"If pain is weakness leaving the body, then I’m about to be the strongest man alive." — Some masochist, probably.
Micah opened his eyes.
The room looked different. Not because anything had changed, but because his eyes had. His vision was sharper, clearer, more detailed than it had ever been. He could see the individual cracks in the concrete walls. The tiny imperfections in the metal frame of his bunk. The dust particles floating in the air, each one distinct and visible.
He could hear things he hadn’t heard before. The low hum of the electrical wiring behind the walls. The distant footsteps of a patrol two corridors away. The sound of his own heartbeat, strong and steady in his chest.
He looked down at his body. The black sludge that had poured from his pores had soaked through his clothes and pooled on the bed beneath him. It smelled awful, a mix of sulfur and rotting meat that made his eyes water.
But beneath the grime, his body had changed. His muscles were denser, more defined. His skin was tighter, clearer. Even his broken ribs felt different. The pain was still there, but the bones had shifted back into alignment, held in place by the newly densified muscle tissue surrounding them.
He pulled up his stats.
[Flux Unlock: 40%]
’Forty percent.’
He stared at the number for a long time, letting it sink in.
Two days ago, he’d been at ten percent. The weakest recruit in the academy. A nobody. A joke. The guy who had literally pissed himself in the arena because a beast looked at him wrong.
Now he was at forty percent. The same level as Myra. Just two percent behind Dexter.
’If Dexter saw me right now, he’d lose his mind.’
A grin spread across his face. Then a laugh. A real, genuine laugh that made his ribs ache but felt too good to stop.
He got up from the bed, stripped off his ruined clothes, and walked to the small sink in the corner of his quarters. He scrubbed the black sludge off his skin with cold water and a rough cloth, wincing as the fabric dragged over his burned hand.
The burn was still bad. The skin was raw and blistered, the tissue underneath red and angry. But the energy absorption had accelerated the healing. What should have taken weeks to close was already scabbing over, new skin forming beneath the damaged surface.
He dried off, found a clean set of clothes in his footlocker, and dressed. Then he sat back down on the bed and took stock of his situation.
His Flux was at forty percent. Good. Great, even. But it wasn’t enough. Dexter had been at forty-two percent a week ago, which meant he was probably at forty-three or forty-four by now. And Myra wasn’t the type to sit still either. She’d be training just as hard.
The tournament was in five days. He needed every advantage he could get.
He looked at the Astral Prism, still sitting on the bed where he’d left it. The crystal pulsed with its violet-and-white glow, radiating enough energy to heat the room.
The system had warned him about unfiltered absorption. The Prism’s energy was pure and raw, far more potent than the Stone-Ape’s power crystal. Absorbing it directly could rupture his meridians and permanently damage his cultivation base.
But he wasn’t planning to absorb it. He was planning to sell it.
The Prism was a world-shaping treasure. An artifact that predated the apocalypse. On the open market, it would be worth more money than most noble families saw in a lifetime. And money meant resources. Training manuals. Equipment. Weapons. The kind of things that could bridge the gap between forty percent and whatever ceiling Dexter was pushing toward.
But selling an artifact like the Prism wasn’t simple. He couldn’t just walk into a shop and slap it on the counter. The kind of people who could afford to buy something like this were the same kind of people who would kill him and take it for free if they found out he had it.
He needed to be smart about this.
’I need to find a buyer. A discreet one. Someone who pays well and asks no questions.’
He looked down at his burned hand, then at the Prism, then at the door.
’I need to go to the city.’
Micah sat on the edge of his bunk, staring at the Astral Prism, and thought about how to get rid of it.
Not because he didn’t want it. He wanted it badly. The thing was practically humming with enough energy to fuel a small army. But walking into a trading hub with a legendary artifact was the fastest way to get himself killed. The kind of people who could afford to buy something like the Prism didn’t play fair. They’d take one look at a masked recruit trying to sell a world-shaping treasure, and instead of paying, they’d cut his throat and keep the crystal for free.
He needed something smaller. Something practical. Something he could walk into a shop, slap on a counter, and walk away with a pocket full of credits without anyone asking questions.
And the only thing he had that could produce items like that was the Daily Gacha System.
The system had one rule. Physical injury from an external source equals a Gacha pull. The severity of the injury determined the rarity of the reward. Minor injuries gave low-tier pulls. Moderate injuries gave mid-tier pulls. Life-threatening injuries gave the big stuff.
He’d already proven it worked. The mutant hound’s tail graze had gotten him a Basic Flux Enhancer. The trap dart in the vault corridor had gotten him the Shadow Step Boots. The Stone-Ape’s rib-shattering hit had given him Kinetic Disruption.
Every time something hurt him, the system paid him back.
Which meant he needed to get hurt. A lot. And he needed to do it in a controlled way, where he controlled the damage instead of relying on beasts and traps to do it for him.
’I’m about to do something really stupid.’
He stood up, walked to the far wall of his quarters, and stared at the reinforced concrete. The academy had built these walls to withstand bomb blasts. They were dense, rough, and about as forgiving as a brick to the face.
He made a fist with his left hand. His right was still too burned to use.
Then he drove his knuckles into the wall.
CRACK!
Pain shot through his hand and up his forearm. His knuckles split open on impact, and blood smeared across the grey concrete. The skin tore in three places, and he felt something shift in the outer bone layer of his ring finger.
’Holy shit, that hurts way more than I expected.’
He stood there, cradling his bleeding hand, and waited.
Three seconds. Five. Ten.
[Ding!]
[Physical injury detected. Source: Reinforced concrete wall, self-inflicted via kinetic impact.]
[Injury severity: Minor. Contusions and micro-fractures on knuckles.]
[Low-tier Gacha pull granted.]
’Yes! It actually worked!’
The golden roulette wheel materialized in his mind, spinning lazily through the standard gold, blue, and white sections. It clicked past several tiers before locking onto a small blue orb.
The orb shattered.
[Item Acquired: Minor Tissue Repair Salve (Consumable, Low-Tier)]
[Minor Tissue Repair Salve: Accelerates healing of minor wounds. Cuts, bruises, and micro-fractures recover 5x faster than natural healing.]
A tiny ceramic jar appeared in his left palm. The lid was sealed with wax, and the jar itself was warm to the touch. The salve inside was a pale green paste that smelled like eucalyptus and something metallic.
’Okay. Not the most exciting pull, but it’s a start. And it’s tradable. Field medics would pay decent money for something like this.’
He set the jar on the bed and looked back at the wall.