Hello everyone, a small update.
Today, my company decided my department was a little too overpowered and killed it off.
So yes, I got laid off.
On the bright side, I have a lot more time to write lol.
And thanks to your support, Patreon income make sure I won't be starving this month, which is always nice. 🥹
So… expect more chapters.
If you'd like to read up to 20 chapters ahead, you can support me on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Thanarit
The clinic door opened so hard it bounced off the wall.
"Doctor!"
Ren, who had been doing nothing more dangerous than reading a supply manifest at the reception desk, dropped it. His hand moved toward his coat on reflex before his brain caught up with the situation, which was that Chu Xinghe was standing in the doorway looking like someone who had just discovered he could fly.
"Vice Guildmaster," Ren said. "You gave me a heart attack."
"My bad, my bad." Chu Xinghe was already across the room, pulling off his left glove. He held his hand up between them. "Look."
Ren looked. Four fingers. Thumb. All present.
"My missing finger grew back!" Chu Xinghe spread his hand wide. "I lost the top joint three years ago in a gate raid. It has been half a finger for three years."
Ren leaned forward and examined it. He pressed his thumb against the tip, checked the nail bed, bent the joint once. Clean regrowth, no scar tissue, bone density matching the rest of the hand.
"Yes, that is normal," Ren said. "CPR at work."
Chu Xinghe blinked. "CPR? You mean chest compressions?"
"Nope. Chainsaw puppy. Regeneration field. He has been sleeping under the building since we moved in. The passive effect accumulates over time."
Chu Xinghe stood with his hand still held up. "There is a chainsaw puppy living under the building."
"Yes."
"A puppy. With a chainsaw."
"For a head. Yes."
Chu Xinghe looked at his finger. Then at Ren. Then he filed it away somewhere private and kept going, because he had learned that this was better for his mental health.
"That is not the point," he said, pulling his glove back on. "The point is that regenerating a lost limb is a threshold ability. The only hunter in this world who can do it is Claire Burningham from the Blinding Light Guild." He paused. "And you are the second one."
"Well, it is not that impressive though," Ren said.
Chu Xinghe looked at him. Is this the legendary humble brag, he thought.
"No, I mean it for real," Ren said. "You should see what other stuff I can do."
Chu Xinghe felt something stir. "So what else can you do?"
"I can give you a skill," Ren said.
The room went quiet.
Chu Xinghe stood very still. Skills were bestowed upon a hunter by the world system itself, by the goddess. They were not handed out by a person standing behind a reception desk in a black clinic on the forty-fourth floor. The idea sat in his mind and refused to become normal no matter how long he looked at it.
"What?" he said.
This is not the realm of Mythical rank anymore, Chu Xinghe thought. This is the realm of absurdity. The skill is bestowed upon you by the world system. The goddess herself. And you are saying you can do what the goddess does.
"Are you trying to be heaven-defying?" he said. "Are you serious, Doctor?"
"Yup," Ren said. "It is called grafting. I take a monster part or an item and graft it to your body. It will change your appearance depending on what is used, and it will grant you a skill according to the item. The only risk is that the higher the level difference between the material and the recipient, the more chance it fails."
Chu Xinghe exhaled slowly. "Doctor, you should not joke like this."
Chu Xinghe's brow furrowed. "The chimera dog. The fused specimens between girl and dog that spread through four countries. The bone-cold energy that Edwin's creatures still instill through the land." He looked at Ren carefully. "Is this not the same thing?"
Ren held up a hand. "First: I have heard that before. The very first patient who received a grafting said the same thing to me."
He folded his arms.
"Second: the power I have is not associated with alchemy. The mechanism is completely different. And as for proof, I cannot tell you the patient's name because of the confidentiality agreement. But I can tell you this. He received an S-rank skill while he was still A-rank. And he is a military officer from the Azareth Empire."
Chu Xinghe was quiet for a moment.
He thought about the Azareth Empire. He thought about its reputation, which was that if you farted too loudly during inspection you would receive a written reprimand in triplicate. The idea of Azareth military clearing a procedure like this, let alone participating in it willingly, was not something he could simply set aside.
If even a soldier of the Azareth Empire, with a reputation so strict that you could get punished for breathing wrong, dared to undergo grafting, he thought, it must be legitimate.
Chu Xinghe was an S-rank hunter. Heaven Sword Body. Sword path, sword cultivator, specialized in slaughter and the kill stroke above all else.
He reached behind his shoulder and drew his sword.
The blade was blood-red. Not the color of the metal, but the color of what had been absorbed into it, years of work soaked into the core, a deep arterial red that pressed against the air in the room even held flat and still.
"Can this be grafted?" he asked.
Ren took the sword and read.
HEAD HARVEST — S Rank, Growth Type
Blade forged for decapitation. Accumulates blood energy through each confirmed kill. As blood energy increases: qi regeneration of the user accelerates, harvest speed increases, reflexes sharpen toward the kill stroke. At threshold: when one hundred lives are reaped in a single release, the stored baleful qi discharges across a three-hundred-meter radius. All targets within range suffer soul destruction. Reincarnation is prevented.
Ren read it again.
He looked at Chu Xinghe.
"Are you sure about this?" he said. "Although this will upgrade your strength in an explosive manner, it is really sinister. And remember, this will be permanent and life-changing."
Chu Xinghe's eyes lit up. "Yes! If it is permanent, even better. I can kill more efficiently now. Monsters or even humans who threaten the people I protect will not be a problem."
Ren stared at him.
"Little brother," he said. "Are you sick or something?"
Chu Xinghe tilted his head. "Doctor?"
"You said I was scary," Ren said. "But you are the real lunatic."
He set the sword down on the desk and looked at Chu Xinghe, who was standing there with his pleasant face and his excellent posture, completely unbothered.
"Come," Ren said. "I will show you the grafting room."
Chu Xinghe followed him down the hallway.
They passed the first door. Then the second.
Chu Xinghe slowed.
The third door at the end of the corridor was blood-red. Red mist curled steadily from the gap at the base, drifting along the floor and disappearing. The walls around the frame had a faint wet look to them, dark and glistening under the corridor lights.
"What is that red mist," Chu Xinghe said.
"Ambient effect," Ren said. "Come."
"And that red light."
"Also ambient."
Chu Xinghe looked at him. Then he decided, with the composure of a man who had survived ceiling mirror brain surgery, that he could handle a door.
Ren opened it.
The room was large and cold, several degrees colder than the hallway. Equipment carts and sealed jars and instruments lined the walls. Red light pulsed from symbols embedded in the stone, each one intricate, lines intersecting at angles that Chu Xinghe's eyes did not want to follow. The air smelled like copper and something older than copper.
In the center of the floor was a circle.
Multiple nested rings, perfectly even, with runes carved between each one. Four cardinal sigils anchored the outer edge, dense and complex, their lines pressing against each other. In the very center was an empty space. A space exactly large enough for a person to lie down.
Chu Xinghe stood in the doorway and looked at the walls. At the instruments. At the cardinal sigils. At the empty space at the center of the circle.
He took one step back.
Everything, his mind said, with great clarity. Everything the Edwin cautionary story ever described. Every single element. In one room. I am looking at all of it simultaneously.
"Doctor," he said, very calmly.
"Yes," Ren said.
"I will not be sacrificed today."
"You are not going to be sacri—"
"I WILL NOT BE SACRIFICED TODAY!"
He turned and ran.
He made it four steps down the corridor before the Awakened Anesthesia hit his neck.
The cold spread from the injection point immediately, moving outward through his muscles with no hesitation. His legs went first. He caught the wall with one hand, then his knees touched the floor, and then he was sitting with his back against the corridor wall, body completely still, mind completely awake, staring at the ceiling.
Ren stood over him and looked down.
He sighed. "Why does everyone always run when they see that room."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Well. If it were me, I would run too."
Two red tentacles came out from his coat, wrapped around Chu Xinghe's shoulders with care, and carried him back inside the grafting room.
The blood-red door closed behind them.
Ren picked up the supply manifest from the floor.