WebNovels

Chapter 7 - The Second Coming of the Sun (1)

[Adam's POV]

The Academy dungeons had been suffocating, but the forest outside wasn't any better.

I trudged forward, one bare step after another, through snow that should have frozen me solid. It didn't. Apparently, my new body didn't much care for cold. Resistance to elements—one of the little perks I'd written into homunculi as a lazy catch-all. At least one of my half-assed design choices was paying off.

The trees loomed around me, tall and quiet, and I couldn't stop myself from reaching out to brush one with my hand. The bark looked normal enough. Felt like granite. My knuckles stung for the trouble. Earth Forest, I remembered.

South quadrant of the [Five Elemental Domain]. The [Five Element Domain] was exactly that, a domain consisting of the elements of fire, earth, wind, water, and the center where. . .that thing is residing in. 

It was also a part of the Central Academy, in that it was sort of a place where the students could take on missions to explore or defeat the monsters living inside, and get field experience basically. Or, you could honestly just chill in some of the 'Safe Zones' established by the Academy, where clubs like the Nature Club could visit and relax, chill in the 'great outdoors'. 

Yeah, I didn't think much when writing this part of the novel, but I just thought that for an Academy-City of this scale, it would do to have a convenient place nearby to farm for monster materials, or get practical experience for the students. 

I'd called the things in here "rock deer" and "rock lizards." The kind of names you invent at three in the morning when the update deadline is tomorrow. But when I spotted one of my rock lizards—a meter-long bastard with slate scales—leaping onto a deer with basalt antlers, my chest actually tightened. They moved like predators, real and dangerous. Something I had written into existence was eating something else I had written.

And, that something would also be having me for a snack if it wasn't so full. 

I should've been terrified. Instead, for a stupid second, I felt proud.

Then I checked my status, or rather just my stats. 

[STATUS SCREEN]

Name: Adam Godwin

Race: Homunculus (Artificial Lifeform) (Failure-Completion)

Path: Null

Titles: [Interdimensional Wanderer] — Heightened sensitivity to surrounding energies. 

Attributes

Strength: Null

Endurance: Null

Vitality: Null

Agility: Null

Wisdom: Null

Intellect: Null

Mana: Null

Aura: Null

Core: Incomplete/Null 

Core Skills: Null

Equipment

Inventory: Basic Pants/Jacket

Every stat bottomed out. Dead last. A newborn fawn in a monster's forest.

If the lizard noticed me, I was done. If the deer noticed me, I was still done. The only reason I wasn't already dead was because of another of my half-conscious authorial quirks that I'd written: monsters here hunted during the day. At night, they slept. Well, most of them. And, that was only in this quadrant, the Southern Rock Section of the forest.

But good for me, since, that meant no rock wolves circling me in the dark. No earth bears sniffing me out of caves. My ecosystem notes were saving my life.

The silence pressed in. My footsteps crunched. My lungs rasped. Then—

A pulse.

Something buzzed in my head, faint as static. I stopped dead, eyes wide. My heart—no, the lump of artificial aura-core in my chest—throbbed once. Energy. Warm, alive, flowing nearby. Sensitivity to energy. My one boon, and it was finally worth something.

I turned toward it. My body was too weak to run, but I walked faster, every step steadier, more confident, until the trees broke and a small clearing opened before me.

A cabin.

Wood walls, chimney puffing faint smoke, light flickering through the shutters. No tracks in the snow. No heartbeat inside. But the fire in the hearth glowed steady.

My lips twisted into a grin. I knew this place. I'd written this place. The [Cabin in the Woods]—a stupid little easter egg I'd thrown in for players who liked side quests.

And here it was.

I knocked three times on the door, voice scraping out the words: "May the Eternal Sun shine."

A click answered me. The door swung open on its own.

The inside was cozy, almost laughably so. A narrow bed with fur blankets. A hearth burning warm. A table with mugs waiting for hands. It was the kind of detail I'd written and then forgotten about—comfort in a world that usually wanted to kill you.

But my eyes went straight to the chest.

Wooden, simple, placed dead center. Carved with the blazing insignia of the sun.

I laughed. I actually laughed—loud, cracked, mad. Because it was here. Because my gamble had worked. Because my knowledge still mattered.

Kneeling, I opened the chest.

Inside lay an orb, small and brilliant, like someone had trapped a piece of the sun and told it to wait. It spun in slow circles, radiating heat and life. 

And then the system prompt appeared before me, bright as fire:

[Will you accept the Primordial Core of the Sun God, Helios?]

I smiled, teeth flashing in the light. Big brain, Park Suhoo. Big brain.

"Accept," I whispered. Then, darkness. 

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