Chapter 16

  The slime bounced again.

  Kelix slid sideways instead of backing up, letting the gelatin teardrop crash into the spot he had just occupied. The jelly-grass quivered from the impact, a slow ripple spreading outward like a lazy shockwave. Kelix kept moving, circling, eyes locked on the creature's glossy surface.

  It tracked him. Not with eyes. Not with a head. With its whole body turning subtly, always orienting, always ready to throw itself like a ticked off jellybean weight.

  Kelix breathed in and forced his focus onto his outstretched right hand. Blue heat clung to his palm, thin and bright, like fire that refused to burn.

  He could feel it now in more detail, the way it tickled along the lines of his skin, the way it gathered near his fingertips when his mind leaned toward it. This was not foreign anymore. Not entirely. In this world, energy answered intent, and intent had a texture you could learn if you survived long enough.

  He needed it to go forward. Not sit there. Not crawl uselessly over his knuckles like a pretty glow.

  Forward.

  He took another step, baiting the slime into a lunge, then pivoted away, keeping distance while his brain did something it should not have been doing in the middle of a fight.

  He pictured it. A blast. A beam. Something dramatic enough to be obvious. His mind offered up an old memory, the kind he had not thought about in years, a childhood image of superheroes with outstretched hands and power pouring out in a straight line. Bright enough to split the world.

  Enough to erase enemies.

  He swallowed and let the image dissolve.

  This place did not reward spectacle. It rewarded function.

  He replaced it with something simpler. A push. A shove. If he thought of it like that old galactic war series he had once binged with Dariel and Finn, maybe the force would listen. Maybe it would move because he told it to, not because it wanted to glow.

  On reflection, the idea was ridiculous. Then again, so was standing in a field of sentient jelly and trying to electrocute one with his bare hand. This world was built on ridiculous things surviving.

  He concentrated hard enough that the edges of his vision blurred.

  The slime bounced toward him again, and Kelix evaded by a hair, the creature's cold surface grazing his sleeve and smearing wetness across the fabric. Kelix barely noticed. His attention was a vice around his hand.

  Release. Channel. Let it go.

  For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating. Yet it was real. The blue heat changed into a glow. A thin fire, and now it crackled.

  What had been warmth and glow snapped into motion. Blue electricity crawled over his fingers in jagged threads, hissing and cracking like tiny living whips. Kelix sucked in a sharp breath. The sensation was keener than heat. Not painful, but alive, like his nerves were singing.

  As he dodged again, he caught a flicker of Endigo's presence. Blue-red arcs flared in response within the creature's paw, restrained, observant. Watching him, as it always did when something new happened.

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  The slime bounced again, and Kelix did not move this time.

  He planted his feet. He shoved his palm forward, not as a strike, but as a command.

  Lightning surged from his hand. Not a beam. Not a neat bolt. Arcs, violent and branching, lashing outward in a sudden flood. The air screamed. The jelly-grass beneath his shoes shuddered, and the slime's glossy surface lit up as the electricity hit it and sank in.

  A name echoed in Kelix's mind with cold certainty, like a label stamped onto the moment.

  [Doom Zap]

  Kelix did not have time to be startled by the name.

  The slime burst.

  It did not splatter. It did not reform. It disintegrated into dark blue particles that scattered like blown ash and then faded into nothing.

  Silence snapped back in.

  Kelix stood there with his arm still outstretched, fingers trembling, blue sparks dying along his knuckles. His lungs pulled in air too fast, like they were trying to catch up with what had just happened.

  On the jelly-grass where the slime had been, something remained.

  A {Dark Blue Core}.

  Kelix stared at it. So cores existed here too. That was both comforting and deeply unhelpful.

  He stepped closer, still half expecting the slime to pull itself back together out of spite. It did not. The core sat in the grass like a polished bead, dark blue light moving inside it like a trapped current.

  Then something else happened.

  A small diamond-shaped crystal drifted up from the spot where the slime had died.

  It floated toward Kelix's face with slow, steady intent.

  Kelix flinched back, instinctively raising his hand as if to swat it away, then stopped because it did not feel hostile. It felt… guided.

  The crystal was clear and sealed, like a tiny vial cut into a diamond shape. Inside it, faint particles swirled, silver-blue dust moving in a contained loop.

  An interface flickered into existence in front of his vision, clean and certain the way the other screens had been.

  {50 Essence}

  Kelix's stomach tightened when the crystal reached him and dissolved.

  Not shattering. Not breaking. It dispersed into a mist of particles that seeped into his skin, sinking through his face and hands and neck like he had been made porous. Kelix sucked in a sharp breath and tried to wipe it off. There was nothing to wipe.

  It was already inside him.

  A new notification snapped into place, bright enough to make him blink.

  [Level Up!]

  Level: 10 → 11

  Kelix paused, his breath stalled, as he assessed the info.

  Level ten?

  He stared at it until the words felt like they were pressing into the back of his skull.

  Why was he starting at ten?

  He should have started at one. That was how systems worked. That was how progression worked. That was how every game and every story and every training program he had ever heard of worked. You started weak. You climbed.

  He was already ten!

  Kelix's thoughts scrambled, trying to build an explanation that would not make his stomach twist.

  He had hunted monsters before. He had fought. He had killed. He had been in a world with ranks and cores and associations and rules. Maybe that counted. Maybe whatever this system was had backdated his life like it had always been tracking him.

  Or maybe something had dragged him in at level ten because it had already touched him.

  He thought of the crocoraptor's core text. The magenta aura on his fist. ZiEnitra's smug poke. Endigo Zest shaking its head at him in the park.

  Kelix swallowed and looked toward Endigo.

  The small cloaked figure stood a few steps away, watching him with stillness that made the moment feel observed. Blue-red electricity no longer crackled in its paw. It had lowered its hand like the demonstration was complete.

  Kelix's voice came out rough. "So that is what you wanted?"

  Endigo did not answer.

  Kelix exhaled slowly, forced his shoulders down, and bent to pick up the {Dark Blue Core}. It was cold in his palm, familiar in an unfamiliar place. He tucked it away without a bag to put it in, just holding it for now, fingers curling around it like an anchor.

  He looked up again at the bubble-sky and the jelly-grass and the distant warped shapes on the horizon.

  A level up. Essence absorbed. Skills with names that had slipped into his mind like whispered instructions. This world did not pause for newcomers. It did not care if he understood.

  Kelix waited for the surge. For strength. For clarity. For anything that felt earned.

  Wind roared past his ears. His vision lurched. The ground tilted violently, and his stomach dropped as if he had stepped off a cliff that was not there.

  Kelix staggered forward, knees slamming into the jelly-grass as nausea rolled through him hard enough to steal his breath.

  Essence, he thought dimly. It had to be the essence. His body rejecting it. Or learning how to hold it.

  He gagged, palms digging into the grass, the dark blue core clenched so tightly his fingers ached.

  When the spinning slowed, something else lingered.

  What changed was subtler. Not only did he feel stronger. He felt watched. And now, at least, he had proof that something had noticed him back.

  ? Mysteries of Sacra [Isekai] [Weak to OP] [Beast Companion] ?

  by Robert Wolf

  Thrown into a world of beasts and magic, Kai must fight to survive and hold on to the last pieces of his humanity.

  What to expect:

  In a world where kindness is weakness and morality is a luxury only the strong can afford, Kai must decide who he wants to be and what he's willing to sacrifice.

  Umbra, fierce and loyal, and Scry, wise and offlandish, refuse to let him lose himself to the darkness growing within.

  But every step forward brings him closer to a prophecy no one dares to speak.