Chapter 99: Unknown
The quiet in Tyler's room had settled into something close to stillness, broken only by the sound of his own breathing, slow and deliberate. With Mana Sight active, he could already see it happening in front of him. The ambient mana scattered through the air bent toward the space between his palms, drawn in the same way he'd pulled it before, not absorbing it outright, just coaxing it, playing at its edges as he opened the mana orifices along both his arms.
They opened and closed in a slow, steady rotation, and with every opening he pushed, trying to pull the mana into himself with everything he had. He watched the light particles and the dark particles drift toward him,his own mana drifting in from around him to meet them, all of it beginning to spin between his palms, curling tighter and tighter into the rough shape of an unstable sphere.
He pushed harder, narrowing his focus down into his mana pathways, and felt a thin thread of it slip into his system before his own body pushed back against it, rejecting the intrusion outright.
After all, he already have full mana.
The sphere spun faster, the motion blurring at its edges. Tyler watched the dark mana drag itself toward the center, gathering into a dense, black core at the middle of the sphere. Then, without warning, a small burst of white light tore out from its center.
Tyler squeezed his eyes shut against the flash, and the instant he opened them again, he saw it hovering there. A sphere of grey liquid mana hung just above his palm, held in place by nothing he could see. "Heh, it worked." A grin cracked across his face.
Then the liquid dropped, the full weight of it slamming into his forearm all at once. His arm buckled under it, dipping hard, and he clenched his teeth and threw his other hand beneath it to catch the fall. *It's still so heavy.* The thought struck him as pure surprise.
He hauled it back up before it could touch the floor. The liquid felt unnervingly close to holding a slime monster in his bare hands, wrong against his skin in a way he couldn't quite place, like it wasn't meant to have any weight or shape at all.
It reminded him of trying to hold water that refused to settle into any form, gravity dragging down on it with a pressure that felt far too heavy for something that size. The sphere flickered with a faint blue light and vanished into his inventory. Tyler gasped and staggered backward, the back of his knees catching the edge of the mattress, and he dropped onto it, the springs groaning beneath his weight. "Phew." The breath left him in a long rush. "Its so damn heavy," he breathed, the words coming out ragged.
He looked down at his open hand and let Mana Sight fade out. *I'm definitely way, way stronger than before. So how come it's still this heavy? It's just as heavy as it was back then.* Before the thought could settle any further, a system panel rose in front of him.
[CHOOSE METAL]
*Iron.* He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, and the panel disappeared. A short pause followed before another rose to take its place.
[PROCESS COMPLETE]
*All right, now that that's done, better start crafting.* He drew in a breath. *System, craft seven iron helmets.*
[CRAFTING]
Tyler kept his eyes fixed on the small circular bar as it filled in steady increments. A thought caught him mid-watch, and his brow furrowed. He didn't know how many iron ores the liquid had actually been applied to, whether it had spread across every ingot or settled into just one. *I remember only getting a single skill out of it last time.* He leaned in closer to the panel, waiting. He knew the result would tell him exactly how the skill bubble had worked this time around. The bar filled the rest of the way, and the panel disappeared.
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
*All right, let's see.* He pressed his palms together, and a thin light shimmered in the space between them before fading, leaving the helmet resting in his open palm, the iron still holding a faint warmth against his skin. It matched the exact design he'd asked Kai to draw, right down to the details Kai himself had worked out, since Tyler had never been able to picture it clearly on his own. He'd never had much use for helmets to begin with.
The helmet had been forged entirely from iron, its dome smooth and rounded, curving down to fully cover the top and back of his head. On either side, the metal swept downward into broad cheek guards that framed the jaw, leaving the eyes, nose, and mouth open to the air. Down the center of the front ran a narrow nose guard, thin enough not to block the view but solid enough to matter. The whole thing carried a plain, practical look to it, nothing excessive and nothing wasted.
He turned the helmet over in his hands, tilting it to look inside.
A thin layer of soft leather lined the interior, clearly meant to cushion the skull and ease the weight of long wear.
"Huh. It added something." He squinted, catching a small drawing worked into the leather at the very center of the helmet, tucked where the crown of his head would rest. It was his label. It looked small and deliberate, carved directly into the material.
Along the edges, from the cheek guards to the back rim, the metal had been folded inward just enough to pin the leather firmly in place. *This looks pretty comfortable.* A system panel rose above the helmet in his hands.
[ASSIMILATION HAS DETECTED FOUR ITEMS WITH ENOUGH MANA ENGRAMS TO DRAW OUT A SKILL]
"Awesome." The word left him on a low breath. He triggered Assimilation, pouring his mana straight into the helmet. It lit with a faint blue that swelled bright for a single instant before dimming back down. A new panel appeared in front of him.
[SKILL: STEADFAST. A PASSIVE EFFECT THAT REDUCES THE CHANCES OF THE USER GETTING KNOCKED OUT OR FALLING UNCONSCIOUS.
NOTE, SLEEP WHILE WEARING THE ITEM IS NOT RECOMMENDED]
"Oh, that sounds like a pretty useful skill." Tyler turned the helmet slightly in his hands. "Would come in handy fighting a very strong opponent." The helmet dissolved into his inventory, and a second one rose to take its place. He triggered Assimilation again, running through the same motion, and another panel formed above it.
[SIXTH SENSE. A PASSIVE EFFECT THAT ALLOWS THE USER TO SENSE ANYTHING THAT POSES HARM TO THEM WITHIN A TEN-METER RADIUS AROUND THEM]
"This one's pretty good too." A smile pulled at his lips. "Could be very useful in the monster zones." The helmet vanished, and he muttered under his breath, "Slithers can come out of nowhere." A third helmet formed in his hand, and after Assimilation, another panel rose above it.
[SKILL SONIC IMMUNITY- THIS IS A PASSIVE SKILL THAT MAKES THE USER IMMUNE TO SONIC ATTACKS]
"Wow." Tyler's eyebrows lifted. "This one could become extremely helpful. It's kind of specific, but against those pixels, anyone wearing this could take them down easily. And if they wore those rings on top of it, they'd be able to counter the hypnosis and the sonic attacks both."
A short laugh broke out of him at the thought. "The pixel just becomes a normal bird to them." The helmet faded from view, dropping back into his inventory. "I think I'm starting to like helmets now." A smile stayed on his face as the last one materialized in his hand. He triggered the skill, and a final panel rose above it.
[SKILL-PRECISION: INCREASES A USER'S ACCURACY WITH RANGED WEAPONS BY 60%]
"Huh." The breath came out slow. *This one's also pretty good, but I don't think I need it. Weapon Mastery should already cover that, right?*
Before he let the helmet fade away, he looked it over once more, catching the line of text sitting beneath the design.
[50 DEF]
He pulled an enhancement crystal from his inventory and pressed it against the helmet, pouring mana through it. The panel that answered him came back sharp and immediate.
[ENHANCEMENT FAILED]
"Damn, I can't even enhance it once? That kinda sucks." He worked through the remaining helmets one after another, all seven of them, and every attempt ended the same way, failure stacking on failure until something behind his eyes started to ache with the effort of it. He let out a long breath, disappointment settling heavy in his chest.
"Guess I should craft more armor." He straightened, pushing the thought forward. *System, craft five pairs of leather boots.*
[CRAFTING...]
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
Tyler opened his palms, and a set of boots dropped into them, the last threads of blue light peeling off the leather and fading against his skin.
The weight of them settled into his hands first, solid and cool, before he even looked down. They looked almost identical to the pair already laced onto his feet, close enough that he had to turn them over slowly, running his thumb along every seam, just to find what had actually changed. The sole was the first thing he checked, flipping the boot upside down and pressing his fingers into the leather underneath.
His own boots ran flat beneath the foot, smooth all the way across, but these carried deep grooves cut straight into the sole, ridges he could feel biting faintly into his fingertips, a grip pattern he'd asked to have drawn in. He turned the boot onto its side next, and there, stitched small near the ankle, sat his symbol, the lines of it exact, matching the original down to the curve.
A system panel rose above the boots.
DEF: 15
AGI: 5
It was one of the recipes he'd unlocked from the quest rewards he'd completed earlier, different from the shadow leather boots. He weighed the boots once in his palms, feeling for a difference that wasn't really there to feel, and let the numbers speak for it instead, more agility, more defense besides, both sitting a notch higher across the board.
Assimilation stayed quiet this time, no panel rising to flag any mana engram worth pulling free. He sat still with that for a moment, his gaze drifting past the boots toward nothing in particular as a new question took shape behind it.
*If I were to use the skill bubble on ingredients other than metals, would it work?* He turned the thought over slowly, remembering how the system always framed the same request back to him, asking specifically for a metal, never anything broader.
*Does that mean it only works on metals and nothing else? But the way the skill's described, it should be pulling mana engrams from any object, right?*
He brought his free hand up to his jaw, fingers pressing into the faint stubble there. *Or maybe the skill bubble only works on metals themselves, while Assimilation can be used on anything I've actually crafted.* He rubbed slowly at the line of his jaw, breath leaving him in a long, even stream. "That's probably it."
He dropped his hand, and an enhancement crystal formed in his palm, its edges cool and faceted against his skin. He pressed it flat against one of the boots and pushed his mana through it, waiting for the familiar give.
ENHANCEMENT FAILED
"Just... why?" The words dragged out of him on a breath as he turned the boot over in his hands, studying it like it might answer him back. "I thought I hit the jackpot with these crystals. But most of the enhancements are failing. Guess it doesn't work on everything."
The boots folded away into his inventory. "Should I try it on the rest of them? Or are they just going to give me the same result as the others?" He sat with the question only a second before deciding to run every pair through the same test anyway.
Crystal after crystal shattered the same way in his hand, fine dust catching against his fingers before the leather pulled it in, and every attempt came back exactly the same.
[ENHANCEMENT FAILED].
By the last pair, his shoulders had dropped, some of the earlier excitement drained clean out of him. He let it disappear into his inventory and sighed, the sound dragging long and low out of his chest.
*I just don't get it.* He leaned back, palms pressing flat against the mattress behind him, letting it take his weight. *But then again, I don't actually know the specifics of why it works to begin with.*
He leaned forward again, elbows finding his knees, and the next panel rose close to his face.
Sixty-six hexhorns sat listed in his inventory.
*There's so many of them.* His eyes stayed fixed on the number for a moment before the memory caught up with him, and it all started to make sense, the Crimson Wolves invasion, how many hexhorns the wolves had torn through during it, how much material he'd managed to pull free from the aftermath, all of it adding up to exactly this many horns now.
But something else further down the list caught his eye, an icon shaped like a long, curved horn. Beneath it, the text read:
[Trihorn horn×3]
His eyebrows shot up, and he leaned in closer to the panel. *Right, I gave them the trihorn hide. I didn't give them the horns as well. The quest only wanted the hide.*
"This will definitely become useful in the future." The words slipped out under his breath, already turning toward what came next. "Craft two offense shields."
[CRAFTING]
Tyler kept his eyes on the circular bar, watching it fill faster than he expected. He hadn't designed this one himself, he'd thought about it back at the workshop, but in the end he'd decided the system's own design suited him well enough to leave alone.
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
He drew one of the shields free, the metal cool and heavy across his palm, and pressed an enhancement crystal against it, pouring his mana through in one steady stream.
[ENHANCEMENT SUCCESSFUL]
A grin broke across his face, and the tension that had been building in his shoulders finally let go all at once. He set the shield aside and pulled the second one free, running the same crystal through the same motion, mana flowing steady from his fingers into the metal.
[ENHANCEMENT SUCCESSFUL]
"Nice." The shield folded away into his inventory.
He pulled the panel back up, ready to move on to the next recipe, but his eyes caught on something near the bottom of the list, and every other thought in his head went quiet. His heart lurched once, hard, then seemed to forget how to settle back into rhythm, climbing up into his throat instead of staying where it belonged.
An icon sat there marked [UNKNOWN], a small orb rendered in flat, featureless grey. He knew it the second he saw it. This was the inventory slot that had been marked with an X, the space he'd lost when the system tore through him with its scanning out in the forest, back when James had been at his side.
A small slime core had sat there once, before all of that.
*What is that?* He rose off the bed slowly, and the panel rose with him, holding its distance no matter how he moved.
The longer he stared at the orb, the more he felt something gathering along the edges of his arms, a fine electric prickling that climbed from his wrists toward his elbows, the same sensation as pressing bare skin to the glass of a television a second after it switched off.
His mouth had gone dry. Still, curiosity pulled harder than the unease did, dragging his hand forward before his mind had fully agreed to it.
He opened his palm slowly.
Something was wrong.
He felt it low in his stomach first, a cold drop that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. His pulse thickened in his ears, slow and heavy, each beat landing loud enough that he could hear it over everything else, and beneath that steady pounding, a thinner thread of panic wound tighter with every second.
*I have to see what it is.* He held the thought like a rope. *Maybe it's just another glitch. Maybe it really is just a slime core.* His hand kept moving anyway, muscle memory carrying it forward the way it always had, wanting the item to simply arrive in his palm the way everything else always did.
The panel answered him instead by warping, the image folding in on itself like something underneath it had torn.
It split first down the middle, the left half lurching upward hard enough to pull a step backward out of him before he'd decided to take it. Then it split again, straight across, both halves sliding apart from each other and leaving a gap of raw black in between.
"Shit, what did I do?" The words came out thin, barely more than air. His heart slammed against his ribs so hard it hurt, a dull, deep ache blooming under his sternum, and every nerve in his body braced at once for what he already knew was coming, the same tearing pain that had ripped through him back in that forest.
He stepped back again, and this time his legs caught the edge of the bed and folded him straight down onto the mattress, his hands gripping the sheets on either side of him. The panel vanished. Another rose to take its place.
ERROR
Then another layered directly over it, the single word packed edge to edge across his vision, repeating without end: ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR, ERROR
The errors closed in around him on every side, each one bleeding a deep, saturated red into his sight until there was nothing left in front of him but red and that single repeating word. His breath caught somewhere high in his chest and refused to move any further down.
"No. Not again...."
The static crawled up from his wrists, spreading across his shoulders and down his spine, sharper now, needling under his skin until his teeth wanted to grind together. He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw locked tight, his whole body pulled rigid as he braced for the pain to hit.
And then, nothing....
He opened his eyes slowly, one degree at a time, half expecting the red to still be waiting behind his eyelids.
The panel was gone.
The silence that followed pressed in heavier than silence usually did. Before all of this, the muffled sound of voices from outside the inn had been sitting under everything, a constant hum he hadn't even noticed until it disappeared.
Now there was nothing. No voices, no creak of the building settling, not even the sound of his own breath, though he could feel his chest still moving. His ears rang faintly in the space where all of it should have been.
He looked down and found his own hand raised above him, arm stretched toward the ceiling, palm open to the empty air. He didn't remember lifting it. Hovering just above his skin, close enough that the hair on his arm lifted beneath it, sat a small black core, perfectly round.
The black looked like a hole cut clean out of the air itself, a patch of space where the light in the room reached and simply stopped, swallowed before it could land.