The blade moved.
Then moved again.
Each swing cut through the air more smoothly than the last.
There was no dramatic burst of light. No sudden explosion of power. Just small, subtle shifts—refined angles, corrected stances, more efficient motion.
Leon stood in the cramped living room of their tiny apartment, clutching an old wooden training sword, scarred from years of effort. The sunlight filtering through the blinds painted long shadows across the floor.
He wasn't doing anything different. And yet, his body was reacting like something inside it had finally understood what it was supposed to do.
Like all those hours of silent training in the dead of night—when the world was asleep and the ache in his bones was the only thing keeping him company—had finally started to pay off.
His movements were cleaner now. Not just practiced, but instinctual. Not forced, but fluid.
Leon came to a stop and exhaled hard, letting the training sword fall to his side.
His arms buzzed—not from fatigue, but from something else entirely.
Progress.
Slow, but undeniable progress.
He looked down at his hands, flexing them.
"…That was Adapt, wasn't it?" he murmured.
It had to be.
That strange phrase written on his evaluation report all those years ago—"Unusual adaptability pattern detected—potential latent trait."
Back then, it was just a throwaway line. Something even the instructors had shrugged off. No one could explain what it meant, and with Leon's pathetic stats, no one had cared.
But now? Now he knew.
He didn't need a system notification or someone else's approval. He could feel it.
His body had learned.
And that was the entire purpose of [Adapt].
Still breathing hard, Leon crossed the room and tapped on an old handheld evaluator—one of the few relics he'd kept from his Academy days. Its square screen flickered on with a soft whine.
These devices tracked one thing: raw Combat Power.
Everything in the world was ranked by it—from civilians to elite Awakened. From F to SSS.
F Rank: ~10 Combat Power
E Rank: ~100 Combat Power
D Rank: ~1,000 Combat Power
C Rank: ~10,000 Combat Power
B Rank: ~100,000 Combat Power
A Rank: ~1,000,000 Combat Power
S Rank: ~10,000,000 Combat Power
SS Rank: ~100,000,000 Combat Power
SSS Rank: ~1,000,000,000 Combat Power
Most people fell somewhere between D and B. Even non-combatants had some baseline Combat Power.
A farmer might read 8 or 9.
Most combat cadets hit 1,000 by graduation.
Leon?
He looked at the screen and gave a wry smile.
--------------------------
Combat Power: 4 → 5
--------------------------
Just a single point.
But to him, it might as well have been the world shifting beneath his feet. His Combat Power had never changed. Not once in all these years.
Now it had.
He was improving.
And for the first time in a long time, he felt something more dangerous than ambition.
Hope.
⸻
Later that afternoon...
Leon found himself walking the outskirts of District 7, a place most of the city tried to forget. The streets were cracked and uneven, the buildings leaning like exhausted old men. Power lines sagged above, buzzing weakly, and the air reeked faintly of smoke and engine oil.
Nobody important came here. No guards. No drones. No real law.
But that made it perfect.
Leon moved quietly through alleyways and back roads until he reached the edge of the district. There, hidden behind a rusted chain-link fence, lay the remains of an old development site—a place long abandoned after a dungeon collapsed five years ago. The city marked it as "cleared."
But the truth doesnt always align with official reports.
Especially in a place like this.
Leon ducked through a bent corner of the fence, stepping into a field overgrown with weeds and broken stone. He was dressed in layered scraps of training gear, a secondhand iron sword strapped to his side, barely sharp and already chipped along the edge. His backpack held only a piece of stale bread and a bottle of water.
But it didn't matter.
Today wasn't about survival.
It was about progress.
⸻
Half an hour passed.
Then, there was movement near a jagged slope of rock, something hunched over a corpse.
Pale, hairless, its yellow eyes glowing faintly beneath the shade of a broken pillar.
A Scavver.
Low-class monsters that fed on the corpses of others, mostly monsters. Small, weak, but dangerous if underestimated.
"Huff..."
Leon's pulse spiked. He gripped the hilt of his sword and charged.
"KRAAAAA!"
The Scavver shrieked, lurching upright with claws raised. Leon swung wide—and missed.
"Ugh...!"
Claws raked his shoulder. Blood sprayed.
Pain exploded in his side—but his body didn't panic. His feet realigned. His shoulders rolled. His next strike came faster.
Crack.
The blade connected with the creature's skull.
The Scavver dropped, twitching, its cries fading to a gurgle.
"Haa... Haa..."
Leon collapsed to one knee, panting hard, blood dripping down his arm.
It had hurt.
But more than that—his body had learned.
His balance had shifted. His movements had corrected. It wasn't instinct—it was adaptation.
The kind you couldn't teach.
"…Adapt..." he whispered again, breathless.
"Damn..."
A few minutes passed, the adrenaline slowly fading, replaced by a growing sense of curiosity.
Leon crouched beside the Scavver's corpse, watching as a thick, blackish-red fluid oozed from its torn neck. The blood was unlike anything human—darker, denser, and clinging to the skin like oil mixed with tar. He could smell it even before he touched it: sharp, metallic, with an undertone of decay.
His rationality screamed at him to step back, to leave it alone. But deep down, his instincts whispered louder.
Try it.
He dipped two fingers into the thick blood. It stuck to his skin like sludge. Disgust twisted his stomach, but his hand moved on its own, bringing the blood to his lips.
He hesitated.
"Ugh... Fuck it!"
Then touched his tongue to it.
The taste hit immediately—like drinking rust scraped from an old pipe, mixed with spoiled meat. His throat clenched, and he nearly threw up.
But before he could spit it out—
Something changed.
The taste disappeared, as if it never existed in the first place.
A sudden warmth bloomed throughout his body. Not painful. Not overwhelming. Just a small flicker of heat, smaller than the flicker of a match. Then—it vanished. Gone as quickly as it came.
Leon blinked.
'Wait...? Could it be...' he thought to himself, like he instinctively knew what had just happened.
He didn't wait. Gripping his sword, he brought the edge to his hand and made a small, shallow cut along his finger. It stung—but only for a second.
He watched, wide-eyed, as the cut closed.
Not instantly—but at a pace far faster than normal. Within minutes, the blood flow stopped. Within half an hour, it was gone entirely, leaving only a faint pink line.
His heart pounded.
"Regeneration...?" he muttered, almost in disbelief.
It wasn't some miracle. The improvement was small—barely noticeable.
And when compared to real healing spells or high-tier potions, it was not even laughable.
But it worked.
A low, breathless laugh escaped him as the implications clicked into place.
"If just a weak monster's blood could do that... then what about something stronger?" he whispered. "What happens if I do it again? Or again after that?"
His mind raced with possibilities. Maybe the effect would stack. Maybe it would grow stronger with repetition. Maybe different creatures would give different boosts—faster healing, stronger bones, sharper senses. The idea was wild.
He had to test its limits.
Now he knew one thing for sure:
His body could not only adapt to training or battles.
Even monster blood could be a source of growth.
He turned his attention back to the corpse.
There, half-buried in the creature's open chest cavity, pulsed a faint light.
A softly glowing shard of crystal, no larger than a marble. Dim. Dull. But unmistakable.
It's core.
Leon's eyes locked onto it.
And slowly, a grin tugged at the edge of his mouth.