Chapter 28

  The heavy stone functioning as the temple door closed behind him with a heavy grind that echoed through the vast chamber. Raime staggered inside, the lever dragging behind across the stone floor before he leaned it against the wall. His breath was harsh, his lungs fighting to keep rhythm, but his chest felt like it was caving in. He sank down, armor clinking softly as the vambrace hit the ground, and pressed his back to the cold pillar near the entrance.

  Alive. Barely, but alive.

  The silence of the temple wrapped around him, gentle and unwavering, as if the ancient place cared nothing for the chaos outside its walls. His hands trembled despite his best effort to still them, and when he looked down, his knuckles were still faintly bloodied, streaked with grime, sap, and dried violet ichor. He looked at them. They didn’t look like his own hands anymore.

  I thought I was strong.

  The thought bled into him unbidden, heavy with shame. His stats had risen, each number a promise of power, and he had believed them. Numbers that set him above the limits of humanity, that whispered of strength and resilience beyond what his old self could even dream. He had felt like he could walk through this world unshaken. Like victory would follow naturally.

  And yet… those centipedes had almost ended him.

  He closed his eyes, memories flashing—jaws snapping with blinding speed, legs ready to cut him in two, the crushing pressure of its bulk as it moved with precision and alien hunger. The raw terror of its charge replayed over and over. He had been faster, stronger, sharper than he had ever been before—and it had barely been enough.

  His fingers curled into fists, nails biting against his palms.

  The knowledge, the armor, the new weapon… I thought with all of it I was untouchable. I thought I had the tools to kill anything that stood in my way. But I don’t have the experience. I don’t even have control. I’m wielding my weapons like a child —I was fighting against children all along…

  The truth cut deeper than any wound. His armor had saved him, yes—but he didn’t even know what it could truly do. Its protections had limits he hadn’t tested. Its functions remained half-hidden, waiting to be discovered. He was walking into battles wearing power he didn’t understand.

  The Tetra Unum… it had killed. It had answered him, it had obeyed his commands. But the movements were crude, frantic bursts of willpower with no grace behind them. He couldn’t call himself a warrior—a master even less.

  And the ability to dominate—Raime’s lips pressed thin at the memory. That pulse of psionic force, had turned the tide when he had been about to die. It was his greatest weapon, but it was also clumsy, draining, unrefined. The recoil of using it still echoed faintly in his skull.

  He had thought he was ready. Reality had spat in his face.

  Raime let the silence deepen, pressing against his ears until it almost hummed. He leaned his head back against the pillar, eyes fixed on the vaulted ceiling above, etched with ancient reliefs he hadn’t bothered to decipher. His body screamed for rest, but his mind refused to still.

  I’m not ready. Not yet. If I walk out there again thinking I can just crush what comes my way, I’ll end up dead. I need more. I need to train—not in one thing, but in all of them. My body, my weapon, my Threads, the armor, my control over new psionic abilities. Every direction at once, until I stop being a pretender and become something that can actually survive here.

  His throat tightened. A memory stirred—back on Earth, sitting at his desk in the dim hours before dawn, staring at yet another medicine book, another gigantic exam, another night shift on an already stretched thin schedule and a sleepless night. That helpless frustration had followed him during his school years, but he learned to adapt. Those moments seemed so hard until just some days ago, so stressful. Now he knew better than to complain about studying and internships, one doesn’t risk their life going to university, no matter how hard it may seem.

  And now here he was, stripped of illusions, forced to confront how fragile he still was.

  But—he had survived.

  That thought cut through the spiral, steadying him. However narrow the margin, however close the jaws of the centipede had come, he was here. Alive. His heart still beat. His lungs still drew breath. And he carried more knowledge than before.

  First: I survived. That alone means I am not lost. Second: I’ve seen the difference in power now, seen what monsters here truly are. I won’t underestimate them again. And for sure there are some even more powerful than those centipedes, first of all the one that caused the eruption. Third: the unknown is the most dangerous part—now I know… more. I can prepare. I will prepare.

  The weight in his chest eased slightly, replaced by a growing ember of determination.

  His thoughts drifted on Earth.

  How many days had passed since the integration began? He tried to calculate, but time here slipped like sand through his fingers. Had it been a week? More? Every sunrise and sunset felt both eternal and fleeting. He thought of cities back home, of crowded streets, of people who had never once held a weapon. People like his brothers. Were they fighting creatures like he was? Were they stronger, injured, dead? Did they have allies—or were they alone, just like him?

  What if it’s worse there? The thought hit harder than he expected. He had little faith in human unity in times of crisis. He remembered history lessons, remembered news reports from before the System arrived. Disasters never brought out the best in everyone. Some pulled together—but others exploited, fought, tore each other apart. The System’s arrival had likely magnified every weakness of humanity.

  He pressed his palms against his face, exhaling slowly.

  I just hope they’re alive. I just hope my family is safe. That’s all I can do right now.

  But hope wasn’t enough. Not here. Not when survival demanded more than blind faith. He would have to last weeks, maybe months. This wasn’t a trial he could sprint through—it was a war of endurance.

  I need to plan. I plan, and I prepare.

  He ticked the points off in his head. Abilities to explore and refine. A fighting style to master. Tools to unlock. Knowledge to absorb. Master Velthar had given him the means to excel, but tools were nothing without discipline.

  And then there was the new ability—the control.

  His stomach twisted at the memory. Forcing his mind into another being, yanking its will away, bending it to his command. It was inhuman, horrible. Yet it had saved his life. It had made the impossible possible.

  Do I throw it away? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Or do I learn it, master it, and keep it as a blade sheathed until I truly need it?

  His lips thinned.

  I can’t discard it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Power like that—moral or not—could change everything. I’ll learn it. If nothing else, I can wield it as a mental attack, stripping clarity from enemies without crossing the line into full control. But if it’s life or death again… I’ll use it. I’ll bear the cost, because the alternative is death. And death helps no one—not me, not Earth, not the people I left behind.

  Resolve rooted itself deeper, branching like iron into his bones.

  The silence now felt more reassuring, charged with anticipation. Broken only by the faint whisper of Ithural’s psychic current brushing at the edges of his awareness and the echo of people long past living in the temple.

  He exhaled, slow and steady, and let his body sat straighter on the stone floor. The Rift would not forgive weakness. He would shape himself into something it could no longer ignore, something it could no longer break.

  A faint chime stirred in the back of his awareness. He froze, realizing he hadn’t checked the System since the battle. The memory of the notification burned faintly in his mind—the one that had flared after killing the adult centipede.

  His breath slowed.

  Right. Messages. The System has something to say about all this.

  Raime straightened against the pillar, forcing his exhaustion to the edges of his mind. His body and mind were recuperating from the stress of battle, clarity pulsed through him. He was bruised and battered, but he had survived, and now he would improve.

  He focused inward, summoning the System notification with a thought.

  Show me.

  Achievement Unlocked: Defiance of Tiers (I)

  You have slain a Tier 2 creature while unranked (Tier 0).

  Against all probability, you have slain a foe beyond your station. Such an act demonstrates potential beyond calculated thresholds. Your survival against disproportionate force reveals a body and mind straining past safe tolerances.

  You stood before inevitability and refused to break.

  Rewards Granted: Vessel recalibration

  Vessel recalibration: Foundational restructuring initiated. Biological inefficiencies and unstable energy previously stressed during uncontrolled Threshold Breach, have been stabilized. Latent flaws corrected.

  Your vessel is now attuned for sustained growth. Attribute ceilings extended beyond standard Tier 0 species limitations.

  Note: This feat is beyond the design of standard Tutorial parameters. Rewards have been adapted to your anomalous state. Proceed with caution—your growth has not gone unnoticed.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The words blazed across his vision, heavy with meaning. Before he could even grasp them, something deeper seized hold.

  The relief that followed the System’s message wasn’t the clean, triumphant kind. It was a deep unwinding, a loosening in places he hadn’t known were clenched. Like an ache leaving his bones by degrees. The recalibration had not given him new strength or more speed; it had removed sand from the gears. He felt that absence keenly—like breathing through both nostrils after weeks of a head-cold, like stretching without the catch in his lower back, like waking and realizing the dull headache he’d been carrying for days was simply…gone.

  For the first time since he touched the limit of his Tier, his body did not feel like a fragile cage straining against its limits. Breath came easier, deeper, as if air itself finally welcomed him. His pulse steadied into a rhythm that felt unshakable. Even the fatigue lingering from battle dulled beneath a strange, clean vitality.

  He couldn’t name what had changed—no awareness of cells repairing or extra energy infusions—but he knew. Something had been wrong with him all along, a flaw buried in marrow and mind, and the System had excised it.

  Potential. The word tasted steady in his mind. No shortcuts, no free lunches. Just room to grow without the ceiling breaking my skull. He could live with that. He would thrive on that.

  He stood, paced the length of the chamber slowly, feeling the armor respond with small adjustments—cloak easing his turns, metal weave flexing with his breath. The Tetra Unum hovered on his left like a stern sentinel; Thunk lay beside the satchel, nicked and stained but always reliable.

  He replayed the fight in the forest as if he were studying another man’s mistakes. He’d thought he was strong—statistically, sure, and he’d felt quick and tough in a way he’d never known on Earth. He’d thought the new weapons would finish what the numbers started, and the armor would forgive any error. Reality had answered with shattered trees, a mouth like a guillotine, and the sick, intimate knowledge that anything less than precision was death. He could win—but only barely, only messily.

  Then win clean next time. He didn’t bother flinching away from the thought. It steadied him.

  He had points to spend. A reward to choose. Thought-Knots to unravel. Threads to create. Levitation to learn. A Sea of Grass that pulsed a constant warning on the Eye of Xethz. None of these were optional if he wanted to live long enough to find home again. And yet—he didn’t feel crushed. The recalibration had quieted something essential in him, and in that silence he could finally hear his own plan without the static of panic.

  Food first, but not just meat. He needed a baseline diet he could repeat, not binges between battles. The Tivis vines would keep him hydrated—Tivis, he corrected himself, and the knowledge felt like a friend now—but he needed fats, salts, and minerals to rebuild a body that had been burning for too much. He would start a larder—drying racks by the shaded alcove, a pit lined with stone to keep things cool, herb bundles to dry. He’d mark portions, plan meals around training blocks. The idea felt boring and perfect.

  Then the temple itself. He walked the space with a different eye—no longer sanctuary, but training ground.

  He could rig a pendulum on the western arch: a stone disk on vine-rope to force timing and footwork. On the eastern rooms, the flat line of broken flagstones would serve for sprint drills and short bursts, mixing low gravity leaps with controlled landings. In the courtyard—already half-cleared—he could lay out a ring with chalked marker-stones for forms practice with Thunk and the Tetra Unum, rotating sets until his hands and mind moved without argument. The cloister’s shadowed corridor would be a place to practice receiving controlled strikes—cloak hardening drills, glancing-blow acceptance, the art of rolling with a hit without breaking focus. He could imagine the rhythm of it, day by day: movement, impact, recovery.

  Weapons next. He touched Thunk’s battered handle, then the nearest blade of the Unum.

  Thunk was honest: a lever that hit where he put it. But he’d been swinging it like a club. He needed to turn it into a decision. That meant seam recognition, not just “hit hard.” In the forest he’d managed to find a joint, to chip at it—too little, too slow. He would create a catalog in his head: seam under jaw, seam at shoulder, seam between third and fourth plate—whatever creature he studied, he’d map it in the air with Thunk until the path from eye to hand was a straight line.

  The Tetra Unum was trickier. It responded like a limb until he asked it to be a mind. It could cut, pierce, split and spin; he’d made it drill through bone and brain because fear had left him no other answer. But that “answer” drained him like a punctured lung. He still didn’t know how many ways of fighting with it remained hidden. He needed to slow down, experiment away from beasts, maybe some thought-knots held a lesson on the weapon.

  He imagined a progression: day one—hover, move, return, stop on command at arm’s-length, then at a hair’s breadth. Day two—blade transitions: edge to spike to fan to spear, no mind-lag, no manual flinch. Day three—springboard work at low height, teaching his body to trust the counterforce so he could jump farther without overthinking. Day four—target drills against hanging stones, then rolling stones, then swinging stones: weight, inertia, anticipation. He’d scale until the Unum moved like a thought, not a task.

  He smiled faintly. And maybe stop using it as a meat auger unless I’m out of options.

  Armor study would run in parallel. He knew a few of its responses now: the self-clean, the cloak’s nudge that turned lethal hits into glancing ones, the way the cloth redistributed force. But those were passive gifts. He needed to learn the language to ask for more.

  That meant testing controlled strikes—short raps against forearm plates to feel how the weave hardened and softened; jumps and landings to sense how the force bled across fibers; sprints to see if the cloak learned his patterns and pre-loaded, or if he had to feed it instruction at the start of motion. He would practice deliberate hardening of one quadrant while leaving another soft, see how quickly he could route power where it mattered. If the cloak could pull him, could it hold him—slow a fall without turning his joints to sand? Could it angle a slide? Batman cape came to his mind. If the weave could absorb force, could it throw it back?

  One discovery at a time.

  Threads. The word alone made his scalp prickle with a mixture of craving and caution. He had three unattuned ones. The second had come easier because it had been half-born in strain; the third had cost him almost everything he had on hand. He knew his path—ten total—wasn’t just a number, it was a threshold, probably. The foundational meditations from the Thought-Knots had felt simple in the moment, but he knew why children started young: repetition builds grooves in the mind that don’t slip under pressure. He would have to build them in adulthood, in crisis. He’d do it anyway.

  He sat cross-legged on the cool floor, leaned back against the stone bed, and let breath find its pattern. Morning—Thread work while the mind is clean. No chasing a fourth if I’m already ragged. The day is long enough to craft one line well and let it set. He pictured the practice: the shape of attention narrowing, then broadening; the way his awareness had to coil and hum without snapping; the energy expenditure he’d need to budget so he didn’t stumble into the evening useless.

  Levitation tugged at him with a child’s joy. He’d caught a taste of it in battle—low gravity turning falls into glides when he aimed his momentum right. But he wanted more than that, he wanted the real deal.

  He recalled the Ilturian primer he’d gleaned in the last thought-knot: the body as a pattern in a field, weight as a dialogue rather than a fact, the gentlest reorderings that turned “down” into “less” rather than “not.” He could almost feel the technique in his fingers: not a shove against the planet, but an agreement with it—redistribute what it asked of him until it asked for less.

  He would start at ankle height, cloak ready to stiffen if he lost it. He’d practice the meeting point between breath and thread, the little pulses that lifted him like a hand under the ribs. No bravado—just one finger-width of air held for ten slow counts, then set down without collapse. From there, two fingers. Then a palm. The jump to a forearm-length would come only when the first three felt easy like breathing.

  He could use the Tetra Unum as a spotter—a hovering rung he could trust. If he could arrest a fall with cloak and Unum together, he’d be able to push higher without fear turning his practice sloppy.

  Control—of others—sat like a stone in his stomach. He didn’t really want it. He also didn’t want to die. The juvenile’s glassed-over eyes haunted him. The parents’ fury justified his use one way; the child’s violated mind condemned him on the other. He had nearly died and the answer he found had worked. That didn’t make it right.

  So change the question. Use the entry without the anchor. He could develop a stun that collapsed a predator’s coordination for a time, without rewriting it. No leash. Just a shove at the right pillar in the mind’s house—a non-lethal attack that stopped a foe long enough to escape, or to strike true if it was possible.

  Neural Shear pulsed at the edge of that thought, the name fitting like a knife in its sheath. He still hadn’t chosen his Insight Infusion. Mental Anchor promised safety in the storm. Cognitive Mirror offered trickery and a kind of poetic justice. Neural Shear was power, dangerous and precise. He could postpone a little longer, but he couldn’t postpone forever. He would decide only after two more Thought-Knots maximum, after trialing a non-lethal jab on a smaller predator, after measuring the energy cost. Choose with information, not fear.

  He crossed to the satchel and opened it. The Eye of Xethz pulsed gently, as if aware of him. He lifted it and let it project the map into the space before him. The Sea of Grass occupied a slab of the horizon with deceptive emptiness—flat, no landmarks, a wide plateau of waving green. But the overlay from the Eye—the rippling danger metric—never fell to calm. It fluttered like a heartbeat that never rested. Not high. Not crisis. But his presence was everywhere on the area, and constant.

  He made a list out loud, the way he’d talk himself through an equation back home. “Possibilities: predators that use the grass to hide. Subsurface tunnels. Holes. Sink-traps. Pollen—psychotropic or corrosive. Wind shear, enough to push someone off their feet. Static discharge—grass blades building charge. Grass itself—razor edges. Or something psionic running through the ground, a whisper that wears you down.” He rubbed his chin. “Or the danger is hunger and thirst—a psychic field or predator that tricks you into spending everything before the middle and snack on a weakened prey.”

  He would test before crossing. He’d walk the perimeter and throw weighted lines to watch how they fell. He’d send the Tetra Unum skimming low and bring it back to see if it carried residue—sap, pollen, dust too fine to see. He’d cut samples of stalks, press them against the armor to judge abrasion, then against skin protected by cloth. He’d watch the wind for patterns: gusts regular or not, lulls that weren’t true lulls. If anything smelled sweet, he’d assume poison; if anything tasted like nothing, he’d assume poison. He’d draft waypoints—small stone stacks every two hundred paces, always in sight of the last—so he could retreat without getting lost in a flat world.

  He’d preload his body with rest, food, and water, then move only when the light favored him. He’d watch the sky. And the map.

  His gaze drifted to the ceiling where the light had tilted toward late day. He thought of Earth then—uninvited, unavoidable. How many days? He’d stopped marking strictly since Ithural’s hours didn’t map cleanly, but he could approximate. A handful of Earth days, maybe more. Family faces flickered across his mind—mom, dad, his brothers. He trusted them to survive ordinary crises; this was anything but ordinary. The System had carved the world into tiers and trials. Were they fighting boars with chitin and flying centipedes? Were they huddled in the house behind curtains, rationing meals, waiting for a siren that never came? Were they lucky enough to have a temple, a satchel, a ghostly master to leave them gifts?

  Hold on. I’m coming. I just don’t know when.

  The honesty of it tightened his throat for a second. He swallowed, breathed through the weight, and felt it pass.

  The Thought-Knots called to him again—more lessons he could absorb before fatigue made them slip through him like water through a sieve. He knew one of the next was a primer on psionic kinesics—how to read a motion before it happened—and a deeper dive on meditative stances that prioritized regeneration rather than expansion. The recalibration had made his baseline clearer; it was the perfect time to lay new lines on top of it.

  He sketched a dayplan in his mind. He would have his days full.

  His eyes slid to the corner where he kept his meager trophies—a part of the forehead chitin plate of the centiparent, a fragment of the lower jaw. He lifted the plate, turned it in his hand. It was beautiful in a way—smooth, dense, layered like a thousand compacted leaves. Harder than steel in places. He set it down gently. He would learn to crack it effortlessly when he needed to.

  The recalibration’s afterglow thrummed softly through his muscles. He could work tonight. He could spend points now and feel the change immediately—bulk up strength for heavy blows, or jack agility to surf the low gravity better, or feed endurance so he could fight for ten minutes instead of two without his vision tunneling. He could pour into Insight and make the Threads sing; he could tilt Resolve up and hammer through fear like a nail through pine.

  He caught himself smiling. Don’t be greedy. Be deliberate. The ceiling was higher. That didn’t mean he should sprint straight at it and crack his neck on it again.

  He rolled his shoulders, took one more slow breath, and let the chamber come back into focus. The temple felt less like a ruin and more like a forge now. The difference was in him though, not the stone.

  “Right,” he murmured to the empty room. “I’ll do this properly.”

  He crossed back to the desk, brushed his fingers over the Eye of Xethz, and let its projection dim. He glanced at the satchel—thought-knots sleeping like embers. He rested his palm on his sternum and felt the steady, recalibrated beat beneath the armor’s weave.

  Potential.

  He was ready to put in the work.

  Raime closed his eyes, summoned the interface, and spoke into the quiet of his mind.

  Status.