Chương 2: A New World

Thud! A pitch-black rift tore open in midair and spat Rowan out like a discarded sack of garbage. He crashed onto the damp earth. The Aether Core beneath the skin of his left arm was still glowing with a dangerous, dark-red superheat. But to his astonishment, the lethal temperature in his brainstem cortex—the heat that had been on the verge of boiling his brain fluid—had miraculously vanished. Panting heavily, he looked down at his right wrist.

The once-inconspicuous Möbius ring birthmark had completely retracted its glow. It was now dull and lusterless, as if completely drained of energy. Did it drain all the waste mana-heat from my body?

"I survived..." Rowan struggled to sit up, but his very first deep breath made him arch his back, his fingers digging agonizingly into the dirt.

"Ugh—cough, cough, cough!" The ambient mana in the air was simply too thick! For someone who had grown up in Terra's "Mana-Depleted Environment," whose lungs were long accustomed to filtering barren air, suddenly inhaling such highly-concentrated wild mana was like plunging raw, unprotected lungs into pure medical alcohol. A violent bout of "Mana Intoxication" swept through his body instantly. The world spun around Rowan, accompanied by a severe urge to vomit.

On his retina, his AR personal vitals interface flickered to life, projecting a line of cold, red text: [Vital Signs Monitor: Heart Rate 160. Mild Mana Rejection Reaction.] Just as the mana intoxication blurred his vision with double images, a foul gust of wind slammed into his face from the waist-high grass to his right!

Whoosh— A creature the size of a hound, covered entirely in hardened bristles and sporting two dagger-like saber teeth protruding from its jaw—a Mana-Mutated Saber-Rabbit—hurtled straight at Rowan's face. Too fast! Rowan's pupils shrank. He had severely underestimated the explosive power of beasts native to a high-mana environment. This was completely incomparable to the malnourished mutant rats in Terra's upper sewers.

With his body currently weakened to the extreme by mana intoxication, dodging was out of the question. Due to cooldown restrictions, the overloaded Aether Core in his left arm only had enough juice left to release one single spell. If he missed, he would become a midnight snack in this godforsaken place.

"Bring it!" Rowan gritted his teeth, a flash of ruthlessness unique to an underhive street rat flitting across his eyes. Instead of retreating, he lunged forward, violently twisting his torso to forcefully ram his right shoulder—the one without the implant—straight into the demonic rabbit's fangs. Squelch! The razor-sharp teeth effortlessly tore through his cheap jacket, sinking deep into the flesh of his right shoulder. There was even a sickening crack of bone giving way.

Agony instantly twisted Rowan's features, but using the pulling force of the bite, his left hand—slick with cold sweat—clamped down viciously onto the beast's furry skull. Now. Through the magical link established by his mage organ—the Source Crystal Core—Rowan rapidly activated the implanted Aether Core in his left arm. The Aether Core frantically siphoned the free-floating natural mana from the surroundings. A faint yet blindingly intense blue light erupted from the palm of Rowan's left hand.

Military Top-Secret Spell — "Minimalist Water Blade (Supercritical State)". Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. There was no deafening explosion, nor any spectacular flash of fire. There was only a brief, ear-piercing shriek echoing in the air. A spectral-blue, hyper-compressed water blade burst from Rowan's palm with a shrill sonic whine.

It cleaved through the beast's skull as if meeting no resistance at all, dragging down the spine and splitting the creature cleanly in two. Rancid blood and viscera instantly splashed all over Rowan. The two halves of the mutilated corpse hit the ground with a heavy thud. Rowan, as if drained of his very last ounce of strength, collapsed flat on his back into the pool of blood. The agony in his right shoulder intertwined with the dizziness of the mana intoxication, and the shadow of death veiled him once more.

With a trembling, blood-soaked left hand, he fished a small glass vial out of his inner pocket. The potion bottle's label was severely yellowed and frayed at the edges, but a line of tiny print was still faintly visible: First Place Grand Prize, Seventh Abyssal Hive Mid-Term Exams. It was the only proof of his past as an underhive genius, and the most valuable life-saving trump card he possessed.

Pulling the cork out with his teeth, Rowan didn't hesitate for a second, swallowing the "Warm Snow Potion" along with the bloody froth at the corner of his mouth. The mild, refined medicinal power transformed into a warm current, rapidly enveloping his battered right shoulder. The bleeding stopped, forming a thin, protective scab. His frantically beating heart also gradually began to calm down. Lying in the waist-high weeds, Rowan gazed up.

Ancient, colossal trees blotted out the sky, and faint moonlight filtered through the gaps in their leaves. Gone was the suffocating sewer stench of the Terra underhives, gone the grating electric buzz of neon signs. In their place: the rich, raw scent of vegetation and earth. He finally calmed down, his brain kicking into overdrive to analyze the situation. Free, unlimited, high-concentration wild mana. Massive, ancient vegetation. Absurdly resilient low-tier mana-beasts.

"This definitely isn't Terra..." Rowan muttered to himself, wiping a streak of blood from his face. The potion's warm current had only saved his life. The muscle aches and the sheer exhaustion of mana depletion still washed over him in waves. He desperately wanted to just close his eyes and fall into a dead sleep. But he couldn't. The heavy stench of blood had already spread. In a primordial forest like this, it was no different from lighting a beacon in the pitch dark.

Gritting his teeth, Rowan propped up his battered body and stood. Before leaving, he pulled a skinning knife from his boot and crouched beside the rabbit's corpse with practiced ease. For an underhive rat who had spent years dissecting mutated sewer monsters in exchange for meager black-market quotas, butchering a corpse like this was pure instinct. His cheap skinning knife nimbly bypassed the hard skull, cleanly prying out the two dagger-like saber teeth, which he tucked into his waistband as makeshift weapons.

Immediately after, he swiftly carved out the two intact hind legs, wrapping them carefully in a few broad leaves he tore from the underbrush. In this godforsaken place, wasting even the slightest bit of food or self-defense material was an unforgivable sin. Having done all this, driven by the instincts of an underhive scavenger, he used the tip of his knife to pry open the area around the beast's heart. Clink.

An irregularly shaped crystal, about the size of a thumb and radiating a pure, earthy-yellow halo, rolled out onto the blood-stained grass. Rowan's movements froze. He picked up the crystal in disbelief. Feeling the surging, primal, and utterly pure mana fluctuations within, his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

Back on Terra, an Earth-Element Mana Crystal of this purity level was a rare alchemical material that required lower-class miners to pay with their lives in irradiated mines just to extract the raw ore, which then had to undergo numerous complex refining procedures to purify. And now, it just casually grew inside the body of an omnivorous beast sitting at the absolute bottom of the food chain?! Rowan tightly gripped the mana crystal. It seemed he hadn't just found the capital to survive.

He had found his golden ticket to turn his life around. Yet! There wasn't much joy in Rowan's eyes. He subconsciously clutched his left chest, feeling the steady, powerful heartbeat beneath his ribs. There, embedded around his heart, was a translucent, semi-solid substance—a Mage's Source Crystal Core. And clinging stubbornly to it like a parasite was his Citizen Personal Chip.

In the Terra Republic, only two things would sink their teeth into the lower class and never let go: Death, and the Consortium's "Credit and Debt Surveillance." Fortunately, the Consortium only cared if you could cough up the money on repayment day. Constant, real-time network surveillance was neither necessary for the bottom-feeders nor something they could afford the network fees for.

His debt had indeed been frozen because he had secured the ticket to the military's "Ruins Practical Combat Assessment," but that was merely a three-month "reprieve." Rowan knew very well that if he just played savage in this primeval forest and missed the military's practical assessment next month, or if he was disqualified as a candidate due to prolonged loss of contact... The debt system would detect his evasion, instantly triggering the self-destruct sequence of his personal chip. I have to find a way back.

Rowan tucked the precious mana crystal close to his body. His gaze swept through the dim primeval forest, his eyes even colder and more resolute than when he had hunted the demonic rabbit. He raised his right hand, looking at the dulled Möbius ring birthmark, and then touched the crystal brimming with violent mana in his pocket.

"First—let's see if this thing has an appetite for mana crystals..."