Kael blinked. He hadn't heard Aris's whispered insult, but he didn't like the look in the younger boy's eyes.
Usually, when Kael bullied the servant kids, they cried. They begged. They curled up into balls. But Aris? Aris was looking at him the way a butcher looks at a side of beef—calculating where to make the first cut.
"What are you staring at, trash?!" Kael roared, his ego bruised by the silence. "I said give me the bread!"
He lunged forward, swinging a heavy, unrefined punch aimed at Aris's face.
To the servants watching from the edge of the pit, Kael was fast. He had started cultivation, after all. To his mother, it was a blur of violence that made her scream.
But to Aris, who was using the Abyssal Eye to process reality at a higher frame rate, the world slowed to a crawl.
[Alert: Incoming Melee Attack.]
[Trajectory: Linear / Amateur.]
[Counter-Probability: 100%.]
Kael's fist moved through the air like it was traveling through molasses. Aris could see the sweat flying off Kael's knuckles. He could see the overextension of the shoulder.
Aris didn't retreat. He simply shifted his weight two inches to the left.
Whoosh.
Kael's fist whistled past Aris's ear, hitting nothing but empty air. The momentum threw Kael off balance, exposing his entire right side.
Aris stepped into Kael's personal space. His small frame disappeared under the bully's guard.
"System," Aris thought. "Apply Force Multiplier."
He drove his palm—reinforced with a microscopic, invisible spark of Abyssal Qi—directly into Kael's diaphragm.
THUD.
The sound was sickeningly wet. The air left Kael's lungs in a violent spray of saliva. The bully's eyes rolled back into his head as his "Level 3" cultivation crumbled under a single, precision-engineered strike to his nerve cluster.
Kael folded in half and collapsed, gasping like a fish thrown onto dry land.
"Kael!"
The two lackeys froze. They stared at their leader, who was now writhing in the coal dust, clutching his stomach and making wheezing noises.
"His center of gravity was too high," Aris muttered to himself, shaking the dust off his hand. "And he telegraphed the punch by dropping his shoulder. Pitiful."
"Get him!" one of the lackeys screamed, panic mixing with rage.
The other two boys charged together, swinging their wooden swords wildly.
Aris didn't wait for them to get close. He dropped low, using the heavy coal basket still near his feet as a pivot point. He spun his small body in a vicious, low sweep.
[Skill Activation: Iron-Bone Kick (Rank 2).]
CRACK.
His shin slammed into their ankles with the density of a metal pipe.
Physics took over. The boys were running forward; their feet suddenly stopped. Their upper bodies kept going. They slammed face-first into the unforgiving ground of the coal pit.
Silence fell over the quarry.
[Quest Completed: First Blood]
[Rewards: 150 AP, Skill Book: Ghost-Step (Low Grade) – Claimed.]
[Bonus Objective Met: Looting Rights Established.]
Aris walked over to the shivering Kael. He reached into the boy's pocket with the practiced ease of a specialized thief and pulled out a small, silk pouch.
Ching.
"Five copper coins and... three meat buns," Aris noted, checking the contents. "A decent drop rate."
"Aris... stop!" His mother, Elena, ran over, her face pale with absolute terror. She grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "What have you done? If the guards see this... if the Matron hears you struck a ranking guard's son..."
"They won't," Aris said calmly.
He walked back to Kael, who was just starting to regain his breath. Aris squatted down so he was eye-level with the bully.
He activated the Abyssal Eye to maximum intensity. For a split second, the human illusion of Aris's pupil vanished. Kael looked into the boy's eye and saw a literal bottomless pit—a swirling vortex of violet void that promised nothing but eternal cold.
Kael stopped breathing. His bladder let go, soaking his trousers.
"Listen to me closely," Aris whispered, his voice sliding into Kael's ear like a venomous snake. "If you tell anyone about this... if you tell your father, or the Matron... I won't just hit your stomach next time."
Aris pressed a finger against Kael's dantian (the energy center in the gut).
"I'll use my 'trash' blood to poison your meridians. I will make it so you never cultivate again. You will be a cripple, just like me. Do you understand?"
Kael nodded frantically, tears streaming down his face. The fear of losing his cultivation was far greater than the fear of pain.
"Good. Now get out of my sight."
The three boys scrambled up and ran, limping and crying, disappearing over the ridge.
Aris turned to his mother. He opened the silk pouch and handed her the warm, stolen meat buns.
"Eat, Mother," he said, a genuine, albeit small, smile touching his lips for the first time in years. "We're moving up in the world."
The Depths Calling
That night, the West Pavilion was quiet. But Aris was not asleep.
While his mother rested, exhausted from the day's fear, Aris slipped out of the window. He moved like a shadow, his feet finding silent purchase on the loose gravel. He wasn't heading to the servants' quarters. He was heading deeper.
He returned to the coal pits, but he went past the mining zones, down into the "Dead Zone"—an abandoned shaft where the miners refused to go because the air was too thin and the shadows felt too heavy.
His Abyssal Eye was vibrating in his skull, pulsing with a rhythmic ache.
[Warning: High-Energy Signature Detected.]
[Status: Ancient / Dormant / Starving.]
[Proximity: 10 Meters.]
Aris pushed aside a pile of collapsed rubble, revealing a narrow, hidden crevice in the rock wall.
Inside, resting on a bed of crushed obsidian, sat an object. It looked like a stone egg, rough and jagged, covered in faint, glowing red cracks. It pulsed like a dying heart.
As Aris stepped closer, the red cracks suddenly shifted color. They turned a deep, royal Violet.
[Rare Event Triggered.]
[The Abyssal Nexus has detected a compatible Bond.]
[Entity Identified: Void-Eater Hatchling (Rank: Unknown).]
The "egg" wasn't an egg. It was a beast cocoon. A creature of the Void that had been stranded in this world, starving, waiting for a master with the same "Abyssal" frequency to wake it up.
Aris reached out his hand. He felt a kinship with this thing—discarded, hidden in the dark, hungry for power.
"You're starving too, aren't you?" Aris whispered.
The egg vibrated, a low hum that resonated in his bones.
[System Prompt:]
[Would you like to spend 200 AP to initiate a 'Blood Contract'?]
[Note: This beast grows by devouring the shadows of your enemies.]
Aris smiled. "A pet that eats my enemies? I'll take it."
He bit his thumb and pressed it against the violet cracks.
[Contract Accepted.]