Fame, as it turned out, was a massive pain in the ass. In the days following the championship, Lin Ke's quiet, anonymous life was obliterated. Teenagers hoping for a glimpse of the "Tactical God" loitered outside his welfare district apartment building. Media outlets hounded him for interviews. Guilds and powerful factions flooded his terminal with lavish invitations, promising him the world.
He ignored it all. The noise, the attention, the accolades—they were distractions from the real work. He had what he needed: capital, a license, and the key to a library of secrets. It was time to become a ghost.
He didn't waste the prize money on flashy clothes or a new maglev vehicle. For two straight days, he was glued to the Guild's private real estate network, hunting. Not for a home, but for a base of operations. He scrolled past lavish penthouses in the city center and gaudy coastal villas with a quiet sneer. He was looking for something practical, secluded, and useful.
And then he found it. On the quiet outskirts of the city, nestled in an old, overgrown neighborhood, was a former botanist's residence. It was a modest two-story house, but the listing photos revealed two features that made his heart pound with excitement: a high-walled, private backyard perfect for training, and a climate-controlled basement that had already been converted into a small, professional-grade laboratory. Sold.
Leaving the cramped welfare apartment he'd inhabited his entire life was a strange, hollow experience. He stood in the empty room for a final moment, the ghost of his past self—a struggling, lonely orphan—still lingering in the corners. Goodbye, he thought. He closed the door on that life and didn't look back.
His new home was quiet, spacious, and humming with potential. The Rock Vole was ecstatic, skittering around the private yard, reveling in the freedom and the scent of rich, damp earth. But Lin Ke was drawn down into the cool, sterile air of the basement.
The rest of his prize money vanished in a furious, focused shopping spree that only a true nerd could appreciate. A high-powered digital microscope, a genetic centrifuge, reagent synthesizers, and several reinforced, secure containment units. The empty lab slowly came to life, humming with the low, satisfying thrum of high-tech equipment. This was his sanctuary. His forge.
Finally, everything was ready. The Jamaican night outside was warm and alive with the chirping of crickets, but down in the lab, it was completely silent. He brought the mottled grey, stone-like egg downstairs and placed it carefully in the central bay of a specialized incubator.
"Alright," Lin Ke said to the empty room, his voice echoing slightly against the concrete walls. "Let's get to work."
He sat at his new terminal, activating the Gene Editor. He pulled up two datasets in his mind: the frantic, cryptic notes on symbiotic and parasitic energies he'd scribbled down in the Archive, and the raw analysis of the Corrupted Gene Essence he'd harvested from the sewer creature.
Editor, he commanded, cross-reference. Synthesize a new protocol. Take the theory of 'Parasitic Anti-Energy' and apply it to the repair of the A-01 'Astral Energy' gene. Formulate a viable incubation plan.
The blue interface in his vision flashed, processing the revolutionary data. The old, impossible shopping list of multi-million-credit items vanished, deleted from existence. In its place, a new, bold, and frankly terrifying blueprint appeared. He didn't just read it; he saw it.
He saw a vision of the chaotic purple essence being fed into a purifying matrix, emerging as a stable, glowing liquid—Purified Life Essence, a perfect substitute for the impossibly expensive Living Soulstone. But the resource requirement that flashed in his mind was daunting: 1,500 units of raw essence. He currently had 12.
He saw the next step: a mental animation of this new life essence being combined with Nebula Sap—still expensive, but obtainable—under a simulated field of astral radiation, the two components bonding to form a Proto-Stardust Catalyst.
And then came the warning, a vivid, frightening simulation of a containment unit cracking, a violent release of energy filling his vision. Warning: Refinement process is highly volatile. Failure may result in catastrophic energy release. High-grade containment lab is essential.
Lin Ke stared at the new plan, his heart pounding with a fierce, wild energy. The path wasn't blocked by a wall of credits anymore. The path was now paved with danger, with skill, with his own two hands. He could create the impossible materials himself. He just had to hunt down the world's deadliest poison to do it.
His objective was suddenly crystal clear, a tangible, multi-step project. He needed to get out there, into the untamed wilderness beyond the city dome. He needed to hunt corrupted creatures, gather 1,500 units of that raw essence, and then return to this very lab to perform the most delicate, dangerous chemical process of his life.
He looked at the stone-like egg resting peacefully in its incubator. The journey would be perilous, insane even.
But for the first time, the sleeping god within it felt truly, terrifyingly within his reach.