The Western Gate was a bottleneck of trade and filth. I moved through the shadows of the supply wagons, my head low, my pulse thudding against the silver-blue etched nerves in my arm. The sensation was a dull, persistent ache—the Stone's "maintenance tax." It wasn't a system that offered help; it was a hungry piece of architecture in my chest that required a constant, non-drastic draw of mana to stay connected to this reality.

  "I'm losing a fraction of a unit every minute," I muttered, the math running in the back of my mind. At Tier 1 (Apprentice), my capacity was capped at 100 mana. Between the Stone's tax and the natural decay of energy, I was trapped. I couldn't reach Tier 2—the 200 mana threshold—just by sitting in a room and breathing.

  I needed external fuel. I needed a Monster Core.

  The Library had hinted that to unlock the first Pillar—Thermodynamics—it didn't just need mana; it needed Chaotic Soul Energy. I didn't know what that was, or why the Stone wanted the "filth" mages usually discarded, but I knew where to find it.

  The Barrens

  I cleared the perimeter of Orizon, heading for the Ash-Barrens. The terrain here was a graveyard of basalt and volcanic vents, home to the Cinder-Hounds. They were low-level pests, scavengers with furnace-red eyes and breath that smelled of sulfur.

  I found one near a steam vent. It was lean, its ribs glowing through its soot-covered fur.

  "Okay," I whispered, my heart hammering. "Now or Never"

  I stepped out from behind a basalt pillar. The hound snapped its head toward me, a low growl rattling in its throat. I didn't reach for a spellbook. I reached for the "Blank Slate" nerves in my arm. I tried to visualize the air between us not as empty space, but as a medium for a Thermal Gradient. If I could pull the heat out of its body...

  The hound didn't wait for my calculation.

  It lunged—a blur of orange sparks and muscle. I tried to sidestep, but my Tier 1 body was sluggish. Its shoulder slammed into my chest, and I went down hard, the air driven from my lungs in a painful wheeze.

  The beast didn't hesitate. It buried its teeth into my left shoulder.

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  "AGH!"

  The pain was a white-hot spike that shattered my focus. I felt the heat of its breath searing my skin, the "chaos" of its mana leaking into my open wound. It was like having boiling lead poured into my veins.

  I tried to push it away, but my hands were shaking. My mana pool was plummeting as the Stone, indifferent to my agony, continued its steady maintenance draw.

  [40/100]... [39/100]...

  "Stop... taking... it!" I gasped, clawing at the hound's throat.

  The beast's jaw tightened. I heard a sickening crack—my collarbone giving way. My vision began to swim with black spots. I was a scientist who had brought a ruler to a knife fight. My "theories" were useless if I couldn't survive the first three seconds of a physical engagement.

  In a moment of pure, blind survival instinct, I stopped trying to "cast" magic. Instead, I did the most dangerous thing a mage could do. I opened my internal "valves" completely. I stopped resisting the hound's heat and the Stone's draw.

  I became a Conduit.

  The Stone reacted. It didn't do it out of mercy; it did it because the "Hardware" was about to be destroyed.

  Suddenly, the suction from my chest quadrupled. It was no longer a "sip"; it was a vortex. The chaotic energy from the hound didn't just leak into me—it was ripped out.

  The hound gave a muffled yelp as its flaming eyes suddenly went dim. I felt a jagged, horrific sensation as the beast's very life force was vacuumed through my wound and into the Stone. It was like drinking liquid glass; my nerves screamed as the "chaos" was filtered through my silver-blue lines.

  The Stone took the chaos, leaving behind a thin, needle-sharp trickle of Pure Mana that felt like ice water on my burns.

  The hound withered. It didn't just die; it turned into a dry, grey husk in seconds, its core shattered by the sheer speed of the extraction. I rolled away, gasping, my hand clutching my ruined shoulder.

  I lay in the ash for a long time, the world spinning.

  My shoulder was a charred mess of meat and cloth. My hand was blistered from where I had grabbed the beast's neck. My mana pool was sitting at a precarious 2/100, flickering like a dying candle in a windstorm, thankfully it seemed satisfied with the pure mana and was not eating at my poor 2 mana.

  I checked the "Orb" in my mind. The Library was silent, but the "Thermodynamics" socket was glowing a faint, mocking orange. I had the "Soul Energy" it wanted, but I had nearly died to get a single scrap of it.

  "I'm an idiot," I whispered, the cold of the Barrens starting to seep into my bones.

  I had treated a Tier 9 Legacy like a Tier 1 tool. I had the blueprints of an Architect, but I was building them on a foundation of sand. I didn't know how the Stone had "refined" that chaos, and I didn't know why it had left me with such high-quality mana in return. All I knew was that I was physically broken.

  I began the long, agonizing crawl back toward the city gates. I had to get back to my quarters before Akhtar found my bed empty. I had survived the hunt, but I had learned the most brutal physical law of this world: Knowledge is power, but power without capacity is just a very elaborate way to commit suicide.