"Hey, newbie." A gentle male voice greeted with a welcoming smile, flashing white teeth as he gave a small wave.
Kyle opened the door, momentarily dazed.
'Who is this cold-toothed idiot? Am I cursed to keep running into people who cannot mind their own business?' Kyle thought, then recalled the tip the derisive guard had offered earlier.
He dismissed the thought and returned his attention to the young man before him, giving no reply to the greeting.
The stranger was more pretty than handsome, the sort of face that drew a second glance without effort.
His blonde hair refused to stay in place, falling in loose strands around his face and half-covering his eyes.
Those eyes were a deep blue, and an old pair of headphones rested around his neck, patched so many times they should not have worked, though somehow they still did.
He wore a brown sweatshirt with matching sweatpants, nothing fancy, only comfortable and lived in.
Kyle gave him a flat once over from head to toe before meeting his eyes again, wondering what the hell this boy was actually after.
Had he walked into the wrong room?
No, that was not right.
He had clearly been called a "newbie" by this one, and the guard had deliberately assigned him this room.
Besides, Kyle hardly looked presentable, filthy, bloodstained, and reeking.
Surely not the sort of person anyone would want to approach on the first day for a friendly introduction.
With a confused expression masking an undercurrent of irritation, Kyle managed a slow reply:
"Umm… hey, I guess."
The pretty boy's eyes widened in surprise before he suddenly burst into laughter, genuinely astonished by Kyle's stiff and awkward response.
"Are you an introvert? Yeah, I don't think I need to ask that. Anyway, I should introduce myself. I am Orion, at Stage Two of the Elemental Vein Realm. Only two of us in this entire teenage quarter have reached it. So yes, Tier Two - Tempered, for now." Orion's voice carried the same gentle tone, though his niceness felt a little too deliberate.
Kyle blinked twice, unfazed by the declaration. Stage Two was hardly something to gape at anymore.
On reflection, it was far easier to step into that realm than it had been to cross the barrier into the first.
Besides, he had already seen Na-Ri, who stood leagues above him.
If strength and body limits were the measure, he had witnessed better and been impressed for a moment, nothing more.
Orion mentioned only two had advanced here, which meant the rest remained stuck at Kyle's stage.
That, too, was no surprise.
Most had likely chosen not to gamble with their lives hunting outside.
Safer to stay within the zone, take on menial work, and pay their daily fees, exactly as the guard had suggested.
The only thing keeping him from advancing was ignorance of the method, even though he had already hit the threshold.
As for the young man before him, Kyle disliked him almost instantly, and for two reasons.
First was his exaggerated niceness towards a stranger.
From Kyle's short experience, people like that usually hid sharpened knives behind their smiles, ready to betray the moment it mattered. If he had to choose between this one and Na-Ri, he would side with her.
At least she had already shown fragments of her true nature, even if she cloaked the rest in dynastic secrets.
The second reason was more complicated. Orion claimed to be one of only two at Stage Two within the quarter.
That meant Na-Ri was the other. She was already Tier Three, brushing close to Tier Four, so the two of them might know each other. That thought alone soured Kyle's view, the dislike spilling onto Orion by association.
Childish, perhaps, but it had its cause.
Orion kept smiling, clearly waiting for a reply.
Kyle sighed, looked up again, and said flatly:
"So, anything else?"
The blonde pulled a playful scowl, glanced around, then leaned closer with a whisper:
"Yes. You should tell me your name. I know you're shy."
Kyle stepped back, irritation breaking through despite himself.
There was a faint disturbance in his ear after the whisper, as though the young man had done something unseen.
'What the hell…?' Kyle thought, glaring now without restraint.
The blonde only grinned wider, rolling his eyes in mock playfulness.
"I introduced myself, so you should too. Do that, and I'll leave you to whatever you were about to do."
Kyle reasoned instantly.
He wanted this nuisance gone before his patience broke. The irritation had climbed to the point he half-considered silencing him permanently.
The boy was disturbing his peace and piling more noise onto his thoughts.
"…I'm Kyle. That's all you're getting."
He had no intention of revealing his stage or anything else.
The less Orion knew, the better.
If this pretty boy was like most of those who flaunted power, he would only use it as leverage.
Kyle had no taste for carrying extra thorns in his side.
Orion accepted it with a bright smile and, true to his word, turned to leave without another question.
Kyle watched the weirdo stroll down the hallway with a grimace, before his attention shifted left where Na-Ri was approaching with another young woman at her side, the two of them engaged in quiet conversation.
Na-Ri carried her usual indifferent expression, while the girl beside her spoke with the warmth of someone reunited with family she had dearly missed.
Kyle's eyes widened as the thought struck him with sudden force.
'She is staying on the same level as me!? I actually believed I would not see her again. What sort of hell is this supposed to be!?'
He glanced down at himself and realised he was standing in the open practically half-naked.
Panic rushed through him.
He forgot the fact that Na-Ri had already seen him fully naked, and that he had just endured a conversation with Orion while still in this state.
Slamming the door shut, he darted straight into the bathroom.
***
A few hours later, after Kyle had bathed and now smelled clean, he sat on his bed with an expressionless face.
He glanced at the chest beside him, lifted his bag from the top, and pulled out the essence cores he had stored inside.
"I can't keep on like this. Either I try this out and see what happens, or I remain stagnant. I can't afford that right now. If—" Kyle broke off mid-mumble as his thoughts involuntarily dragged up the dying man's scrambled words from the Market.
After some deliberation, he decided to test it.
He would consume one or two cores and observe the outcome.
Consuming a core required only that the cultivator tighten their grip until it shattered into faint threads of energy, which would then sink into the cultivation core through every meridian. Kyle did just that, and the essence dissolved into him.
An electrifying sensation coursed through his body, narrowing his pupils and stirring a torrent of unstable emotions.
That was not the normal reaction.
...This was the response of a body straining under more energy than its core could safely contain.
***
Core has absorbed more Spiritual Energy than its limit
There will be consequences for such an act, [Clueless]
Threshold requirements for breakthrough to Stage Two have not been met
Punishment will commence for attempting a forced ascension
***
"...What!?"