The back door of the Adventurer's Guild did not lead to a street, but to a purgatory of mud and misery.
Leo spent the night shivering in the lee of a stinking dumpster in the alley, the brand on his hand a dull, persistent throb in the darkness. Dawn came not with sunlight, but with a grey, suffocating fog that seeped from the nearby river and clung to the cobblestones like a wet shroud. He was roused not by a kind voice, but by the toe of a guard's boot nudging his ribs.
"Up, Defective. Your new master awaits," the guard grunted, his face a mask of bored disdain.
Disoriented, stiff, and hollow with a hunger that had moved past pain into a cold emptiness, Leo stumbled to his feet. He was led not through the grand front gates, but around the side of the colossal guild complex, through a warren of service yards that grew progressively more decrepit. The polished marble and gleaming windows of the Quest Hall gave way to stained limestone, then to rough-hewn timber sheds, and finally to a vast, reeking enclosure of packed earth and rotting wood that seemed to breathe out a miasma of animal sweat, dung, and despair.
This was the Guild's underbelly: the Menagerie and Stables. Not for the glorious steeds of knights or the exotic familiars of mages, but for the common dray horses, the stubborn mules, and the low-level creatures used for training, manual labour, or simply as living fodder for higher-level beasts.
A man emerged from a low, smoke-stained shack that seemed to lean against the main stable wall for support. He was built like a barrel, with arms thick as ham hocks and a face that looked like it had been used to break rocks. A stained leather apron covered his front, and he held a chipped clay mug of something that steamed and smelled fiercely of cheap spirits. This was Janus, Stablemaster of the Filth.
He didn't look at Leo's face. His eyes went straight to the boy's left hand, where the yellow brand glowed faintly even in the grey morning light. A snort, more contempt than laughter, escaped him.
"Another one," Janus rumbled, his voice like gravel shifting in a bucket. "Thorne's trash heap grows. You'll do for the pits. Come."
The shack's interior was a cave of clutter: rusted tools, coiled rope of dubious strength, barrels of feed that had long ago ceased to be appetizing. The air was thick with dust and the smell of mildew. Janus rummaged in a corner without ceremony and tossed a bundle at Leo's feet.
"Put 'em on. Try not to ruin 'em. They're Guild property."
The bundle contained a pair of stiff, canvas coveralls, stained with a history of unspeakable fluids, and a pair of leather boots so large they looked like they were made for a giant. They were cracked, the soles worn smooth in places, and they smelled profoundly of someone else's feet and old manure.
"My… my clothes?" Leo asked, his voice small.
Janus took a slurp from his mug. "You think you're mucking Rock Rat pens in your Sunday best? Change. Or stand there in your smalls. Don't care."
The humiliation was a physical burn, worse than the brand. Leo turned his back, his cheeks flaming, and shuffled out of his worn but clean tunic and breeches. The coveralls were coarse and itchy, the seams digging into his skin. The boots swallowed his feet; he had to clench his toes to keep them on. He felt like a child playing dress-up in a monster's skin.
Janus gave him an appraising, utterly unimpressed look. "Too tall, too thin. You'll snap in a breeze. But the rats don't care. Follow."
They stopped at a slop sink outside the shack. Janus gestured to a collection of handles leaning against the wall. They were the skeletons of tools—broken shovels, a rake missing half its teeth, and, leaning forlornly against the rest, a mop.
It was a pathetic thing. The wooden handle was dark with grime and splintered in places, worn smooth by countless uncaring hands. The mop head, once perhaps white, was now a uniform grey-brown, matted into stiff, foul-smelling clumps. It looked less like a tool and more like a dead animal.
"Your weapon," Janus said, a grim parody of a knight bestowing a sword. He picked it up and thrust it at Leo. "You break it, you mend it. You lose it, you work with your hands. This," he tapped the disgusting head, "is for the wet work. The pens get flooded twice a day. You push the water and the shit into the runoff channels. That's your holy purpose, Defective. You are a mover of filth. Understand?"
Leo took the mop. It was heavier than it looked, the handle slick. A small, transparent box appeared in his vision, superimposed over the tool.
ITEM: WORN MOP
DURABILITY: 3/10
EFFECTS: NONE
NOTE: GUILD PROPERTY. LOSS OR DAMAGE WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM ALLOWANCE.
An allowance he didn't even know he had. A weapon that couldn't harm a fly. He nodded mutely.
Janus led him to his kingdom: Pen Seven, the Rock Rat enclosure. It was a sunken area the size of a small house, walled with rough stone. The floor was a slurry of mud, straw, dung, and scraps of rotten vegetation. And everywhere, there were the rats.
Rock Rats were not vermin of the cellar. They were burrowers, the size of large cats, with coarse, grey-brown fur, powerful digging claws, and blunt, stubborn faces. They were Level 0, utterly worthless in terms of XP, but they were prolific, resilient, and their dung was collected for some alchemical process Leo didn't want to imagine. They squeaked, they grunted, they rooted through the muck. They completely ignored the two humans.
"Water's already in," Janus said, pointing to a slow-flowing stream from an iron pipe that was flooding one corner of the pen. "Push it all to that grate there. Use the squeegee on the walls after. I'll be back at noon. If I see a dry patch, you skip supper."
Then he was gone, leaving Leo alone in the pit with his mop, his oversized boots, and a hundred indifferent monsters.
The first hour was pure, unadulterated hell. The mop was unwieldy. The water, heavy with filth, resisted his pushes. The boots, filled with icy slurry, became leaden weights. Every time he thought he'd made progress, a rat would amble through, churning up the mud behind it. The stench was a living thing—ammonia, rot, wet animal—it coated his tongue, filled his lungs. His back screamed. His arms trembled.
He saw other workers in distant pens, moving with the slow, resigned efficiency of the damned. None looked his way. He was just another part of the scenery, a slightly taller, sadder piece of refuse.
Despair, which had been a cold lump in his chest, now became a hot, choking fog. This was his life. This endless, pointless moving of waste. The grand, terrifying mystery of his Mythic skill felt like a cruel joke played by a malicious universe. Arcane Replication. What a farce. Here, the only thing replicating was the filth.
During a moment of exhaustion, leaning on his mop handle and fighting the urge to retch, a flicker of soft green light caught his eye from the adjacent pen.
Pen Six housed Glitterhens, flightless birds with iridescent feathers that were plucked for petty ornaments. They were skittish things. A young girl, perhaps his age, was moving among them. She wore the same stained coveralls, but they were cinched tight with rope to fit her slender frame. Her hair, the colour of wheat straw, was tied back in a messy braid.
One of the hens, spooked by something, was flapping and darting in a panic, threatening to start a chain reaction among the others. The girl didn't chase it. She simply raised a hand, palm out. A gentle, leafy-green light, soft as dappled sunlight, emanated from her fingertips. The light washed over the agitated bird. Instantly, its frantic movements ceased. It let out a soft brrrk, settled onto the straw, and began preening its feathers as if nothing had happened.
SKILL DETECTED: [CALM ANIMAL]
The notification was clinical, but the sight was anything but. It was the first gentle, purposeful magic Leo had witnessed since his own disaster. It was quiet, useful, kind.
Then the girl turned slightly, reaching for a feed bucket. The movement pulled her coverall sleeve back, and on the back of her left hand, Leo saw it: the same sickly, persistent yellow glow. The Brand.
Their eyes met across the wooden fence that separated the pens. Her eyes were a calm, clear grey, like the river stone. In them, he saw no pity, no camaraderie, no shared rebellion. He saw only a reflection of his own hollow exhaustion, and a deep, quiet resignation. She held his gaze for a second, then looked down and went back to her work, the green light already forgotten. No words were exchanged. None were needed. They were citizens of the same cursed country.
The noon bell clanged, a dull, jarring sound. Leo's arms were trembling noodles, his back a single solid ache. He had, perhaps, cleared a quarter of the pen. Janus appeared at the rim, looking down at his work. His expression didn't change.
"Pathetic. But expected." He climbed down into the pen, his own boots, stout and practical, making solid impressions in the muck.
As he passed a particularly large, dozing Rock Rat that was blocking the main channel, he didn't swerve. He didn't even break stride. He simply lifted his heavy, hobnailed boot and brought it down on the creature's head with a casual, brutal CRUNCH.
It wasn't a stomp of anger. It was an administrative gesture. The rat ceased to be a minor obstacle. Leo flinched at the sound, a sharp, wet finality.
But his System saw more. As Janus's boot descended, Leo saw a brief, sharp flash of earthy brown light solidify around the sole for a fraction of a second, just at the moment of impact. It was fast, efficient, and utterly lethal.
A new notification seared itself across his vision, bright and urgent, utterly different from the passive detection of [Calm Animal].
SKILL DETECTED: [POWER STRIKE]
WITNESSED IN USE.
INITIATING REPLICATION...
...REPLICATION COMPLETE.
COPY SLOT OCCUPIED: [POWER STRIKE] (0/100 MP)
Leo's breath hitched. His heart, which had been trudging along in a dirge, gave a sudden, hard thump. He stared at Janus's retreating back, then down at the very dead rat, its skull flattened.
Power Strike. A Common combat skill. The most basic way to channel mana into a physical blow. Every guard, every low-level adventurer had it. It was utterly mundane.
But it was real. It was tangible. It made a boot into a hammer. It had a name, and now, according to his System, it was in him. Locked in some internal slot, waiting.
Janus had killed the rat not with overwhelming strength, but with a skill. A tiny, common flicker of power Leo's broken, Mythic ability had somehow… stolen? Copied?
For the first time since touching the Stone, the crushing weight of despair cracked. Not shattered, but cracked. A single, narrow beam of cold, clear light pierced the fog in his mind.
It wasn't hope. It was something harder, sharper: calculation.
If his skill could copy… and if the copied skill needed something called "MP" to master… and if Janus got MP by using it to kill…
Leo looked down at his own hands, clutching the filthy mop handle. He looked at the dozens of remaining Rock Rats, grubbing in their own waste, their lives worth less than the dirt they stood on.
A strange, foreign thought took root in the frozen tundra of his mind.
What if… I could do that too?