The power was a secret that burned.
Jack lay on his bunk in the suffocating dark of the barracks, surrounded by the shallow breathing of broken orphans. His body hummed with the quiet, persistent thrum of [Minor Regeneration]. A cut closed too fast. His stamina recovered too easily. The miracle refused to turn off, and he had spent the entire day bruising himself deliberately, faking exhaustion, wearing a mask of weakness to protect the disguise he had built.
It was exhausting. But worse than that
It was slow.
Four more souls had died in the last raid. Four more points added to his foundation. And yet, after all the death, after all the trauma he had engineered, the difference in his body was barely noticeable. Stronger? Yes. Faster? A little. But nothing close to what he needed.
The Bureau's 14-day timer ticked away in the back of his mind, relentless. His dungeon was exposed, a faint anomaly on some faceless auditor's desk, and he was building power with the efficiency of a starving rat hoarding crumbs.
This wasn't progress. It was mockery.
Driven by a cold, frustrated clarity, Jack opened his Dungeon Interface. The familiar tabs glowed before him: [Layout], [Monsters], [Rewards]. He had memorized them, dissected them, optimized every corner. But there was another tab he had dismissed before as a mere log.
[Essence Ledger].
He focused, and the screen unfolded.
It was a list. Simple. Brutal. Every orphan who had died in the culvert was listed by a number Tenant #1, Tenant #2, Tenant #3. Their lives, reduced to nothing but an entry.
But there was a column he had never noticed before. A single, damning word stamped beside every name:
Quality: Poor.
At the bottom, a summary.
Total Essence Harvested: 11.
Average Quality Grade: Poor.
Total Stat Points Generated: 11.
Efficiency Ratio: 1.00.
Jack stared at it, his lips pressed into a thin, cold line. Eleven children. Eleven stat points. A perfect one-to-one return. His mind, always so sharp, always so analytical, reached its only conclusion.
Pathetic.
He wasn't an industrialist. He wasn't a farmer. He was a fool harvesting weeds, throwing bodies into the fire for scraps while the Bureau's blade hung above his neck.
His hands tightened into fists.
No. The System was not that crude. A structure this vast, this predatory, would have deeper rules. And if those rules existed, he would find them.
He scrolled lower, and there it was a subsection, almost hidden.
[Projected Yields].
Jack opened it, and the world tilted.
It was a chart. A butcher's price list for the value of a soul.
[Essence Quality is determined by the target's Rank.]
F-Rank (Poor/Standard): 1 Stat Point.
E-Rank (Standard/Superior): 1–2 Stat Points.
D-Rank (Superior): 2 Stat Points.
C-Rank (Exceptional): 2 Stat Points + 1 Free Stat Point.
Higher ranks: Data obscured. Insufficient Authority.
The entries beyond C were blurred, deliberately locked. He couldn't access them. Not yet.
But it was enough.
Jack exhaled slowly, the faintest curl of a smile tugging at his lips. He had been wasting time on weeds when he could have been harvesting prize bulls. A single C-ranker was worth more than his entire flock of orphans.
The truth hit him like lightning.
He wasn't a farmer anymore.
He was a hunter.
A soft, broken whisper pulled him back into the room.
Maria sat across the barracks, her dented shield across her lap, her lips moving in a muttered prayer. Her voice cracked on every other word, zeal burned down to ash, but the fire was still there, fragile and dangerous. The other orphans gave her a wide berth.
Jack glanced at her once, then dismissed her from his mind. Her cult was shattered. Her value as a prophet had already been spent. The Ledger had made her irrelevant.
The next day, Unit 17 was sent on Hazard Clearance patrol in the crumbling industrial sector. The air stank of oil and rust. Sergeant Vale barked orders without interest, sending the orphans to clear nests of Giant Rats.
Jack followed, his body moving with the same fake sluggishness as always. But his eyes weren't on the rats.
They were scanning the horizon.
He wasn't looking for monsters anymore. He was looking for prey.
Most of what he saw were weeds: Bureau patrols, low-rank cleanup units, other desperate orphans trudging through the ruins. F-ranks, the bottom of the barrel.
Then he saw them.
A party of three. Their gear gleamed under the hazy light. Their movements were crisp, confident. They cut through a pack of hobgoblins like scythes through grass, their rhythm casual, almost bored. A guild party, slumming it for an easy mission.
One of them stood out. A young man with a rapier at his hip, his face sharp with arrogance. His footwork was sloppy, his swings flamboyant. He left massive openings in his guard, holes the hobgoblins were too weak to exploit.
And then Jack's vision shifted.
The arrogant youth shimmered faintly, as though outlined by a hidden aura only Jack could see. A new notification appeared at the edge of his vision:
[Target Scanned.]
Rank: Low C-Rank.
Class: Sword Dancer.
Essence Quality: Exceptional.
Projected Yield: +2 Random Stat Points, +1 Free Stat Point.
Jack stopped walking. Unit 17 fought and bled behind him, Vale shouted, rats squealed but all of it faded into silence.
This was it. His prize bull. His wolf.
The first true victim worth killing.
That night, back in the barracks, Jack lay on his bunk, staring into the dark. His mind wasn't on Maria's mutters or Leo's quiet sobs. It was on the Sword Dancer.
His culvert dungeon was a pathetic trap designed for sheep. A C-ranker would rip it apart in minutes. If he wanted this, if he wanted to leapfrog the grind, he needed something sharper. Something deadlier.
He opened his Dungeon Interface and navigated to the [Renovation] tab.
Cooldown: 12 days.
The Bureau sweep: 13 days.
His lips curved in a sharp, humorless smile. The timing was perfect. A razor's edge. If he succeeded, he would walk out a different man. If he failed, the Bureau would find nothing but corpses in a broken culvert.
"To catch a wolf," Jack whispered to himself, his eyes gleaming cold in the dark, "you can't use a pen made for sheep."
It was time to renovate.