Consciousness returned to Ethan not with a surge of power, but with the cold, heavy bite of iron against his skin.
He tried to shift his arms, but a sharp, metallic rattle cut through the darkness. His wrists were bound tightly behind his back. Opening his eyes, the blur of his vision slowly cleared to reveal a grim, cramped reality. He was lying on the splintered wooden floor of a moving cage-wagon, surrounded by the stench of sweat, fear, and dirt.
All around him sat huddled figures—emaciated men and women dressed in tattered, coarse linen robes reminiscent of ancient China. Their eyes were hollow, staring blankly at the floor. They were slaves. Outside the wooden bars, men in hardened leather breastplates walked with spears, their postures straight and their muscles dense from basic body-tempering. Further ahead, fat merchants wrapped in silks rode on horseback, casually tallying up figures in parchment ledgers.
Ethan immediately tried to ping his internal systems. 'Chronos. Report.'
Silence. The neural chip at the base of his skull remained cold and dead. The nanobots in his bloodstream were completely powered down, leaving him with nothing but his baseline, un-augmented human body. He was entirely vulnerable.
"Hey! The strange one is awake!"
A gruff voice shattered his focus. A guard with a scarred cheek stepped up to the moving cage, his hand resting on the hilt of a crude iron saber. He stared at Ethan's modern, seamless black clothing with naked greed, before barking out a string of sharp, tonal words.
""—""
To Ethan, it was complete gibberical nonsense. The language didn't match any linguistic database he had ever studied on Earth.
Ethan remained perfectly silent, his expression blank, his eyes coldly observing the guard's facial muscles, stance, and vocal inflections. He was calculating, gathering data even in captivity.
Seeing the prisoner ignore him, the guard's face darkened with irritation. "!"
The guard thrust his spear through the wooden bars, the blunt wooden haft striking Ethan squarely in the ribs. The impact was raw and agonizing, sending a dull crack through the cage. Ethan was thrown against the rusty chains, gasping for air as a sickening bruise began to form on his chest. Without his nano-suit to absorb the blow or instantly heal the tissue, the physical pain was excruciating.
Yet, Ethan did not cry out. He didn't beg. He simply clamped his jaw shut, absorbing the pain with a chilling, detached calm that made the guard pause.
"Tsk, a mute," the guard muttered in his native tongue, spitting on the ground in disgust before walking away toward the front of the convoy.
As the ache in his chest subsided into a dull throb, Ethan dragged himself slightly upright, looking out past the bars toward the center of the camp. His eyes narrowed.
A few yards away, the carcass of the four-eyed beast he had slain was undergoing a systematic, ruthless harvest. Several low-tier cultivators and butchers were at work. They were using heavy iron cleavers to skin the thick, blue hide, carefully rolling it up to be sold as armor material. Two men were using mallets to chisel out the razor-sharp teeth and dense bones, likely to be fashioned into crude weapons or tools. Further back, a large iron pot bubbled over a roaring fire, filled with chunks of the beast's dark meat, feeding the merchants and senior guards to nourish their physical strength.
They were stripping his kill down to the bone, extracting every ounce of value from it.
Ethan watched the scene play out, his mind a void of cold calculation. He had no technology, no weapons, no strength, and no way to communicate. But as he looked at the merchants consuming his prey, a dark, unwavering resolve settled deep within him.