The wind howling through the outer wastelands of Pan-Asian Mega-City 9 carried the bitter taste of ozone and rusted iron. It was a dead zone, heavily polluted by the low-level cosmic radiation that had plagued Earth ever since the Great Galactic Convergence.
High above the smog layer, the gleaming spires of the inner city prepared for the annual Awakening Ceremony. Down here in the scrapyards, survival was the only ceremony that mattered.
Seventeen-year-old Chen Xi hung upside down by his knees from the skeletal remains of an Old Era industrial mecha. His grease-stained fingers worked with rhythmic precision, stripping a bundle of superconducting copper wire from the chassis. He didn't rush. While the other orphans of Sector 4 spent their credits on cheap synthetic liquor or dreamed of miraculously awakening as a high-tier Esper, Chen Xi tore down machines.
Luck was a myth constructed by the privileged. Survival belonged to the prepared.
He dropped silently to the ash-covered ground, a fifty-pound crate of salvaged alloys resting easily on his shoulder. To the local scavenger gangs, Chen Xi was just another scrawny, quiet kid who always met his quota and never caused trouble. It was a carefully constructed mask. As he navigated the treacherous terrain of jagged metal and glowing toxic pools, his breathing followed a strange, cyclic rhythm.
Inhale for three beats. Hold. Exhale a compressed breath that heated his lungs.
It was the Basic Star-Gathering Breathing Technique, a flawed, low-tier martial arts manual he had scavenged from a dead mercenary three years ago. Without the Cosmic System's active guidance, training it was supposed to be impossible. Yet, through sheer obsessive repetition and a brutal tolerance for pain, Chen Xi had pushed his physical parameters to the absolute limit of an unawakened human. He hid his strength because displaying claws without the backing of a faction only turned you into someone else's cannon fodder.
He was two miles from the perimeter wall when his right hand twitched.
The fine iron filings clinging to his protective gloves were vibrating, standing on end and pointing toward a massive, collapsed plasma-reactor half-buried in the slag. A magnetic distortion. And an unnatural one.
Chen Xi set his crate down, his expression hardening. He drew a foot-long, painfully sharpened alloy pipe from his belt and approached the reactor. Dropping to his knees, he dug through the irradiated soil and warped steel. Three feet down, his fingers brushed against something impossibly cold.
He pulled it free. It was a sealed, black polyhedron, roughly the size of a fist. Its surface was perfectly smooth, devoid of a single speck of rust or corrosion, contrasting violently with the decay around it. As his thumb brushed a faint groove on its surface, a dormant energy signature rippled across the metal.
A low, guttural growl vibrated through the scrap heap behind him.
Chen Xi didn't gasp. He didn't turn around to check. His eyes went dead-calm as his combat instincts took over.
A shadow launched itself from atop a rusted transport rover. It was a Steel-Scaled Hound, a low-level mutated cosmic beast whose hide could deflect small-arms fire. Its jaws snapped shut where Chen Xi’s neck had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Relying on the explosive power built by years of secret breathing techniques, Chen Xi dropped flat, spun on his heel, and drove his legs upward. He kicked the beast's underbelly, using its own momentum to flip it into the air. Before the hound could hit the ground, Chen Xi was already moving. He lunged forward, the sharpened alloy pipe in his hand striking like a viper.
He didn't aim for the armored skull or the thick chest. He aimed for the soft, unarmored gap just beneath the jawline.
With a sickening crunch, the pipe pierced the hound's brainstem. The beast convulsed once and died before it hit the dirt. The entire exchange had taken less than three seconds.
Chen Xi exhaled a long breath of hot air, his heart rate instantly returning to a steady baseline. He pulled a rusted combat knife from his boot to begin harvesting the hound's core—a valuable commodity on the black market—when a drop of the beast's acidic, neon-blue blood dripped off his pipe and landed squarely on the black polyhedron.
The object violently hummed to life.
Before Chen Xi could throw it away, the polyhedron dissolved. It turned into a stream of silver nano-liquid that shot forward, burrowing directly into the veins of his right wrist.
Fire. Absolute, agonizing fire erupted in his bloodstream. Chen Xi clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle his scream, collapsing to his knees as the alien energy surged toward his brain, forcing his genetic locks open years before his time. The world blurred, pixelated, and then shattered.
A holographic interface, glowing with an archaic, deep-gold light entirely unlike the standard pale-blue Cosmic System, burned itself into his retinas.
[Warning. Host biological parameters inadequate. Cellular breakdown imminent.]
A voice echoed in his mind—female, mechanical, yet layered with a cold, terrifying authority.
[Initiating forced synchronization. Stabilizing genetic sequence.]
[Class determination... Mechanic. Mutation detected... Dual-Class protocol engaged: Martial Artist.]
[Sub-routine: Origin-Alpha activated. Awaiting host consciousness.]
Chen Xi’s vision went entirely black, his final thought clinging to the golden text burning in the darkness as he drifted into unconsciousness in the toxic wasteland.