Chapter 3: Against the Natural Order
Zack stared at his weapon.
A chipped dagger, barely longer than his hand. Bent near the hilt. Dull along the edge. Stained dark from old blood and rust.
It was trash.
He turned it over once, twice, then let out a breath through his nose.
"Still better than nothing," he muttered, slipping it back into its torn sheath.
But the truth was, he had nothing. Not really. No Spirit Gear. No cultivation. No clan. Just a name no one remembered, and a body nobody wanted.
In a world where even children carried relics born from death, he was still empty-handed.
Still spiritless.
Still weak.
Zack swept his gaze across the dunes. Same cracked horizon. Same dry wind. The sun hung heavy in the sky like a wound, bleeding heat across the sands. He shifted on his feet, ready to move on—
And then he froze.
Something shimmered in the distance.
It wasn't bright. Just a pulse. A faint, bluish flicker. There and gone again. Like a heartbeat.
He dropped low, slipping into the sand like a shadow, and squinted through the haze.
There. Two ridged legs moving. A fat, segmented body dragging across the dunes. That ugly stinger wagging behind it like a tail.
A Carbee.
Except… it was wrong.
It glowed.
Faintly, but unmistakably. Its shell shimmered like polished glass, veins of blue light crawling beneath its carapace like living circuits. It moved slow, clumsy, just like the others.
But it glowed.
Zack's breath caught in his throat.
"Mutation…?" he whispered. "Or am I just losing it?"
It didn't look any bigger. No extra limbs. No added armor. No screaming aura of power.
Just another Carbee. Shiny, but still scuttling forward like the blind, dumb spirit beast it had always been.
And in the Holy Domains, spirit beasts didn't mutate. That was the one thing humanity understood clearly: They didn't change.
But he could feel something stirring in his gut.
Hope.
He rose, slowly, dagger held tight in his fingers.
"Doesn't matter what you look like," he muttered. "Still just a Carbee."
He didn't hesitate.
One breath.
One step.
And then he lunged.
The strike was clean. The blade slipped between the armored seams beneath the belly, soft tissue parting with a wet sound. The Carbee shrieked once—high-pitched and sharp—and collapsed, its legs twitching.
Then it came.
Like ice cracking across the surface of his mind:
> [System Message: Platinum-ranked Carbee killed.]
[Spirit Gear obtained.]
[Eat flesh to gain from 0–10 Spirit Points randomly.]
Zack stared.
The dagger dropped from his fingers.
"…Platinum?" he whispered.
He looked down at the twitching corpse.
This wasn't real.
It couldn't be real.
Spirit beasts didn't evolve. They didn't rank up. They were born what they were, and stayed that way until they died. That was the law. That was the rule of the Holy Domains.
Only humans adapted.
Only humans grew stronger.
That's what made this place fair—if such a word still existed.
But this Carbee… it had broken the order.
And the system had confirmed it.
"Platinum," Zack said again, numb. "That's not even possible…"
His eyes widened.
"And Spirit Gear…?"
His first.
After all the blood, all the failures, all the empty kills…
His first.
He dropped to his knees, carving into the glowing corpse like a starving dog. Steam rose from the flesh, blue and sickly. He didn't care. He didn't even hesitate.
He bit into the meat and chewed.
> [Flesh eaten. +10 Spirit Points gained.]
[Flesh eaten. +10 Spirit Points gained.]
[Flesh eaten. +10 Spirit Points gained.]
It hit him like fire in his veins.
Zack gasped, clutching his chest.
Every breath felt like it was stretching his lungs wider. His muscles twitched. His skin burned. His bones felt like they were pulsing from the inside out—denser, heavier, stronger.
His fingers curled tighter into fists. There was weight in them now. Pressure. Like his blood had turned to mercury.
He grinned, teeth red.
"This is… this is real," he panted.
He tore off another piece, then another, until his stomach burned from fullness. But he didn't stop until every last drop of Spirit remained in the corpse.
He wiped his mouth with a trembling hand.
Then, his dagger struck something hard.
Clink.
He blinked, pushed aside the remains, and saw it.
A sphere.
Blue. Glassy. The size of a plum. Softly glowing. Etched with strange, circuit-like runes, like ancient tech frozen beneath crystal.
It shouldn't have been there.
Spirit beasts didn't drop orbs. They dropped gear. Sometimes relics. Never this.
"…What the hell are you?"
He reached for it.
The moment his skin touched the surface—
> [ALERT: Unauthorized protocol detected.]
[System breach in progress… failsafe engaged.]
Zack screamed.
A white-hot shock flooded his mind. Symbols scrolled across his vision—code, data, glyphs he couldn't read. It felt like someone had cracked open his skull and shoved lightning through the cracks.
The world twisted.
He fell.
His head slammed against the sand.
And then—
Darkness.
Nothing.
Just the fading glow of that blue orb…
…flickering gently as if it were alive.