Chapter 2: Mortal Coil and Rusted Iron
The crimson glow of the system interface cast long, bloody shadows across the dark forest floor. Jack lay in the mud, his chest heaving as the freezing rain beat down on him.
[First Quest Issued: Blood for Blood]
[Time Limit: 7 Days]
[Failure: System Detonation (Death)]
Seven days. He had one week to accomplish what scholars and warriors of Aethelgard deemed mathematically impossible: a Rank 0 Mortal killing a Rank 1 entity.
"System," Jack rasped, his voice barely a croak. "Show me my status."
The screen flickered, the blood-red letters rearranging themselves with a sickening squelch sound that echoed only in his mind.
[Status Window]
* Host: Jack
* Rank: 0 (Mortal - Peak)
* Divine Resonance: 0% (Absolute Null)
* Strength: 19 (Average Mortal: 10)
* Agility: 17 (Average Mortal: 10)
* Endurance: 24 (Average Mortal: 10)
* Skills: [Pain Tolerance (Passive - Low)], [Brawling (Passive - Mid)]
* System Abilities: [None unlocked. Complete First Quest.]
Jack stared at the numbers. His ten years of bone-breaking labor and obsessive training had pushed his physical limits far beyond a normal human. An endurance of 24 meant he could take beatings that would kill a grown man. But it wasn't enough. He had seen Rank 1 Acolytes training in the city courtyards. Even at the Initial sub-rank, their bodies were enhanced by their Divine Seeds. They could shatter boulders with a casual strike and move faster than the mortal eye could track. Their baseline stats were likely in the fifties, backed by an endless reservoir of divine mana.
A straight fight was suicide.
Jack gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up. A wave of nausea washed over him as his broken right forearm shifted. The adrenaline was fading, and the agonizing reality of his fractured bone was setting in.
"First things first," he muttered, biting his lip until it bled. "If I die in the woods, the system won't even need to detonate."
With his left hand, Jack felt around in the dark, gathering a few thick, sturdy branches from the splintered ironwood tree. He tore the sleeves off his ruined tunic, shivering as the icy autumn wind bit into his bare skin. Placing the sticks around his swollen, bruised forearm, he gripped one end of the makeshift cloth bandage with his teeth and pulled it agonizingly tight with his good hand.
A suppressed scream tore through his throat, sounding like a dying animal in the silent woods. Black spots danced in his vision, but he didn't pass out. He tied off the splint, his entire body trembling in cold sweat.
He didn't have healing magic. He didn't have potions. He just had his flesh and his refusal to die.
Slowly, agonizingly, Jack began the long trek back to the Slag-Wards.
The Slag-Wards were the rotting underbelly of Aethelgard. Located downwind from the grand forges and alchemy towers of the inner city, the air here was permanently stained with soot, sulfur, and the stench of unwashed humanity. There were no cobblestone streets, only packed dirt pathways that turned into rivers of toxic sludge when it rained.
It was past midnight when Jack limped into the district. The taverns were overflowing with laborers drinking away their meager copper coins. Drunks lay in the gutters, and the shadows hid thieves and desperate men.
Jack kept his head down, pulling his torn collar up to hide his face. In the Slag-Wards, weakness was an invitation to be robbed or killed. Even with a broken arm, his broad shoulders and the dark, predatory glint in his eyes kept the alley-rats at bay.
He reached his "home"—a dilapidated shack constructed from scavenged sheet metal and rotting lumber, wedged between a slaughterhouse and a tannery. The smell was enough to make a noble vomit, but to Jack, it was just the scent of Tuesday.
He pushed the rusted iron door open, securing it behind him with three heavy deadbolts. The interior was barely larger than a closet. A straw pallet lay in one corner, and a crude workbench cluttered with rusted tools, scraps of leather, and whetstones occupied the other.
Jack collapsed onto the straw pallet, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He closed his eyes, the red system interface immediately projecting onto his eyelids.
Seven days.
He needed a target.
In Elyria, gods weren't the only ones with power. The wildlands were teeming with 'Fallen Beasts'—animals that had consumed residual divine energy or fragments of shattered Divine Seeds from ancient battlefields. Even the weakest Fallen Beast was a Rank 1 entity.
"The Whispering Woods..." Jack murmured to the dark room.
The outer edges of the woods were relatively safe, inhabited by normal animals. But deeper in, near the Ruined Aqueduct, there was a creature the local hunters called the 'Iron-hide Bristleback'. It was a massive, corrupted boar. It was classified as a Rank 1 (Initial) Fallen Beast. It had a rudimentary Earth-element Divine Seed that made its skin as tough as crude iron.
Hunters avoided it. It wasn't worth the risk for the low-quality meat, and its temper was fiercely territorial.
"Iron-hide Bristleback," Jack decided, his eyes opening in the dark. "That's the target."
But how to kill it? His left fist and a broken right arm wouldn't scratch iron-hard skin. He couldn't afford weapons; a decent steel sword forged by a Rank 1 Artisan cost ten gold coins. Jack's entire life savings, hidden beneath a loose floorboard, amounted to thirty-two copper pieces and one tarnished silver.
He needed an unfair advantage. He needed a trap.
The next morning, the smog over the Slag-Wards blocked out the sun, casting the slums in a perpetual, dreary twilight.
Jack woke up at dawn. His right arm was a throbbing pillar of agony, the skin around the splint swollen and purple. He ignored it. He ate a piece of stale, rock-hard rye bread and drank water from a rusted bucket.
He strapped a heavy leather brace over his crude wooden splint, concealing the injury as best as he could under a thick, patchwork canvas coat.
His first stop was Old Man Groat's junkyard.
Groat was a miserable, half-blind man who bought scrap metal from the inner city and sold it to the slum blacksmiths. Jack often did heavy lifting for him in exchange for coppers.
"You look like you fought a troll and lost, boy," Groat grunted as Jack walked into the yard, surrounded by mountains of rusted cogs, bent steel beams, and discarded armor plates.
"Tripped," Jack lied, his voice flat. "I need some materials, Groat. Not for money today. Trade."
Groat spat a wad of black chewing tobacco onto the dirt. "What do you have to trade, rat? Your sparkling personality?"
Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his single tarnished silver coin. It was the only thing of value he had found in the streets a year ago. Groat's remaining good eye widened. Silver was rare down here.
"I need three coils of high-tension steel wire," Jack demanded, his voice cold and calculating. "The kind they use for the pulley elevators in the noble district. Discarded is fine, as long as it isn't frayed. I also need your heaviest bear trap, the rusted one in the back shed. And a bucket of industrial acid sludge from the alchemist's runoff."
Groat frowned, his greed fighting his suspicion. "What in the hells are you planning to do with that, boy? That wire could take off a man's leg if it snaps. And that acid eats through flesh in seconds."
"Building a reinforced fence," Jack said smoothly, though his eyes remained dead. "Wild dogs have been trying to get into my shack."
Groat snorted, snatching the silver coin. "Your funeral. Go grab the junk yourself. I ain't lifting it."
It took Jack two hours to haul the heavy materials back to his shack. Carrying the massive, rusted iron bear trap and the coils of thick steel wire with only his left arm was pure torture. Every step sent a jolt of fire up his broken right side. His Endurance stat was the only thing keeping him from collapsing.
By noon, his shack was a workshop of deadly intentions.
He spent the rest of the day modifying the bear trap. The springs were rusted, so he spent hours meticulously scrubbing them with sand and oiling them with animal fat until they snapped shut with bone-crushing force. He carefully coated the serrated iron teeth of the trap with the industrial acid sludge, wrapping it in cloth so the acid wouldn't eat the trap itself before it was triggered.
Next came the wire. High-tension steel. If an entity moving at high speed hit it, it wouldn't just trip them—it would act like a blade.
As night fell over the Slag-Wards, Jack sat on his floor, drenched in sweat, his breathing ragged. The red system interface hovered in the corner of his vision, a constant, ticking clock.
[Time Remaining: 6 Days, 11 Hours]
He looked at his calloused, scarred left hand, then at his broken, splinted right arm. He looked at the brutal, cruel implements of death he had fashioned from the city's garbage. He had no magic. He had no god.
But he had a mind hardened by suffering, and a willingness to drag his enemy down into the mud with him.
"Tomorrow," Jack whispered to the empty room, his voice echoing with a chilling, dark resolve. "We hunt."