The Avatar's fist came at my head like a piston forged from liquid nightmare. My precognition—crippled to 0.4 seconds—screamed EVADE! But evasion was what it expected. Adaptation demanded novelty.
I didn't dodge. I parried.
Not with force. With angle. My shortsword met the Avatar's wrist at precisely 73 degrees, blade flat, guiding the strike past my temple. The corruption-touch sheared off a lock of my hair, which sizzled and dissolved mid-air. But the deflection spun the Avatar, overextended its momentum.
[PARRY SUCCESS: CRITICAL PRECISION]
[+15 EXP]
[OPPONENT: OFF-BALANCE (0.6s WINDOW)]
0.6 seconds. With my Agility of 6, that was two moves. Three if I cheated physics.
I stepped into the Avatar's spin, sword stabbing for where its head would be. It adapted, its neck liquefying, the blade passing through harmlessly. But that wasn't the attack.
My boot was.
I kicked the pooled lumen-sap mist at its feet, not at the Avatar, but past it. The mist swirled into the air currents, drawn to the heat of the Avatar's core. It condensed on its back, on the one spot my INT 15 overlay highlighted in blinding gold:
[WEAKNESS: MATRIX ANCHOR POINT - UPPER SPINE]
The Avatar's liquid form had a rigid framework, an invisible skeleton of energy. My sword couldn't cut it. But the lumen-sap could catalyze it.
The mist touched the anchor point. The Avatar's scream became a shriek, its body convulsing as pure light met pure corruption in the heart of its architecture.
[CRITICAL HIT: ENVIRONMENTAL WEAPONIZATION]
[DAMAGE: 89 HP]
[AVATAR HP: 191/320]
It whirled, no longer humanoid. Just a mass of thrashing tendrils and mouths. Level 9 power, but no control. It was a boss fight that had lost its AI script.
I became a ghost. Not through stealth, but temporal displacement. I moved in the 0.4-second gaps between its attacks, where its precognition couldn't predict because I hadn't decided yet. I let the system decide for me, a thousand micro-calculations per second guiding my feet, my blade, my breath.
Another tendril lanced. I stepped left. Not because I saw it, but because the probability cloud of its attack vectors had a 0.8% safe zone. I occupied that zone.
[EVASION: STATISTICAL IMPROBABILITY]
[+10 EXP]
The Avatar was breathing hard now, its form losing cohesion. The lumen-sap residue was spreading, a cancer of light in its darkness. Each hit I didn't take was damage it did—its own energy consumption was killing it.
[AVATAR HP: 143/320]
[AVATAR STAMINA: CRITICAL]
It was running out of resources. I was conserving mine.
It made a mistake. It overcommitted, lunging with three tendrils at once, trying to box me in. But three tendrils meant three anchor points exposed. I drew my last three Demon-Bark slivers, snapped them in half for more surface area, and threw.
Not at the tendrils. At the floor. At the corruption fluid still pooling there.
The bark hit. The fluid reacted. A geyser of steaming, boiling ichor erupted, enveloping the Avatar from below. It had been so focused on me, it forgot its own environment.
The shriek cut off. The Avatar's form burst, spraying the cavern with black rain that sizzled where it landed. Its HP bar bottomed out:
[BLOOM AVATAR: DEFEATED]
[+1500 EXP]
[CREATIVITY BONUS: +200 EXP]
[PERFECT EVASION BONUS: +150 EXP]
[TOTAL: 1850 EXP]
The cavern echoed with silence.
---
[LEVEL UP! LEVEL 4 ACHIEVED!]
[+5 STAT POINTS]
[+1 SKILL POINT]
[HP/MP RESTORED]
[SANITY STABILIZED: 4.8/6 → 5.5/6 (CORRUPTION DEBUFF REMOVED)]
Level 4. [HP: 120/120] [MP: 20/20] . I was a quarter of the way to matching the Avatar's raw power, and I'd beaten it through pure math.
The stat points were screaming to be spent. I dumped four into Intelligence, hitting 19. The last point went into Vitality—not for the HP, but because the debuff timer on everything I suffered would shrink. Survivability through efficiency.
[INT: 15 → 19] [VIT: 8 → 9] [HP REGEN: 3.0/min → 3.3/min]
The skill point, I used on Stealth (LV1). Not because I wanted to be a rogue, but because Stealth reduced enemy detection radius, and my 1 Luck meant I needed every margin I could get.
[SKILL LEARNED: STEALTH (LV1)]
[EFFECT: -15% DETECTION RANGE, +10% AMBUSH DAMAGE]
The Avatar's corpse wasn't dissolving like the Gloomvermin. It was congealing, forming a pool of pure essence. I knelt, touched it. The system reacted with surprise:
[UNIQUE DROP: DEMON-BLOOM HEART-ESSENCE (LEGENDARY)]
[QUALITY: PURE]
[USE: CONSUME FOR STAT BOOST OR CRAFT FOR ARTIFACT]
Consume was risky. Legendary-tier items had side effects. But craft required a workshop, time, and skills I didn't have.
[ANALYSIS: RISK/REWARD FOR CONSUMPTION...]
[BENEFIT: +2 PERMANENT INT, +1 PERMANENT WIS]
[RISK: CORRUPTION SEED (1% CHANCE PER POINT)]
[TRUE ODDS: LUCK 1 = 3% CHANCE OF CORRUPTION]
97% clean. I'd take those odds.
I drank it.
The essence tasted like ozone and forgotten memories. It hit my system like a cold shock, then a warm wave. My overlay went wild:
[PERMANENT STAT BOOST: INT +2 (19 → 21)] ⚠️ BREAKTHROUGH THRESHOLD
[PERMANENT STAT BOOST: WIS +1 (7 → 8)]
[SPECIAL UNLOCK: TACTICAL PRECOGNITION (LV3) - ONE SUB-MODE UPGRADE]
[CORRUPTION CHECK: ROLLING... 97]
[SUCCESS: PURE INTEGRATION]
My brain expanded. Not physically. Conceptually. I could hold more variables, see deeper patterns. The cavern around me wasn't just flesh and stone anymore. It was a system, and I could see its code. The veins, the nodes, the heart—they were a network, and I'd just deleted the firewall.
[SUB-MODE UPGRADE OPTIONS:]
- Sequential Prediction: See 5 seconds of linear future
- Parallel Analysis: See 3 seconds of all possible futures (probability cloud)
- System Infiltration: Interface with enemy systems temporarily
I chose Parallel Analysis. Seeing one future was good. Seeing every future and picking the best one was better.
[TACTICAL PRECOGNITION (LV3) - PARALLEL ANALYSIS ACTIVE]
[PREDICTIVE WINDOW: 3.0 SECONDS × INFINITE BRANCHES]
The cavern groaned. The web was collapsing. The heart had fallen, the nodes were gone, and the Demon-Bloom was dying. But dying things thrashed.
[ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE: 120 SECONDS TO CAVE-IN]
The exit shaft I'd climbed down was disintegrating. Veins snapped, arteries tore, the entire structure liquidating as the Bloom's magic failed.
I ran. Not toward the shaft—through the heart chamber. The Bloom's death was dissolving the barriers, opening new paths. The Sounding Charm's map updated: EMERGENCY EXIT DETECTED. A fissure in the rear wall, leading to a natural cavern that connected to the surface.
I sprinted across the bone-littered floor, leaping over corruption pools that were evaporating into harmless steam. The cavern trembled. The ceiling cracked. A chunk of calcified flesh the size of a horse fell behind me, splashing ichor.
[EVASION: AUTOMATIC (LV3 PREDICTION)]
[HP: 120/120]
The fissure was tight. I had to drop my pack, shove it through, then squeeze. The leather armor caught, tore. [ARMOR DURABILITY: 65%] . I popped free into a natural limestone tunnel, cold and clean. Behind me, the Demon-Bloom cavern collapsed with a sound like a giant's final breath.
I kept running. Upward. Always upward. The tunnel sloped at 30 degrees, natural stairs formed by water flow. I saw daylight—real daylight, not dual-moon phosphorescence—filtering through a crack.
I emerged into the forest, gasping, covered in black ichor that was already drying to harmless dust. The sun was setting. I'd been in the Bloom for nine hours.
[QUEST COMPLETE: BLOOM SURVEY]
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: SUCCESS]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: OVERKILL]
[REWARD: 3000 EXP (BASE + BONUS)]
[STAGE CLEAR: DEMON-BLOOM ELIMINATED]
The EXP hit, but didn't level me. [LEVEL 4: 1850/2000] . Close. So close.
I checked my status. Clean. No corruption debuffs. My armor was battered, my gear depleted, but I had a Legendary Essence integrated and a system upgrade that made me a tactical god.
The walk back to River's Reach was uneventful. My Stealth skill kept me off predator radar. My parallel analysis let me choose paths where nothing hunted. For the first time since dying, I felt in control.
The north gate greeted me at moonrise. Gorum was there, his prosthetic arm crossed. Mira stood beside him, her expression unreadable.
I reached into my pack—miraculously intact—and pulled out the Sounding Charm. Its charge was spent, but the crystal had recorded the 3D map. I tossed it to Gorum.
"The Bloom's dead. Heart collapsed. Cave's sealed."
He caught the charm, slots built into his prosthetic analyzing it. His eyebrows rose. Actual human expression.
Mira stepped forward. "You did it. Not just mapped. You killed it."
"Secondary objective," I said, my voice hoarse. "Optimization."
Gorum looked at me. His overlay—did he have one?—seemed to recalculate. "Level 4. You were Level 2 yesterday."
"Good returns on investment."
He grunted. [HIGHER PITCH - RESPECT] . "Helga's got your payment. Citizenship papers are in the mail." He turned, then added over his shoulder: "Worldlost meeting tomorrow. Dawn. Warden's Tower."
A summons. Not a request.
Mira walked me to the Wayward Wake. "My father..." she started, then stopped. Social overlay: [EMOTIONAL CONFLICT: GRATITUDE VS SHAME].
"Is he sober?" I asked.
"For now. The Bloom's death cleared his debt. Gorum paid the bar tab." She looked at me, her eyes dark in the lumen-light. "You saved more than the town. You saved him."
[REPUTATION: MIRA - TRUST (LOCKED)]
[NEW STATUS: FRIEND]
At the inn, Helga had a package. Three pouches of Essence— [GLOOMVERMIN ESSENCE x20, MIRELING ESSENCE x5, DEMON-BLOOM RESIDUE x3] . A letter of citizenship, stamped with River's Reach's seal. And a small iron key.
"Basement room," Helga said. "Rent's 2 copper a week. Has a workbench. For... crafting."
She knew. Of course she knew. Information broker.
I took the key. "Thanks."
"Thank me by not dying tomorrow," she said. "Worldlost meetings are when the real shit starts."
In my room—my room, with a lock and a workbench—I spread my loot. The Essences alone would net me 500 copper if sold. The residue was priceless. I placed one Gloomvermin Essence in my mouth, let it dissolve like a lozenge.
[+50 EXP]. [LEVEL UP! LEVEL 5 ACHIEVED!]
[STAT POINTS: +5] . I dumped three into Intelligence (21 → 24), two into Agility (6 → 8). I needed speed more than health now.
[SKILL POINT: +1]. I saved it. The next upgrade would be expensive.
I lay on my cot, system windows painting the dark ceiling. My Luck was still 1. The world still wanted me dead. But I'd just solo'd a Level 15 zone at Level 2, and come out Level 5 with a Legendary essence in my blood.
The grind wasn't broken. I was just better at it than the system anticipated.
[DAILY SUMMARY:]
[KILLS: 3 ANCHOR NODES, 1 AVATAR]
[QUESTS: 1 COMPLETE (OVERKILL)]
[LEVEL GAIN: 2 → 5]
[REPUTATION: RIVER'S REACH (RESPECTED), MIRA (TRUSTED)]
[PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL TO DAY 7: 67%]
Sixty-seven percent. The highest it had ever been.
I closed my eyes, not to sleep, but to run simulations for tomorrow's meeting. The Worldlost were coming. And if they were anything like me, they were all monsters in human skin.
The River had brought me here. Now I'd show it what happens when you give a programmer root access.