Kael had planned everything. Every variable mapped, every contingency accounted for. But no amount of planning could fully prepare him for the moment when the corrupted crystal's essence flooded his body. It was like being struck by a wave of heat and violence that surged through his veins and bones, a river of power that tore away the limits of what it meant to be human.
He had pressed his palm to the crystal's surface, knowing full well it was suicide for anyone else. The stone had felt too warm, almost feverish, pulsing in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat. The light it gave off had changed too, shifting from violet to a muddy amber that shimmered beneath his skin like liquid fire. Every instinct Kael had honed for survival screamed at him to pull back, to run, to preserve what he'd spent years building. But he stayed.
Seventeen corpses had taught him that hesitation was a form of death. Now he would find out what came after.
The reaction hit instantly. Energy, raw and unfiltered, erupted through his nervous system and filled him with impossible sensation. It wasn't pain, not exactly, not at first. It was pressure. Momentum. A current driving through his core with such intensity that he felt like he was falling inward, collapsing into himself. He staggered back from the crystal, but the damage or the transformation was already underway.
The sensation deepened. What started as heat became searing pain. His bones felt like they were being crushed and rebuilt at the same time, pulled into new shapes by invisible hands. His limbs locked, muscles seizing as if his body didn't know whether to fight or surrender. He fell to his knees, clutching his chest, vision blurring into a smear of colors and symbols he didn't recognize.
Somewhere in the chaos, he heard a voice.
Not external. It echoed inside his skull, garbled and distant.
Imperial Cultivation Primer. Corrupted Data Stream. Accessing Archived Knowledge.
He recognized the tone. His neural implant. Standard equipment for every worker born on Nethys Prime before the Collapse. It had gone silent when the planet fell apart, another obsolete piece of hardware buried in his brain. Now it had reactivated, triggered by whatever the crystal had awakened.
Fragments of information pushed into his mind, half formed visuals, corrupted files. Meridian diagrams flashed before his eyes, cultivation progression charts, risk assessments. Most of the data was damaged beyond recognition, a storm of flickering code and lost files, but some pieces were clear. Enough to orient him.
Bone Forging Realm detected. Skeletal density undergoing transformation. Duration range: six to eighteen months. Warning: inadequate biological integrity may result in structural failure.
Kael's mind gripped the words like a lifeline. Bone Forging. The term echoed through his thoughts with clarity, as if it had always been there, waiting for something to activate it. He focused through the agony, anchoring himself to the language of data. That was how he had always survived. Not by strength. Not by luck. Through understanding.
His bones were densifying, reforging themselves under the force of the crystal's corrupted energy. He could feel it tendons tugging against hardening marrow, vertebrae shifting beneath the weight of change. Each breath sent sharp jolts through his spine and ribs, and each heartbeat pumped more essence into his skeleton. It was brutal. Messy. Imperfect. But it was working.
He had seen others fail. Gareth's corpse, turned inward by radiation collapse. Maya's crew, crushed beneath the rubble he had engineered, their bodies later recovered half dissolved by ambient energy exposure. They had all been too slow, too weak, or too unprepared.
Kael was not unprepared.
His years of measured exposure to essence laced dust, his careful study of the Dead Zone's radiation fields, had forged a resistance no one else possessed. While others avoided contact, he had collected fragments and allowed them to touch skin, muscle, and eventually blood. The sickness that followed had always been brief. He had tracked every symptom. Measured his recovery rates. Adjusted doses like a chemist refining a volatile compound.
Now that work came to fruition.
The energy rushing through him was not destroying it was converting. Not every part of him agreed with the change. Years of starvation, dehydration, and the toxic conditions of life on Nethys Prime had left his body flawed. Energy flow stuttered in places. His liver felt like it might rupture. A deep tearing sensation ran down the length of his legs as muscle fiber reshaped itself without warning.
The neural implant updated again.
Muscle Refinement detected. Progression instability. Caution: advancing cultivation stages simultaneously is not advised.
Kael's teeth ground together as the new stage began before the previous one had finished. His hands clenched into fists. Pain rippled through him like tidal waves, but still he clung to it. Every sensation was another data point. Every twitch, every failure to breathe properly, every knot of tension in his gut valuable input.
The implant wasn't giving him a roadmap. It was simply confirming what he already suspected. The corrupted crystal wasn't acting within standard cultivation parameters. It was accelerating the process, tearing through the natural order of progression. Where Bone Forging might take months, it was happening in hours. His muscles followed, dragged into the next stage whether they were ready or not.
And still he survived.
Through the haze of pain, Kael crawled toward the far end of the chamber. He reached for his notebook. Shaking hands flipped open the last page he had written before the experiment began. Seventeen corpses, seventeen mistakes. He added a new line beneath them.
Eighteenth attempt: Success. Subject demonstrates resistance threshold above predictive maximum. Essence progression, accelerated.
The act of writing helped ground him. The tremors in his limbs were starting to fade. Energy flow was becoming smoother, less chaotic. The meridian pathways he could feel them now. They weren't just theoretical anymore. They were real. He felt them like channels carved through his flesh and bone, like riverbeds guiding the power inside him. Twelve major ones, just like the diagrams had shown. More were branching off now, forming secondary flows, spiraling outward into his limbs.
He didn't know how he knew the terminology. The knowledge was just there, layered over his thoughts like a new sense. As if the implant wasn't just feeding him data, but reawakening instincts buried by a life of deprivation.
He stood slowly. The world felt different. His balance had changed. The strength in his legs was alien. Controlled, but immense. He reached down, lifted a chunk of fractured ore that he knew had once taken two hands to move. Now it came up with ease. No strain. No effort.
He turned his attention toward the viewport cut into the shelter wall. From here, he could see the outer tunnels. Shapes moved in the distance. Scavengers. Survivors. Vultures sniffing around what used to be Gareth's and Maya's territory.
They must have thought he was dead. Perhaps they'd heard the crystal's resonance and assumed he'd made the same mistake the others had. Perhaps they were just desperate.
Kael felt none of his usual irritation. No fear. Only opportunity.
His new strength needed testing. His control over the flow of essence needed refinement. What better way to verify his awakening than against real variables?
He moved to the edge of the chamber, gathering what supplies remained. The crystal itself had dimmed behind him, its glow now barely a flicker. Whatever energy it had offered, it had given it all. Its power was gone. Kael had consumed it.
He glanced back once more at the center of the room where the transformation had begun. His bones still ached. His skin itched. His blood felt too warm, too fast. But he was stable. For now.
Data point eighteen was complete. The risks had been greater than expected, but the rewards exceeded every projection.
The man who walked into the Dead Zone as prey now emerged as predator. And predators don't ask permission.