The steady drumbeat of rain on the rusty tin roof was the only constant sound in the narrow alley outside the tech-den. Inside, the diner smelled of old grease, scorched wire, and the damp wool of men who lived too close to the gutter.
Nexar didn't move immediately after severing the neural link. He sat in the dark booth, letting the static noise of his mind settle back into the cold, sharp baseline of his physical body. The data from his Mind Eye was still settling beneath his skull—a brutal mental atlas of a world built on fear, gene-editing, and star-spanning slaughter.
He reached for the glass of stale water on the table, taking a slow sip. It tasted like limestone and chlorine, a far cry from the turquoise lake in Sector 0, but it wet his dry throat.
"You've been staring at that cold wall for twenty minutes, kid."
The voice was gruff, gravelly, and carried the heavy rasp of a man whose lungs had swallowed too much coal dust plasma smoke.
Nexar didn't flinch. His Third Eye didn't even need to flare to tell him who was standing near the edge of his booth. It was the old diner owner—the man with the whirring cybernetic eye and the greasy apron tucked into his belt. He was holding a glass bottle of amber-colored synth-whiskey and two scuffed glass tumblers.
"I was thinking," Nexar said flatly, his voice low and unhurried.
"Dangerous habit in Asloca" the old man grunted, sliding into the bench seat opposite Nexar with Nexar didn't flinch. His Third Eye didn't even need to flare to tell him who was standing near the edge of his booth. It was the old diner owner—the man with the whirring cybernetic eye and the greasy apron tucked into his belt. He was holding a glass bottle of amber-colored synth-whiskey and two scuffed glass tumblers. a heavy creak of iron joints. He set the bottle down with a soft clink and poured two fingers into each glass. "Thinking gets men killed faster than the beasts outside the fence. Out there, a razor-wolf cuts your throat. In here, your own head does the job."
The old man pushed one of the glasses across the sticky laminate table toward Nexar.
"I don't drink," Nexar said, not making a move for the glass.
"It ain't poison. Just cheap grain alcohol and a touch of refined mana-nectar. Warms the blood when the rain gets into your joints." The old man picked up his own glass, took a long swig, and let out a harsh, rasping sigh. "Name's Garl. Used to be a third-tier vanguard for the old militia before the Assembly merged us into the local defense corps. Now I sell greasy meat to scavengers and watch young idiots walk out those doors to get chewed up by the world."
Nexar looked at Garl's left eye—a mechanical brass socket held together by exposed wire and cheap solder. Through the subtle perception of his Mind Eye, Nexar could see the jagged scar tissue beneath the metal casing where a beast's claw had torn away half the old man's face years ago.
"You survived," Nexar noted coolly.
"Barely," Garl spat, leaning back against the vinyl booth. "And for what? So I can sit in a hole and watch these high-born bastards parade around in their pristine martial tunics? Did you see the news feeds? The Valence Academy opened its regional registration today. Thousands of 'em. Kids from the merchant guilds, Elven nobility from the upper canopy, even some Iron-Dwarf heirs."
Garl leaned forward, his mechanical lens zooming in with a quiet click-whir as he stared directly into the shadow of Nexar's hood.
"They talk about 'Gene Points' like it's a game," Garl muttered, his voice dropping an octave. "Rewrite your DNA. Unlock an Aura pathway. Inject a bit of refined monster core and suddenly you're throwing lightning like a god. But I seen what happens when those gene-modded kids hit a real Void-Rift. Their fancy gene-pathways overheat, and they scream just like the rest of us when something from the dark starts eating 'em from the feet up."
Nexar remained silent, his arms resting casually on the table. Underneath his sleeves, the golden warmth of his Manipura Chakra beat with a slow, rhythmic pulse, keeping the damp chill of the diner at bay. The pitch-black void energy coiled around his core like a sleeping viper, completely unbothered by the cold rain or the old man's cynical rant.
"You're not from around here, are you?" Garl asked suddenly, his biological eye narrowing. "You don't smell like a city boy. You smell like old stone and wet leaves. And that piece of bone you dropped earlier... that wasn't scavenged from some market stall. I know the look of a man who killed the thing he's carrying."
"It doesn't matter where I came from," Nexar replied, his voice devoid of anger, fear, or pride. It was simply a cold statement of fact. "The world outside changed. I'm just catching up."
Garl stared at him for a long moment, then let out a low, dry chuckle. "Catching up, huh? If you're looking to make a mark in this mess, you're looking at the wrong door. Valence Imperial Academy isn't a place for men who come out of the woods. It's a slaughterhouse run by the high-bloods. They take kids with no backing, put 'em on the front lines as meat shields for their own heirs, and call it 'service to the Accord.'"
"Let them try," Nexar said softly.
The words weren't delivered with dramatic bravado. There was no flare of intent, no dramatic release of pressure. Just a flat, chilling certainty that made the old veteran pause mid-sip.
Garl set his glass down slowly. The mechanical eye whirred violently as it tried to read the energy signature coming off the young man across from him, but it registered nothing—no mana flux, no gene-activation signal, no aura radiation. Nexar sat there looking like a ghost, a dead zone in the middle of a glowing city.
"You're either the stupidest kid to walk through my door this year, or you're something bad," Garl whispered, his cybernetic eye locking tight. "Really bad."
"How much for the meal?" Nexar asked, ignoring the old man's assessment completely. He reached into his pocket and placed two small silver coin-shaped mana-tokens—taken from the pocket of a dead scavenger he had passed hours ago—onto the table.
Garl looked at the coins, then at Nexar. He didn't touch the money.
"Keep it," the old man grunted, waving his hand dismissively. "Consider it a donation to a funeral. If you're really heading toward the Valence registration grounds, you'll need every bit of luck you can carry. The regional selection grounds are three blocks east, near the old sector gate. They're testing physical force, gene-stability, and combat reaction today. If you don't have a registered Guild ID, they'll throw you in the Unclassified bracket."
"Unclassified?" Nexar stood up, his heavy leather coat settling over his shoulders like a shadow.
"The cannon fodder bracket," Garl said flatly. "Where the kids with no money, no family, and no high-tier gene-mods fight over the leftover scraps. Half of 'em don't walk out of the arena."
Nexar pulled his hood down slightly lower, obscuring the upper half of his face until only his firm jaw and pale lips were visible in the dim neon light of the tavern.
"Good," Nexar rasped, turning his back on the booth. "Less paperwork."
He walked toward the heavy iron door of the tech-den. As his hand touched the cold steel handle, Garl called out one last time over the low hum of the rain and the diner's static radio.
"Hey, kid!"
Nexar paused, but didn't look back.
"What's your name? So I know what to ask the mortician when they drag you back out."
Nexar pulled open the door, letting the icy wind and the roar of the city rain flood into the warm, greasy room.
"Nexar," he said, his voice cutting through the storm with effortless clarity.
He stepped out into the deluge, the heavy iron door slamming shut behind him with a dull, hollow thud.
The streets of New Raipur at night were a chaotic tapestry of old-world concrete and futuristic magitech infrastructure. Massive elevated magnetic rails hummed fifty feet above the asphalt, carrying high-speed transport pods between the inner military spire and the outer slum rings. Holographic billboards projected sixty-foot-tall images of decorated Guild Captains, advertising gene-refinement serums, high-frequency kinetic blades, and recruitment drives for the deep-space war fleets.
Nexar walked along the wet sidewalk, his boots splashing through shallow puddles of black rain. He kept his head low, blending into the crowd of desperate applicants moving toward the massive blast-alloy gates of the selection hub. The air was rank with the smell of cheap street food—greasy fried dough, synth-meat skewers, and roasted root vegetables being sold out of converted shipping containers along the plaza's edge.
Nexar's stomach let out a hollow, quiet rumble. He paused near a rickety metal stall where a middle-aged woman with scarred hands was turning skewers over a sputtering magitech grill.
Thump.
Without a single physical gesture, the Third Eye between his brows pulsed behind his dark bangs. His Mind Eye opened silently, laying the structural reality of the world over his vision:
Target: Street Skewer (Processed Meat)
Base Ingredient: Low-Grade Marsh-Boar Meat (35% Organic, 65% Synthetic Binder)
Energy Profile: 12% Low-Grade Earth Qi (Contaminated by Industrial Sulfur)
Nutritional Value: Moderate Protein, High Sodium, Minor Toxicity (Safe for ingestion; 0.2% cellular degradation over long-term consumption)
Nexar blinked, severing the focus. He tossed one of his silver mana-tokens onto the grease-stained counter.
"Two," he said, his voice quiet against the roar of the rain.
The woman pushed two charred skewers toward him. Nexar took them, tearing a chunk of the hot, salty meat off the stick with his teeth as he turned toward the main gates.
As he chewed, his Mind Eye drifted across the sea of applicants queuing up at the registration barriers.
A few feet ahead of him, surrounded by four bulky retainers wearing insulated duster coats, was a tall teenager in a pristine white martial tunic. The boy's skin was unblemished, his hair perfectly combed despite the drizzle, and a sleek, silver-alloy darter blade hung from his hip. He was laughing, tossing a polished green mana-crystal between his hands.
Nexar leaned against a wet concrete pillar, taking another bite of the meat, and let his Mind Eye lock onto the boy.
Target: Julian Vance
Affiliation: House Vance (Mid-Tier Merchant Guild)
Gene Points Unlocked: 142 (System Refined)
Primary Energy:
* Gale-Force Aura (Wind Attribute): 45% Purity (Artificially boosted via Tier-2 Cultivation Pills)
Internal Anatomy:
* Qi Pathways: Artificially widened using gene-serums. Slight energetic leakage at the spine due to over-cultivation.
* Physical Density: 1.8x Standard Human
Combat Assessment: Fragile core stability. High speed, predictable trajectory, poor pain tolerance.
Nexar finished the first skewer and tossed the wooden stick into a nearby trash drum. Julian Vance was living proof of what Garl had been talking about back at the diner. The kid was a walking glass house—stuffed with expensive pills and artificial gene-points, but his underlying foundation was a fragile mess.
"Look at this trash," Julian's voice drifted back through the rain, sharp and dismissive as he glanced toward the line of unclassified applicants. "The Academy actually lets these gutter-rats line up on the same plaza. Smells like rotten grease and wet dog."
One of his retainers chuckled softly. "Selection rules, Young Master Vance. The Council requires a public open-bracket to maintain the illusion of meritocracy. They'll be cleared out in the first round of the physical screening anyway."
Nexar didn't react. To him, Julian Vance wasn't an enemy to be hated. He was just data.
"Unclassified line! Move your feet!" a voice bellowed through a megaphone near the iron turnstiles.
A heavily armored enforcer waved a glowing baton toward the crowd. "Have your physical waivers signed or get out of the way! First test is the Kinetic Compression Pillar! If you can't register 500 kilograms of raw physical impact, don't waste my damn time!"
The crowd surged forward. Nexar stepped into the queue behind a tall, scar-faced girl stepping up to the testing pillar. She didn't have a weapon, but under her skin, her muscle fibers were coiled like thick steel cables, glowing with a dense, crimson Qi that hummed with pure, biological pressure.
Target: Maria Joy
Gene Points Unlocked: 310 (Naturally Absorbed)
Primary Energy: Flame-Serrated Aura (Earth/Fire Mutation)
Gene Traits:
* Bone Density Modification (3.2x Human Standard)
* Internal Plasma Reservoir (Heart-Core Fusion)
Combat Assessment: Lethal flesh-and-blood evolution. High physical durability. Capable of tearing blast-alloy plating apart with bare hands.
The girl drew her fist back, her breathing dropping into a heavy, rhythmic growl. When she threw a straight punch into the Kinetic Compression Pillar, her mutated Gene-Core detonated like a high-explosive shell from the inside out.
BOOM!
The four-inch-thick alloy pillar bowed backward, the digital readout spiking instantly into the crimson zone: 2,800 KG IMPACT.
The surrounding guards and high-born kids went silent for a second. That was pure, terrifying human evolution. By feeding monster cores, raw energy, and ancient cultivation techniques directly into their own DNA, humans had turned their very bodies into living weapons.
Julian Vance sneered, though his hand subconsciously twitched near his darter blade. He had the money for expensive pills, but true Gene-Evolvers who survived raw genetic mutations were the ones everyone secretly feared in the arena.
Nexar watched the girl rub her bruised knuckles, her crimson Aura slowly retracting back into her bloodstream like cooling lava.
They were rewriting their DNA to force their bodies into monster-like killing machines. It was brutal, effective, and lethal. But as Nexar stepped up to the line, feeling the golden heat of his Manipura Chakra resting like a miniature sun beneath his sternum, he knew the difference. Their power was a forced mutation. His was an unyielding cosmic law, anchored by the pitch-black void mist sleeping inside his veins.
"Next!" the enforcer yelled, pointing his sparking baton straight at Nexar's chest. "Name, Gene-Rank, and state your primary capability!"
Nexar stepped up to the black iron testing line, his wet leather coat dripping onto the steel grid beneath his boots. He didn't pull back his hood, nor did he activate his power.
"Nexar," he said, his voice flat "Unclassified."