The ceaseless hum of the city, once a comforting backdrop, now felt charged, subtly vibrating with unseen negative energies. Elias walked, blending into the stream of pedestrians, his senses heightened by the recent absorption. He noticed the pinched expressions on faces, the aggressive blare of car horns, the weary slump of shoulders beneath heavy bags. Each flicker of irritation, each sigh of resignation, was a minute contribution to the pervasive pollution that fed the Eldritch. He was seeing the world through game-tinted glasses now, every emotional output a potential resource for the cosmic invaders.
His immediate problem, however, was far more mundane: he had nothing. No wallet, no ID, no idea where he was beyond "the world of ECU." He needed to acquire basic necessities. His eyes scanned his surroundings, not for Eldritch, but for opportunities. A discarded newspaper flapped against a lamp post, its headlines a dizzying array of local politics and trivial scandals. Nothing about reality-bending horrors. Just the usual human anxieties, ripe for cultivation by the Other Side.
He turned into a quieter side street, the buildings here looking older, more neglected. A boarded-up storefront, its paint peeling, offered a fleeting thought of temporary shelter, but the grime and the heavy scent of decay radiating from it felt like a magnet for low-level entities. Too risky. He needed somewhere less polluted.
The Level 1 Eldritch had been a test. He'd passed, but his mind raced with the implications. His power was immense, but also raw, unrefined. He couldn't just walk up to a Level 5 or a Red Alert Eldritch and expect to absorb it. Overpowering was key, and he was far from that. His current human rank meant he was barely above an ordinary civilian, despite his cheat. This wasn't a game where he could just brute-force his way through. It was survival, and he had to be smarter. First step: find a way to get off these hostile streets.