A few hours later when the sun went down, Hajin sat by a camp fire, with deer meet cooking on a makeshift spit. Just the site of it turning brown and the smell was enough to make his stomach rumble, showing just how hungry he was.
While he waited, he sat by a tree, wrapping his ribs with strips torn from his shirt, 'hmm, I think I get most it now,' he thought, finishing tying his ribs and shifting his attention back to the system.
He'd been reading it for the past hour, cycling through the different sections by tapping them with his finger, and every new screen filled his head with a lot of information.
[ Status ]
[ Name: Hajin ]
[ Class: Summoner (Awakened) ]
[ Rank: 1 shard (Wrong Rank Path) ]
[ EXP: 1,500 / 50,000 ]
[ STR: 14 ] [ AGI: 12 ]
[ VIT: 10 ] [ MANA: 8 ]
[ SEN: 7 ] [ LUK: 5 ]
[ HP: 100 / 100 ]
[ Stamina: 100 / 100 ]
[ Traits ]
[Fragment's Blessing] ×10 Worth Gain
[ Active Summons: 0 ]
[ Summon Slots: 1 ]
[ Fragment Recovery: 0.00% ]
He stared at the stats, seeing just how bad they were. 'My mana is only 8? And what the hell is Fragment's Blessing?' he thought, tapping the next section.
[ Summoning Log ]
[ Previous attempts: 47 ]
[ Successful summons: 0 ]
[ Failure reason: System was not activated, which made the summoning ability dormant, awaiting trigger initiation. ]
'So it wasn't me,' he thought, feeling something warm in his chest, 'all those years, everything that I have went through, it wasn't because I was talentless.'
He read the line again and smiled a little, 'I have spent seven years thinking I was broken or cursed,' he thought, 'turns out my ability was just dormant. Did killing the monster trigger this system somehow?'
He didn't know if that was the case yet so he turned the meat on the spit and kept reading.
[ Stream ]
[ Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 0 ]
[ Soul Energy: 0 ]
[ Broadcasting host activity to designated world: Earth. ]
He read that last line three times, 'earth? It says designated world, so this earth place is where I will do this stream thingy?'
He tapped on the word Earth hoping for more information but the panel just gave him a short description.
[ Earth ]
[ A world in a different realm, inhabited by humans. The world has no magical power at all, it's simply a normal world.]
'I world without magical power?' he thought, looking at the meat, 'why is a world like that important, am I missing something?'
He scrolled down the stream section and found more text.
[ The stream transmits your actions, words, and environment to viewers on Earth in real time. Viewers can donate, comment, and interact with the stream through the system interface. ]
'Donate?' he thought, 'comment? You mean they are watching me do right now?' He panicked for a bit until he saw the viewer count.
[ Viewer count: 0 ]
'Zero viewers,' he thought, not sure if that made him relieved or insulted, 'so nobody is actually watching, it's just... active? Waiting for someone to tune in?'
He tapped on the stream section again looking for something useful and this time the panel gave him a clearer explanation.
[ Earth donations are converted into stream credits. ]
[ Conversion Rate: 1 Earth currency unit = 1 stream credit ]
[ Example: 10 donated units = 10 stream credits ]
[ Stream credits may be withdrawn as local currency or used in the system shop. ]
[ Soul Energy is generated through stream viewers, gifts, and engagement. ]
[ Soul Energy directly fuels the Goddess Fragment Recovery bar. ]
'So if someone from Earth sends 10 of their currency, I get 10 stream credits,' he thought, pulling the deer meat off the spit because it looked done and he was starving. 'And I can turn that into actual money here or spend it through the system shop. And the more people watch or send gifts, the more Soul Energy I get for that recovery bar.'
He took a bite the second it cooled enough not to burn him, and the first mouthful of real meat in two days nearly made him groan. It was a little tough and plain, but right now it tasted better than anything he could remember.
Grease ran down his fingers while he tore off another piece and kept tapping through the menus with his other hand. Most of the sections were locked, which annoyed him a little, but at least that meant there was more waiting for him.
[ Inventory ]
[ 3 deer cuts ]
[ 1 cheap iron sword (damaged) ]
[ 2 monster shards ]
[ 1 torn shirt ]
He paused mid-bite and looked at the list again, then at the broken sword beside him and the two crystals he had pried off the deer's antlers earlier.
'So it keeps track of what I have automatically,' he thought, swallowing the meat and wiping his hand on his pants, 'okay, that part is actually useful.'
He tapped back to the status screen, mostly because it was the only section that felt simple, but the moment it opened the line under his class flickered and the whole panel shook once.
[ Rank path mismatch detected ]
[ Current display: Shard Path ]
[ Recommended correction: Destined Path ]
[ Apply rank path change? ]
He stared at it with a strip of meat still in his hand, his brows pulling together.
'What does that even mean,' he thought, looking between the lines again, 'rank is rank. How can there be a wrong path?'
"Destined path?" he said out loud, frowning at the panel. "Is this thing trying to flatter me now?"
He tapped the warning and the status screen folded away, replacing itself with another set of lines that started appearing one after another.
[ Power in Ouro manifests through two recorded paths. ]
[ Common Path: Shards ]
[ Destined Bloodline Path: Rings ]
His chewing slowed as he read the next lines.
[ Shards are the standard manifestation used by awakened beings of Ouro. ]
[ Rings are the hereditary manifestation of those tied to the bloodline of the Goddess of Reincarnation. ]
[ Those of that bloodline do not walk the path of Shards. ]
[ They walk the path of Rings. ]
The food in his mouth suddenly had no taste at all.
'Bloodline?' he thought, staring so hard at the words that his eyes started to hurt, 'what bloodline? If something like this was tied to me then why was I thrown away like trash?'
He sat up straighter and felt his ribs complain, but he ignored that and kept reading.
[ Host lineage confirmed. ]
[ Bloodline status: Active ]
[ Surviving direct carriers: 1 ]
[ Host designation: Last of the bloodline ]
"Wait," he said, the word leaving him before he could stop it. "Last?"
The system responded immediately, more lines sliding into place under the first set.
[ The Goddess of Reincarnation is the source tied to this system. ]
[ Your soul resonated with the fragment because your bloodline carries her mark. ]
[ The bloodline remained dormant until bond initiation. ]
[ Rank manifestation can now be corrected to its proper path. ]
He looked back at the status window when it returned, and the old line was still there waiting for him.
[ Rank: 1 shard (Wrong Rank Path) ]
[ Correct to: 1 Ring ]
For a few seconds he just sat there listening to the fire crackle, because none of this made sense and all of it somehow felt too direct to be a lie.
'If this is real, then there was something about me all along and I never even knew it,' he thought, remembering the elder's cold face, 'either way, I am not leaving it wrong just because I don't understand it yet.'
"Fine," he muttered, reaching out. "Change it."
[ Applying destined path... ]
At first nothing happened, and then it felt like something grabbed every bone in his body at once and twisted.
"Ghhk-" The sound tore out of him before he could stop it, and the strip of deer meat fell from his hand while his whole body locked up so hard he rolled sideways off the log, hitting the ground.
Pain ripped through him in waves, so sharp and deep that it made the broken ribs from earlier feel small by comparison. It wasn't just his arms or chest either, because his back, his legs, his neck and even his teeth started hurting at the same time like his whole body was being taken apart.
[ Warning: correcting manifestation path ]
[ Reconstructing body for Ring alignment ]
[ Do not resist ]
"Do not resist?" he gasped, digging his fingers into the dirt. "Are you insane?"
He tried to curl up on instinct, but the moment he moved, something under his skin shifted and a scream ripped out of him so raw that it hurt his throat.
His shoulders felt like they were being split open from the inside while both arms burned all the way down to his fingertips, and his spine arched so hard off the ground that for a second he thought it had snapped.
'What the fuck is this,' he thought, though the words barely held together, 'this isn't a path change, this is torture.'
The panel stayed above him while he writhed under it.
[ Existing manifestation route incompatible ]
[ Shard alignment being removed ]
[ Ring alignment being established ]
He felt something tear through his chest and couldn't even tell if it was flesh, mana, or something deeper than both. Every breath came out broken while heat and cold kept trading places through his body.
when he clawed at his forearms he almost swore he could feel things moving under the skin.
The camp fire blurred in and out of focus while dirt got into his mouth when he turned and gagged. The next cry that came out of him sounded hoarse and ugly enough that if anyone was nearby they would probably think he was dying.
'Stop, stop, stop,' he thought, not because he believed the system would listen but because his mind had nothing else left.
His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would burst, then his pulse suddenly dropped, making his vision darken at the edges.
A second later it came roaring back while both his arms convulsed and he felt a ring of pressure clamp around each of them deep inside the muscle, not on the skin but somewhere worse.
[ Ring channels formed ]
[ Core route revised ]
[ Authority pathway opened ]
He didn't know what any of that meant, and right now he hated the system enough not to care. Sweat soaked through the last dry parts of his clothes while tears forced themselves from his eyes without permission, and all he could do was drag in shallow breaths between sounds he was too far gone to hide.
Then the pain climbed one last time.
It hit so hard that his whole body jerked, causing his head to crack against the ground, and for one terrible second he felt everything in him pull inward toward his chest before rushing back out through his limbs.
The pressure around his arms tightened again and he screamed until there was no air left.
Then finally, after all that pain, it stopped.
He lay there shaking on the dirt beside the fire, his chest hitching, his hands too weak to close properly and every part of him feeling wrong in a new way. The pain was gone, but it had left an afterimage behind, something deep in his nerves that made even breathing feel dangerous.
The panel flickered once and a new line appeared in front of his blurred vision.
[ Destined path correction complete ]
[ Current Rank: 1 Ring ]
[ EXP: 1,500 / 500,000 ]
He laughed by accident, 'I almost fucking died.'
Another line appeared under it.
[ Help revive the Goddess of Reincarnation. ]
He stared at the words and tried to push himself up, but his elbow buckled immediately and dumped him back into the dirt.
"Yeah," he whispered, voice rough and wrecked, "sure, let me just..."
The sentence died there because the world suddenly tilted sideways.
[ Stream status unstable ]
[ Host consciousness failing ]
[ Disconnecting broadcast... ]
The fire turned into a smear of orange, the panel dimmed with it, and a second later everything went black.
[ Stream disconnected ]