The destruction had lasted for several days. No help appeared before humanity's eyes, no guidance. Only blood, fear, and helplessness. The world's militaries had nearly collapsed. The monsters seemed impossible to harm with conventional weapons.
On the Trash-Dragon, Stella wasn't merely observing. The primordial hunger within her, coupled with her deep understanding of Black Chroma Essence – the universe's "mold" – urged her to act. Instead of just dropping seeds of power, she decided to punch holes in the very fabric of Earth's reality.
She did not create a "System" of power like those often found in novels. That was too mechanical and lacked creativity. Instead, she caused the true nature of all things to leak through.
Bending Physical Rules: Creating Essence From Matter
Stella touched the space with her crystalline fingers, as if typing code into the planet's source code. She rewrote a basic line:
MATTER_ESSENCE_RELEASE = TRUE
The result was tragedy and opportunity, both multiplied for humanity:
Metal: When struck hard, it would ooze a metallic liquid – Hardness/Malleability Essence.
Broken Glass: Reflected light into Light Essence, absorbed shadows into Invisibility Essence.
Earth and Stone: Cracking open would sprout crystals of Gravity/Stability Essence, extremely heavy or extremely light.
Unleashing Atomic Power: Gaining Essence from Non-Material Phenomena
This was the most radical change. Stella made natural phenomena and energy no longer invisible processes. They became "trees" from which one could "pick fruit."
Wind: Condensed into shards of "Wind Blade" Essence, which could enhance Speed/Cutting.
Water: The purer the water, the more likely it was to give rise to Flow Essence, capable of Soothing or healing wounds.
Thunder and Lightning: Each lightning strike upon the ground now gave birth to glassy orbs containing sparks, called Thunder/Lightning Essence.
Earthquakes/Major Storms: Would spew forth "Seismic Essence" or cause "Eye of the Storm Essence" to rain down.
Earth had become a giant, dangerous, yet opportunity-filled Essence mine.
In a ruined market, a man named Marcos was fleeing a monstrous creature of disjointed shapes. In his panic, he stumbled into a campfire survivors were using for warmth. His hand burned. But instead of just a burn, he felt an unusually intense heat coursing up his arm like lava. In that instant, he punched straight at the pursuing monster.
Instead of an impact, a sizzling sound was heard. The smell of burning flesh rose from the creature's wound. It shrieked a new sound: pain. Marcos stared in shock at his fist. He didn't understand what was happening.
Elsewhere, an old blacksmith named Josef was using a sharp iron rod to try and fight back. During the struggle, the rod accidentally struck an extremely hard rock on the road. A spark flashed, and Josef felt a chilling, terrifyingly sharp sensation transmit from the rod into his palm. When he stabbed it into a monster, it pierced the creature's outer hide with unbelievable ease.
They had no interface to look at. They only had sensation. Touch, formed by a dangerous environment, forced them to explore and discover new rules for survival.
And not everyone was lucky.
A woman tried to "absorb" the strange light from a dead monster. She convulsed and turned into a deformed mass of flesh, screaming madly.
A young man intentionally jumped into a large fire to "take" that strange heat, and burned to death painfully without gaining anything.
A group of people fought over a piece of metal emitting a "hard" light, and ended up killing each other before understanding its use.
These random "events" began to be spread among survivors in distorted ways, like fantastical fables.
"Fire... fire can hurt them!"
"I saw an old man use an iron rod to pierce a monster's hide! He said he... 'felt' it get sharper?"
"Don't touch that black light! It will turn you into one of them!"
There was no professional guidance whatsoever. Only the sharp-witted survivors, daring enough and lucky enough not to die while experimenting.
A nurse realized she could heal minor wounds by... concentrating on a small, pale blue crystal she picked up from the corpse of a tree-like monster. She called it the "Healing Stone."
A smuggler began collecting these "shiny things," trading them for food and weapons. He gave them rough names: "Fire Stone," "Sharp Stone," "Hard Stone."
A mechanical engineer, after witnessing Marcos, tried to "temper" a blade by heating it in a fire containing a "Fire Stone." The blade stayed red-hot for a strangely long time but also became brittle and prone to breaking. He realized: there was a "method" to fuse these properties into weapons, and he hadn't found it yet.
The old order completely collapsed. Those who grasped a bit of "knowledge" or possessed a few "stones" became the new powers. They formed hunting groups, small fortresses, and began making their own laws. The struggle for Essence "sources" (like a particularly large fire, or an exceptionally hard metal deposit) became the cause of new, bloody conflicts.
On the Dragon-Scrap, Stella observed this chaos with cruel satisfaction.
"Much better now," she whispered. "No instructions. No clear rules. Only groping in the dark, fear, and pure aspiration. Knowledge paid for with lives is the most valuable knowledge. And sometimes... being guided by threads of connection from the past."
Her gaze briefly paused on the image of Kai, as if noticing something different about the boy. "Let's see who will be smart enough, ruthless enough, and lucky enough – or loving enough – to piece these fragments into their own path."
By NOT granting them anything, Stella had created an even harsher trial. She had turned Earth into a small laboratory of natural selection, where intelligence, instinct, brutality, and even deep spiritual connections would determine the survivors.
The path to power was now dark, bloody, and without a map. And it was in that darkness that the true heroes and villains of the new era, like Kai with his lessons from dreams, would begin to take their first steps.