The air inside the hut was stifling. Welt slowly opened his eyes, staring up at the rotting ceiling, his small body once again feeling unfamiliar. The ritual had succeeded. He could sense the newly-formed, invisible circuits within him, an intricate, rarefied network pulsing in harmony. Now, he could clearly perceive the World Essence in every leaf, every patch of soil, and countless other things.
He forced himself to rise, his joints stiff. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, yet his mind remained clear, perhaps thanks to the strange ritual. He stepped out of the hut. The world looked the same, but something fundamental had changed. He was now a part of it, connected in a way only those "blessed", as Silas had put it, could be.
This power was still raw, unshaped. He might have become an Evolver, but his level remained at zero. He needed to train, to deepen his understanding of the Bizarre Dao of the Outers, and above all, to survive. This was the first step in an unending journey. This new world, with all its threats and mysteries, would have to be conquered.
Exhaustion from the ritual and hunger finally overcame him. He found a hidden crevice between the roots of a great tree and drifted into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
Or so he thought.
His consciousness was pulled into a place he couldn't quite comprehend. Before him sat a towering entity, its face distorted, obscured by something he couldn't understand. Its dark green robes devoured the light, and above its head floated a crown made of black stars. The entity was turning the pages of an enormous tome, bound in what appeared to be skin—or something like it.
Suddenly, a voice echoed directly into Welt's mind. The shock of it staggered him. He had no idea what the consequences would be, or what he had just done.
"You who come from beyond,
You who bear a god's burden,
You who mourn fate,
You who choose the path of ████."
His consciousness returned to his body. He woke up gasping for breath, lying on the damp forest floor. Three words echoed in his head, repeating endlessly like a broken record: "Trogool, Skarl, ████-████-██████." The whisper faded as he managed to move his fingers, leaving behind the disturbing words that refused to fade away. His clothes were soaked through with cold sweat.
He couldn't keep hiding in the woods or stealing from small towns. The risk of capture was too high, and his progress would stagnate. He needed a more complex environment, richer in information and resources.
The Eastern Cledestine Kingdom's Capital: Clockthon.
Welt packed his only possessions, the Throne of Nothing book and a few leftover coins. The journey to Clockthon required money he didn't have. He'd have to earn it without drawing the attention of the Essence Keeper Order.
He made his way to the nearest settlement, District Nine of Cruches. At the horse-drawn carriage terminal, he approached a resting driver.
"How much to Clockthon?"
The driver eyed him up and down, a child in worn clothes. "Two dryn. Pay upfront."
Welt had only one dryn and ten grior, half a dryn short. "I'll pay one and a half dryn now. The rest when we arrive."
The driver spat into the dirt. "Kid, do I look like a charity? Full payment or find another ride."
"Then I'll find work along the way to pay the difference. Unless you prefer traveling with empty seats."
The man scratched his beard, calculating. Empty seats meant lost profit. "Fine. But if you can't pay the rest, you walk. Don't care if we're in the middle of nowhere."
Welt handed over his coins and climbed aboard. The cabin smelled of stale wood and old sweat. He sat in a corner, keeping quiet. The journey would take five days. Five days to plan how to get the remaining fare, and his next move.
The other passengers barely acknowledged him. A fat cloth merchant dozed against the window, occasionally snoring. Two farm women whispered about grain prices and sick livestock. The carriage wheels creaked over uneven dirt roads, passing through dense forests that gradually gave way to sprawling farmland dotted with small villages.
On the second day, the carriage stopped in a waystation town called Romen, under SydneyBarony's jurisdiction. The place looked tired. Wooden buildings leaned at odd angles, the roads were muddy trenches, and everything smelled like stagnation. The driver announced a two-hour break for the horses.
Welt stepped down and surveyed his surroundings. He wasn't looking for food. His eyes scanned the area, seeking materials. Behind a carpentry workshop, he collected wood scraps. An abandoned forge provided charcoal. An old peddler sold him a piece of chalk for his last few grior coins. With a small knife he always carried, he found a quiet alley and got to work.
For the next hour, he carved wood with unusual precision for a child. Thirty-two chess pieces took shape: kings, queens, bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns. His hands moved with practiced efficiency, muscle memory from another life guiding each cut. He drew a 64-square board on a flat wood slab, darkening half the squares with charcoal mixed in water.
Instead of hawking it at the market, he asked a town guard for directions. "Where's Baron Sydney's residence?"
The guard pointed down a muddy road. "That manor with the peeling paint. But he's not receiving visitors."
"We'll see."
The manor looked as tired as the rest of Romen. Overgrown gardens, chipped paint, sagging shutters. A servant answered his knock, looking equally worn down.
"I have a proposal for the Baron."
The servant hesitated, then shrugged. "Follow me."
The study was dim and dusty, but the mahogany desk dominated the room like an island of quality in a sea of decay. Baron Sydney sat behind it, a thin middle-aged man with graying hair and hazel eyes. He looked up from a ledger with mild irritation.
"A child brings proposals now? What entertainment is this?"
Welt didn't answer. He placed the chessboard on the desk and began arranging pieces. "This isn't entertainment. It's war."
The Baron's eyebrow twitched. "Elaborate."
"Two kingdoms. Two armies." Welt moved pieces as he spoke, his tone flat and instructional. "Each piece has different movement rules, representing their battlefield roles. Pawns are infantry. Knights are cavalry that leap over battle lines. Rooks are siege engines. The queen commands the most flexibility."
He demonstrated basic moves, captures, the concept of check and checkmate. The Baron leaned forward, his merchant's mind already calculating possibilities.
"Victory comes from cornering the enemy king. Strategy trumps numbers. Planning beats impulse."
Baron Sydney studied the board. As a minor noble in a poor province, his influence had eroded over the years.
"Play one match with me."
They played. Welt guided the Baron through the learning process, offering enough resistance to make it engaging while ensuring his host achieved a narrow victory. The Baron's eyes lit up with something that hadn't been there before.
"How much for this contraption?"
"Five grior."
The Baron laughed, but it wasn't humor. "You waltz into my house, show me something I've never seen, and ask for pocket change? Are you simple or just naive?"
"I need carriage fare. The real value isn't in the wood, you know, it's exclusivity."
"Exclusivity." The Baron tasted the word. "I appreciate that concept." He drummed his fingers on the desk. "Ten dryn. Not for this set alone, but for exclusive rights within Sydney Barony. You'll supply ten more sets within the month."
A binding contract… Long-term obligations would trap him here. "Fifty dryn upfront for monopoly rights in your province."
"Outrageous!"
Welt began packing the pieces. "Five grior for this set is sufficient. Business is business."
"Hold on." The Baron moved faster than expected. He recognized the addictive nature of strategic games, their potential as luxury items among nobles, possible revenue streams. "Two dryn. For this set only."
"Acceptable."
The Baron called for his servant. Two gold dryn clinked onto the desk. Welt pocketed them without ceremony and left the manor without looking back.
He returned to the carriage terminal with minutes to spare, paid his remaining fare, and settled into his corner seat with one and a half dryn surplus. The vehicle lurched forward, leaving Romen's decay behind.
For the next three days, Welt observed and planned. He had starting capital now. In Clockthon, chess would be a one-time trick. He needed something sustainable.
The dream fragments lingered: Trogool, Skarl, ████-████-██████. Names, passwords, incantations? And that entity with the crown of black stars, was it connected to the Bizarre Dao of the Outers? The cultivation manual mentioned no deities or patrons. This path felt grafted onto the world from elsewhere.
As the carriage drew closer to the capital, everything changed. Dirt roads gave way to cobbled streets, and mounted patrols in Essence Keeper Order uniforms became a frequent sight. They moved with the kind of military professionalism Welt had imagined, scanning the crowds for any sign of irregularity.
Welt could sense faint pulses of Essence from several of the guards, judging by the fluctuations, they were low-tier Evolvers.
Clockthon loomed on the horizon like a mechanical giant. Smokestacks belched steam into the grey skies, rising above Gothic cathedral spires and government buildings. Steam engines, factory whistles, and tram bells made it unmistakably clear that Welt had entered a city of industry. The air was thick with the stench of vapour and industrial residue, unsurprising, though far from healthy.
The carriage pulled into a bustling terminal. Welt stepped down and blended into the crowd. He wandered streets lined with Victorian grandeur, now interwoven with steam-age contraptions. Bronze pipes coiled around brick façades, releasing bursts of vapour at regular intervals. Electric trams crackled along the tracks while pedestrians moved with a purposeful urgency, some seemingly lost in thought, others perhaps driven by professional discipline.
He couldn't afford to drift aimlessly. He needed lodgings, somewhere cheap and well-placed. Steering clear of the affluent and administrative districts, he made his way towards the grittier Docks Quarter. Among warehouses heavy with the stench of fish and taverns frequented by sailors, he would be harder to trace, the place held nothing particularly suspicious.
"The Rusted Anchor" looked suitably run-down, just the sort of place he was after, yet still lively with patrons. The innkeeper barely glanced at him as he paid for a small upstairs room for the week. It held only a thin bed, a desk, and a window overlooking an alley cluttered with crates and refuse.
Once alone and with the door locked, Welt took out the Throne of Nothing. The previous ritual had unlocked its initial section, but many of its pages remained obscured. To access further knowledge, he would need a higher level of cultivation.
His method relied on a specific type of Essence. The book referred to it as the Echo of the Drum of the Gods, or The Fall of Antares. This form of Essence was exceptionally rare in ordinary environments. It was said to manifest only through cursed or haunted places, sites typically avoided by Evolvers due to their corrosive and unstable nature.
Locating such a place within a city like Clockthon became his immediate priority. He would need maps, rumours, and off-the-record information.
The following morning, Welt visited the public library. Rather than consulting officially sanctioned texts, he combed through newspaper archives, municipal records, and incident reports. He searched for a common thread: haunted houses, mysterious plague zones, industrial accidents with strange aftereffects, anything, really, that might be considered "haunted" by this world's standards.
After hours of searching, he came across a brief article dated five years prior. It reported a partial collapse of the sewers beneath the Factory District, officially blamed on ageing infrastructure. One detail stood out: rescue workers had reported auditory hallucinations and a sensation of "an unseen presence pressing down." City officials had sealed off the area permanently, citing structural hazards.
That evening, dressed in dark clothing, Welt made his way towards the Factory District. Narrow streets wound between towering brick factories, most of them inactive by nightfall. He located the sewer entrance: a large iron gate bound with chains and marked by official warning plaques.
The seal was purely physical, no Essence reinforcements. His slight frame allowed him to slip through a gap between the twisted bars with little difficulty.
The air underground was cold and vile, thick with the stench of sewage, rust, and something mineral with a strong, iron-like tang. He lit a small oil lantern he'd pilfered earlier; its dim light revealed brick-lined tunnels that seemed endless in the gloom.
He walked for nearly an hour, guided by a rough map he had committed to memory. The further he ventured, the more his nadir circuits began to respond, perhaps by resonance, perhaps by design. He could feel the energy slowly gathering.
The tunnel eventually opened into a vast cavern where the ceiling had collapsed, exposing strange geological strata beneath the city's foundations. The stone was black, laced with violet veins that pulsed with inner light. At the centre was a narrow fissure, from which a thin indigo mist emerged. This, perhaps, was the kind of haunting the book had described.
Welt extinguished his lantern. In total darkness, the mist shone brighter. He sat cross-legged a few metres from the fissure, not too close, as this Essence could be harmful if absorbed too quickly.
He closed his eyes and began to meditate, following the instructions laid out in the Throne of Nothing. Rather than forcefully drawing the Essence in, he opened his nadir circuits, allowing the ambient energy to seep into him naturally, like water into dry cloth.
The process was slow and agonising. The foreign Essence flowed like freezing water through his veins, then turned to scalding acid, and finally to searing current, all in rapid succession. His body trembled and burned in turns as the energy merged with his cultivation base.
Hours passed, each one dragging through layers of discomfort.
Yet slowly, a change began to take place. His nadir circuits grew stronger, more sharply defined. The invisible network within him gained clarity, as if broken apart and reforged under pressure. When he finally opened his eyes, the cavern appeared altered. As always, he could see the Essence more clearly now, the way it moved, pooled, and pulsed.
He had progressed to first hierarchy of the Bizarre Dao of the Outers.
Dawn light filtered in through the collapsed ceiling as he emerged from the sewers. The city was beginning to stir, factory whistles, the first trams, the hum of trade and daily movement.
He returned to The Rusted Anchor just as the populace began their routines. In his small upstairs room, he reopened the Throne of Nothing. More pages were now legible. New techniques, deeper insight into his cultivation path, and warnings of trials yet to come.
But one passage gave him pause:
"The Outer paths demand sacrifice. With each level attained, the cultivator drifts further from humanity, edging ever closer to something else. At the highest tiers, the question is no longer what power one gains, but what is lost in the gaining."
Welt closed the book.