The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 002: The First Price

The world stopped.

It didn't slow down. Between one heartbeat and the next, the teeth in front of Ethan's face froze a hand's width from his throat. The tower bell dragged into a single low note and hung there. Dust floated in the air like flour. The creature's breath, which had been hot on his cheek, was gone.

Ethan couldn't move. He could think, which surprised him.

A pale square opened in the air in front of his eyes. White letters sat inside it, sharp and clean.

[Host detected. Name: Ethan Vale. Age: 20. Magic affinity: None. Compatibility: Complete.]

"Complete," Ethan said. His mouth didn't move, but the word went out somewhere anyway. "I've got nothing in me. The crystal said so. The whole hall heard it."

[The crystal measures magic. This system does not use magic.]

"Why me? There were a thousand people in that hall."

[Query restricted.]

"Restricted by who?"

[Query restricted.]

"That's not an answer, either."

[Time is limited. Thirty seconds remain before the target resumes. Host vitality: 4 of 100. Death will occur nine seconds after the target resumes.]

"Then do something."

[Emergency contract available. Review terms.]

New text slid into the square.

[Divine Evolution System. Terms. 1. The system restores the host to functional condition. 2. The system grants one skill: Observe. 3. Every major evolution carries a cost. The system selects the cost. The host cannot refuse it after acceptance. First cost: one memory.]

Ethan read it twice, looking for the trick. He couldn't find one, and that bothered him more than finding one would have.

"Which memory?"

[Undisclosed.]

"You can't just take something and not tell me what."

[Correct. The system can. It will.]

"What if it's something I need?"

[Then you will not know you needed it.]

He nearly laughed. Even frozen, it hurt.

He thought about the hall. Garrick's grey back going through the arch. Seraphine saying I told you. Dorian's boots on the bench, four years of bruises from a wooden sword. If the thing wanted those, it could have them. He'd hand them over gladly.

But his mother had hummed when she cooked. Always the same four notes, always a little flat. He could still hear it when he lay awake. It was one of maybe six things he owned.

"If it takes her," he said, and his voice shook, "if it takes that-"

[The system does not select by emotion. The system selects by cost.]

It wasn't comforting. It was honest, though, and Ethan found he preferred honest. Everyone else had been so kind to him right up until they weren't.

"Fine. Accept."

[Contract accepted.]

Heat hit his spine like a bucket of boiling water. His ribs ground back into place with a crunch he felt more than heard, and he would have screamed if the world had let him. Color came back into his hands. The numbness in his fingers burned away.

Something small went missing.

He felt it go the way he'd feel a coin slip through a hole in his pocket. He reached for it and closed on nothing. There was a gap, about the size of one quiet afternoon, and he could not say what had been in it.

He tried the one thing he could think of. In the frozen quiet, he hummed four notes under his breath. Flat on the third, the way she always did it.

Still there.

Relief hit him so hard his eyes stung. Then it soured. If the hum was here, something else was gone. Something he would never get to miss, because he'd never know to look for it. He had paid, and he had no receipt.

[Memory deducted. Vitality: 62 of 100. Skill acquired: Observe.]

Words appeared above the creature's head, as if painted on the air.

[Rift Stalker. Rank: D+. Vitality: 480. Weakness: Core, located behind the chest mouth. Exposed only while feeding.]

Ethan stared at that last line.

Up this close, he saw something else. A thin ring of dull grey metal circled the creature's throat, half sunk into the hide, as if the skin had grown around it over years. Scratches covered the band. Letters, maybe. The Observe window said nothing about it.

Monsters didn't wear jewelry. He filed the thought away for later, if there was a later.

"Exposed while it eats," he said slowly. "Eats me."

[Correct. Mission issued: Survive. Time remaining: four seconds.]

His right hand lay flat against the stair. Something hard pressed into his palm. He turned his head the smallest bit and saw it, a plain steel dagger with a leather grip. A guard's blade. Rhea Kessel had dropped it through the bars of the gate, he realized. That gloved hand hadn't only been reaching for him.

His fingers closed on the grip. It was still warm.

He had never held a real blade. Four years of academy drills, and the instructors only ever gave him the wooden sword, the one Dorian liked to break across his back. Keep it low, they'd said. Keep your elbow tucked. He tucked his elbow. It was the only advice he had.

His hand wouldn't stop shaking. He let it shake.

Three. Two.

The bell rang again. Dust fell. The creature's breath hit his face, rotten and hot.

The teeth came down.

Ethan didn't roll away. Every part of him wanted to, but the line of text stayed bright in his head. He stayed where he was and drove the dagger up, into the spot where the teeth parted. Behind them something pulsed purple, and he stabbed at the center of it with everything the new heat had given him.

The jaws shut on his left arm.

The pain was white. He heard himself yell, a thin ugly sound. Teeth ground against bone. The creature thrashed, and Ethan went with it, dragged across the stone, but his right hand stayed locked on the dagger and he shoved it deeper. Something under the blade gave. It cracked like a frozen pond.

The scream that came out of the Rift Stalker had too many voices in it. Some sounded like children.

Then the light behind its teeth went out.

The four long arms spasmed. The whole body leaned, hung, and fell sideways with a crash that shook dust off the walls. Ethan went down under it. The jaw still held his arm. He lay there on his back with a ton of dead flesh across his legs and listened to the bell ringing, ringing, ringing.

He breathed. In. Out. Nothing in his chest caught.

One tooth at a time, he pried his arm free. Blood ran to his elbow and dripped. It was bad. He could move his fingers, though.

Above him the iron gate rattled. A woman's voice shouted his name. Boots pounded on the upper landing, and a chain began to grind as someone hauled on the gate's winch.

He didn't answer yet.

A D-rank monster had walked out of a sealed vault and killed no one but him. Or so they would think. In about a minute, a dozen guards would find a null with no magic, a dead Rift Stalker, and a dagger in its chest. They would ask how. They would keep asking.

His arm throbbed in time with his heart. The Observe window still hung in the air, and nobody else seemed able to see it.

He was looking at the new square of light that had opened over the corpse.

[Target defeated. Absorb Rift Stalker?]