The shadows along the eastern palisade were deep and forgiving. Han Sen moved like a ghost, the muscle memory of this new body—honed by months of solitary survival and pariah-status—taking over completely. His Eryndorian mind was the strategist, but the body of the Han Sen was the instrument. He found handholds and footholds in the rough-hewn timber that he wouldn't have seen seconds before, hauling himself up and over the sharpened spikes at the top with a fluid, silent grace. He dropped into the damp grass on the other side, landing in a low crouch, every sense screamingly alert.
The world outside the shelter was a different beast at night. The opalescent sky provided a faint, ghostly luminescence, painting the landscape in shades of grey and deep blue. The familiar, comforting hum of the shelter was gone, replaced by an orchestra of alien night sounds: the chittering of unseen insects, the rustle of something moving through the tall, silver-grassed plains, and the distant, echoing howls that set his teeth on edge. Mutant beasts. They were out there, rulers of the dark.
He didn't summon the golden armor. Its glow would be a beacon. Instead, he gripped the hilt of the bronze short-sword, its weight a solid, comforting promise of violence. The meta-map in his mind was clear: north, to the canyon. Three-legged wolves. Solitary nocturnal hunters. Aggressive. Potent first-time yield.
He moved off at a ground-eating lope, not a run, conserving energy, his eyes constantly scanning, his new, sharpened hearing parsing every sound. The encounter with the sacred-blood beetle and the copper-toothed beast hadn't been mere luck; they had been a violent tutorial. He now understood the language of this world—the tension in a creature's muscles before it pounced, the shift in its scent from curiosity to aggression.
It took him twenty minutes of steady travel to reach the mouth of the canyon. It was a narrow fissure in the earth, walls of dark rock streaked with mineral deposits that gleamed faintly in the low light. The air here was cooler, carrying the damp smell of stone and a distinct, musky odor. Predator. This was the place.
He didn't rush in. Fanfic 101: the overconfident MC gets ambushed. He found a vantage point behind a large boulder and waited, letting his breathing slow, becoming just another part of the night. Minutes stretched. The howls seemed farther away now. Then, he heard it. A soft, scraping sound. The click of a single hard footfall on stone.
Peering around the boulder, he saw it. A three-legged wolf. It was smaller than he'd imagined, maybe the size of a large dog, but built for grotesque efficiency. Its front two legs were powerful and ended in cruel, hooked claws. Its single back leg was a thick pillar of muscle, providing a bizarre but likely powerful hopping motion. Its fur was a mottled grey that blended perfectly with the stone, and its eyes glowed with a faint, sickly yellow light.
It was limping along the far canyon wall, its nose to the ground, following a scent trail. Prey. Perfect.
Han Sen's plan was simple: ambush. A quick, lethal strike to the spine or neck before it could howl and alert the pack he knew was denned deeper in the canyon. He melted back behind the boulder, calculating its path. It would pass within ten feet of him.
He counted its steps by the soft clicks. Click-scrape… click-scrape…
He focused, not on the beast, but on the SGS interface in his mind. He visualized the bronze short-sword. He felt the shift, the subtle drain of energy as the beast soul manifested. The chipped dagger at his belt vanished, and the weight of the superior weapon solidified in his hand.
Click-scrape…
Now.
He exploded from behind the boulder not with a yell, but with a silent, focused intensity. The wolf's head snapped up, its yellow eyes widening in surprise. It was fast, already coiling its powerful back leg to spring away or towards him.
But Han Sen was already in motion. He didn't swing wildly; he lunged, putting all his weight behind the bronze point, aiming for the spot where its neck met its shoulder. The meta-knowledge paid off; the novel mentioned their skulls were thick, but the neck joints were vulnerable.
The sword bit deep with a wet thunk. The wolf let out a choked yelp, more shock than pain, and collapsed, its legs spasming. Han Sen didn't hesitate. He wrenched the blade free and brought it down again in a decisive chop, severing the spinal cord. The creature went still.
The silence of the canyon rushed back in, broken only by his own ragged breathing. The fight had lasted three seconds.
Then, the beautiful, resonant voice of the SGS filled his mind.
[Primitive three-legged wolf killed. Beast soul of primitive three-legged wolf gained. Eat the flesh to gain 0-10 geno points.]
A thrill, cleaner and sharper than any he'd felt on Eryndor, shot through him. Another beast soul. 100% drop rate. Unbelievable.
But he had no time to marvel. He focused on the notification, waiting for the crucial part.
[Geno Point Harvesting: Locked at Maximum Yield Geno Points Gained: +10 (Maximum Yield Achieved) Total Geno Points: 100 Evolution Threshold Reached.]
The words hung in his vision, glowing with finality. This was it.
A sudden, violent cramp doubled him over. It felt like every muscle in his body had simultaneously been pulled taut and set on fire. He dropped to his knees, a strangled gasp escaping his lips. It wasn't a gentle transition. It was a riot. A revolution happening inside his very cells.
The world dissolved into a maelstrom of sensation. His bones felt like they were cracking and reforming. His blood felt like molten lead coursing through his veins. His skin prickled and burned as if being scoured by a sandstorm. He could feel his heart hammering, not just in his chest, but in his fingertips, his temples, his toes—a frantic, runaway drumbeat of change.
He vaguely registered the SGS interface flickering wildly, text scrolling too fast to read.
Evolving... Integrating Primitive Geno Points... Lifespan Recalculated... Physique Reforging...
A wave of agony worse than the last washed over him, and he collapsed onto his side, curling into a fetal position on the cold stone. He couldn't see, couldn't hear, could only feel the brutal, magnificent process of becoming more than human. It was nothing like the clean, instant-level-up he'd somehow imagined. It was primordial. It was torture.
He didn't know how long it lasted. An eternity. A second.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
The pain vanished, leaving behind a profound, echoing emptiness. For a long moment, he just lay there, breathing, feeling the cold of the rock against his cheek. He felt… hollowed out. Scoured clean.
Then, a new feeling began to bloom. It started as a warmth in his core and spread outward, a wave of pure, unadulterated power. It was the feeling of the sacred-beetle meat multiplied by a thousand. He felt incredibly light, yet impossibly dense. His senses, which he thought had been sharp before, now exploded into hyper-reality.
He could smell the individual mineral components in the rock beneath him. He could hear the skittering of a centipede-like insect thirty yards away. He could see the faint thermal glow of the wolf's cooling body. He slowly pushed himself to his feet. His body moved with a fluid, effortless grace he had never possessed. He felt no fatigue from the fight or the evolution, only a ravenous, gnawing hunger.
He looked at his hands. They were the same, yet different. The calluses were still there, but the skin seemed tighter, the veins tracing patterns of newfound strength beneath the surface. He willed the SGS interface to appear.
[Name: Han Sen Status: Evolved (Primitive)
Lifespan: 210.3 years
Geno Points Required for Next Evolution: 100
Primitive Primitive Geno Points Gained: 0
Sacred Geno Points: 7 Beast Souls Gained:
Sacred-Blood Black Beetle (Armor), Primitive
Copper-Toothed Beast (Weapon),
Primitive Three-Legged Wolf (Tooth Dagger)]
He had done it. He was evolved. He had gained a decade of lifespan in a single night. And he had a new beast soul.
A fierce, triumphant grin spread across his face. He turned his gaze south, back towards Steel Armor Shelter. The howls of the mutant beasts in the distance no longer sounded like threats. They sounded like invitations.
Dawn was still hours away. He had time.
He looked down at the corpse of the three-legged wolf. His stomach growled fiercely. The hunger was all-consuming. Without ceremony, he began to butcher the creature, carving off large strips of lean, dark meat. He ate it raw, barely chewing, fueling his newly forged body. The meat was tough and gamey, but to his evolved metabolism, it tasted like the most succulent feast on Eryndor.
[Flesh of primitive three-legged wolf eaten. Zero geno points gained]
the SGS chimed cheerfully. He was maxed out again. It didn't matter. The points weren't the goal; the sustenance was.
As he ate, he summoned the new beast soul. In his hand, the bronze short-sword dissolved and reformed into a cruel, jagged dagger fashioned from one of the wolf's own teeth, its edge serrated and wickedly sharp. A tooth dagger. A nice, stealthy option.
He finished eating, his strength returning fully. He felt… incredible. Invincible.
He stood, sheathing the tooth dagger at his belt. The sky was beginning to lighten ever so slightly at the edges, the indigo softening to a deep periwinkle. Dawn was approaching.
He took one last look at the canyon, the site of his transformation. Then he turned and began to run.
It wasn't the lope he'd used to get here. This was a full-out sprint. His evolved legs powered him forward, eating up the ground. The wind ripped past his face, and the world became a blur. He was faster than any hovercar in the Neonspire slums. He was power. He was speed. He was change.
He reached the shelter's eastern wall in a fraction of the time it had taken him to leave. He didn't bother with the climb this time. With a powerful leap that seemed to defy gravity itself, he cleared the top of the palisade in a single bound, landing silently inside the shelter grounds just as the first true rays of light began to paint the opalescent sky.
He walked back to his alcove, his steps sure and steady. A few early risers were already moving about. They saw him, and their eyes widened. They saw the new confidence in his posture, the subtle shift in his physique, the dangerous glint in his eye. The whispers of "Ass Freak" died on their lips before they were even spoken.
He ignored them. He went to his hidden stash, checking to see it was untouched. It was.
He sat back down on the log, not to hide, but to wait. He didn't need to prepare. He didn't need to plan. He was ready.
He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to meditate, to feel the thrum of his new power, to savor the moment.
The arena at dawn. Qin Xuan was waiting.
But the man waiting for her was no longer the "Ass Freak." He was Han Sen, Evolved. And he was about to rewrite the story.