For the first quarter hour, he accomplished nothing at all without correction. Mana kept slipping into the wrong channels, stalling near old injuries, scattering whenever the pill’s force spiked too hard. Slowly, though, a pattern started to surface. The energy wanted to circle. The pill wanted to spread outward. Xuan Wuye wasn’t forcing either one of them. He was keeping them from colliding in the wrong places.
Damien matched his breathing to the rhythm, in as the mana climbed the spine. Hold as it crossed the shoulders, out as it split into the arms and worked back down through the chest. The pain never lessened. It just got organized. Somehow that felt worse.
Thirty minutes in, sweat had soaked clean through the grey robes. The bandages around his shoulder loosened as the flesh underneath tightened and knit itself back together on its own. His bruised ribs clicked softly, and he decided not to think too hard about that particular sound.
An hour in, the stone beneath him had darkened with whatever his body was pushing out. Xuan Wuye called it impurities settling out of the flesh. Damien privately decided the human body was a genuinely disgusting container to live inside.
At ninety minutes, the burning finally reached his bones. His fingers dug into his own knees.
"If you stop circulating now," Xuan Wuye said, "the remaining force will settle unevenly. One arm might end up stronger than the other."
"Which arm?"
"Keep going, and you won’t have to find out."
He kept going.
Near the end of the second hour, the pill’s violence finally started to burn itself out, heat pulling back from his limbs and gathering under his heart. His mana finished one last full circuit without anyone touching him at all.
The hand lifted off his back. "Release it."
He exhaled. The last of the heat rolled through his entire body in one wave, and the stone underneath him cracked from the force of it.
Silence followed.
He opened his eyes. His body felt wrong in a good way, not injured, just too light for what he remembered weighing. The exhaustion that had followed him out of the Broken Road was gone. His breathing sat deeper in his chest. His pulse struck slow and heavy, like a drum instead of a heartbeat.
When he pressed one hand flat against the floor to push himself up, his fingers left shallow marks pressed straight into the stone. He eased off immediately.
Xuan Wuye tossed him a cloth. "Clean yourself."
He looked down at the dark residue coating his skin and robes. "You could have mentioned this part."
"Then you might have asked another unnecessary question."
He pulled up his status.
➤[Earthling]
➤[Level: 22]
➤[Available Stat Points: 06]
The level hadn’t moved much. The lines under it made his eyes go wide behind the mask.
➤[Nine-Forged Body-Strengthening Pill fully absorbed.]
➤[Strength increased by 30.]
➤[Physique increased by 30.]
➤[Stamina increased by 30.]
➤[Permanent physical refinement completed.]
Ninety points. He opened his full profile fast enough that the interface stuttered slightly under the pull.
➤[Player Profile]
Alias: Earthling
Level: 22
Class: Nightwalker (Uncommon)
Class Status: Synchronization: 11.01%
Titles:
• Boss Killer 17th (Legendary)
• Player Killer 99th (Legendary)
• 5th Disciple of the Dark Lord
Stats:
Strength: 47 | Physique: 50 | Perception: 21 | Intelligence: 23 Stamina: 52 | Agility: 49 | Speed: 65 | Mana: 20
Echo: Hollow Giant
Skills:
Active: Shadow Imitation (Lv. 1), Shadow Dash (Lv. 1)
Passive: Nocturnal Eyes
Available Stat Points: 06
Thirty levels’ worth of ordinary stat gains, in two hours, without a single point going toward level or handing the system a stronger enemy to throw back at myself. Nice...
The synchronization had crept from 10.02% up to 11.01% too, small, but nothing about it felt like an accident.
"This was a gift," he said, half a question.
"A basic foundation gift."
On Earth-69, entire nations would go to war over what he calls basic.
"How many of those pills do you actually have?"
"Enough that stealing one from me remains a poor life decision."
Not a number. It answered the important part anyway.
Xuan Wuye stepped toward the blank wall, and the hidden door opened before his hand even reached it. "Our business here is finished."
Damien rose, carefully. His balance had shifted again. The speed and agility he’d poured points into during the night battle had already taught his body to move fast. Now the pill had made every single movement heavier with raw strength underneath it. He was going to need practice before he trusted himself around anything breakable.
"Remember what I told you," Xuan Wuye said. "No native of Murim hears that you entered the Heavenly Demonic Cult. Not the title. Not the token. Not the manual. Above all, keep the connection away from the Orthodox sects entirely."
"What if someone recognizes the title anyway?"
"Leave, if you can."
"And if I can’t?"
His face stayed perfectly calm. "Make sure nobody left standing remembers what they recognized."
There’s the assassin sect again, right on schedule.
"Master the first section of Walk of Night. Then find me."
Darkness had already started gathering beneath his feet.
"Wait, how do I get out of here?"
"The door returns you to the First Sanctuary road."
He sank into his own shadow and vanished without a sound, no flourish, no warning.
Damien stood alone in the room, ninety stat points richer and, if anything, more irritated than grateful about the whole arrangement.
The hidden door opened onto a short stone corridor. At the far end waited an ordinary wooden gate. He pushed it open and stepped out into late-afternoon sunlight, warm against the mask for the first time in what felt like far too long.
Black Reed Gorge stretched out behind him. Ahead, a paved road wound down between dark bamboo toward Cloudstep City, the stalks whispering against each other in a breeze he could actually feel now, sharp and clean after however many hours spent underground. Far past the rooftops, he could make out the plain two-story shape of the First Sanctuary.
The walk took under an hour with his improved body carrying him. He spent most of it relearning how hard to push off the ground without accidentally launching himself into the treeline.
Inside the First Sanctuary, no clerks waited, no guards, just white lanterns lighting the same impossible hall he’d walked through the first time he’d come from Earth-69. Doors lined both walls, each one belonging to a different arrival.
He pulled up his system menu. Inventory. Friends. Server. At the bottom of the final page sat the option he’d been looking for.
➤[Logout]
He selected it.
➤[Logout Requirements....]
➤[You must be inside a First Sanctuary: Confirmed.]
➤[No active combat: Confirmed.]
➤[No active quest preventing departure: Confirmed.]
➤[You may return to your registered world.]
He paused at the final confirmation. Murim had handed him twelve dead investigators, an ancient manual, ninety permanent stats, and a seat in a demonic cult he’d joined at literal knifepoint. He’d come here for sleeping pills. He still didn’t have a single one.
"Great trip," he muttered.
Then he pressed Logout.
’I might get addicted to getting free lunch like this. It’s so much easier.’
The hall folded in on itself. His vision blurred at the edges, and the whole world went away.
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