Chapter 181: How to increase your strength
Chapter 181: How to increase your strength
He thought back to the skarn he had killed before entering Veyrhold, to the strange jolts of heat and strength he had mistaken for Molten Assimilation reacting to danger. It had happened then too, hadn’t it? Small amounts. Buried beneath panic, injury, and ash-working. He simply had not understood.
Now he did.
Or at least, he had the first piece.
Liora looked at him.
"First clean death-gain?"
Rohan slowly turned toward her.
"That’s what that was?"
She blinked.
"You didn’t know?"
"No."
Sen, one of the archers, lowered his bow.
"You’ve killed beasts before."
"I came from a place where killing beasts makes crystals drop. You absorb those later."
Everyone looked at him.
Even Jorren.
Rohan looked between them.
"What?"
Liora rubbed her forehead.
"Crystals drop?"
"Yes."
"From the bodies?"
"Yes."
"And you pick them up?"
"Yes."
"And eat them?"
"No. Absorb them."
"With your hands?"
"Something like that."
The silence that followed was profound.
Then Jorren made the sound.
Rohan pointed his spear at him.
"Don’t."
The sound got slightly louder.
Maerin, unfortunately, looked thoughtful rather than amused.
"In this universe," she said, "death essence releases at the moment of a beast’s death. The Great System claims it and passes it to the killer, or divides it among contributors if the kill is shared."
Rohan turned to her fully.
"Automatically."
"Yes."
"No crystals."
"No."
"No storage."
"Not unless one uses special containment tools. Veyrhold does not have them."
"And people grow stronger by hunting."
"Yes."
That was similar to the Origin Realm.
Close enough to feel familiar.
Different enough to be dangerous.
Rohan looked down at the cinderback’s corpse. The body remained. Its plates, fat, stomach stones, meat, and bones were still there. The strengthening energy was gone, taken at the instant of death by the system and delivered to those it judged had earned it.
"How does it decide?" he asked.
"The Great System knows contribution."
"That’s not an answer. That’s a belief."
Maerin’s gaze sharpened slightly, but not with anger.
"With beasts like this, the one who lands the killing wound receives most. Others receive fragments for meaningful aid."
"Meaningful aid."
"Yes."
"So if someone hides until the end and stabs once?"
"Sometimes they receive little. Sometimes more than they should. The Great System sees much, but not always as people think it should."
Rohan absorbed that.
In the Origin Realm, kill credit could be straightforward but still complicated by last hits, team fights, and drop claims. Here, the system itself measured contribution at the moment of death. That sounded cleaner. It probably wasn’t.
No system involving strength, death, and human greed stayed clean for long.
Maerin seemed to read some of that on his face.
"Stealing death-gain is a serious crime in Veyrhold."
"As it should be."
"It is also common outside Veyrhold."
"As expected."
Liora crouched beside the cinderback and began checking the plates.
"You really came from a strange place."
"I’m starting to think everyone’s place is strange from the outside."
"Maybe. But crystals dropping from corpses is especially strange."
Rohan gave her a flat look.
"You live on a planet called the Ash, descended from a crashed spaceship, hunting six-legged furnace animals for stomach stones."
She paused.
"Fine."
[Quest Complete: First Watch Hunt]
[Reward Acquired: Death Essence Understanding]
[New Glossary Entry Unlocked: Death Essence]
Rohan did not know whether to laugh or be offended.
The Great System was teaching him like he was a particularly endangered child.
Over the next weeks, hunting changed everything.
Not immediately with the people. Trust still came slowly. But for Rohan himself, the shape of survival shifted.
He had been thinking of Cael Athis primarily as a prison.
It still was.
But now it was also a training ground.
A horrible one, yes. A dry, murderous, ash-choked training ground filled with predators, storms, exploitative merchants, and locals who measured acceptance in soup portions. But still a place where strength could be gained.
That mattered more than he liked to admit.
In the Origin Realm, Rohan had awakened late compared to everyone else. He had been behind from the first moment, scrambling to catch up with people who had already been preparing, training, and dreaming for years. Evolution Gene gave him potential, but potential did not stop claws from tearing open skin.
Here, the Great System offered another path.
Kill beasts. Absorb death essence. Raise his rank. Complete quests. Gain standing, knowledge, and opportunities.
It was similar enough to the Origin Realm that he could use his old instincts.
Different enough that every assumption had to be checked before it killed him.
He began to hunt regularly with the outer watch.
At first, Maerin placed him at the safest edge of formations. Not safe in any actual sense, just less likely to result in him being immediately swallowed by something with too many teeth. He watched, listened, and asked questions until even Liora told him he was exhausting.
He learned the difference between skarn sign and cinderback sign.
Skarn moved through ash like knives through cloth, leaving shallow claw lines and heat pocks where ember-mouths had opened. Cinderbacks churned ash in broad scoops and left mineral-rich droppings that Pell, with great seriousness, called "valuable and disgusting."
He learned that ashmoths were not harmless just because they looked like torn cloth drifting on the wind. Their wings carried fever spores.
He learned that hollow hares were edible but screamed like children when trapped, which made them awful to hunt.
He learned that furnace leeches did not live in water, because Cael Athis apparently considered water too merciful. They lived in warm ash near vents and latched onto heat sources, including boots, legs, and once, to Rohan’s lasting disgust, Jorren’s shield.
He learned that storm-silver did not come from mines exactly. It condensed in thin veins across black stone after certain skyglass pulses, then had to be harvested quickly before the next ash tide buried it or the charge dispersed.
That work was dangerous.
Everything was dangerous.
But with each task, each hunt, each miserable outing beyond the walls, the Great System rewarded him in small ways.