The smell of burnt copper and monster blood hung heavy over Sector 409-B.
Around Leo, the chaotic sounds of battle were finally dying down. Of the thousand people initially dropped into the rocky ravine, perhaps seven hundred remained standing. Screams of grief mixed with heavy breathing as the surviving Initiates collapsed onto the dusty earth, cradling bruised limbs and chipped iron weapons.
[First Wave Cleared.]
[Intermission Phase: 05:59:59]
[System Shop Access Temporarily Unlocked.]
A collective sigh of relief swept through the crowd, followed immediately by dozens of glowing blue screens opening into the air.
Leo didn't waste time watching the others. He dragged the corpse of the Iron-Jaw Scavenger behind a slate pillar, out of direct sight, and looked down at his blood-stained palm.
In his hand sat the tiny, glowing marble: the Fragmented Beast Core.
Current Status, Leo thought.
[INITIATE PROFILE]
Name: Leo Mercer
Level: 1 (15/100 EXP)
Health: 85/100 | Stamina: 40/100 | Mana: 6/50
Inherent Skill: Material Replication (Rank: Trash) — Cooldown: 23:51:12
His Mana was recovering at a painful crawl—roughly 1 point every ten minutes. At this rate, it would take hours just to get back to full, and his skill was locked behind a 24-hour cooldown anyway.
Or is it? Leo mused, tilting the glass-like core toward the pale suns.
He brought up the item description again.
[Item: Fragmented Beast Core (Common)]
[Effect: Can be absorbed by Initiates to instantly restore 5 Mana OR sold to the System Shop for 5 System Credits.]
Leo's eyes narrowed as his inventory manager brain went into overdrive.
"I need 49 Mana to activate Material Replication," he calculated softly. "Absorbing one core gives me 5 Mana. To instantly refill my Mana pool from near-zero, I need 10 cores."
Ten cores meant ten dead monsters—a massive risk for someone with baseline physical stats and a pair of two-inch pocketknives.
Unless...
Leo turned his head and looked out over the battlefield.
Most people were too traumatized or exhausted to search the ground carefully. The dead Iron-Jaw Scavengers were scattered across fifty yards of bloodied dirt, and tiny glowing specks were faintly pulsing near the corpses.
Leo moved quickly and quietly.
Slinking between groups of weeping survivors, he scavenged the perimeter. He didn't steal from anyone's kill directly; there was plenty of uncollected loot left behind by people who didn't even realize the monsters dropped items.
In ten minutes, he retrieved 7 Fragmented Beast Cores from unclaimed corpses. Combined with his own, he had 8 cores.
"Hey! What are you doing over there?" a voice shouted.
Leo turned. Walking toward him was a muscular man wearing a bloodied leather vest and holding a heavy iron mace. Two other men followed close behind him. The leader's tag read [Level 2 - Marcus].
"Just clearing debris," Leo said smoothly, slipping his hands into his pockets and hiding the small cores.
"You're picking up those glowing rocks, aren't you?" Marcus sneered, stopping a few feet away. "Hand 'em over. My squad did most of the heavy lifting on this flank. Everything on this side of the pillar belongs to us."
Leo observed Marcus's stance. He had high Strength, but his movements were heavy and tired. Behind him, his two squadmates looked hesitant.
"The System shop opened," Leo replied calmly, keeping his voice even. "Cores sell for 5 credits each. You can scavenge the northern ridge there are at least a dozen bodies over there nobody has touched."
Marcus scowled, caught off guard by Leo's complete lack of panic. "Don't tell me what to do, scrub. Give me what you picked up, or "
[Warning: Violence during Intermission inside the Safe Zone will trigger automatic System Disintegration.]
A red notification flashed vividly between Leo and Marcus.
Marcus spat on the ground, stepping back. "Lucked out, weakling. But the safe zone drops when the next wave starts. Keep that in mind."
"I'll remember," Leo said quietly.
He walked away toward the edge of the safe zone, finding a quiet shadow beneath an overhang of slate rock. Sitting down with his back against the stone, he opened his hands.
He had 8 cores. He needed 10 for a full Mana reset.
Checking his status: Mana: 16/50.
"Sixteen plus eight times five..." Leo muttered. "I don't need ten. I only need seven."
Without hesitation, Leo held a Fragmented Beast Core in his palm and willed the System to consume it.
Absorb.
The tiny marble dissolved into a stream of warm, liquid light that soaked directly into his skin. A rush of energy hit his chest, clearing the throbbing headache behind his eyes.
[Consumed 1x Fragmented Beast Core.]
[Restored 5 Mana.]
He absorbed another. And another.
[Mana: 50/50 (MAX)]
Leo smiled. He still had 2 Beast Cores left in his pocket, full Mana, and a strategy to test.
Now came the real hurdle: The 24-Hour Cooldown.
Leo opened his skill pane and focused intensely on the timer ticking down in red: [23:41:05].
"Every system has hard limits," Leo thought, staring at the translucent blue interface. "But cooldowns in RPG systems are almost always tied to one of two things: physical stamina depletion, or internal mana channel lockout."
He pulled out his cheap steel pocketknife the original one and held it in his hand alongside one of his remaining Beast Cores.
He didn't activate the skill yet. Instead, he forced his Mana to circulate through his body, pushing the energy toward his right hand where he held the core.
When you use a spell, the System acts as an intermediary, pulling Mana from your body, processing it through the skill framework, and imposing a cooldown lock on your soul interface to prevent spamming.
What if I don't use the System's automated trigger?
Leo closed his eyes. He imagined his Mana pool not as a bar on a screen, but as water in a tank. The System was a tiny faucet that opened once every 24 hours. But the Material Replication blueprint was already burned into his mind from the first time he used it.
He targeted the Beast Core, not the knife.
[Material Replication]
[Skill on Cooldown! Time remaining: 23:40:12]
Leo ignored the error message. He pushed harder, forcing 49 units of raw Mana out of his palm simultaneously, wrapping the energy around the tiny Beast Core, manually replicating the exact structural flow he felt during his first casting.
His veins burned. His hand shook violently as the raw Mana resisted, trying to collapse into ambient waste energy.
"Duplicate..." Leo gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his nose. "Copy item!"
Bzzt!
A spark of violet static erupted from his palm a glitch in the matrix. The System interface flickered wildly.
[Warning: Manual Skill Overclocking detected!]
[Skill 'Material Replication' forced through non-standard mana channel!]
[System Error: Cooldown bypassed via manual mana injection.]
[Mana Drained: 49/50.]
The flash of blue light illuminated the dark slate cave.
When Leo opened his eyes, two identical Fragmented Beast Cores rolled out of his palm and hit the dirt.
Leo gasped for air, collapsing against the stone wall, his Mana instantly crashing back down to 1/50. But a wild, triumphant grin broke across his face.
He looked down at his lap.
He now had 3 Beast Cores.
"The 24-hour limit isn't a hard physical rule," Leo whispered, wiping the sweat from his eyes. "It's just a throttle to keep low-tier users from spamming. As long as I have the Mana to feed it manually, I can bypass the timer completely!"
He quickly picked up two of the three cores and absorbed them.
[Consumed 2x Fragmented Beast Core.]
[Restored 10 Mana.]
Current Cores: 1.
Current Mana: 11/50.
He was in a closed loop.
To duplicate 1 core, he needed 49 Mana.
To get 49 Mana, he needed to consume 10 cores (which yielded 50 Mana).
If he duplicated a single core, he gained 1 extra core.
If he duplicated a Higher Tier Core later... the math would explode.
Right now, a Fragmented Core gave 5 Mana (or 5 Credits).
If he found a Medium Beast Core that restored 50 Mana or sold for 100 Credits...
One duplication cycle would yield net positive Mana and massive profit.
Leo looked toward the center of the safe zone, where the System Shop kiosk stood glowing like an ethereal blue fountain. Initiates were crowding around it, trying to buy rusty iron daggers for 20 credits or stale bread for 2 credits.
Leo stood up, dusted off his pants, and checked the time remaining until the Second Wave.
[Time until Second Wave: 05:22:10]
"Five hours," Leo murmured, walking casually toward the System Shop. "Five hours to build an empire."