The morning air in Cardinal Peaks held a thin bite, crisp with the scent of wet grass and churned earth. Kaiden's boots squelched in mud as he crossed the sloped field past the Kidpen, wooden dagger strapped at his hip, his eyes gleaming with a tension too complex for words.
Golden grass bowed beneath the morning breeze, whispering softly across the glade just beyond. Dew clung to the edges of low leaves. A few bees bumbled lazily between wildflowers. Birds chirped.
And yet, Kaiden stood still, but ready.
Ready for his grandfather's guidance.
His wooden dagger felt heavier than before. Not physically, but in meaning. The sun had barely risen, but sweat already beaded on the back of his neck.
[ Nkilaus ]
"Remember what I have told you, boy..."
"The world is a harsh place."
"Be ready for your first lesson!"
[ Kaiden ]
"This should be easy..."
"It's just a slime."
Nik leaned against a crooked tree, cane angled like a musket across his arms. His eyes, usually half-lidded in sarcasm, were sharp this morning.
[ Niklaus ]
"Easy things get you killed, Kaiden."
"Underestimate nothing."
"Especially the weak."
A ripple stirred the grass, slow and unnatural. There — sixty feet out. The slime emerged with the sluggish elegance of something not designed to exist in a world governed by logic.
Its body was translucent, a shade of pale mint, like sap stretched too thin. Sunlight bent through it wrong. Inside, fragments of bark and grass floated as if suspended in honey. It quivered, then began its slide toward the scent of heat — toward Kaiden.
[ Niklaus ]
"Now listen close."
"Watch how it moves."
"The rhythm."
"Slimes aren't smart, but they're consistent."
"Patterns are survival."
Kaiden crouched low, eyes narrowed. He'd studied. He'd analyzed. He'd even charted secretion trails like a botanist obsessed with goo.
But this was different.
The slime was alive.
[ Kaiden ]
"...I'm ready."
He stepped forward, soft on the balls of his feet, dagger in hand.
The slime reared — or pulsed, really — its front swelling unnaturally before it lashed forward with a tendril-like extension of itself.
Kaiden reacted late.
The impact wasn't a slash — it was a slap of cold jelly across his ribs, and it stung through his shirt like icy resin. He stumbled back, breath catching in his throat.
[ Niklaus ]
"Too slow."
"You're reading it like paper."
"Read it like breath."
Kaiden bit his lip, nodding.
The slime surged again.
This time, Kaiden darted left, feinting low and circling wide. The dagger in his grip hummed — a whisper of memory, a weight passed down. He slashed, not hard, but with intent.
The blade met the slime's edge. It sank in.
But it didn't cut.
The slime absorbed the wooden blade halfway and pulled.
Kaiden gasped, twisting with all his might. The dagger came loose with a wet pop, coated in glistening residue.
The slime pulsed harder, faster, angry now. A second tendril struck low. Kaiden jumped, but not high enough. It caught his ankle.
He went down.
The world spun, sky and grass blurring as he hit the dirt. He felt the sting of the fall, the sharp poke of gravel along his elbow.
Nik didn't move.
[ Niklaus ]
"Get up."
"It's not trying to kill you."
"It's trying to claim you."
Kaiden groaned, rolling to his feet. His chest burned where the first tendril hit. His ankle throbbed. But his grip tightened.
[ Kaiden ]
"No."
"I'm not just a scavenger."
He took a breath. Then another.
The slime charged again.
Kaiden waited this time, just long enough. At the last second, he sidestepped, pivoted on his heel, and slashed in a full arc from below the slime's central mass upward through the core.
This time, the dagger hissed.
It carved through the gelatinous creature with a wet screech, bisecting the slime in a burst of pressure and moisture. The halves quivered, then twitched, and collapsed into stillness—liquid mass deflating into the grass like a spilled potion.
Kaiden stared.
Then slowly, cautiously, he knelt beside the dissolving form.
[ Kaiden ]
"Analyze."
The flicker of light washed over the remains.
[ HEART ]
[ Slime Core Fragment (Self-Earned) ]
+0.0011 STR
+0.0003 AGI
Resonance: Stable
Web Link: Primed
Kaiden's mouth went dry.
The numbers were leagues above the scraps he'd scavenged.
[ Kaiden ]
"I did it."
"I fought."
"I earned it…"
"And it's stronger."
[ Niklaus ]
"Of course it is."
"Effort writes itself into the reward."
"Anything handed to you carries someone else's weight."
"But this?"
"This is yours, boy."
Kaiden looked down at his trembling hands.
His cuts weren't deep. His pain was real, but not unbearable. His pride swelled—not the boastful kind, but the quiet, anchoring kind that grew like fire beneath the ribs.
[ Kaiden ]
"Then I'll earn them all."
Nik stepped forward, finally. He placed a hand on Kaiden's shoulder—not a heavy gesture, just enough to steady the weight of what Kaiden had done.
[ Niklaus ]
"You just started your real climb, boy."
"And it's going to be steep."
Kaiden nodded.
He didn't wipe the slime off the dagger.
He wanted it to dry there, to stain the wood, to remain.
A mark. A proof.
And somewhere deep within his HEART, the Passive Web shimmered again.
One node blinked faintly.
Awakening.
◈◈◈
The field grew quiet again.
The birds had not returned. The wind no longer whispered. The slime's remains soaked into the soil, fizzing faintly as the light of its death faded. All that remained was the dagger in Kaiden's trembling grip, smeared with drying ichor.
His knees buckled slowly into the grass.
For a moment, he simply sat there, hunched over like a broken scarecrow, breath shallow, chest rising and falling with the stutter of adrenaline not yet spent. He stared at his hands.
Small.
Sticky.
Shaking.
[ Kaiden ]
"...It hurts."
He looked up at Nik as if needing confirmation that he was, in fact, still alive. The old man just tilted his head, cane tapping once against the earth like punctuation.
[ Niklaus ]
"You bled, you stumbled, you hesitated…"
"But you lived."
"Welcome..."
Nik's voice held something almost reverent.
"To the ledger of those who've fought back."
Kaiden let out a low laugh — thin, nervous, barely a sound. It felt like it belonged to someone else. He wiped his hand across his tunic, leaving a smear of translucent blue down his chest.
His gaze drifted back to the slime's remains.
He stared at the glistening smear left behind.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Before, he'd analyze scraps by the dozen — reflexively, obsessively. But this one felt different.
Like it deserved asking, not taking.
He opened his palm and called again, softer this time:
[ Kaiden ]
"Analyze..."
[ HEART ]
[ Slime Residue - Resonant Trace ]
+0.0001 STR
+0.0002 AGI
Minor Passive: 'Elastic Vein' (Dormant)
Status: Bound (Self-Earned)
Modularity: 12%
[ Kaiden (murmur) ]
"Two pieces from the same fight..."
"But this one has a passive?"
He blinked, pulling the information into his memory. The numbers were small, but far from the microscopic scraps he'd scavenged for days. More importantly, the item was... talking to his Ki Card differently.
As if it knew him.
It belonged.
He closed his fingers around the residue gently and held it to his chest.
Something pulsed faintly in his palm.
Not heat — tension.
Like a thin thread had stretched between the residue and his veins, tugging softly, then vanishing.
He blinked, unsure if it had been real.
[ Niklaus ]
"Your Trait responds differently to what's earned through effort."
"It was a mirror."
"It doesn't show you what loot is..."
"It shows you what you are through the loot you claim."
"You were never cursed, Kaiden."
Kaiden looked up sharply, eyes wide.
[ Kaiden ]
"...Then scavenging was never enough?"
[ Niklaus ]
"Scavenging taught you patience."
"But power?"
"Power demands blood and resolve."
"And more importantly…"
"It remembers."
Kaiden's thoughts stirred like embers. Suddenly, every broken bottlecap, every chipped fang, every crusted shard of bone he'd pocketed in obsession — they felt flat now.
This was different.
This loot wasn't just scavenged.
It felt alive within him.
Like part of his body recognized it, structured around it, as if slowly knitting invisible wires between the fragments and the lattice of his own being.
He opened his Ki Card manually, for the first time since the fight.
[ HEART STATUS ]
Name: Kaiden Stagin
Health: 25/50
Energy: 20/50
Attributes: [ STR: 1.0011 | AGI: 1.0005 | INT: 1.0002 ]
Trait: Void of Aena (Sealed Functions: 92%)
Skill: Analyze – Tier 1.8 (Progress: 96%)
Passive Web: Awakened (1 Node Active)
Modular Passive: 'Scavenger's Crown' (Stable)
New Node: 'Elastic Vein' [Dormant] - 12% Linked
The decimal increases were laughable to others, Kaiden knew. They were crumbs.
But to him?
They were proof. He'd fought for these numbers. Not plucked them off the corpses of others. Not scavenged them from piles left behind by careless children. No — he had bled.
He clenched his fists and closed the Card.
[ Kaiden ]
"...I want more."
"But I want them right."
Nik exhaled slowly. A soft smirk tugged the edge of his mouth as he turned toward the path.
[ Niklaus ]
"And that's the difference between a thief and a craftsman."
"Come on, boy."
"We've got a long walk home, and a few dozen tales I still haven't told you."
"One of them's about a girl who felled a chimera with a soup spoon and a prayer."
Kaiden stood shakily, dagger in hand.
The grass no longer felt soft underfoot. It felt sacred — like the place a part of him had died, and something better had taken root.
He glanced back at the faint splotch of slime blood, already drying into dust, and whispered under his breath:
[ Kaiden ]
"Thank you."
He didn't know if monsters had souls.
But the resonance between him and that first kill would never leave him.
Not as long as the numbers remembered.
And so would he.