The number burned into Ethan's vision, glowing with an unnatural, silver light that seemed to pulse in sync with his racing heart.
[Total Experience Earned: 1,000,000 EXP]
One million. To a student who had spent the last four years carefully calculating every single silver coin, every page of a textbook, and every scrap of food, a number of that magnitude felt entirely abstract. It was an impossible wealth of power, delivered by a cold machine for the price of a broken river stone and a ruined pocket knife.
Ethan dragged his gaze away from the text and scanned the small clearing. The dead Shadow Hound lay motionless at his feet, its dark, foul-smelling blood slowly sinking into the mossy ground. The forest around him remained quiet, save for the steady rustling of leaves and the gentle murmur of the nearby stream. He was completely alone. The isolation requirement was met.
He closed his eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, and mentally reached out to the floating text. *Claim.*
The moment the thought formed, the silver letters shattered into a thousand microscopic points of light that rushed directly into his chest.
Ethan's eyes snapped open, but he saw nothing but blinding, absolute whiteness. The physical restructuring didn't start with a gentle warmth; it hit him like a tidal wave of molten iron poured directly into his veins.
He didn't even have the breath to scream. Every single muscle fiber in his body tore itself apart and knit back together in a fraction of a second. The deep, heavy fatigue that had settled into his bones from years of starvation and sleepless nights in the Westmere library was violently incinerated. He could feel his bone density shifting, hardening, while the dull ache in his chest from the Hound's blunt impact vanished as if it had never existed.
The air around him began to warp. A localized pressure wave rippled outward from his body, flattening the clover and moss for three paces in every direction. The water in the shallow stream hissed, tiny plumes of steam rising where the ambient heat of his breakthrough radiated into the cold current.
[Profound physical restructuring in progress...]
[Host attributes aligning with accumulated energy.]
[Level 1 -> Level 2 -> Level 5 -> Level 10...]
The notifications flashed in a dizzying, vertical blur, too fast for his human mind to track. His perception of time stretched. Every second felt like an eternity spent drowning in pure, unadulterated power. He could hear the individual drops of water splashing against the river stones; he could smell the trace elements of sulfur hidden deep within the dead beast's fur.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the blinding light receded, and the crushing pressure snapped back inside his body.
Ethan collapsed forward, his palms slamming into the dirt. He wasn't panting from exhaustion; his lungs felt incredibly efficient, drawing in vast amounts of oxygen with effortless ease. The dirt beneath his hands felt different—he could perceive the individual grains of soil, the moisture levels, the microscopic friction against his skin.
He stood up, and the sheer lightness of his own body almost made him stumble. He felt as though the gravity of the world had been halved. He looked down at his arms; the lean, slightly frail limbs of a starving scholar were gone, replaced by dense, corded muscle that possessed a terrifying, coiled tension.
[Physical restructuring concluded.]
[Host level capped at current threshold: Level 10 (Max Tier 1 Limit).]
[Remaining EXP stored in reservoir: 994,200 / 1,000,000]
[Notice: To unlock further levels, Host must undergo a Tier Advancement Trial.]
Ethan stared at the system interface. He hadn't even used a fraction of the energy he had earned. He was already sitting at the absolute limit of whatever "Tier 1" meant, with nearly a million points of experience sitting in reserve like an unexploded bomb.
A cold breeze swept through the clearing, rustling his caked, muddy robes. The physical transformation was exhilarating, but the warning from the liminal void echoed clearly in his mind: *Any exposure of the system's existence to external entities will result in immediate Host termination.*
If anyone saw a Level 10 novice walking out of a low-tier forest with enough raw energy to match a seasoned veteran, questions would be asked. He wasn't just a survivor anymore; he was a walking anomaly, a target for every faction in this unknown world if his secret ever slipped.
He bent down, picked up his leather satchel, and slung it over his shoulder. The parchment certificate inside felt lighter now, a relic of a past life that had vanished the moment the blood hit the stones. Turning away from the carcass of the Hound, Ethan stepped deeper into the forest, his heightened senses tracking every shadow.