Lin Yuan smiled, patted his best friend's shoulder, and thanked him. "Thanks, Fatty. Don't worry. I can take it."
The instant he turned away, all the dejection vanished from his face.
A starting area of three hundred thousand square kilometers, plus the SSS-rank talent Creation Extraction.
If he could just keep his head down and develop, reaching the pinnacle of godhood was no fantasy.
And beyond that, he needed to find out how to repair a Divine Spark.
After the awakening ceremony, Lin Yuan politely declined a few classmates' insincere invitations to dinner.
He left the academy, swiped his card, and boarded an aging maglev train bound for the slums on Jiangcheng's outskirts.
The carriage smelled of sour sweat and cheap machine oil.
Leaning against the window, Lin Yuan watched the scenery race backward.
Jiangcheng was a fortress city.
In the distance, a pale blue energy shield covered the entire city like an overturned bowl.
Beyond it, gray Abyssal fog churned without end.
As the train passed the outer wall, Lin Yuan could clearly see the dark-brown claw marks gouged into its hundred-meter-high alloy surface. Each scar stretched dozens of meters.
Dried black blood remained in the crevices.
Humanity had no easy life in this world. Gods fell every day. Defensive lines were torn open every day.
Without strength, a person was nothing but cannon fodder.
Forty minutes later, he reached an old apartment building with peeling walls in Jiangcheng Outer District No. 7.
Lin Yuan pushed open the creaking metal door.
A strong stench of cheap alcohol hit him in the face.
In the living room, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a worn undershirt sat in a wheelchair.
His right leg had been amputated at the hip and fitted with a rusty metal prosthesis.
He was staring fixedly at the news on the holographic television.
Onscreen, a radiant star-region chief god was delivering a speech on the front of the Abyssal defense line.
Only the sound of the door brought the man back to himself.
Old Lin shoved his liquor bottle into a hidden compartment beneath the wheelchair with astonishing speed. He rubbed his cheeks hard and put on an energetic expression.
"You're back?" He turned his wheelchair, his eyes settling on Lin Yuan with obvious anticipation and anxiety. "How did the awakening go? How big is it?"
Lin Yuan put down his bag and went to the dispenser for a cup of water.
He didn't hide anything.
"Three hundred thousand square kilometers."
Old Lin's eyes widened. His hands clamped around the armrests. "Three hundred thousand?! You're a genius! What about the starting environment? Plains? Forest?"
"Scorched earth." Lin Yuan drank some water, his tone calm. "F-rank talent, Wasteland Descent. Overall rating F-. Extremely dangerous."
A deathly silence settled over the room.
Only the newsreader's voice continued to drone from the holographic television.
Old Lin's fingers froze around the armrests. His straightened back slowly bowed again.
Three hundred thousand square kilometers should have been a heaven-sent starting hand, the kind that could launch someone into greatness. Instead, it had come with a lethal wasteland environment.
He was silent for a full half minute. His eyes reddened faintly.
Then he suddenly lifted his head and burst into laughter.
He slapped his metal leg hard, making it clang.
"Good! That's great! Being a mortal is a good thing!"
Old Lin wheeled himself over and planted a rough hand firmly on Lin Yuan's shoulder.
"You know how impressive I used to be? I kindled my Divine Flame, and what did it get me?"
"Some monster on the Abyssal defense line bit my Divine Spark to pieces. Every last one of my kin died. Now look at me."
His voice was loud, but a little hoarse.
"As a mortal, you won't have to face those monsters at the front. You can find a steady job in the rear. Get yourself a wife."
"The compensation and welfare I've saved all these years will be enough for you to live comfortably."
With that, Old Lin turned his wheelchair and dragged the mechanical stump toward the kitchen.
"Today's a good day! Any day you don't have to go to war is a good day. I'll heat up a couple of proper dishes. You and me, we're having a drink!"
Watching that slightly stooped back and hearing the prosthesis scrape across the floor, Lin Yuan felt his throat tighten.
In this age when everyone could become a god, being a mortal meant remaining at the very bottom forever, liable to be pulverized in any Abyssal invasion.
Old Lin was simply trying, in his own way, to protect the last of his adopted son's dignity.
I won't be a mortal, Lin Yuan vowed silently.
After dinner, he returned to his bedroom.
He drew the curtains and locked the door.
Sitting on the bed, he opened the Deity Terminal on his wrist and logged into the Alliance's government network.
Ding.
[Notice: Your initial awakening welfare resource package has been issued. Based on your F- overall rating, your allocation is as follows:]
[Faith Points: 1,000]
[Starter Kin Card: Gray Goblins (100 individuals, 1-star Black Iron)]
[Random Supply Card: Damaged Building Card x1]
Lin Yuan's mouth twitched at the meager resources.
The Alliance was brutally pragmatic about allocations.
With a wasteland start like his, he received only the lowest-grade trash.
Gray Goblins.
The bottom of the low-tier races.
Timid, cowardly, and virtually useless in battle. Their only advantage was that they would eat anything.
As for the building card, Lin Yuan opened its details.
[Damaged Building Card (Junk): A broken gargoyle wing recovered from the outskirts of an Abyssal battlefield. No divine-power fluctuations. No building attributes. Recommended use: crush into paving material.]
Hopeless.
Before today, an allocation like this would have left Lin Yuan in despair.
But things were different now.
He closed his eyes and focused.
A force pulled his consciousness from his body in an instant, carried it across the boundless starry sky, and plunged it into his Divine Domain.
Dim. Oppressive.
Lin Yuan's consciousness hovered in midair.
Below him stretched three hundred thousand square kilometers of land.
Not a drop of water. Not a speck of green.
Nothing but cracked, charred soil as far as he could see.
Gray-black embers drifted down from the sky. A thin, sickly green poison gas filled the air.
This wasn't merely a wasteland. It was a dead zone.
Forget breeding kin. Even bacteria would struggle to survive here.
Lin Yuan took the faintly glowing white [Starter Kin Card] from his terminal.
Holding it between two fingers, he gently tossed it downward.
"Descend."
The card shattered in midair, becoming a hundred streaks of gray light that struck the blackened, cracked ground.
The light faded.
A hundred scrawny, gray-green creatures less than a meter tall appeared on the wasteland.
They had pointed ears, battered wooden clubs in their hands, and little more than scraps of cloth covering their bodies.
They had barely landed, with no chance even to pray to the majestic being above them, when disaster struck.
Sickly green poison mist flooded their lungs with every breath.
The scorched earth beneath them burned their fragile skin.
"Kree—gak!"
One especially frail Gray Goblin screamed. It dropped its club, clutched its throat, and thrashed in agony on the scorched ground.
Then a second. A third.
In little more than ten seconds, all hundred Gray Goblins were convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Black poison blotches spread across their exposed skin.
[Warning! Your Gray Goblin kin are suffering damage from an extreme environment!]
[Warning! Gray Goblin vital signs are deteriorating rapidly. Mass fatalities are projected in three minutes and twenty seconds!]
Lin Yuan watched his struggling kin coldly, without the slightest panic.
With a turn of his wrist, he materialized the [Damaged Building Card].
Boom!
An enormous gray-brown rock, five meters long and scarred by weathering, slammed into the scorched earth and raised a ring of dust.
Its outline vaguely resembled half a bat's wing.
Lifeless. A dead object.
Lin Yuan drew a deep breath.
Everything depended on this.
He lifted his hand, aiming his palm at the broken gargoyle wing below.
The power dormant in the depths of his soul awoke.
"Extract."
A hum rang out.
Somewhere in the void, a distant bell seemed to toll.
Dazzling dark-gold light erupted from Lin Yuan's consciousness.
It ignored the laws of his Divine Domain and the distance between them, forming a dark-gold chain that coiled around the gargoyle wing.
An impossible sight unfolded.
That solid rock, battered by the Abyssal battlefield, did not shatter under the chain's constriction.
It melted rapidly, like snow beneath a blazing sun.
Matter was utterly dismantled. Concept was forcibly stripped free.
The rock became drifting ash.
Where it had lain, a thumb-sized sphere hovered in the air, glowing with a dense gray light.
Lin Yuan made a grasping motion. The sphere flew into his palm.
Understanding came to him as naturally as water joining water.
[Notice: Laws bypassed. Extraction successful!]
[You have obtained the Black Iron-grade conceptual trait: Stoneskin.]
[Trait Effect: Bestows rock-like skin on the target (follower/building), permanently increasing defense by 300% and granting immunity to weak toxins.]