A knock at his door pulled Dan from his thoughts.
"Dan?" His mother's voice was gentle. "There's someone here to see you."
Dan frowned. "Who?"
"She didn't give her name. Just said it was important."
Confused, Dan dismissed his spore and opened the door.
Standing in his family's small common room, looking completely out of place among the worn furniture and cramped space, was Riu.
Her silver-white hair seemed to glow in the candlelight, and her golden eyes swept across the cottage with clinical interest. Her massive Celestial Wyvern was nowhere to be seen—probably waiting outside to avoid destroying their home with its size.
"What are you doing here?" Dan asked, too surprised to be polite.
"We need to talk," Riu said simply. "In private."
Dan's mother looked between them uncertainly. "I'll just... give you two some space." She retreated to the kitchen, though Dan could feel her curiosity radiating from the other room.
"How did you even find me?" Dan asked.
"I asked around. The lower districts aren't that large." Riu pulled something from her satchel—a small leather-bound book, worn with age. "I came to give you this."
Dan took the book carefully. The cover bore no title, just a simple embossed symbol: a sprouting seed.
"What is it?"
"A cultivation manual. Specifically for fungal-type beasts." Riu's expression was unreadable. "My family's library has thousands of texts. Most are useless to me—focused on beasts we'd never summon. But I remembered seeing this one years ago."
Dan opened the book carefully. The pages were yellowed with age, filled with neat handwriting in an old dialect he could barely read.
"Why are you helping me?" Dan asked quietly.
Riu was silent for a moment. "Because you didn't cry. Didn't rage. Didn't break." She met his eyes. "Most people with your Resonance Grade would have given up already. But you're still looking for answers."
"I don't have a choice. The Academy contract is signed."
"There's always a choice." Riu turned toward the door. "You could attend and just go through the motions. Survive eight years, get assigned to some manual labor position, live a quiet life of mediocrity."
"But?"
"But I don't think that's what you'll do." Riu glanced back, a slight smile touching her lips. "The Academy is brutal. It doesn't care about your Resonance Grade when it comes to survival training. Beasts don't care about potential when they're trying to kill you."
She paused at the threshold. "That book won't make your spore into a dragon. But it might help you not die in the first month."
"Wait," Dan called. "Why do you care?"
Riu's golden eyes gleamed in the fading light. "Because everyone expects you to fail. And I have a weakness for people who prove expectations wrong."
Then she was gone, leaving Dan standing alone with a book that might be worthless or might be salvation.
He didn't know which yet.
***
That night, Dan sat by candlelight, slowly working his way through the cultivation manual.
The old dialect was difficult, and many pages were damaged or faded, but he pieced together the core concepts:
Fungal beasts grow through decomposition and absorption.
Unlike other beasts that grew stronger through combat or meditation, fungal creatures fed on organic matter—breaking down dead material and converting it into growth.
The manual detailed techniques for accelerating this process:
- Spore Dispersal Training: Spreading spores across a wide area to maximize absorption
- Decomposition Focus: Concentrating the spore's natural abilities on specific materials
- Network Integration: Connecting multiple spore clusters to create a larger organism
None of it would evolve his spore beyond Iron-rank. The manual was clear on that—fungal beasts had hard limits.
But there was one passage near the end that made Dan pause:
"The greatest strength of the fungal path is patience. What appears dead may simply be dormant. What appears weak may have roots deeper than any can see. Do not judge by surface growth alone."
Dan looked at his spore cloud, hovering silently beside the candle.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's see what you can really do."
He spent the rest of the night practicing the basic exercises from the manual—learning to sense his spore's presence more clearly, to direct its movements with intention rather than vague wishes.
It was exhausting work. By dawn, Dan's head pounded and his body ached as if he'd been hauling stone all day.
But his spore cloud glowed slightly brighter.
Progress.
Slow. Almost imperceptible.
But real.
***
Six days until the Academy.
Dan spent them following the manual's guidance, practicing in secret in the woods outside Haewon where no one would see and mock him.
He scattered his spore across fallen logs, teaching it to decompose and absorb. The process was maddeningly slow—a single log took hours to break down—but each time, his connection to the spore grew stronger.
On the third day, something unexpected happened.
Dan had dispersed his spore across a rotting tree stump when he felt a sudden surge through their bond. The spore wasn't just absorbing nutrients—it was learning.
The fungal threads spread faster, more efficiently. The mushrooms that sprouted were larger, brighter.
When Dan finally recalled his spore, checking his reflection in a stream, he saw that the luminescent mushrooms in his hair had grown from tiny pinpricks to the size of his thumbnail.
Still embarrassing. But stronger.
The manual's passage echoed in his mind: "Do not judge by surface growth alone."
On the fifth day, Dan encountered his first real test.
He was practicing spore dispersal when he heard voices—cruel, mocking voices he recognized immediately.
Kael Stonefist emerged from the trees with two other boys from the awakening ceremony. His Crimson Salamander coiled around his shoulders, scales gleaming with aggressive heat.
"Well, well," Kael sneered. "The mushroom boy. What are you doing out here? Growing more fungus in your hair?"
Dan straightened, keeping his expression neutral. "Just training."
"Training?" One of Kael's friends laughed. "What's a 1.3 going to train for? You'll be scrubbing floors at the Academy, not fighting."
"Maybe he's training to be a better sponge," the other boy suggested, and they all laughed.
Dan's fists clenched, but he forced them to relax. Fighting would accomplish nothing.
"Say something, mushroom boy," Kael stepped closer, his salamander hissing. "Or are you too weak even for words?"
"I'm busy," Dan said evenly. "Move along."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "You think you can dismiss me? My Resonance Grade is 4.2. You're nothing but—"
The salamander lunged without warning, a ball of fire forming in its mouth.
Dan's body moved on instinct. He dove sideways, rolling behind a tree as flames scorched the air where he'd been standing.
"Kael!" one of his friends gasped. "You could've killed him!"
"He's fine," Kael said dismissively. "Just teaching the mushroom his place."
Dan's heart hammered against his ribs. His spore cloud swirled around him protectively, but against fire, what could it do?
Then he remembered: Poison Resistance and Life Force Extension.
The spore couldn't fight. But it could survive.
Dan called out from behind the tree. "Is that all your salamander can do? Shoot fire at unarmed targets?"
"What did you say?" Kael's voice was dangerous.
"I said," Dan stepped out from cover, "your salamander is all flash and no substance. Just like you."
The salamander attacked again, this time with a sustained stream of fire.
Dan didn't dodge.
He couldn't—not fast enough.
The flames engulfed him, and Kael's friends screamed in horror.
But when the fire cleared, Dan stood intact.
His clothes were singed, his skin reddened, but he was alive. His spore cloud had wrapped around him like a shield, absorbing the worst of the heat and filtering the smoke from his lungs.
It hurt. God, it hurt.
But he was standing.
Kael's face went pale. "How...?"
Dan forced a grim smile through the pain. "My beast might be weak. But it doesn't quit."
He turned and walked away, each step agony, his spore cloud trailing beside him.
Behind him, Kael stood frozen in shock.
***
That night, Dan's mother tended to his burns with healing salves they could barely afford.
"What happened?" she demanded. "The truth."
"Training accident," Dan lied.
His mother didn't believe him, but she didn't press.
His father sat nearby, watching with sharp eyes. "The Academy will be worse than this," he said quietly.
"I know."
"Can you handle it?"
Dan thought of Kael's fire. The pain. The way his spore had instinctively protected him despite being the weakest beast in existence.
"I have to," Dan said. "The contract is signed. The money is spent. There's no going back."
His father nodded slowly. "Then you'd better be ready."
Dan looked at his spore cloud, glowing softly in the darkness of their cottage.
"I will be," he promised.
One day until the Academy.
Dan spent it reviewing everything he'd learned from Riu's manual, practicing until his body ached and his mind buzzed with exhaustion.
As night fell, he sat on the cottage roof, looking out over Haewon's tiered districts—the wealthy upper city glittering with lamplight, the middle districts humming with activity, and the lower districts where he lived, perpetually shrouded in mist.
His spore cloud drifted beside him, patient and silent.
"Tomorrow everything changes," Dan said quietly. "We'll be surrounded by people with Elite Resonance, High Resonance, maybe even a few Lords like Riu."
The spore pulsed.
"They'll look at us and see failure. Weakness. The lowest of the low."
Another pulse.
"But we're going to survive. And then we're going to prove them all wrong."
The spore glowed brighter, as if in agreement.
Dan smiled despite himself.
Tomorrow, the Academy.
Tomorrow, the real test began.
But tonight, for the first time since his awakening, Dan felt something he hadn't expected:
Determination.
His father's words echoed: A beast doesn't make the man. The man makes the beast.
"Alright, little spore," Dan whispered. "Let's see how far we can grow."
The mushrooms in his hair glowed softly in the darkness, tiny beacons of stubborn, relentless life.
And somewhere in the upper city, Riu stood on her family's balcony, her Celestial Wyvern coiled beside her, watching the lower districts where a faint gray light flickered against the night.
"Interesting," she murmured.
Her wyvern rumbled in agreement, golden lightning crackling across its starlight scales.
The Academy would test them all.
But Riu had a feeling the real surprise wouldn't come from those with the highest Resonance Grades.
It would come from the boy with the weakest beast who refused to accept his fate.
---
To be continued...