The heavy rain didn’t slow down, but the air around Grant remained completely dry.
The freezing water vaporized into tiny plumes of white mist the moment it drifted within three meters of his skin.
He didn’t look back at the harbor shipping office.
Bradley’s desperate, suffocating gasps fading into the dark night were nothing but static background noise to him now.
Five years of absolute degradation had ended in a single, silent step.
Grant walked past the rusted wire fences of the harbor perimeter, moving deep into the unlit, abandoned warehouse district behind Dock 4.
The wind howled through the gaps between the massive corrugated metal structures, carrying the bitter scent of rust, wet asphalt, and sea salt.
To anyone else, this place was a labyrinth of shadows and decay.
To Grant, it was a hiding spot he had memorized over half a decade of heavy labor.
He knew which gates were unlocked, which floorboards were rotted, and where the security cameras had blind spots.
He needed an isolated space to anchor his newly awakened dragon core.
The raw power flooding his veins was expanding rapidly, demanding room to settle into his physical form.
Stepping inside an old, forgotten machine shop with a partially collapsed wooden roof, he slid the heavy metal door shut behind him.
The interior was pitch black, lit only by occasional flashes of lightning from the storm outside.
Puddles of stagnant water covered the uneven concrete floor, reflecting the dark sky above.
Grant walked over to a massive concrete support pillar in the center of the shop, leaned his back against it, and closed his eyes.
“Status,” Grant thought, focusing his mind inward.
A soft, clear chime resonated inside his ears, cutting through the drumming of the rain on the roof.
A vast, intricate azure light exploded outward from his chest, painting the dark, greasy walls of the abandoned workshop in glowing geometric grids as his full attribute panel compiled right before his retinas.
« SYSTEM STATUS ARCHIVE COMPLIANCE »
• Host Name: Grant Cross
• Current Realm: Tier 1: Iron Body (Stage 1)
• Experience Points: 0 / 1,000
(Defeat hostile entities or absorb Spirit Stones to level up)
• Core Vitality: 150 / 150
• Primordial Dragon Qi: 500 / 500
• Core Attributes:
Strength: 125 (Average Human Baseline: 1)
Agility: 98 (Average Human Baseline: 1)
Endurance: 140 (Average Human Baseline: 1)
Soul Purity: 85% (Meridians fully cleared)
• Unlocked Inventory: None
(Reach Stage 3 to unlock the Spatial Vault)
Grant stared at the hovering numbers, his fingers trembling slightly as he felt the heavy, dense energy pulsing through his veins.
The transformation was absolute.
A standard human strength value was exactly one point.
At one hundred and twenty-five points, his muscular structure wasn’t just human flesh anymore—it was biological iron.
Every fiber of his body had been reorganized, woven together with the golden threads of the Primordial Dragon Qi.
He could feel his heartbeat, low and steady, vibrating like a heavy industrial engine deep within his chest.
The constant, burning ache from the shattered core that had plagued him for five years was completely gone.
In its place was a bottomless reservoir of vitality.
He slowly curled his right hand into a tight fist.
The air inside his empty palm compressed with a sharp, low pop, like a small vacuum collapsing under immense atmospheric pressure.
The sheer physical density of his skin was mind-boggling.
To test the absolute limits of his Stage 1 Iron Body without relying on external skills, Grant turned toward a decommissioned, solid steel industrial boiler sitting in the corner of the shop.
The machine was a massive relic of the city’s old manufacturing era, its cylinder walls forged from over three inches of tempered steel, reinforced with heavy iron rivets.
He didn’t use any Dragon Qi.
He didn’t drop into a complex martial stance.
He didn’t even pull back his arm for momentum.
He simply stood a foot away from the massive machine and threw a casual, straight punch forward.
CRASH!
The sound was deafening—a screeching metallic tear that vibrated violently off the corrugated walls of the empty warehouse, rattling the loose iron sheets on the roof.
Grant’s fist didn’t break.
It didn’t even bruise.
The skin over his knuckles remained entirely unblemished, smooth as flawless jade.
Instead, his fist tore straight through the three-inch steel plating like a red-hot knife sliding through wax, burying his entire forearm deep inside the iron structure.
When he pulled his arm back, a perfectly circular, melted crater remained in the center of the boiler.
Wisps of acrid black smoke rose from the torn, glowing edges of the fractured metal.
« SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: COMBAT ANALYSIS »
• Strike Target: Industrial Steel Boiler
• Object Integrity: 0% (Structurally Destroyed)
• Host Damage Sustained: 0 (Perfect absorption)
• Note: Physical muscle density output is perfectly stable.
Ready for combat expansion.
A faint, cold smile touched Grant’s lips.
The obsidian spike his cousin Bradley had driven into his spine five years ago was meant to keep him broken permanently.
They had wanted him to crawl in the mud, to look up at them from the gutter for the rest of his miserable life.
They had no idea they were simply burying a seed.
And now, the harvest had begun.
Before he could close the interface and begin consolidating his power, the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up.
The atmospheric pressure inside the warehouse changed instantly.
The temperature dropped by twenty degrees in a split second, freezing the incoming puddles of rain on the floor into solid sheets of brittle ice.
The heavy scent of ozone vanished, replaced by a thick, cloying smell of old blood and burning sulfur.
A dark, crimson aura began to bleed through the cracks of the front sliding doors, pulsing like a dying heartbeat.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The slow, rhythmic sound of heavy wooden sandals striking the wet concrete echoed from outside, cutting through the thunderstorm.
The sound stopped directly outside the machine shop.
BOOM!
The massive metal sliding doors were violently thrown open.
The reinforced steel tracks tore completely off the brick walls, and the heavy doors slammed into the interior concrete floor with a loud, echoing roar, sending a wave of frozen water flying into the room.
Standing in the frame of the storm, backlit by a sudden flash of purple lightning, was an elderly man.
He wore long, blood-red martial robes that drifted in the wind despite being soaked by the rain.
His long grey hair was tied back tightly with a carved human bone pin, and his eyes were entirely bloodshot, glowing with a manic, unhinged light.
Over his head, Grant’s system flashed an aggressive, blood-red warning indicator that hummed with a low hazard tone.
« HIGH-RISK HOSTILE ENTITY DETECTED »
• Identity: Elder Baltis (Third Elder of the Iron Shroud Sect)
• Cultivation Realm: Tier 1: Iron Body (Stage 7)
• Current Combat Strength: 850
• Hostile Intent: 100%
(Seeking the source of the recent harbor energy spike)
The old man’s eyes locked onto Grant, stepping over the shattered metal doors.
He didn’t even look at the melted steel boiler in the corner.
His gaze was entirely fixed on Grant’s chest, his nostrils flaring as he smelled the raw, unrefined primordial energy pouring from Grant’s newly opened meridians.
To the martial underworld of the city, Elder Baltis was a terrifying name.
As an elder of the Iron Shroud, he had slaughtered entire minor families to steal their resources.
His Stage 7 Iron Body made him virtually immune to small arms fire, and his cultivation allowed him to dominate the northern districts with an iron fist.
“A newly awakened stray,” Elder Baltis hissed, his voice sounding like dry sandpaper scraping across a stone slab.
“I felt a massive surge of primal energy from the harbor.
I thought a legendary spiritual artifact had manifested in the mud.
But it turns out to be just a little rat hiding in a garbage can.”
The old man took another step forward, a cruel, predatory smile twisting his wrinkled face.
He raised his hands, and a faint, toxic green fog began to leak from his fingertips, hissing as it dripped onto the frozen concrete floor.
“You’re quite fortunate, boy,” Baltis continued, his eyes widening with greed.
“Your body has somehow absorbed a fraction of that divine energy.
If I refine your heart into a spiritual pill, my core will finally break through to Tier 2.
Hand over whatever artifact you just found, crawl over here, and I might give you a swift death.
Refuse, and I will peel the skin from your bones while you’re still breathing.”
Grant didn’t move from the concrete pillar.
He didn’t drop into a defensive guard, nor did his expression change.
He simply looked at the old man’s 850 Combat Strength, then back at his own 1,200 baseline score floating in the corner of his eye.
“You chose the wrong warehouse, old man,” Grant said, his voice entirely calm, yet his golden pupils flashed brightly in the pitch black.
Grant is about to face a Stage 7 Elder while only at Stage 1!
Can his Primal Dragon Core bridge the gap?