The water was as cold as regret.
As Devon rose from the large wooden tub, each drop of water that trickled down his skin felt like a cleansing and a reminder. The cool morning air greeted his naked body, a touch that on any other day would have sent shivers down his spine, but now, it felt like an affirmation. He was still here. He could feel the cold. He was alive. He had purged his home of dust and neglect. He had cleansed his body of blood and filth. Now, all that remained was to cleanse his mind of the ghosts that had been dancing within it.
He stepped back into the cabin, no longer feeling like a terrified intruder, but rather an owner reclaiming his property. He ignored the bloodied clothes lying on the floor—shrouds of the old Devon—and went straight to the chest in the cellar where he had found Corvus's clothes. He chose the same set as yesterday: a black t-shirt of thick-woven material that felt protective, black canvas trousers with countless cargo pockets on the thighs and sides—practical, functional, and unpretentious—and tall black leather boots, whose soles felt solid and silent on the wooden floor.
Putting on the clothes was a transformation. It was no longer just covering his nakedness; it was donning a persona. Each button fastened, each shoelace tied, felt like a step away from the ordinary teenager who had fallen off a cliff and a step closer to... something else. Something shaped by this place, by the terrible legacy he had stumbled upon.
Once dressed, his eyes fell upon the chest of magic stones he had sorted so carefully yesterday. He could no longer leave his most precious possessions lying around. He rummaged through the contents of the chest, his fingers brushing the cool surface of the blue stone, the throbbing warmth of the red stone, and the faint vibration of the yellow stone. And then, at the bottom, beneath a worn velvet cloth, he found it. A necklace.
It was not a beautiful piece of jewelry. The design was brutal and functional, like everything else that had belonged to Corvus. The chain was made of small, interlocking black metal plates, devoid of shine, and felt heavy in his hand. The pendant was an intricate octagonal metal cage, with a tiny hinge on one side and a precise catch on the other. The cage was clearly designed to hold something of a very specific size.
"Oh, good," Devon whispered to himself, a rare, faint smile touching his lips. He retrieved the green healing stone from his pocket. It fit perfectly inside the pendant's cage, as if the two had been made for each other. He closed the catch, and a satisfying 'click' echoed in the silent room.
He put on the necklace. The cold metal was a shock against his warm skin, and the weight of the pendant felt reassuring against his chest. It was an anchor. An amulet. An insurance policy written in ancient magic. "I don't have to worry about injuries anymore," he said, his voice stronger, steadier. The burden lifted from his shoulders was so great that he felt as if he could float. The fear of a painful death from infection, the fear of a single misstep that would leave him bleeding to death—those fears had been his constant companions since he had opened his eyes in this world. Now, they had been reduced to a distant whisper.
With a newfound sense of security burning in his chest, he grabbed one red fire stone and one blue water stone, placing them in separate cargo pockets on his trousers. Batteries. Ammunition. His first elemental toolkit. He was ready.
But ready for what? Survival was no longer just about not dying. Survival meant building a life. And life required food. Real food, not sawdust biscuits and jerky that was decades old. He walked out of the cabin, the soft morning light now brighter, transforming the surrounding forest into a tapestry of green, silver, and rust. Instead of venturing into the woods to hunt—a prospect that still made him feel slightly nauseous after his humiliating failure—he decided to explore his property. He walked to the area behind the cabin, where the trees thinned out slightly.
And there he saw it. A large rectangular plot of land, perhaps half the size of a basketball court, that had clearly once been cultivated by human hands. A garden. But the garden was now a battlefield where nature was violently reclaiming its territory. Waist-high weeds and thorny vines as thick as his thumb choked everything that had once grown there. A few rotting wooden stakes marked the former vegetable beds, and in one corner, the skeleton of a collapsed trellis was shrouded in vines so dense that it looked like a living green mound. The air above it hummed with strange, colorful-winged insects. It was a graveyard of an attempt to cultivate life, and now it was teeming with lush decay.
"Yeah... it's a little overgrown," Devon muttered, a masterful understatement. Yet, instead of feeling despair at the monumental task before him, he felt only a cold calculation. A problem. And problems were meant to be solved.
He walked to a small building leaning against the side of the cabin, which could only be described as a shed. The door was hanging off one hinge, dangling at an angle like a broken jaw. He pushed it open, and a thick cloud of dust exploded outwards, making him cough. Inside, it was dark and musty, smelling of rotting wood, rust, and dry earth that had not been touched by rain in a long time.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the shed was filled with tools. Hoes with cracked handles, shovels with rusted blades, rakes with missing teeth. On a rickety shelf, there was a stack of empty clay pots and several small cloth sacks tied with string. He picked one up. As he opened it, a handful of tiny, black, oddly shaped seeds spilled into his palm. Plant seeds. A true treasure.
"Alright," he said to himself. "Time to garden."
As he stood there, amidst the dust and decay, planning the arduous task of clearing and replanting, he realized something strange. Something was missing. The feeling of trauma. The memory of his own torture, the horror of seeing his own insides, the overwhelming revulsion after killing the goblin—all of that was still there, stored in the archives of his mind. But the emotions attached to them, the sharp psychic pain, had faded. The memories now felt like facts he had read in a gruesome history book, not something he had personally experienced. They were encased in a thick, cold layer of glass. He could see them, analyze them, but he could no longer feel their burning heat.
His eyes unconsciously flicked to his right hand. The black crystal ring was fixed on his index finger, absorbing the dim morning light and reflecting nothing. "Could it be..." he thought, raising his hand closer to his face. "Could this ring..."
A disturbing hypothesis began to form. Perhaps the ring was not just a key or an amplifier of magic. Perhaps its effects were more subtle, more invasive. Perhaps the ring had an effect on his emotional state, slowly altering its wearer.
He tried to recall the horror and guilt he had felt after killing the goblin. He could remember the fact that he had felt them, but the emotions themselves now felt foreign, like a language he had forgotten. He tried to relive the overwhelming panic when his knife had slipped. All he felt was a logical analysis of a tactical error.
"Yikes," he muttered, and a small, dry, humorless laugh escaped his lips. "I could get used to this killing thing. Heh."
The joke felt hollow, an echo of the old Devon's sense of humor spoken by the voice of something new and colder. He didn't know whether to be terrified by this change or to welcome it. The fear itself felt blunt, distant. All he felt was a cold pragmatism. Overwhelming emotions were a liability in this world. They made him panic. They made him make mistakes. Maybe... maybe this was a gift. A tool that not only healed his wounds but also cauterized his soul.
"Ah, whatever," he said, pushing the unproductive philosophical thoughts aside. "Time to garden."
He looked at the rusted hoe and shovel. Practical. Efficient. Boring. Then, an idea that was completely impractical, inefficient, but immensely satisfying, popped into his head. A flicker of the gamer, the dreamer, Devon, who was still alive somewhere within this hardening shell.
Instead of grabbing the gardening tools, he turned and walked back to the cabin, down the stairs to the cellar. The cold air and the strange, ozone-like smell greeted him like an old friend. He walked past Corvus's workbench, past the gruesome specimen tubes, and towards the rack of melee weapons. There, leaning against the wall between serrated daggers and brutal war axes, was a sword. A katana.
The sword was a deadly work of art. The scabbard was made of black lacquered wood, unadorned. The handle was wrapped in pale white ray skin and bound with black silk cord in a traditional pattern. The hand guard (tsuba) was a simple black iron disc, etched with the image of a raven in flight. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and the blade seemed to drink in the lantern light. The steel was folded thousands of times, creating a subtle wave pattern (hamon) along its razor-sharp edge. The sword was perfectly balanced, feeling alive in his hand.
"Now this is cool," he whispered, genuine awe in his voice. "Feels like being a samurai."
He carried the katana back upstairs, to the overgrown garden. The sun was higher now, its warm light on his back. He set the hoe and shovel down on the ground. He wouldn't need them. Not yet.
He took his position at the edge of the garden, both hands gripping the katana's handle, the blade pointing downwards. He took a deep breath, mimicking a pose he had seen in dozens of samurai films. Then, he moved.
He wasn't just hacking at weeds. He was dancing. He lunged forward, a burst of contained energy. The blade sang as it sliced through the air, cleaving through thick clumps of weeds and thorny vines with sharp, clean hisses. Each slash was a note in a symphony of controlled destruction. He spun, the blade becoming a blur of silver, cutting a neat path through the chaos of nature. Green sap from severed stems sprayed into the air, sparkling like emeralds in the sunlight.
He mimicked movements he remembered. A straight thrust to pierce the heart of the thickest vine mounds. An upward diagonal slash that sent waves of leaves and thorns flying into the air. He leaped back to avoid a snapping tendril, then lunged forward again with a series of rapid slashes that reduced a small sapling to splinters.
It was utterly inefficient. Using a masterpiece of metallurgy to do the work of a machete was sacrilege. But it felt amazing. Each movement was a release. He wasn't just clearing a garden; he was carving order out of chaos with his own hands. He was imposing his will on this wild world, not with brute force, but with deadly grace. He forgot his pain, his trauma, his loneliness. There was only him, the blade, and the dance of controlled destruction.
After nearly an hour, the work was done. Devon stood in the middle of the garden, panting, sweat soaking his black t-shirt. Around him, the weeds and vines now lay in pathetic green heaps. The garden had been cleared. He looked down at the katana in his hand. The blade was still sharp, unblemished, only stained with plant sap. He carefully wiped it clean with a piece of cloth before returning it to its scabbard.
The ache was beginning to set in his muscles, a satisfying weariness from hard labor. He felt a gentle warmth spreading from the necklace on his chest. Yes, thanks to the green magic stone necklace, his fatigue was lessened. It wasn't a burst of energy, but rather a dampening of exhaustion, taking the sharp edge off his muscle pain and allowing him to keep working.
Now, it was time for the real work. He picked up the hoe. The work was no longer glamorous. He bent over, his back muscles protesting, as he began to turn over the compacted soil, breaking up the hard clods of earth and pulling out the remaining stubborn roots. He worked with a steady rhythm, each swing of the hoe an affirmation. This. Is. Mine.
Finally, after several more hours under the sun, the garden was ready. Dark, rich soil lay exposed, neat beds waiting to be planted. He retrieved the sacks of seeds from the shed. He didn't know what would grow from these strange seeds—some were spiraled, others were pale blue—but it didn't matter. It was an act of faith.
He began to sow the seeds, letting them fall from his fingers onto the warm earth. He could feel the black ring on his finger, cold and indifferent. He was a minor god sowing life in his new world.
Once all the seeds were planted, the final task was to water them. He could have filled buckets repeatedly, but why do things the hard way? He stood in the center of the garden, extending his hands, palms facing upwards. He held the water stone in his pocket, focusing his will.
The familiar blue magic circle formed in the air above the garden, larger and more stable this time. From its center, instead of a column of water, a gentle, even drizzle began to fall, soaking the dry earth with a soothing hiss. He stood in the middle of his own magical rain, letting the cool droplets wash over his face and hair.
He looked at his work. The clean cabin behind him. The newly planted garden before him. He had spent his first day in his new life not hiding or running, but building. Creating. Taking control.
He didn't feel happy. Happiness was an emotion that was too warm, too complicated for a mind now shielded by the coldness of the black ring. But he felt something else. Something deeper and more satisfying.