Six hours passed in silence, but Elias did not sleep.
He tried.
He lay among the mossy ruins, staring up through the broken dome of the ancient temple, watching storm clouds churn like oil in water. The pain had dulled, but it hadn't gone. It sat in his bones like heat from a long-cold fire, faint but unforgettable.
His muscles twitched without reason—residual tremors from the last trial. Every breath reminded him that something had changed inside him. Not healed. Not even improved. Just... reforged.
[Time to Next Trial: 00:00:03]
[Initializing Trial 3: Muscular Lattice Reconstruction]
[Trial Type: High-Impact Micro-Tear Simulation]
[Duration: Until full failure or adaptive resilience. No rest permitted.]
He tried to sit up, but his body locked mid-motion.
Then came the tearing.
His muscles seized as if hooked by invisible barbs. Each fiber expanded, stretched, and tore apart at the microscopic level. It wasn't an injury, not in the conventional sense. It was forced adaptation, an artificial overtraining compressed into a single moment.
His tendons pulled taut. His shoulders dislocated, snapped back into place. His calves spasmed so hard he nearly split his heel bones. He opened his mouth to scream but gagged on his breath.
[Muscle fibers undergoing hypertrophic catalysis. Protein synthesis accelerated. Neural motor control recalibrating.]
[Warning: Cardiac stress approaching tolerance threshold.]
[Override accepted. Continue trial.]
Of course it continued.
Elias's mind spiraled. He saw darkness creep in at the edges of his vision. But within that void, he saw something else: memory. Motion. He saw a younger version of himself, maybe ten, lifting bricks in the slums for a single silver coin.
His arms, too weak to carry, had bled from strain. His back had ached for days. But he'd returned the next day. And the next.
That pain had forged the first brick of his will.
[Time Elapsed: 14 minutes, 23 seconds.]
[Adaptive Node Identified: Quadriceps → 12% Growth]
[Latissimus Dorsi: Tearing incomplete. Amplify micro-stimulus.]
His back arched. His vision went white.
[Muscle reinforcement in progress…]
Elias clawed at the ground, the moss squishing under his hands like rot. He screamed into the earth until his throat tore. But he didn't stop.
He endured.
When it ended, he lay in a pool of his own sweat and blood, trembling. The ground beneath him was cracked in a spiderweb pattern—he had done that. Not with a strike. Not with a weapon. But through the tension of his body fighting itself and refusing to break.
[Trial Complete.]
[Strength Rating: E → D]
[Unlocking Passive: Fast-Twitch Resilience (Tier 1)]
[You recover 5% faster from all muscle damage.]
[Next Trial in 12 hours. Sleep is strongly advised.]
Elias didn't move for a long time. But this time, when his fingers curled into the dirt, they didn't feel weak. His arm didn't shake. He flexed, and his biceps felt heavier, denser—not like a bodybuilder's, but like woven steel wrapped in skin.
He sat up slowly. The world spun, then stilled. For the first time since he could remember, he stood—stood—without pain lancing through his legs.
He had changed.
Not just survived. Improved.
The temple where he had taken refuge had long ago been swallowed by nature and time. Moss-coated statues loomed, their features long eroded, their robes eaten by lichen. But now that he could walk, Elias explored.
The central altar was shattered, the stone cracked into six fragments. Each bore sigils of a bygone age—symbols from a pre-cultivation civilization.
He touched one.
It pulsed with faint light. Not spiritual energy, not qi, but something older. More primal. A kind of residual will. The air shimmered faintly.
And for a split second, the System spoke without warning:
[Unregistered External Energy Detected.]
[Do Not Engage. This site is classified as a Level-3 Cognitive Hazard.]
[You are not ready.]
He pulled his hand away, heart racing. The sigils dimmed.
Something had lived here. Something still lingered.
He made a note: when he was stronger—much stronger—he would return.
He left the ruins at dawn.
The rain had stopped. The clouds had parted. In the distance, the jagged skyline of Whitebrand rose like a wall of stone and smoke. Its forges never ceased. Its towers always gleamed with borrowed light.
Elias knew he had to go back.
He had no food. No shelter. The city, for all its cruelty, was a source of both—if you knew where to look and how to avoid being noticed.
But something else called to him, too. A whisper from the System.
[Secondary Objective Unlocked: Flesh-Grind Milestone 1]
[Defeat a cultivator in combat. Condition: Must survive the encounter without weapons.]
[Reward: Reflex Loop Upgrade & Muscle Memory Storage (Tier 1).]
It wasn't just about enduring anymore. The Body & Will Refinement System demanded conflict. Struggle. Combat.
It was time to find someone to bleed.