The damp air of Fairview clung to his skin, thick with the metallic scent of rusted iron and the faint, coppery tang of unrefined Crystal Essence.
Deicya walked. He didn't look back.
Just keep moving, he told himself, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. Looking back only slows you down.
For a full hour, he put slow, deliberate distance between himself and the rhythmic ringing of his father's hammer, leaving the low-slung shanties and makeshift roofs of his past completely behind. He needed a place to anchor himself. As he moved deeper into the forgotten sectors, the chaotic noise of the settlement began to bleed away. The streets grew progressively quieter, flanked now by the skeletal ribs of half-collapsed concrete buildings and asphalt that spiderwebbed like shattered glass.
Scattered along the crumbling sidewalks were the dregs of the new world—low-ranking Vessel Hunters. F-Rank and E-Rank scavengers draped in the familiar, desperate uniform of the city's bottom-feeders: rugged leather, rusted buckles, and patched tactical gear.
Deicya kept his head down, paying them no mind, his towering frame cutting through the crowd like a ghost.
Then, a shift in the air.
A sharp, rhythmic brush of footsteps cut through the dull background hum of the scavengers.
A man slipped past him. It was a subtle movement, but to Deicya's newly awakened senses, it blared like a siren. The stranger moved with a distinct, predatory lightness—a fluid, utterly silent stride that completely defied the clumsy, heavy-footed shuffle of the ordinary hunters around him.
Deicya didn't turn his head. Only his dark eyes flicked sideways, catching the trailing edge of the man's shadow.
Without a single conscious command, his passive appraisal skill flared to life.
Target acquired.
In the periphery of his vision, the world tinted slightly blue. A translucent window snapped open, hovering silently in the dead air.
TARGET APPRAISED Name: Unnamed Rogue Classification: Human / Assassin Rank: F-Rank
ZZZT…
The panel rippled, expanding downward as the core within Deicya's chest vibrated with a sudden, localized heat.
ABSORPTION TARGET DETECTED Skill Siphoned: Multi-Hit (Grade: F) Trait Integrated into Body: Rapid Strike Execution (Active) +85 Essence Collected [190/200] E-Rank Effect: Grants the user the ability to execute a rapid succession of consecutive physical strikes, multiplying impact force within a narrow window. (Cooldown: 1 Hour)
Deicya's breath hitched, dying in his throat.
An active combat skill… just like that?
He hadn't even raised a finger. It was siphoned instantly, ripped right off a stranger's back in the middle of a crowded street.
Accept.
A thick, dark golden wisp bled seamlessly off the assassin's fading silhouette. Unseen by the masses, the ethereal vapor curled through the damp air and sank directly into Deicya's chest.
Ding.
The rush of energy was intoxicating. Eighty-five points of essence flooded his gauge in a single, heavy surge. The numbers on his interface ticked upward in a rapid blur, finally locking dead at 190 out of 200.
Only ten away, he thought, his pulse quickening. Ten points from shattering my rank ceiling.
A sharp, electric thrill spiked through his veins. The implications were staggering. He didn't need to hunt mutated monsters in the deep ruins. He didn't need to corner hostile Awakeners in dark alleys. He could harvest an entire ecosystem of skills and essence simply by walking among the human population.
Without missing a step, Deicya pivoted on his heel. His dark eyes, now burning with a quiet intensity, scanned the lane for his next target.
There. A burly E-Rank brawler hauling a heavy crate of scrap metal near a collapsed storefront.
Deicya adjusted his trajectory. He walked straight toward the man, brushing past him and deliberately letting his shoulder clip the brawler's heavy arm.
He waited for the blue flash.
Nothing.
The system remained completely dormant. The brawler merely grunted an insult and kept walking.
What?
Frowning, Deicya circled back toward the intersection. He spotted a lean scout leaning idly against a rusted pillar. Deicya passed him, stepping just close enough to invade his personal space.
Still, the blue interface refused to flicker. The dark golden aura did not appear.
A cold flash of realization cut through his mounting excitement, sobering him instantly.
Wait. There has to be a catch. Nothing this powerful comes without a rule.
Closing his eyes as he walked, Deicya mentally probed the background latency of his system core. As he sifted through the residual energy of the recent absorption, the hidden restriction revealed itself—glaringly obvious in hindsight.
A strict, mandatory cooldown.
The system operated on categorical locks. Siphoning a skill from a human left a one-hour lockout before another human signature could be harvested. The beast he had extracted earlier confirmed that animal extractions operated on an entirely separate, independent timer.
Deicya exhaled a slow, calculated breath. He let the rush of adrenaline fade, forcing his mind back into a cold, detached composure.
Greed makes mistakes. If I rush this, I'll mess up.
If he wanted to maximize his growth, every single extraction had to be meticulously timed, categorized, and planned.
With his essence gauge sitting precariously at 190/200, Deicya turned his focus away from the crowds and back to the decaying buildings towering above him. He needed a secure, abandoned shelter to lock down for the night.
And he had exactly one hour to find it before his human absorption cooldown reset.
The frustration of the human-absorption cooldown still burned in his chest.
One hour per human target.
He had thought he could tear through the city's population and skyrocket to the top in a matter of minutes, but the system had clipped his wings.
Deicya spat a dry breath onto the cracked asphalt, his boots crunching over shards of safety glass as he searched for an abandoned storefront to barricade himself in for the night. The shadows of Fairview's hollowed-out high-rises stretched long and menacing across the street.
Then—
A sudden twitch in the overgrown weeds beside a rusted guardrail caught his eye.
A green grasshopper. Unusually large, its chitinous plates armored and gleaming with a faint, oily sheen, it hopped clumsily through the debris.
Deicya glanced down.
To anyone else, it was just another mutated pest of the new world. But to Deicya, a sharp, crimson light violently flickered across his vision.
A system panel snapped open.
TARGET APPRAISED Name: Mutated Field Hopper Classification: Insect / Beast Rank: F-Rank
Deicya stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes narrowed.
Wait.
The gears in his mind turned rapidly. He had been locked out from absorbing another human, but the system restrictions hadn't mentioned cross-species cooldowns. It categorized targets separately—human, beast, insect.
He could still harvest skills immediately, as long as he switched categories.
ABSORPTION TARGET DETECTED
Skill Siphoned: High Jump (Grade: F)
Trait Integrated into Body: Spring-Loaded Lower Limbs (Active) +15 Essence Collected [205/200]
Effect: Grants the user the explosive ability to propel themselves vertically multiple times their own height, bypassing obstacles and granting incredible aerial mobility. (Cooldown: None)
Deicya's breath caught. A wide, dangerous grin slowly stretched across his face.
High Jump.
It was the missing piece of the puzzle. The absolute, perfect combination for his Soft Landing skill. Until now, Soft Landing had been purely situational—he needed high ground to make it useful, but climbing ruined structures took time and exposed him. With High Jump, he could manufacture his own high ground anywhere, anytime, launching himself into the air and cushioning the descent effortlessly.
Without hesitation, Deicya commanded in his thoughts: Yes.
A dark wisp laced with brilliant, pulsing golden lines bled from the grasshopper's twitching frame. The ethereal vapor rose into the damp night air and slammed directly into Deicya's chest.
A massive surge of kinetic energy detonated through his muscles. His legs burned as his bone density and muscle fibers violently restructured to handle the recoil.
Ding.
The numeric counter on his interface skyrocketed past the threshold, locking in the overflow.
Essence Collected: 205/200 Threshold Met.
A sudden, suffocating pressure dropped over the alleyway.
From deep within Deicya's core, a thick, abyssal dark aura burst outward, cloaking his towering frame in swirling shadows. Interlaced through the pitch-black shroud, intricate golden lines flared to life, burning with a brilliant, blinding intensity across his skin before vanishing into thin air as quickly as they had appeared.
The heavy, stagnant air around him snapped back into place.
Ding.
RANK UP! Current Classification: D-Rank Awakened
Deicya exhaled a hot plume of air, his body feeling lighter, denser, and infinitely more dangerous. But before he could even test his newly reinforced legs, a second, blood-red notification box violently materialized, flashing insistently across his vision.
CRITICAL SYSTEM UPDATE Unique Skill Unlocked / Evolved: Infinite Synthesis (Passive) Definition: All skills absorbed by the host will now be upgraded immediately upon integration, fusing and elevating their grade based on the user's total essence and rank progression.
Deicya stared at the blood-red notification, letting the words sink in before his gaze dropped to his personal status interface. With a mental nudge, he pulled up his skill inventory.
The moment the panel expanded, his breath hitched.
Every single skill he had accumulated, from the basic utility tools he started with to the insect trait he had just harvested moments ago, had been completely overwritten. The system's passive evolution had taken hold, twisting his abilities into something far heavier, far more destructive.
High Jump was gone. In its place stood Dash. Description: Compresses physical kinetic energy to distort spatial movement, allowing the user to instantly displace themselves across short distances in a blur of motion, ignoring localized friction.
His old Auto Dodge had vanished too, replaced by Moving Wind. Description: Automatically calculates enemy trajectory and shifts the user's center of gravity with passive spatial displacement, allowing the body to flow around incoming attacks like a gale-force breeze.
The humble Appraisal skill had undergone a terrifying metamorphosis into Dreadnauth Vision. Description: Overrides standard optical perception to peer directly into the soul, core, and structural flaws of any target, exposing fatal weak points and absolute classification data regardless of concealment.
And finally, Soft Landing—once a simple trick to save his legs—now glared back at him under the name Crater Impact. Description: Reverses kinetic cushioning upon collision, converting descent momentum into a localized shockwave capable of fracturing reinforced concrete and pulverizing surrounding terrain upon landing.
Deicya clenched his fists, feeling the dense, heavy hum of power vibrating through his newly upgraded D-Rank strength. The system wasn't just letting him hoard abilities. It was forging them into an arsenal meant for absolute destruction.
After a few moments, a dark smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
"So this is the power of absorption," he muttered into the empty, desolate street. "I think I get it now."
The raw, terrifying hum of his new D-Rank strength vibrated beneath his skin, but the gnawing ache in his stomach quickly pulled him back to reality. He still needed to find a shelter to rest in, and he hadn't eaten a single thing all day.
Deicya continued walking through the desolate streets, crossing the boundary deeper into Bulacan until he spotted a lone, abandoned building standing in isolation on the side of the road. He approached with calculated caution, circling the perimeter to investigate before finally deciding to make it his hideout after confirming there were no living presences nearby.
Stepping inside the shadowed interior, he dropped his gear onto the floor with a dull thud—his worn jacket, his canvas bag, and a few meager cans of preserved food.
Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floorboards, Deicya brought up his system interface, his gaze sweeping over his newly acquired arsenal. But as he navigated through the layout, his eyes narrowed at the restrictive grid layout.
Two slots empty in active. Two slots empty in passive.
A cold wave of understanding washed over him. The system imposed a rigid constraint. He could only store a maximum of four active skills and four passive skills at any given time. And since he currently possessed a total of exactly four abilities, his inventory slots were completely filled.
Sitting in the dim silence of the abandoned room, Deicya began mentally mapping out his loadout, piecing together lethal combat combinations between his active and passive tools to prepare for whatever horrors waited for him anytime.
While Deicya sat resting in the dim silence of the abandoned building, he finally decided to open a can of sardines and a bottle of water to satisfy his growling stomach. But halfway through eating, a strange, low-frequency vibration rattled through the floorboards.
Heavy, four-legged footsteps shook the ground outside.
Even after he set the bottle down on the dusty floor with absolute care, the water inside kept waving continuously, the ripples growing more and more violent by the second. Then he realized it was a threat. A few moments later, a massive Red-Eyed Goat, standing a towering five feet tall with a densely muscular build and large, jagged horns, appeared, violently smashing through and wrecking the exterior wall of the building.
Deicya's eyes snapped to the creature, his mind immediately appraising it as a D-Rank beast. It was mutated, furious, and let out a roar so deafeningly loud that Deicya was forced to drop his food and cover his ears against the sonic wave. In that very moment, the goat began charging straight at him while he was completely defenseless, moving so fast that Deicya was unable to react in time. A thick horn drove straight into his ribs.
Deicya couldn't use his absorption skill because he could only use it on targets below his rank, leaving him with no choice but to fight it to the death.
The kinetic force sent Deicya flying backward across the room, leaving a horrific splatter of blood on the wall as his ribs shattered upon impact. He couldn't move for several agonizing seconds, and during that brief window, the mutated goat turned and charged again at unimaginable speed in his direction. Deicya tried to dodge, but his limbs refused to respond. He couldn't even rely on his passive moving wind skill since that side of his body was heavily destroyed. The mutated goat smashed right through the concrete wall along with Deicya, causing a torrent of blood to spill from his mouth.
In a panic, Deicya forced his failing consciousness to activate his dash skill, lunging blindly to snatch his utility knife off the ground. The very moment he gripped the handle, the mutated beast spun around to charge again with its horn. This time, it was channeling a volatile energy source, a crackling red electric surge sucking into the focal point in the middle of its horn.
While the mutated beast raced toward him, Deicya activated his multi-hit skill using his knife. The rapid-fire assault tore into the goat and proved highly effective, shredding its hide. Seizing the opening, Deicya activated his dash toward the sky and brought his heavy momentum down in a direct crater impact against the mutated beast.
The beast was brought to the brink of death, but Deicya's severed ribs could not keep up with the catastrophic strain, bleeding continuously. The recoil of his own crater impact worsened his condition exponentially after he dropped hard to the ground, a scream of pure agony tearing from his throat.
The mutated goat was bleeding profusely from its head and all over its body from the multi-hit barrage, but it gathered itself to charge its final, suicidal attack. Deicya was trapped in a state of sheer panic as he watched the beast barreling toward him while he remained completely paralyzed. There were no more options left for him. He couldn't move, and he was dying.
In a matter of seconds, the surrounding ruined concrete melted away into the familiar, abyssal void he had experienced just moments before everything changed. It was the void of Kazura. Kazura's resonant voice echoed directly into Deicya's mind, commanding him not to let his fear defeat him.
The very next moment, reality snapped back into place.
Deicya found that he could still move his lower body. In a fraction of a second, he saw the five-foot-tall mutated goat already tearing across the room toward him with full force. Deicya threw a desperate glance behind him and spotted a jagged, spike-like rebar protruding from the pillar where he was leaning. In an instant, he executed a powerful dash to his right side, letting the charging beast overshoot its mark and fall straight into the lethal trap.
In that exact moment, the beast's skull crashed headfirst into the iron spike, shattering its head into countless pieces.
After a few days of unconsciousness, Deicya woke up in a stark white, sterile room that resembled a high-tech hospital. He found thick bandages wrapped tightly around his ribs and his shoulder. Every nerve ending flared with agonizing pain, making it impossible to move or even flinch from the aftermath of his brutal fight.
A guard standing post outside the observation glass noticed Deicya's eyes flicker open. The guard immediately pulled out a communication device, placing an urgent call to the Second-in-Command Vessel Hunter of the Philippines, Vendetta Louise.
Vendetta answered instantly and rushed back to the facility via helicopter. As an A-Rank Vessel Hunter who prioritized the safety of the provinces, her presence commanded absolute authority.
As Deicya forced his strained eyes to focus, the automatic doors slid open, revealing a striking woman clad in sleek, high-technology armor powered by glowing Crystal Essence. A massive sniper rifle was strapped across her back, its scope threaded with a faint blue line that pulsed with the same Essence. Her aura alone was enough to freeze Deicya in place the moment she stepped into the room.