Eryx spun on his heel, his shortsword clearing its sheath with a dry rasp just as the first worm snapped its jaws inches from his face.His eyes locked on the thing, and a cold spike of shock hit him. During all those late nights buried in the academy library, reading through index after index of classified beast logs, he'd never seen anything like this.The creature didn't have the simple, blind brain of a mud parasite. Its segmented body rippled with dozens of jointed, hook-like legs—resembling a massive, mutated caterpillar—while its head flared out into the pale, slimy face of a blind tapeworm."Fresh meat..." a raspy, wet gurgle echoed through the damp cavern.The sound wasn't coming from inside Eryx's head like Drogo’s link. It was coming straight from the creature's split maw. It spoke human tongue.“Human intelligence?” Eryx thought, dropping his weight low in the thick slush as three more worms burst from the mud around him. “No natural beast evolves like this. These things a

A sudden, violent gust of wind whipped over the ridge, striking Eryx full in the chest like a thrown log. He staggered back, his vision swimming for a fraction of a second as the unrefined core energy sloshing near his sternum flared hot and uneven. The cold mountain air did nothing to soothe the heat crawling beneath his skin. Every breath seemed to drag the unstable energy around his chest into another violent spiral, forcing him to clench his teeth as he fought to keep it contained. He had already pushed his body far beyond what it could comfortably handle, and the last thing he needed was for his core to become unstable now. Crack. The stone shelf right beneath his boots buckled. A massive chunk of granite broke free, plummeting down into the foggy void below without making a sound. For one terrifying second, Eryx felt the empty space beneath him before his instincts took over. There was no time to think about how deep the ravine was or whether anything waited below. The mo

Eryx wrapped a leather strip twice around his right hand, covering the glowing red brand before stepping into the bright morning light.It was his first time walking onto the main courtyard in days. The air was crisp, filled with the loud clashing of practice steel and the steady chants of upper-tier recruits going through their morning drills.But as Eryx cut through the central stone path, his steps felt fundamentally different. His feet touched the gravel without making a sound, his body moving with a fluid precision that wasn't there before.The brood energy had settled deep into his marrow. His conduits weren't just healed—they were wider, denser, and held a steady reservoir of power waiting right under his skin.He stopped near the edge of the testing ring, resting his hand casually on the pommel of his shortsword as he watched a training dummy forty paces away.“I need to know my limits now,” Eryx thought, tracing the subtle pulse in his legs. “No spirit energy. Just… force.”B

The blue rune on the library doors pulsed with a suffocating light. The shadow on the wall stretched longer, its form thickening until the pressure in the narrow aisle threatened to snap Eryx’s ribs."You think a few old books will save you?" Aldric’s voice vibrated through the floorboards.Eryx didn't answer…he couldn't. The volatile brood energy in his chest was boiling, slamming against his inner conduit walls in response to the spirit pressure choking the air.“If I fight him here, my core blows,” Eryx thought, his jaw locked tight. “I need to break the lock, not the shadow.”Instead of drawing his blade against the entity, Eryx lunged to his right. He slammed the hilt of his shortsword straight into the ancient ward-lantern hanging over the archive desk.CRASH…!The glass shattered, spilling ward-incense into the air. The ward-suppression runes etched into the oak shelves violently reacted, clashing against the icy-blue spirit magic locking the doors. High-frequency sparks explod

The air in the lower clinic smelled like crushed root, old blood, and burning silver-moss. Two guards dumped Eryx onto a cold stone slab. His body hit with a dull thud. The healer, a sharp-eyed woman with ink-stained fingers, didn't look up from her mortar and pestle. "Take him out," she said. She wiped her hands on a grease-stained apron. "I don't waste salve on lower-bound trash with broken conduits. He's a dead hope. He'll be a corpse before second watch." "He stays alive, Lyra," Elder Vane said from the doorway. His voice was dry. He stepped in and pulled a small velvet pouch from his robes. He tossed it on the wooden table. It landed with a heavy metallic clink. Lyra’s eyes narrowed. The pouch opened. Three high-grade spirit jewels rolled out. Deep blue light spilled across the stone walls. "Fix his core," Vane said. His sunken eyes were on Eryx. "Stabilize him enough to stand." Lyra stared at the jewels for a second, then swept them into her palm. She didn't argue. She walk