Waiting for dawn in a fantasy city isn’t fun when you’re a snake. I spent the night coiled up behind a regular wooden crate down an alley, listening to drunk guys sing outside a tavern.
The moment the sun started peaking over the big white city walls, I slithered back up the side of the guild building, slid through the open window, and dropped right onto the floor of the director’s office.
The room looked normal now. The broken vase from yesterday was cleaned up, and the floor was swept.
Bae Suzy was already sitting behind her desk. Her black-and-silver hair was tied back in a quick ponytail, and she looked fresh, though she still had a tiny bit of dark blush on her cheeks when she looked down at the chair where I hid yesterday.
"You’re on time," Suzy said, her voice smooth and relaxed. She reached into a small drawer and pulled out a heavy leather pouch that jingled loudly. "Five hundred gold pieces. As promised."
I didn’t touch the bag. Instead, I activated the text trick, letting the words appear directly on her shiny desk line by line.
[BARRY: Keep the gold. I can’t carry coins without pockets anyway. Give me the crystals.]
Suzy raised an eyebrow, setting the coin bag down. "You want monster cores instead of currency? Gold can buy you anything in this city, Barry."
[BARRY: Gold can’t buy me an evolution upgrade. I need the rocks, manager. The high-tier ones.]
Suzy looked at the text, then let out a small laugh. "Fair enough. You did do all the lifting with the wolf." She reached into a separate iron lockbox behind her seat and pulled out three large, glowing crystals.
Two of them were a bright, electric yellow, and the last one was a deep, dark red. They looked like oversized pieces of rock candy, but I could feel the magic heat radiating off them from three feet away.
"These are Tier 3 Thunder Raptor cores and one Fire Beetle core," Suzy said, placing them on the desk right in front of my nose. "They cost a fortune on the open market. Are you sure you want to just eat them?"
[System: Oh boy! Look at that spreadsheet! That’s pure, unadulterated energy right there. Eat them all at once, Barry. Let’s break the budget!]
’Watch me’, I thought.
I didn’t hesitate. I unhinged my snake jaw, opened my mouth as wide as a coffee mug, and swallowed the first yellow crystal whole. Then the second one. Then the red one.
Suzy’s eyes went completely wide as she watched a three-foot black snake swallow three rocks the size of baseballs back-to-back.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, my stomach felt like it was full of popping corn. A sudden shock of yellow electricity crackled out from my scales, zapping the inkwell on her desk and making it spin around. The red core hit next, turning my throat intensely hot, like I had just downed a cup of boiling water.
[Biomass Gained: 20,000 / 25,000]
[Warning: High elemental imbalance. Thunder and Fire attributes are fighting in your gut.]
’Hey, System!’ I yelled in my head, my body twitching as my scales started flashing yellow and red. ’ The math isn’t mathing! It hurts!’
[System: You idiot, you mixed lightning and fire like a bad cocktail! Quick, absorb the residual shadow magic from the paper under your scales to balance the equation!]
I quickly squeezed the silver guild note still hidden under my side scales. The cool, minty shadow magic from Suzy’s thumbprint bled into my skin, acting like a cold glass of milk after eating too much hot sauce.
The burning stopped instantly. The zapping turned into a smooth,vibration that ran from my nose to the tip of my tail.
[Biomass Gained: 5,000 / 5,000]
[Evolution Threshold Reached! Current Total: 25,100 / 25,000]
[System: Evolution ready. You somehow didn’t explode. Select your Tier 4 Form:]
1. Void-Scale Stalker (Stays small, unlocks absolute invisibility even while moving fast, adds ’Mana Dissolve’ to your bite)
2. Abyssal Viper King (Grows to ten feet, unlocks ’Intimidation Aura’, loses stealth)
I didn’t even need to think about it.
’Option one,’ I told the system. "I am not becoming a ten-foot target. Stealth is life.’
[System: Choice locked. Commencing Void Patch. Get ready to disappear forever, potato.]
My matte-black scales didn’t split this time. They just slowly dissolved, turning into a strange, glossy material that looked exactly like looking into a deep, dark night sky full of tiny stars. My body felt entirely weightless, like I was made of nothing but air and shadows.
When the light settled, the desk was completely empty.
Suzy stood up, leaning over the desk and squinting at the empty wood. "Barry? Did you vanish permanently? If you died from eating those rocks, I’m going to be highly annoyed."
I glided right next to her hand, completely invisible even though I was moving. I let the text appear on the wall behind her.
[BARRY: I’m still here, manager. Just upgraded the software. Now, what’s our first official corporate assignment?]