His knuckles were already bleeding again, the fresh cuts reopening as he flexed his fingers. The micro-fractures in his ring finger ached dully, a constant reminder of what he’d just done.
He made a fist again.
And hit the wall again.
CRACK!
Then again.
CRACK!
Then again.
CRACK!
By the fifth hit, his knuckles were a bloody mess. The skin was completely gone, worn down to raw tissue that smeared red across the concrete with each impact. The micro-fractures had spread from his ring finger to his middle finger, and the bruising had crept up past his second knuckle joint.
But something else was happening too. Something he hadn’t expected.
The system’s rewards weren’t just giving him items. Each pull was also feeding a small amount of restorative energy back into the damaged tissue, rebuilding it denser than before. He could feel it in his knuckles. The bone that had cracked on the first hit was already harder on the second. The skin that had torn on the third was thicker on the fourth. His body was adapting in real time, the system using each injury as a blueprint to reconstruct the damaged tissue stronger than it had been before.
By the eighth hit, his entire hand was throbbing so badly that he couldn’t tell where the individual fractures were anymore. It was just one continuous wall of pain from his fingertips to his wrist. But his knuckles were noticeably denser. The bone beneath the raw skin felt harder, heavier, like someone had replaced the original calcium with something tougher.
[Ding!]
[Physical injury detected. Source: Reinforced concrete wall, self-inflicted.]
[Injury severity: Minor-to-moderate. Multiple contusions, compound micro-fractures, soft tissue damage.]
[Low-tier Gacha pull granted.]
He pulled. Another blue orb. Another consumable.
[Item Acquired: Basic Mana Recovery Potion (Consumable, Low-Tier)]
[Basic Mana Recovery Potion: Restores 15% of user’s total Flux capacity over 30 seconds. Standard issue military surplus.]
A small glass vial appeared in his palm, filled with a thin, pale blue liquid that sloshed gently when he tilted it.
’Two pulls, two items. Both tradable. Let’s keep going.’
He hit the wall nine more times. Then ten. Then eleven. Each strike sent fresh agony through his hand, but the bone density kept increasing. By the twelfth hit, his knuckles barely chipped anymore when they connected with the concrete. The skin was still tearing, but the tissue underneath was regrowing in thicker layers, tougher and more resistant with each cycle of damage and repair.
By the fifteenth hit, he was biting down on a strip of cloth to keep from screaming loud enough to alert the night patrol. But he’d also figured something out. The system had a threshold. Too little damage, and the pull was garbage tier. Too much, and he risked permanent injury that would cripple him for the tournament. But right in the sweet spot, where the pain was blinding but nothing was irreparably broken, the system responded with its best low-tier rewards.
He was learning the exact line between productive pain and destructive pain. The precise amount of damage that triggered the system’s most generous payouts without crossing into territory that would leave him permanently broken.
By the twentieth hit, the wall had a visible blood stain, and his knuckles looked like raw hamburger meat. The bone was visible through the torn skin in two places, white and gruesome against the red. But the bone itself was denser than it had ever been, reconstructed layer by layer into something that could take a hit from a hammer without cracking.
His right hand was useless, so he switched to headbutting the wall.
That lasted exactly two hits before he saw stars and almost knocked himself unconscious. He decided headbutts were a last resort.
He went back to his left hand. By the twenty-fifth hit, he had the threshold dialed in perfectly. He knew exactly how hard to strike, which angle produced the optimal micro-fracture pattern, and how many hits he could take before the damage crossed from productive into dangerous. He had turned his own pain into a formula, a repeatable process that squeezed the maximum value out of every drop of blood he spilled.
But low-tier pulls weren’t going to cut it. The kind of money he needed to buy tournament-grade equipment and supplies required mid-tier items at minimum. And mid-tier pulls required moderate injuries. Not micro-fractures and split knuckles. Real damage.
He looked around his quarters for something that could deliver a harder hit without killing him.
His eyes landed on the training dummy in the corner.
Every recruit’s quarters came with a basic training dummy. It was a heavy, sand-filled leather bag mounted on a metal frame, designed for striking practice. Standard military issue, about six feet tall, and dense enough to absorb full-force kicks without tipping over.
But Micah wasn’t planning to hit it. He was planning to let it hit him.
He dug through his footlocker and found a roll of heavy duty cord. He tied one end to the dummy’s frame and the other to the metal bar on his closet door, creating a crude pulley system. He propped the dummy at a forty-five degree angle, tension on the cord holding it in place.
Then he took a deep breath, positioned himself directly in front of the dummy, and released the cord.
The training dummy swung forward with the full weight of sixty kilograms of packed sand behind it. It caught Micah square in the ribs.
THUD!
The impact was exactly what he needed. Hard enough to cause real damage, controlled enough to avoid killing him. He felt his already-damaged ribs shift, the fracture lines widening by a fraction of a millimeter. The breath knocked out of him in a single, violent burst, and he dropped to one knee, gasping.
Pain flooded his chest. Not the dull ache that had been his constant companion since the Stone-Ape fight. Fresh, sharp, immediate pain that made his vision blur and his stomach heave.
[Ding!]
[Physical injury detected. Source: Weighted training dummy, self-rigged.]
[Injury severity: Moderate. Rib fracture expansion detected.]
[Mid-tier Gacha pull granted.]
’Mid-tier! There we go!’
The golden roulette wheel appeared, spinning faster than any of the low-tier pulls. Gold, purple, and blue blurred together until the wheel locked onto a glowing blue orb that pulsed with a steady, rhythmic light.
The orb shattered.
[Item Acquired: Liquid Flux Condenser (Consumable, Mid-Tier)]
[Liquid Flux Condenser: Concentrated, highly refined Flux Energy in liquid form. Instantly repairs severely damaged meridians. Permanently expands user’s base cellular Flux capacity. Purity rating: FLAWLESS. Market value: EXTREME.]
A small, perfectly cylindrical glass vial materialized in his palm. The liquid inside was a deep, vivid sapphire blue, so bright that it cast a blue glow across his fingers. It was thick, almost syrupy, and it moved slowly when he tilted the vial, clinging to the glass walls before sliding back down.
The energy radiating from the liquid was dense and pure, far more refined than anything the Stone-Ape’s power crystal had produced. His Beast Analysis Talent fired automatically, scanning the vial’s contents.
[Liquid Flux Condenser Analysis:]
[Flux purity: 99.7%.]
[Meridian repair capability: FULL.]
[Cellular expansion capability: PERMANENT.]
[Market value estimate: 80,000 - 120,000 credits per vial.]
[NOTE: This specific condenser’s purity exceeds all known commercial standards. Actual market value may be significantly higher.]
Micah stared at the vial.
Then he stared at it some more.
Then he held it up to the light and watched the sapphire liquid catch the glow and throw blue dots across the ceiling.
’A hundred thousand credits. For one vial. And the system says the purity is so high it might be worth even more.’
He suddenly felt a lot better about his broken ribs.
He looked at the training dummy, still hanging from its cord, and then at the wall with his blood dried on it, and then at the row of low-tier items lined up on his bed.
He had twelve low-tier consumables and one mid-tier Flux Condenser. Enough to walk into a trading hub with real, tradable merchandise that wouldn’t immediately get him flagged as someone carrying legendary artifacts.
The Prism stayed in his pack. Hidden. Safe. The power crystal from the Stone-Ape was already consumed. The Condenser and the low-tier items were his ticket in.
He wrapped his bleeding hand with the Flux-infused bandage tape from one of his earlier pulls. The tape tightened around his knuckles, and a warm, tingling sensation spread through his fingers as the embedded Flux began accelerating the healing process. Beneath the tape, his reconstructed knuckles were already harder than they’d been before he’d started. Denser. Tougher. The system had turned his self-inflicted damage into a biological upgrade.
He packed everything into his tactical pack, pulled on his civilian clothes, grabbed the black tactical mask, and headed for the door.
The sun was coming up. The city was waking. And Micah had a trading hub to infiltrate.
’Time to turn pain into profit.’