The forest behind Valerius receded like a curtain being drawn. The further he walked, the lighter the air became, until at last the black canopy thinned and he stepped into a ruined courtyard where stone had once held prayers. Moss ate the steps. Vines braided over the toppled altars. Statues with blank faces lay cracked and half-buried. The silence felt old—older than the lives that flitted through the nearby towns.
He paused at the threshold and felt the shrine's residue brush against him like an appraisal. A soft warmth, a memory of incense and voices now gone, settled around his shoulders.
Ding.
The Eternal Sovereign System's light appeared—calm, unannounced.
⸻
[Eternal Sovereign System — Local Sync Complete]
Location: Shrine of Shattered Dawn (Ruins)
Ambient Energy: Faint Astral Residue (fragmented)
Knowledge Cache: Basic Local Lore Available
Recommended Action: Learn, absorb, proceed to local settlement.
⸻
Valerius crouched to the cracked altar and let the system extract what remained—fragments of history and practical knowledge: maps of Ashen Vale, a summary of its cultivation structure, and the economy of spirit-currency used across villages and towns.
He read, voice low, absorbing the basics in a single glance.
Bronze Essence Coins — common small-value currency.
Silver Spirit Coins — moderate.
Gold Astral Coins — rare, used for higher training and equipment.
Crimson Core Coins — the prize of legends and desperate bargains.
Nearby towns used mission halls — public boards where residents and merchants posted tasks. Hunters, cultivators, and mercenaries took jobs, turned in proof, and were paid in spirit currency or items: herb bundles, beast pelts, spirit cores. If you had no coin, you took a mission. If you were strong, you took the dangerous missions for better pay.
Valerius rubbed his palm along the altar stone as if feeling the world's contours. He had no coin. He had his vows, his system, and the hunger for strength.
He rose and followed the ridge of the hill. In the near distance a small township stirred around a sturdy palisade—smoke from kitchens, traders arguing about prices, cultivators boasting loud enough to bore holes in his ears. He walked toward the town with the casual gravity of someone who owned nothing but time and iron will.
At the town's center, a tall post held dozens of tacked parchments and a ledger guarded by a thin, curt clerk. The mission hall thrummed with activity. People pointed, shouted, and scrolled through requests. It was a market for risk and coin.
Valerius scanned the board. Routine tasks lined the edges—herb gathering, escorting merchants, clearing a single low-tier beast—small profits. Closer to the center were the bigger rewards: calls to hunt a corrupted stag, recover a spirit core, or hunt a pack of mid-tier predators. Each posting was stamped by someone of local authority. Each had coordinates, proof requirements, and a reward.
His pouch at his waist was empty. The habit of checking it was muscle memory now. He had learned the currency names, the economy's cadence. He needed coin. He needed materials. He needed a way to train.
He hadn't decided which posted job to take when the system intervened.
[System Notice]
Host Status: Indecisive; No funds.
Action: Selecting optimal mission from local mission hall for Host.
Mission Selected (Public Posting ID: T-032): Eliminate Two-Tailed Shadow Blood Wolf (Low-Tier Arcane Beast) — Coordinates attached.
System Reward Commitment: 30 Bronze Essence Coins + 1 Spirit-Level Cultivation Technique upon completion (System Guarantee).
Note: Posting is public; mission remains listed. System chooses Host's optimal path; reward will be paid to Host upon verified completion.
⸻
Valerius narrowed his eyes. The mission existed on the board—someone, likely the town administration or a local trader, had posted it. It was not conjured by the Eternal Sovereign System; rather, the system had chosen this posted job as the quickest path to both coin and battle experience for him. It promised to secure the payment and grant an extra reward directly through system guarantees. In short: the world posted the job, but the system ensured he would be the one to profit if he succeeded.
A slow smile crawled over his face. Fate found a neat way to do business with him now.
He took the coordinates and left the town without fanfare. The road quickly surrendered to wild roots and the low moan of old trees. The system pulsed quietly, receptive, patient. Valerius's mood was no longer of a mild curiosity; it had settled into the cold calculation of one who needed to climb.
The coordinates led him deeper into a denser copse. The smell of wicked blood threaded the air—sharp, metallic, recent. He crouched and followed prints: deep claw gouges pressed in the soft earth, multiple sets overlapping. The trail was messy. Beasts had run through, not a single solitary wolf's path. Three distinct patterns marched in a tight triangle, cutting across one another as if they traveled as a pack.
He frowned. The mission posting named only one Two-Tailed Shadow Blood Wolf.
Either the original poster was mistaken—or deliberately deceptive.
Valerius moved silent as the dark between trees and arrived at a clearing where the world was less a forest and more a battlefield. Blood soaked the grass. Torn cloth and smashed shields bore witness to a violent struggle. Two men—both loose cultivators by their dress and manner—were locked in mortal combat with three enormous shadow-wolves, each the size of a warhorse with twin sweeping tails and thick fur like a void.
They were losing.
Two of the wolves tore at the traders' flank; one had been forced back by sheer desperation. A man with a severed sleeve was screaming and clawed at a beast's muzzle while another halted and tried to cast a fragile spell that fizzled and popped against the beast's aura. Both were wounded, both exhausted; both had the look of men who had reached the end of a rope and were trying to swing it back.
They saw Valerius at once.
"Brother! Please!" one rasped between labored breaths, blood streaking his cheek. "Help us! We'll split the reward, we swear—"
Another roar drowned him. The wolf slammed into the man and he flew, rolling, arm broken. He landed at Valerius's feet, eyes wide and pleading.
For a second all the old reflexes—duty, guilt, habit—flared like flint. It would have been so natural to step into the clearing, to fling his body between beast and man, to throw himself into the fray as he once would have. The man's life would have mattered. He would likely have acted.
The new thing inside him—the thing that had sworn never to be "too good" again—tightened like a blade. He didn't move.
They kept begging. Blood and tears mixed. Their pleas turned from hope to prayer to frantic bargaining. They called his name, misreading him for some local lord or rich hunter. They promised him food, shelter, a share of the gold. Their words were a lifeline thrown in a storm.
Valerius listened. He let them beg until their lungs failed.
A wolf ripped the throat of one and the sound ended the bargain.
The other man, in a fit of desperate rage, ripped a dagger from his belt and struck clean through the flank of one wolf. The beast howled and collapsed under a rain of blood. They had managed to kill one—barely—and lay panting, eyes gone hollow.
Valerius still did not move.
Silence swallowed the clearing except for the labored breathing of the dying and the steady growls of two remaining wolves who now regarded him with hungry calculation. They had watched the scene—the failed pleas, the sacrificial attack, the sudden collapse—and now their attention narrowed into a single new target: Valerius.
He stepped forward then, not with urgency but with deliberation. The world seemed to inhale before he acted. The wolves lunged; the forest vibrated like a struck drum.
He moved with a speed that did not belong to a man of his measured build—an instinctive, calibrated speed. The first wolf tried to tear his shoulder; he sidestepped, a fluid motion that left the beast slamming into a tree with a broken rib. He seized the moment and drove his forearm into its skull. Bones fractured with a crunch that echoed in the clearing.
The second wolf struck from behind—its twin tails lashing like whips. Valerius twisted, grabbed the tail, and used its momentum to spin the beast around and break its spine against the same tree. It collapsed in a shuddering heap.
He tore the beasts' heads free—cruel proof, practical and necessary—and set them aside. He did not linger over the dead. There was no triumph in his face. Instead, there was a cold, clinical satisfaction of someone who had accepted a calculus: coin for proof, power for experience, life for nothing. Ding.
The system rewarded as promised.
⸻
[System Notice]
Mission Verified: Public Posting ID: T-032 (Two-Tailed Shadow Blood Wolf — x3)
Completion Status: Host Verified (Evidence: Beast Heads; Time & Location Match)
Reward Released: 30 Bronze Essence Coins (Credited) + Spirit-Level Cultivation Technique "Abyssal Shadow Devouring Art" (Unlocked & Bound to Host)
Stat Increase: +3 Strength, +2 Constitution.
System Comment: "Host performance meets baseline. Continue progression. Further trials required for technique mastery."
⸻
Valerius felt the coins weightless in his mind—the system's credit: a small fortune for now, a breath of security. The cultivation technique's name glowed darkly in his vision as if already whispering possibilities of hunger and absorption. He allowed himself a narrow smile.
The two fallen men lay a short distance away, their faces pale, their chests still. No pity rose in him. They had misread the world. They had assumed a stranger's mercy was owed simply because they begged. The currency of Ashen Vale was strength—and he had taken what was his by contract.
He gathered the beast heads and set his course for the mission hall. His steps did not quicken. The town would take the posted proof, release the public reward if the posting's author or clerk verified, and the system would push the bonus into his account. The world and the system had both paid. He had been efficient. He had been decisive. He had been cold.
As he walked back through the dim trees, the system sent one last, soft prompt.
⸻
[System Passive Notification]
Technique Details: Abyssal Shadow Devouring Art — A spirit-level technique allowing host to channel abyssal shadow to consume and absorb life energy from beasts and weaker cultivators. Initial mastery requires stage-based trials. Technique scales with Host's Abyssal Sovereign Body. Forbidden under certain jurisdictions.
⸻
Valerius's lips curved—not with compassion, but with the dangerous hunger of someone who had been given a new tool and decided to use it without remorse.
The shrine's ruined stones fell away behind him like the shadow of a past life. In front of him lay coin, technique, and a path he had chosen: not the road of selfless kindness—but the sharp, efficient avenue of sovereign ascent.
He stepped forward.
The Eternal Sovereign System pulsed in answer.
His new life's cadence had a single, brutal rhythm now: survive, grow, dominate.
And he would not be good again.