"Done yet? How about now? Now?" Hajin squatted between two boulders, poking a venison strip that sizzled over his little fire like it was ignoring him.
A strip of shirt held his ribs together, knotted well clear of the shoulder dressing.
Fat dripped into the coals with a hiss, and his stomach answered with a noise like a dying goose.
He glared at the glowing letters hovering beside his elbow, "And you, quit staring, it's rude to watch a man bleed while he cooks."
'Two days of chewing roots, and now the meat wants me to be patient, unbelievable.'
He tore into the crispy edge anyway, burned his tongue, and kept chewing out of pure spite.
"Hot, hot, hot, worth it, so worth it—"
The letters unfolded into neat rows, as if the thing decided he was finally ready for paperwork.
[ Host | Hajin ]
[ Class | Summoner ]
[ Current manifestation | One Shard, incompatible path ]
[ Deer kill receipt | 1500 EXP ]
[ Current EXP pool | 1500 / 50000 ]
[ Mana | 10 / 10 ]
[ Summon slots | 1 ]
[ Fragment's Blessing | Tenfold worth gain, not an EXP multiplier ]
He jabbed the skewer at the pool and nearly flung his dinner into the fire, "Fifteen hundred? I got my ribs cracked for fifteen hundred, and you want fifty thousand?"
"And ten mana, ten, what am I supposed to call with ten, a mouse with a really good attitude?"
'One summon slot, and nothing in three years ever wanted to sit in it.'
He set the skewer across two stones and opened his palm anyway, since he never learned when to quit.
"Come on, just once, a sparrow, I'll even share the deer—" The channels under his wrist twitched, sulked, and coughed up the usual nothing, plus a warning throb.
[ Summoning log | Previous attempts: 47 ]
[ Successful calls | 0 ]
[ Failure recorded | System inactive, summoning faculty dormant ]
Hajin read it once, twice, and a third time with his mouth hanging open.
"Dormant? Dormant?!" He scrambled onto his knees, nose almost touching the panel. "As in asleep? As in switched off, not broken?"
'Forty-seven tries, and the door was locked from the other side the whole time.'
"Forty-seven contracts, all that ink, all those fees, and Varos told my father I lacked discipline!"
"You hear that, you smug old bastard? Discipline doesn't flip a switch nobody turned on!" He shook the skewer at the darkening sky.
Varos used to watch his hands during every failure, then his face, hunting for the lie.
His things left the courtyard room beside his mother's before the household finished calling him useless.
He touched the pendant under his collar, relieved the cord survived a morning full of antlers.
"I should mail them this log, and charge a silver every time they read it, ha!"
Another panel elbowed in under the record before he could decide where to send the bill.
[ Stream | Active ]
[ Viewers | 2 ]
[ Soul Energy | 0 ]
[ Broadcast destination | Earth, physical realm without native mana ]
[ Transmission | Host actions, words, and surroundings ]
[ Viewer messages | Enabled ]
"Stream? Viewers? Earth? What's an Earth, and why is it watching me eat?" He hunched over the venison like someone might steal it.
[ Lurker_01: what channel is this? ]
[ RandomWatcher: looks like some indie live action ]
"Hello? Whoever you are, come out, I've got a sword and very little patience!"
[ Lurker_01: he is talking to us, wait is this really live ]
[ RandomWatcher: nice injuries, who did the makeup ]
"Makeup?" He stared at the blood spotting his shoulder cloth. "A deer did my makeup, and I did its makeup with a sword through the mouth!"
[ Lurker_01: how are you reading us, where is the screen ]
"Your words just float next to my face, okay?" He waved through the messages, and his fingers caught nothing. "I can't touch them, I can only read them, so make yourselves useful and tell me if my dinner starts burning."
A receipt shoved the lowest message aside just as a flame leapt up and licked the venison.
[ Starting funds credited | 30 Credits ]
[ Wallet | 30 Credits ]
[ Donation exchange | One Earth currency unit becomes one Stream Credit ]
[ Credits | Shop purchases or conversion to local currency ]
[ Soul Energy | Fuels Goddess Fragment recovery ]
He yanked the skewer back and slapped his belt pouch, finding only the wrapped core and zero new coins.
"Thirty credits I can't even bite? Fine, free money is free money, show me the goods!"
The catalog listed salve at fifteen, rations at five, a dagger at forty, and better shoes at eighty.
Artifacts glittered further down, each priced beyond anything his whole miserable life could pay.
'Salve's for minor cuts, and my ribs are way past minor, so that's a trap.'
"Rations? I've got a whole deer, dagger? I own a sword, it's ugly, but it's mine, shoes, okay, the shoes are tempting..."
He closed the catalog and nudged the skewer toward the cooler embers, "Nope, keeping all thirty, the core buys bread, the credits buy me an exit when ordinary money stops working."
"Okay, talk, my summoning was asleep, my Shard is wrong, so what's the catch, and skip the compliments."
[ Manifestation mismatch | Common mortal path: Shards ]
[ Lineage path | Rings ]
[ Source | Goddess of Reincarnation, ancestral mark confirmed ]
[ Surviving direct carriers detected | 1, Hajin ]
"Rings? A goddess? Ancestral mark?" He pointed at his own face, eyebrows shooting up. "Me? The gutter rat with deer guts on his sleeves?"
He tugged the pendant out by its cord, but it was the same dull copper he knew since childhood.
'Mother never mentioned any goddess, and now I can't ask her a single thing.'
"Wait, one carrier, so do you know what happened to everyone else, or did you only find me?"
[ Ancestral resonance established | Other carriers not detected ]
"Not detected isn't dead, okay, I'm not crying over a word you never actually said." He scrubbed his sleeve across his eyes anyway, jaw tight.
[ Proposed correction | One-time lineage path-initiation calibration ]
[ Cost | Full channel reconstruction, severe pain, exhaustion, possible loss of consciousness ]
[ Condition | Knowingly accept and complete reconstruction ]
[ Completion receipt | 50000 EXP ]
[ Nonrepeatable | Existing wounds affected by this reconstruction only ]
"Severe pain, huh? You know, most people lead with the reward, not the screaming part."
'Fifty thousand for surviving the fix, not for the deer, so no getting greedy.'
He set the sword within reach, moved the meat off the fire, and loosened the cloth around his ribs.
The core pouch went under his folded coat, where tonight's stupidity couldn't scatter tomorrow's only sale.
He laid his forearm across his knee and hovered a finger over the prompt, "Fine, I accept, but if you break something you can't fix, I'm complaining to your goddess personally!"
[ Consent received | Reconstruction beginning ]
[ Warning | Interrupted alignment may worsen injury ]
Pressure punched into his spine and flung him sideways, his face skidding through pine needles into the dirt.
"GHHAAAK! Fuck, fuck, fuck, severe pain, you said severe, this is way past severe!" His legs kicked on their own, heels dragging through the needles while his back arched.
[ Former route incompatible | Shard alignment releasing ]
[ Ring channels | Forming ]
Mana flipped direction inside his wrist, and heat poured into places all those estate tutors never reached.
"Cancel! Is cancel a word you know? Cancel, stop, quit, no thank you—!"
'I said yes, sure, but nobody said I have to enjoy this shit.'
He jammed his forehead into the dirt as his stomach heaved, keeping his face turned well away from the coals.
He lifted his head just enough to snarl through his teeth, "Finish it, damn you, FINISH IT!"
Mana crushed around his forearm until his fingers went numb, then flooded back into his chest.
A band of light snapped shut around his right wrist, and the pressure finally, mercifully, stopped moving.
"...Huh? I'm alive? I'm alive, and my ribs aren't screaming, what?" He rolled onto his back, keeping the shoulder dressing clear of the dirt, and lifted his wrist toward the firelight.
[ Path-initiation calibration | Complete ]
[ One-time completion receipt | +50000 EXP ]
[ Host EXP pool | 51500 ]
[ First Ring threshold | 50000, met ]
[ Acquired stage | One Ring ]
[ Ring multiplier | 1.5 ]
[ Next threshold | 500000 EXP ]
[ Reconstruction | Complete, further injuries require treatment ]
"One Ring, heh," he laughed weakly, "half a million for the next one, and never doing that again, we agree on that, right?"
His shoulder stopped leaking under the cloth, and his ribs held steady when he pressed them gently.
'Not free strength, just enough patching so I don't bleed out before morning, fair.'
[ Mission offered | Help revive the Goddess of Reincarnation ]
"Revive a goddess, sure, why not," he said, rubbing the new band on his wrist, "keep giving me stuff I can use and I'll hunt down your missing pieces, but tonight, breathing counts as my first useful result, deal?"
[ CringeSlayer91: is this real or an ultra realistic isekai sim? ]
He squinted at the new message, nose wrinkling in suspicion, "Isekai? Sim? What's a sim, some kind of bruise? Does it bruise this much where you live?"
"Explain later," he murmured, tugging the coat's edge over his knee while his eyelids drooped, "I'm done volunteering for anything else tonight..."
His elbow buckled when he reached for the last of the meat, and his cheek landed on the coat instead.
The gap between the boulders blurred until the trees beyond it stopped holding their separate shapes.
[ Host consciousness failing | Broadcast disconnecting ]
[ Stream | OFF ]
[ Soul Energy and Fragment Recovery | Paused ]
The Ring dimmed beneath his sleeve as sleep finally reached the place where the pain stopped.