Understanding washed over him, cold and unforgiving as winter rain. He tried to scowl, but the movement sent a sharp throb through his swollen jaw.
"Tch. You called me your child," he mumbled, spitting blood into the dirt. "And this is where you drop me? A broken body, in a village full of hostile people, and in the vicinity of a forest crawling with orcs." He let out a ragged breath. "Hell of a start for a savior."
"Wonderful," he rasped, exhaling slowly. An old trick for staying calm, a reflex from his old body, but it felt hollow here. He pushed the rage down before it could cloud his head.
"Then again," he thought, the edge of his spite softening, "maybe it didn't have a choice. Maybe this was the only way in. Or maybe there's a deeper reason. Or maybe I'm just paranoid."
His gaze drifted back to the two empty straw beds, and the grief hit him in a second wave, this time colder and more crushing. Before he could stop them, tears tracked hot paths down his swollen, grime-streaked cheeks.
His throat constricted, burning as if he'd swallowed a live coal. He white-knuckled his fists until his battered fingers screamed, then forced them to unclench, one by one.
He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the sight of the empty beds. "Get a grip," he told himself. "They were dead before I even got here. These memories and emotions are just echoes—hormones in a borrowed brain."
He focused on the rise and fall of his chest. "The world is full of people I can replace them with," he rasped into the quiet room. "Sentiment is a luxury I can't afford in this village."
He took another steadying breath. "They're already dead," he repeated, the words a cold, necessary wall—and they worked. Slowly, the turbulence in his chest began to subside.
"She was just a stranger," he mumbled, his voice cracking. "I'm not dying for a woman I've never met."
But the memories didn't care about his logic. They surged back, overwhelmingly vivid and intimate; sharp fragments of a life he hadn't lived, pressing against the inside of his skull. He could smell her hair, hear her laugh; for a moment, he felt like an intruder. A squatter in a dead man's head, listening to secrets he was never meant to hear.
He scrubbed at his face with the back of his hand, but the tears kept coming. He wiped again, harder this time, his knuckles dragging against swollen face until the salt-sting faded. Finally, a hollow normalcy returned.
"Too close," he muttered as his stomach gave a violent, cramping growl—forty-eight hours of not eating.
He gritted his teeth against the hunger and forced himself upright. As he stood, his joints cracked, knees, spine, shoulders, protesting the movement after two days in bed.
His eyes swept the room again, avoiding anything that might awaken unwanted memories. His gaze drifted to the clay pots by the door. Those were the pots Rill's wife and sister had used every morning to fetch water from the river in the forest.
Tucked behind the clay pots was a rough-hewn wooden box that served as their wardrobe. As for Rill, the man who had owned this body, he apparently owned nothing but the rags clinging to him. The tattered straw vest scratched against his bruised chest, and his coarse brown pants were stiff with layers of dried mud.
Aris walked to one of the pots. He dipped a clay cup, gulping the water down; after a few more, his hunger faintly subsided. With what little energy he had left, he lifted the pot. His ribs ached, making him wince, but he carried it to the doorway and angled it until the afternoon sunlight struck the surface.
Then, after steadying himself, he leaned over and studied the reflection staring back at him.
The face in the water was young—seventeen, maybe eighteen—with messy black hair that refused to lie flat. Despite the swelling, there was a symmetry to his features. He leaned back, assessing the lean muscle on his body; it was a frame built for labor.
"Not bad," he murmured, raking his fingers through the matted hair to clear his vision. "At least I won't be fighting an uphill battle in the looks department."
He turned from the water and retreated to the straw bed, his vanity fading as focus sharpened. He sat, spine straight despite the ache, and drew deep breaths. He closed his eyes, imagining the shape of his soul.
Moments later, his eyes snapped open to find a blue panel hovering before him. He passed his hand through the light, but it was a phantom; his fingers met only air. He didn't dwell on the impossibility, shifting his focus instead to the flickering display.
[Name: Aris Seldon | Strength: 1.2 | Agility: 1.3 | Vitality: 0.7]
"Strength," he mumbled, looking at his hands and physique. "1.2. I don't know if that's high or low for this world. I'll need more data." He paused, his gaze narrowing. "Does this stat scale with weapons?"
He stood and walked to the wall where the utensils were kept. Crouching, he picked up a crude iron knife; the wooden grip was coarse against his palm. He turned back to the panel, but the strength stat remained unchanged. "So it only reflects my baseline physical capacity."
He tossed the knife back to the ground and shifted his focus to the Agility stat. This one didn't need much thought; he understood it represented the speed of his motor functions. A fast body required a fast mind for quick reflexes.
His gaze drifted to the Vitality reading of 0.7. "Simple enough. If 1.0 is the baseline for a healthy adult, then I'm operating at a thirty percent deficit. Anything lower than one is ailing." He stroked his sandpapery stubble, his expression darkening. "And if average humans are 1.0, where do the orcs sit? 2.0 Strength? 5.0?" He exhaled, the gravity of the data sinking in. "No wonder the village is terrified."
He set aside thoughts of the orcs and refocused on the panel; the core features of the Biochip had finally appeared at the bottom. His gaze narrowed on the first feature: [Scan: Map one-meter area omnidirectionally.]
He focused on the ability and activated it. He had expected the world to change before his eyes, but it was his perception that shifted. A translucent blue wireframe exploded outward, mapping the space within a one-meter radius in a 360-degree burst.
In his mind he could see the geometry of the water pot, the jagged edge of the iron knife, and even the frantic skittering of a beetle beneath the floorboards. It was a perfect 3D rendering.
"Incredible," he breathed. "Real-time environmental data."
With excitement bubbling on his dirt-streaked face, he turned immediately to the second feature. "Storage," he mumbled, and activated it.
Suddenly, his mind felt clear. His thoughts were orderly now—categorized into folders. He focused on one, and his childhood on Earth resurfaced: his father's hopeful gaze, his mother's gentle eyes, a home filled with warmth. It felt like yesterday, as if he were still sitting at the table with them. He basked there for a long moment before closing the file.
Nearby folders held the darker data, his family's death, the struggles that followed. He skipped them and wandered through the catalog of his life. Chemistry. Physics. Every subject he had ever studied, even glimpsed, was there in the tiniest detail. Every novel. Every spicy movie. And beside them, clustered like corrupted data, sat Rill's memories—shattered and incomplete.
He turned to the third feature. "Analyze, huh," he mumbled, picking up the knife again. He activated it.
[Analyzing... Analysis Successful.]
[Object: Crude Knife | Composition: 82% Impure Iron, 18% Organic Fiber (Oak)] "Hmm, so it's like that," he said, his mind already jumping to the final feature.
[Optimization: Identifies optimal refinement and enhancement pathways for analyzed items.]
"Good. They complement each other." He turned toward the door, his expression hardening. "I need more data."
With that, he stepped outside. Warm sunlight washed across his skin—air that hadn't felt fresh for two days. The heat seeped into his bones, easing the stiffness in his muscles.
For a moment, he simply stood there, letting the world settle over him. The lingering grief in his chest dulled beneath the light. He stayed a moment longer, eyes closed, letting the warmth soak into his aching limbs.
He took a deep, freeing breath. The air carried scents of cooking smoke, wood fires, and something roasting—beef? Rabbit? His stomach, empty for two days, clenched at the aroma. He raised his hands to bathe in the light, and for a moment, he felt almost comfortable. Then his aching ribs and throbbing face pulled him back to reality.
He opened his eyes. The village spread before him; dozens of weathered wooden houses with straw roofs stood in orderly rows. His own home sat at the northern edge, only two meters from the perimeter wall to his right.
To his left came the rhythmic thud of an axe splitting wood. He turned to see a middle-aged man working in the neighboring yard; a dog at the man's side looked at Aris and barked, high and insistent. Aris turned away, looking forward. Dozens of meters ahead, another house blocked his path, with chickens scratching in the dirt before it.
He eyed the plump birds, feeling the weight of watching eyes from every shadow.
He walked forward, his fingers brushing against his left pocket. A few coins remained; the others had been taken, but he kept moving. To his left, more rows of wooden houses stretched toward the settlement's edge, most of the inhabitants standing in their yards, watching.
He walked alongside the perimeter wall—a three-meter-high barrier of logs sharpened to lethal points at the top.
Beyond that wall lay the forest and its dangers.
After walking for some time, he arrived at a small clearing between the rows of houses. He lifted his eyes to find two watchtowers rising above the walls in the distance, each nearly five meters tall.
He narrowed his eyes at the silhouettes of the armed men atop them, bows slung across their backs. One spat over the edge. The other scratched his beard, his gaze fixed on the dark line of the trees.
As Aris approached the main junction where the rows of houses met, he saw two more guards leaning on spears before the open gate. He estimated the thick wooden barrier at four meters tall. One guard was talking; the other was laughing, a rough, grating sound that carried clearly to Aris, even from a hundred meters away.
In the open space before the gate, children ran along dusty paths, their bare feet slapping against the dry earth. A girl chased a boy with a wooden sword, both laughing as a dog trailed them. Women carried baskets on their hips, talking quietly as they returned through the gate from the nearby river.
The smell of baking bread drifted from nearby stalls as he passed, but the owners only offered him judging gazes. A man hammered a fence post, steady as a heartbeat, beside his wooden house, his young daughter smiling at his side.
Then, another man caught his eye. He was sharpening a blade with slow, scraping strokes on a whetstone. The face was vivid in the Biochip's storage: one of the men who had beaten Rill to death. Before the surge of unwanted emotion could surface, Aris turned away.
Through the open gate, three men emerged from the tree line several hundred meters away, dragging a carcass between them. As they neared the entrance, the kill became clear: a deer, its fur smeared with dark blood and clouded by buzzing flies. One of the men called out, and a woman hurried toward them, a heavy knife already in hand.
Aris watched the scene unfold, then forced his focus back to his goal. He approached one of the food stalls and stopped. The merchant behind the counter met his eyes with a complicated expression, pity mixed with a lingering unease, but ultimately, the man didn't comment. He simply shifted back into his sales pitch. "What do you need, young man? I have brown bread, honey-baked, and loaves with honey inside."
"How much for the brown bread?" Aris asked. As he spoke, he triggered the Biochip.
[Name: Unknown | Strength: 1.3 | Agility: 1.0 | Vitality: 0.9]
"Just as I guessed. The average is 1.0," he thought, reaching into his pocket.
"Two copper coins," the man said.