was my mother. If anyone should be upset, it should be me.”

“I miscalculated. And someone died. I failed and everyone died,” he said. I looked at Clarissa who just shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t the best at motivational speeches.

“Well, then get better. Get stronger. Its that simple,” I told him. He didn’t respond and that annoyed me. I walked over to his bedside. “I never gave up.” He still didn’t respond. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him up to slap him, but he just gave me a blank stare. No fear. Nothing.

I let him fall back on the bed. “You are already dead,” I said. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to lose the will to live. But it appeared Doctor Katz had completely broken, mentally. I looked at Clarissa again who looked as frustrated as I did at the moment.

“I failed.”

“I failed as well. People died. I didn’t defeat the sphere fast enough or early enough. I didn’t kill a child when I should have. We all fail. The key isn’t to give up, but to keep trying,” I countered.

“I failed. Just kill me,” Doctor Katz said.

“Kill yourself,” I replied. I wasn’t about to do the deed for him. But ultimately he was a coward. If he had the courage to kill himself, he would have already done so. Just looking at him I felt incredibly frustrated.

“You were supposed to save us! You were supposed to save everyone! I believed in you!” Doctor Katz shouted and got up. He swung wildly at me. His fists bounced off me, doing nothing. His stats were too low to pose a threat. I didn’t attack back for several seconds.

He gave up after a couple more blows. “Just kill me Michael.” Time for something drastic. I didn’t want to waste my time on him. But for the sake of everything he had done and his knowledge, I would try to break his current mindset. Either this would work or it would go really badly. He had survived the calamity, so there was still fight in him. I had to bring it out.

“Fine, you want to die! Then die!” I shouted and my left hand shot out wrapping around his throat. I just kept him in place and did not let him breathe. My right hand grabbed on his head with my thumb over his left eye. I slowly began to push down on his eye with my thumb.

“You want death, well then let me grant you death!” He struggled but couldn’t do anything. His hands couldn’t budge mine. My thumb began to put pressure on his eye. “But it won’t be quick. And it won’t b clean. I will give you want you want, but it is going to be horrible and messy.”

He kept struggling. “Michael!” Clarissa said.

“Silence,” I shouted back at her. The only thing that I thought might work was forcing him to fight. To fight for his life. I pretended to let her shout distract me and eased up on Doctor Katz’s throat. He gasped for breath.

“Imbue Death!” He swung for my face. I pushed him away and he slammed into the wall. His skill missed completely.

“So, you do want to live?” I asked with a glare.

“Why don’t you just kill me?!”

“I don’t take orders from you. If you want to die, jump off the edge of the world, or kill yourself. I am not your servant or slave. I call you the good doctor, but ultimately you need to get your shit togeather. Sure people died. Sure, you messed up. But that happens. Even when you were a doctor in the military, you couldn’t save everyone.”

“But-“

“I don’t care. Save your ‘buts’. I know it is hard. Life is hard. Life is a struggle. This place makes it even worse. But if you want to die, there are monsters. Just fight until you can fight no more. Run off the edge. You don’t want to die, what you want is for someone else to deal with all the shit. Well, tough luck. You have to step up and help deal with it yourself,” I countered.

“I can’t. I can’t save anyone.”

“Then work harder. Get a meta-point. But we aren’t your caretakers or your nanny. Not even your therapist. Life sucks, deal with it and move on. When I come back, you better be moving about being productive, or gone. I don’t care. But you aren’t just going to sit around moping, asking people to kill you,” I told him.

He didn’t say anything. “Give him a day. Then put him to work tomorrow, teaching or doing something useful,” I told Clarissa. She moved aside as I walked out of the room. She wanted me to deal with the situation, I dealt with the situation.

Coddling Doctor Katz wasn’t something I could do or would do. If I had tried, it would have come off as fake and he would know that. The best I could do was give him a scare and put some fight back into him. It wasn’t a good strategy, but it was my only strategy to deal with whatever mental issues he had going on.

Telling someone suicidal to kill themselves was a horrible idea. But he had fight. One didn’t live through the calamity where countless others had died, unless they had fight in them. Rebuilding his body, struggling to survive. They were signs that he wasn’t about to kill himself. He was on the top of the building and standing at the edge, but he wanted someone else to push him off.

That wasn’t going to happen. There was no way we could watch over him full time. If he wanted to kill himself, he could kil himself. But he just wanted to do nothing. He could do that, but he wasn’t about to drag Clarissa down with him. He could leave and mope about somewhere else.

“You fix Doctor Katz?” Young Michael asked me when I returned to the airship.

“Only time will tell. The man is broken mentally,” I told him. “Right now, we are going to grind up more points. Strength is what matters.”

“Sorry about your mother,” Young Michael said as he went over to the airship controls.

“Thank you, but ultimately, we can only move forward. You lost your mother as well,” I said.

“Yeah. I know she is dead, but like you said, got to keep moving forward,” he replied.

“I admire your fortitude.”

“Where to?” he asked.

“We need to get you skill points,” I said.

“I have a map with me of the dungeons I have already been to.”

“Really? That makes things easier,” I said.

“I also want to get Imbue Life as my sixth skill,” he added on.

“Going to be a doctor?” I asked.

“Maybe, but it will be useful regardless,” he replied.

“It is a useful skill. Alright then. I am guessing you cleared out the nearby zones?” I asked.

“Already done. Here is the map,” he said, and I looked it over. It would take a while, but getting the skill points now for Young Michael would make things a lot easier long term. I hadn’t gotten a sixth skill yet, preferring to keep my options open.

We would do the level 1 zones around cities at the start of the deek and then go around them, moving to the next one at the start of the next deek. Clearing them when they reset so we didn’t have to worry about other people claiming the skill points.

With how new everyone was after the last reset that probably wasn’t a huge issue. Speed would be the most important thing. We could clear all zones up to level 7. Young Michael was just a meta-point behind me and a lot of stat points. With my help he would easily get the skills necessary to fight at a higher level.

The main issue would be his combat experience. That was something I had picked up after fighting so many different monsters. He did have combat experience, but higher level combat was different from lower level combat.

Realistically he could compete up to level 6, maybe level 7 monsters. Maybe. The meta-point he got put his stat points ahead of his skills which we needed to correct. Now that we were doing that, he would be able to fight in level 5 zones. Level 6 zones would be a struggle and level 7 monsters would put too much pressure on him.

He wasn’t my son, but I was proud of him regardless. He had endured and kept pushing forward. That was the mindset that was needed. It felt good to have someone I could trust to have my back. In time we might even team up. Having someone with the same skills and mindset as me would be quite useful in fighting higher level monsters in large groups.

We might even start clearing level 8 zones if he became strong enough and I felt confident enough handling them. We could push our grinding speed even higher. That was when I thought about needing someone to pick up crystals while I fought. Eventually he would want to fight instead of just picking up crystals.

But that would happen a long time in the future. I would worry about that when it came to pass. For now, I would help him get stronger and then we would grind. Grind out so many points the airship would struggle to move with all of the points we would pack away. Then we would repeat that over and over again as many times as needed.

That was the end game for this place. Not the towers. Not the zones. But pure strength. Just maybe Young Michael might give me a meta-point. I was a bit disappointed he hadn’t used his meta-point to boost me, but it was understandable. No one would give up a wish for another person.

But if I could stock up on meta-points like the stupid sword, then that would be amazing. But I doubted the Almighty System would hand one out while I killed monsters for points. It hadn’t done so in the past, and I doubted it would do so in the future.

As we left, I couldn’t help but hope that Doctor Katz would recover, even a bit. He might hate me, but ultimately, he was a good person at heart. That was why he mentally struggled. Unless I went around like the Divine Empress, he would never be an enemy. Perhaps I was wrong, but unless someone showed hostility, I wouldn’t kill a person for no reason. Annoying new arrivals didn’t count.

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AN: Don't use this kind of therapy in real life for someone who is suicidal. It can backfire very badly. Ultimately this is a story, and Michael isn't a therapist. Normally I wouldn't say anything, but this chapter was hard to write, even for me. I would add that giving someone a hug and letting them know they are not alone is never a bad thing.