The "small sun" in my stomach was a tyrant.
It was no longer just silent and cold, or merely pulsing weakly. Now, it was the center of everything. Every breath, every heartbeat, felt like it orbited its biting warmth. The power I felt after destroying the Spirit Ore had not subsided. My muscles were tense, full of energy I couldn't discharge. My mind was clear, sharp, but behind that clarity was a faint hiss—the whisper of the tyrant.
Hunger.
That word was no longer a feeling. It was a command etched into every cell of my body.
Old Man looked at me from across the cell, his eyes like two black holes in his wrinkled face. "It's awake, and now you must feed it. Or it will eat you from the inside." His words were not a prophecy, but a statement of fact, like saying water is wet.
I didn't answer. I just stared at my charred hand. The skin was blackened and peeling, but underneath, new skin had formed rapidly, pink and too smooth for a slave's skin. An unnatural healing process. A gift and a reminder of the price to pay.
The cell door opened. Not Borok, but one of the low-ranking overseers.
"Wa Lang. Overseer Yan summons you."
I was taken not to the stone room, but to a place I had never seen: a small laboratory located behind the guard post. The room was filled with shelves containing glass jars of strange fluids, preserved animal organs, and human bone fragments carved with dark symbols. In the middle of the room was a stone table with restraints.
My heart pounded. My "Seed" reacted to this environment, pulsing with anticipation.
Overseer Yan stood in front of a leather blackboard, covered in scrawled formulas and diagrams I didn't understand. He turned as I entered.
"Condition report," he ordered, while wiping his hands with a cloth.
"The strength... still lingers, Sir," I answered carefully. "But there is hunger. Very strong. And my hand..." I showed my half-healed hand.
He approached, examining my hand closely without touching it. "Accelerated healing. A side effect of absorbing pure energy, albeit toxic." His eyes gleamed. "And that hunger is natural. A parasite that has tasted fresh blood will never be satisfied with scraps again."
He pointed to the stone table. "Lie down."
The command was cold and merciless. I obeyed, fear and hope battling in my chest. He picked up a thin, shiny scalpel and a stone plate.
"This is a measurement," he said as he bound my wrist. "I need to know how large your 'Seed's' capacity is, and how deep the symbiotic bond has formed."
Before I could protest, the tip of the blade sliced my forearm. The pain was sharp. Blood flowed, dripping onto the stone plate.
But that wasn't the most shocking part.
The most shocking part was the reaction of my "Seed."
It erupted.
The hunger turned into a frenzy. A strong, savage pull emerged from the pit of my stomach, sucking something out of me. Not blood, but something deeper. Life. Spirit.
The wound on my hand did not heal. Instead, the skin around it began to wrinkle and fade, like a flower withering in the scorching sun. I felt a weakness so rapid, so terrible, spreading throughout my body. The "sun" in my stomach turned out to be a black hole eating its parent star—myself.
"Sir... please..." I groaned, my voice already weak.
Overseer Yan carefully observed this process, taking notes on the leather. "Interesting. Without an external energy source, it will consume its host at an exponential rate. The stronger it gets, the greater its need."
He poured a little "Pure Spirit Water" over my wound. The flow of cool energy was like oxygen for a drowning man. My "Seed" snatched that energy, and the maddening hunger subsided for a moment. My body's natural healing process resumed, albeit slowly.
He released my restraints. I got up, trembling, my body covered in cold sweat. I had almost died on that table. Not by the knife, but by the creature inside me.
"Do you understand now, Wa Lang?" asked Overseer Yan, putting down his scalpel. "This is no longer about surviving Borok or poison. This is a race against time. You must keep giving it the 'food' it desires. If not, it will eat you alive."
He gave me a small leather pouch containing three small, dull green Spirit Ores. Their energy was weak and impure.
"This is your ration for today. Survive."
I left the laboratory with a terrifying understanding. I was no longer human. I was a prison for a hungry creature, and the prison bars were slowly eroding my life.
When I returned to the mining area, the stares I received were different. Not hatred or envy, but fear mixed with grim curiosity. "Stone-Eater." They made way for me.
Borok saw me, and for the first time, he did not approach. He just watched from a distance, like looking at a wounded wild animal.
Old Man approached me as I sat in the corner, staring at the three small stones in my hand.
"I told you," he whispered. "Now you understand. It gives you power, but that power is a whip driving you towards your own grave. Or..." he paused, his eyes narrowing, "...towards something else."
"Or what?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
"Or you find a way to tame the tyrant. To reverse the relationship. To make it submit to you, not you becoming its slave." His words sounded like delusion. But in this insane world, delusion was the only hope.
I gripped the first Spirit Ore. My "Seed" snorted, smelling it. I focused, not on its hunger, but on the connection between us. I tried, with all my will to live, to direct that hunger. To control its flow.
As the chaotic, weak energy began to flow into my hand, the pain was still there. But this time, I didn't let it flood in. I tried to dam it, regulate it, filter it before my "Seed" sucked it dry.
It was like trying to tame a raging river with both hands. Nearly impossible. But, for a brief moment, before the stone crumbled, I felt a sliver of control. The hunger subsided a little more orderly, no longer like a frenzy.
I looked at Old Man. There was an almost imperceptible nod from him.
The race against time had begun. I had to become stronger, faster than my own "Seed." I had to learn to be the master of the thirsty little sun inside me, before it burned my entire self to ashes.
And the first lesson was: power always has a price. And the price is yourself, bit by bit.
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