The forest path opened before him like a throat. Fifty yards of packed dirt stretched ahead before the tree line thickened into shadow. Birdsong exploded from the canopy overhead. Sharp trills and guttural caws layering over each other in chaotic harmony. Something chittered in the underbrush to his left, and Kellen decided not to investigate what that something was.
He adjusted the pack on his shoulder. The strap dug in hard enough to promise a bruise later. This is fine, he told himself. Just stick to the path. Minimize profile. Minimize risk. Don't do anything stupid.
The trail was all dirt and gnarled roots that seemed specifically designed to catch ankles. Oak gave way to pine, and the canopy thickened overhead, choking the sunlight down to scattered beams that barely reached the forest floor. The air smelled like rotting leaves and something sharper. Sap, maybe, or fungus. Kellen walked for an hour, avoiding the wider game trails. The Codex warmed against his ribs, a constant low-level thrum of awareness that meant not dead yet.
No notifications. Good.
He reached a bottleneck. A narrow space between two moss-slick boulders, choked with rotting deadfall. A massive oak trunk sprawled across the path like a gatekeeper. Three feet high, maybe four.
Keep moving. Don't look like prey.
Simple movement puzzle. Root cluster as a step, vault the trunk, land on the flat stone beyond. Kellen had calculated harder trajectories a thousand times in simulations. Which, as it turned out, meant exactly jack shit in a body that had never vaulted anything.
He broke into a jog, planted his foot on the root cluster, and launched himself forward.
His boot caught the lip of the log. Just the edge, just enough. His ankle twisted with a hot spike of pain that shot straight up his leg. Momentum did it's worst, slamming him face-first into bark that scraped his palms raw and made his teeth click together hard enough to taste copper. He tumbled over the log and landed in a heap on the other side, tailbone connecting with a rock in a way that made his spine light up like a fireworks display.
"Fuck." The word came out as a wheeze.
Kellen pushed himself upright, hissing through his teeth. His hands were bleeding. He flexed his fingers. The skin on his right palm had torn in a diagonal line from thumb to pinky.
Dexterity isn't just a stat, he thought, staring at the blood. He'd known that intellectually, the way he'd known that fire was hot and fall damage was real. Turned out reading it in a manual was different from learning it with his face. No muscle memory. No proprioception training. Just a gamer's brain in a vessel that had probably never climbed anything taller than a flight of stairs.
His ankle throbbed. Not sprained, he could still put weight on it, but definitely tweaked.
Walk it off.
He limped forward.
Ten minutes later, just long enough for Kellen to start thinking he might actually survive this, the rustling started.
At first, he thought it was wind. The canopy above swayed in rhythmic waves. But the sound was coming from ground level, from the underbrush to his left. A dry, scraping noise, like claws on bark.
The creature burst from the bushes.
[THREAT DETECTED: Void Rat]
Level: 3
Threat Assessment: Moderate
The thing was wrong on every possible level. Size of a mastiff, but built like a greyhound that had been starved, stretched, and reassembled by someone who'd only seen dogs in nightmares. Its fur was patchy. Black and translucent white in splotches that showed raw, wet skin underneath.
It hissed.
Kellen's hands moved on instinct. No incantation. No ritual circle. Just a flick of his wrist and a pulse of mana.
[QUICK SUMMON ACTIVATED]
Cast Time: 0.4 seconds
The Stone Toad materialized between them with a wet thump.
[SUMMON: Stone Toad] (Common)
Level: 4
Role: Tank
Mana Cost: 15
Four feet wide, squat and lumpen, skin the color of wet granite. It opened its mouth in a threat display.
Perfect. Classic hammer-and-anvil. Toad takes the hits, Kellen strikes from...
The rat ignored the toad entirely. It lunged. Not at the summon, but at Kellen.
He tried to sidestep, but his tweaked ankle gave out beneath him. His weight shifted wrong. The rat's jaws clamped down on his left calf, teeth punching through fabric and skin in one vicious snap.
The pain was immediate and educational. The kind of lesson that bypassed the brain entirely and went straight to the screaming reflex. A white-hot spike shot from his leg up through his spine, and Kellen discovered that yes, he could in fact hit notes he'd thought were reserved for opera sopranos. The teeth were inside him, grinding away like the world's worst dental appointment.
"Dismiss!"
The Stone Toad vanished. The rat braced itself, shaking its head, tearing at the muscle. Kellen's vision swam. He couldn't aim the toad while grappling. He needed distance.
Blind it.
He slammed his hand onto the Codex. No incantation. Just intent.
[QUICK SUMMON ACTIVATED]
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Cast Time: 0.4 seconds
The Glimmerling materialized in the rat's face like a hummingbird-moth made of photons.
[SUMMON: Glimmerling] (Uncommon)
Level: 3
Role: Support
Mana Cost: 6
Detonate.
The summon exploded in a flashbang of holy light that stripped the shadows from the clearing. The rat shrieked, its pupils contracting to pinpricks. Its jaw loosened just a fraction. Just enough for Kellen to kick it in the nose and scramble backward, dragging his shredded leg across the dirt.
The rat shook its head, still dazed, blinking milky tears from its eyes. It turned back toward him, growling.
The fear drained out of Kellen all at once, replaced by something hotter and meaner. His hands were shaking. Not from terror anymore, but from pure, crystallized rage.
[SUMMON: Stone Toad]
He cast the target reticle three feet above the rat's spine. The toad materialized. Kellen felt the mana drain like ice water in his veins, fifteen points gone in a heartbeat. Gravity did what gravity does...
CRUNCH.
The sound it made was less 'battle' and more 'hydraulic press versus watermelon.' Kellen stared at the tuft of black fur sticking out from under the toad's belly. It twitched.
"Dismiss."
The toad vanished. Kellen ground his teeth. The pain in his leg was a white-hot fire, but the anger was hotter.
"Not dead enough."
He pointed his finger. "Again!"
[SUMMON: Stone Toad]
CRUNCH.
"Dismiss. Again."
CRUNCH.
He was starting to suspect this wasn't what the Codex's original designers had in mind, but they weren't here getting chewed on by demon rats, so their opinions didn't count.
"AGAIN!"
CRUNCH.
He let the toad sit there for a long moment, chest heaving, listening to the echoes fade into the forest. The rat was no longer an adversary. It was a geological survey.
"Dismiss."
Kellen stared at what used to be a rat and was now a black paste. His leg throbbed in perfect counterpoint to his heartbeat. "That was very stupid." He shifted his weight, winced, and added, "But worth it."
He scooped up a handful of the black paste. It had the texture of wet cigarette ash mixed with hair gel, because apparently the universe hated him specifically.
Oryn had mentioned Banishing. Something about recovering mana. Kellen focused on the Codex, willing the interface to show him how.
Text flickered across his vision:
[TRIAD OF CHOICE]
Select Umbral disposition:
[BIND] - Tether Umbral to Codex (Permanent)
[ABSORB] - Consume essence for growth
[BANISH] - Deconstruct binding, recover mana
Requirements:
- Target must be defeated (non-hostile)
- Structural integrity: ≥60% for Bind
- Structural integrity: ≥40% for Banish
Kellen stared at the requirements. Structural integrity: ≥40% for Banish.
He looked down at the black paste in his hand. The thing that used to be a rat.
"You have got to be kidding me."
The paste wasn't 40% intact. It wasn't even 10% intact. It was paste.
He did the math in his head. One Stone Toad for defense. One Glimmerling, six mana, detonated, maybe two back. Then three Stone Toads dropped like anvils and dismissed right after impact. Fifteen mana each, but he'd gotten partial refunds. Four or five mana back per toad.
Fifty-one mana spent. Roughly thirty back.
Twenty-one mana net.
He pulled up his status. Mana: 99/120. No regen. He'd burned a fifth of his tank turning a Level 3 rat into paste, and because he'd pulverized it so thoroughly, he couldn't even Banish it for a refill.
"I guess banishing is off the table... maybe absorption is the way to go?"
He takes the black paste and presses it against the gem on the Codex's cover.
"Eat up, you creepy little bastard."
The Codex hummed. The gem glowed with a faint, eager light. Text flickered:
[BIOMASS ACCEPTED]
"Well someone's a hungry, hungry hummingbird..."
More text flickered:
[RODENT SUMMON MASTERY]
Progress: 15/90 XP
Mastery Level 1
Kellen blinked. "I guess it still counts as a Rodent."
He stared at the notification, piecing it together. Absorb didn't just give him generic XP, it leveled up species-specific masteries. Which meant if he kept absorbing rats, he'd get better at summoning rats. And if he wanted to actually summon a rat instead of just dropping toads on them, he'd need to Bind one first.
More rats. He needed to find more rats.
And maybe not turn the next one into paste.
Then the bushes rustled again. To his right. Then to his left. Then from the canopy above.
Kellen froze. The Codex flashed, text scrolling so fast it blurred: Threat Detected: Void-Rat (Lvl 2). Threat Detected: Void-Rat (Lvl 3). Warning: Swarm Signature Detected.
There weren't two. There were twenty. Maybe thirty. The underbrush was alive with them.
"Shit! Too many rats! Too many!"
The noise, Kellen realized, the blood draining from his face. When I dropped those toad! The impacts. I rang the dinner bell.
The alpha lunged.
Kellen fell into a rhythm born of pure terror. Target, summon, crunch, dismiss. The mana drained in jagged chunks—sixty-four, fifty-two, forty—but the rats kept coming. He crushed one mid-leap, its body folding like wet paper under the toad's granite belly. He dropped another on a cluster of three, liquefying them into a smear of fur and ichor.
The pile of corpses grew into a wall, a rampart of gore that made the living rats hesitate.
One more. The alpha of the second wave. A scarred brute with missing ears. It coiled to spring.
Kellen pointed. "Summon!"
The toad dropped. The rat vanished under the granite belly.
CRUNCH.
The remaining rats hissed, sniffing the air. The scent of pulverized kin filled the clearing, sharp and metallic. They hesitated.
Kellen scrambled backward, dragging his shredded leg. "Dismiss."
The toad vanished. His mana sat at four points. Barely enough to summon a spark, let alone another toad. He raised his hand anyway.
Bluff. Just bluff.
"Come on!" he roared, voice cracking. "Who's next?"
The rats stared at him with empty black eyes. Then, as one, they turned and melted back into the shadows. Not fear. Disinterest. The prey was too much trouble.
Silence rushed back into the clearing, heavier than before.
Kellen slumped against a tree, which was probably the most dignified thing he'd done all day. His chest heaved like he'd just run a marathon. A marathon where the finish line was 'not being eaten'.
He looked at the battlefield. Twelve dead rats. Maybe fifteen. A fortune in XP lying there, waiting to be harvested.
The Codex warmed against his ribs, and text scrolled across his vision in clean, minimalist lines:
[COMBAT COMPLETE]
+127 XP | Void-Rat Swarm defeated (x14)
WARNING: Mana depleted (4/100)
Kellen blinked at the notification. One hundred and twenty-seven experience. That was... substantial. The kind of gain that would've taken him a week of safe grinding back in Sol-Arcadia. Apparently murder-by-amphibian was an efficient leveling strategy, even if it wasn't exactly sustainable.
He tried to stand. His vision swam.
No mana. No protection.
He could banish them. The ritual itself was free. But the swarm hadn't left. They were watching from the treeline, eyes flaring in the underbrush. A low, collective hiss filled the clearing, vibrating in his chest.
It was the first sign that wild Umbrals weren't just mindless aggression. They attacked because he had invaded their territory.
Which meant Kellen... down to fumes in the mana tank... was the asshole who'd stumbled into their living room and started dropping toads on the furniture.
"Fine," he whispered, stepping back. "Keep it."
He dragged himself upright, wincing as his calf muscle protested. He didn't have enough mana to cast Lesser Heal... not that he could cast it anyway. He'd never learned a secondary class, but now Healer seemed appealing.
One foot forward, he told himself.
He started walking.
The first hundred yards were agony. Every step sent fire lancing up his calf, the makeshift bandage already soaking through. He ripped another strip from his cloak and tied it tighter, a tourniquet that made him see stars but slowed the bleeding to a seep.
[VITAL STATISTICS]
Condition: Injured - Leg Wound (72%)
Stamina: 28/100
Mana: 4/120
Damage Reduction: 2%
By the time the sun dropped below the canopy, he'd covered maybe half a mile.
Night was coming. And the forest knew he was empty.