Black Coin

[Chapter 2: The Mechanical Heart]

[Chapter 2: The Mechanical Heart]

Scritch. Scritch.

The sound of a pen scratching against rough paper was the only thing breaking the dead silence of the apartment.

Seven sat at the small dining table, the flickering light of a single candle dancing in his dark eyes. He chewed slowly, savoring the bland taste of cold canned beans. In this world, flavor was a luxury; calories were life.

He glanced at the tactical watch on his wrist.

"Sunrise has been pushed back to 12:00," Seven muttered, his voice barely a whisper. "The daylight window is shrinking. We have less than five days before the Perpetual Night sets in."

He jotted the calculation down in his diary. It wasn't just a diary; it was a survival algorithm.

Priority 1: Power.

The generator and storage batteries in the back room were the heart of this safehouse. They kept the refrigerator humming and the motion sensors active.

Priority 2: Light discipline.

He kept the curtains drawn and the lights off. In a city plunged into pitch-black anarchy, a lit window wasn't a comfort. It was a target. It was a beacon screaming, "Fresh meat inside."

Dinner finished. Seven wiped his mouth and turned his attention to the backpack on the floor.

Zip.

He dumped the contents onto the table.

"Two cans of beef. Two bottles of purified water. And..." Seven picked up a crinkled, dusty package. "One pack of expired potato chips. Better than starving."

But the food was just the appetizer. The real main course—at least for the monster living inside his chest—lay in the pile of junk he had scavenged.

Three cracked cell phones.

A rusted Bluetooth speaker.

A portable electric shaver with a dead battery.

A bright pink hairdryer with a severed cord.

To anyone else, this was garbage. To Seven, it was evolution.

"Let's eat," he whispered.

He placed his hand over the rusted speaker.

Thump-Thump.

The black coin fused to his chest pulsed. A strange, metallic heat surged down his arm. His pupils dilated, glowing with a faint, circuit-blue light. His hair floated slightly, defying gravity, as if charged with static electricity.

Vrummmmm...

The speaker didn't just break; it dissolved. The plastic casing withered, the metal components turned to dust, and the copper wiring disintegrated into brown ash. It was entropy, accelerated by a thousand years in a single second.

Swoosh.

The pile of ash collapsed onto the table.

[ DEVOURING SUCCESSFUL. ]

[ MECHANICAL SOURCE POINT +1 ]

[ MECHANICAL DEVOURING PROFICIENCY +1 ]

[ CRITICAL REWARD: STRENGTH +1 ]

Seven clenched his fist. He felt the muscles in his forearm tighten, the fibers knitting together denser than before.

[ CURRENT MECHANICAL HEART: LV.1 (176/500) ]

[ TIP: UPGRADE THE MECHANICAL HEART TO UNLOCK SPECIAL SKILLS. ]

[ NEXT AWAKENING: LV.3 ]

Seven waved his hand, dismissing the notification, and pulled up his status panel.

[ BASIC ATTRIBUTES ]

[ STRENGTH: LV.1 (22/50) ]

[ SPEED: LV.0 (28/30) ]

[ DEFENSE: LV.0 (15/30) ]

[ PASSIVE SKILLS: SCAN, REPAIR, OPERATION ]

"One point of strength," Seven mused, flexing his grip. The wood of the table creaked under his fingers. "Not bad for a piece of junk."

He remembered the body he had inhabited just a few hours ago. The original owner, this universe's Seven, was a scrawny college student who wheezed after climbing a flight of stairs.

Now? Seven dropped to the floor.

One. Two. Three.

He rattled off fifty one-handed pushups in seconds. His breath remained steady. The transformation was terrifyingly fast.

"I was a Null back home," Seven thought, a bitter smile touching his lips. "No Divine Essence. No future. But here? Here, I'm a predator."

He looked at the remaining junk.

Sizzle.

[ MECHANICAL SOURCE POINT +1 ]

Zap.

[ MECHANICAL SOURCE POINT +1 ]

The cell phones crumbled into dust. No attribute boosts this time. Just raw energy points.

Seven sighed, looking at the pile of ash. "Diminishing returns. Small tech won't cut it anymore. I need something bigger. An engine. A generator. Maybe a tank."

He paused, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck as a memory surfaced.

Two days ago, he had tried to Devour an abandoned sedan's V8 engine.

It had been a mistake.

The moment he touched the engine block, the energy feedback loop nearly fried his brain. He was stuck there for an hour, paralyzed, his hand fused to the metal as the system drained him dry to process the complex machinery.

He had been a sitting duck. If a Ghoul or a Licker had wandered by...

"Greed kills," Seven reminded himself, his eyes hardening. "Slow and steady. Safety first. I'm not dying because I got impatient."

He picked up the last item. The pink hairdryer.

"You look ridiculous," Seven muttered to the appliance. "But you have a motor and a heating coil. Be useful."

He activated the ability.

VRUMMM!

The blue light flared brighter this time. The hairdryer didn't just turn to ash; it exploded into particles of golden light that shot straight into Seven’s chest.

[ DEVOURING SUCCESSFUL! ]

[ MECHANICAL SOURCE POINT +1 ]

[ CRITICAL REWARD: NEW ACTIVE SKILL ACQUIRED! ]

[ SKILL UNLOCKED: WIND CANNON (LV.1) ]

[ DESCRIPTION: COMPRESS AIR AT THE FINGERTIP AND RELEASE IT INSTANTLY. CAUSES CONCUSSIVE IMPACT DAMAGE. ]

Seven blinked. "A skill?"

He stared at his hand. He had devoured phones, speakers, and shavers, and got nothing but stats. But a hairdryer gave him a weapon?

"Air compression..." Seven analyzed. "It makes sense. A hairdryer moves air. The System strips the concept and turns it into a weapon."

His heart began to race. This changed everything. Until now, he only had a knife and his fists. Now, he had range.

He stood up and faced the worn-out fabric couch across the room.

"Let's test the caliber."

Seven raised his right hand. He pointed his index finger like a pistol. He focused. He could feel the air in the room being sucked toward his fingertip, swirling into a dense, invisible ball the size of a marble.

He didn't use full power. He didn't want to blow the wall out and alert the thing in the clouds.

"Bang," Seven whispered.

He flicked his finger.

THWIP!

It wasn't a loud explosion. It was the sound of a suppressed sniper rifle.

PUFF!

The throw pillow on the couch exploded. Feathers and stuffing erupted into the air like a sudden snowstorm, drifting slowly to the floor.

Seven lowered his hand, smoke rising faintly from his fingertip.

"Shit," he hissed, his eyes wide.

He walked over to the couch. The pillow was gone. But behind it, there was a hole punched clean through the leather backrest, and a spiderweb crack in the concrete wall behind that.

That was with minimum power.

"If I charge this up..." Seven calculated, "I could blow a Ghoul’s head off from ten meters away."

He sat back down, the adrenaline slowly fading. He looked out the window, through the gaps in the alloy shutter. The darkness outside was absolute.

His new memories filled in the blanks of this nightmare.

The year 2069. Apocalypse Day.

Thirteen massive "Devouring Zones" opened up across the Earth. The scientists called them the Star Abyss.

Then came the Dark Tide—a radiation that blocked the sun and rotted the world.

And then came the monsters. The undead. The horrors from the deep.

Humanity had fled, migrating to the few safe zones left. But not everyone made it.

And not everyone stayed human.

Seven looked at his hand, the faint blue light of the Mechanical Heart pulsing under his skin.

"Some people died," Seven thought, the memories of Lin Xian merging with his own cynical worldview. "And a small percentage... we changed. We absorbed the radiation of the Abyss."

He clenched his fist, feeling the Wind Cannon ready to fire.

"We mutated. We gained Superpowers. And in this hell, that makes us the kings of the wasteland."

[End of Chapter 2]