The ravine felt almost familiar now, its walls less ominous, the brook’s gurgle steady in his ears. The day’s first task never changed. He waded in, shovel biting into sand and stone, hauling bucket after bucket until a shallow basin opened at the brook’s edge. Sweat slid down his temples, but the rhythm steadied him. The pool was his field. Without it, the harvest couldn’t begin.
Catch, stab, split. Dump, burst, collect. The loop was simple, and in its simplicity it pressed everything else quiet. His arms ached, his back burned, but the pattern of it dulled the pain. He moved as though tethered to a drumbeat only he could hear, each repetition both comfort and command. The work numbed him, yet in the spaces between he found his mind turning sharp, restless.
He coaxed a slime into his bucket, stabbing just enough to split it once, then again, until a dozen weaker bodies pressed against each other, quivering in panic. He carried them to the pool and tipped them in. The water frothed as the slimes swelled. A heartbeat later they burst, spraying green mist across the stones. Cores rolled free, glinting faintly as they clattered together. Relief pulsed through him, filling the hollow space inside almost at once—too fast, too much. He forced it down. From his pocket he drew a pebble, summoned the cube around it: Identify. Hardness. Then added a water drop: Merge. Liquid stone. The fullness ebbed as his power bled into the work.
Again, again. Catch, stab, split. Dump, burst, collect. Each cycle smoother than the last, his body following the groove of the task even as his thoughts roamed. Curiosity tugged at him in every pause, whispering to push the cube against new materials, to ask questions no one else thought to ask. He obeyed it as often as he resisted, each experiment another scratch in his journal, another notch in the long grind. The repetition held him steady, though a slow interference crept in at the edges. Monotony loosened his guard, and stray images surfaced—Tomas advancing through ranks, Saskia’s easy laughter, his parents’ measured concern. Noise in the process. He forced the cycle forward, emptied another bucket into the pool, and let the spray of green mist erase the rest.
By the time the light slanted toward evening, his satchel sagged heavy with cores and the ground near his pool bore the remnants of today’s trials. A crust of bread merged with butter had congealed into a rubbery block that refused to crumble. A shard of glass fused with a spider’s body had left the creature a translucent marvel, legs invisible. One of his own baby teeth, merged with a shaving of copper, gleamed with a faint metallic sheen.
Only what he took out would survive the reset. Tomorrow the ravine would be scrubbed clean. But every result was preserved in his journal, and anything worth saving was already cataloged in his storage. That was discipline. That was the grind.
He could indefinitely push off leveling by spending the essence he earned from farming the slimes on his experiments. He pulled up his stats:
[ASSESSMENT LOG — SUBJECT REGISTRY]
License: Thrive System [Provisional] (Ref: LIC-TH/PRV).
Name: Rembrandt de Vries.
Race: Human (Enhanced).
Level: 1.
Class: Error — No class found (Ref: SYS-ERR/CL-404).
[ASSESSMENT LOG — STATISTICAL INDEX]
Strength: 10.
Agility: 10.
Vitality: 10.
Intelligence: 12.
Perception: 12.
Essence Control: 11.
Finally, his post-coma physique had recovered and improved through physical exertion bringing his stats to baseline average. Essence Control had increased by 2 points. That was likely from his repeated use of his powers, though he couldn’t be sure since he never got a notice for it.
Rem pulled the canteen from his satchel and shook it a few times to replenish his water before taking a long sip. He enjoyed the cool crisp water as he drank it down. It was one of his better ideas, to merge water with a slime core, resulting in duplicating water. Now he just needed to agitate his canteen and the water would refill it to the top.
[INSPECTION REPORT]
Item: Duplicating WaterGrade: Uncommon (Ref: IT-GRD/COM).
Traits: Agitate to duplicate.
He straightened, shovel balanced across his shoulder, and glanced at the single slime still trembling in his bucket. One slime was all it took to keep the cycle going. He looked over the churned water, the slick stones, the pile of faintly glowing cores. His lips twitched, but the smile never came. Instead a restless ache pressed at him.
He was bored. And he knew what that meant. The next challenge tugged at him, whispering of unknown rules, new materials, more truths to uncover. He wanted to see it, to break it, to learn. But the thought of moving on without wringing every last drop from this place gnawed at him harder. One day he might need a core he hadn’t taken. He didn’t want his future self to think him lazy or stupid. He had enough of that with his present self.
So he stayed. Grinding. Testing. Balancing. The motions were steady, but underneath them the pull forward gathered, strong and insistent. The ravine was almost exhausted, and he knew it.
And worse, others were starting to notice.
The dinner table was quieter than usual. Forks scraped against plates, the hum of the overhead light filling the gaps where words didn’t. Rem kept his head down, tearing bread into neat crumbs, lining them up, crushing them again. The rhythm was safer than looking anyone in the eye.
“So,” his father said at last. He shoved his chair back with a scrape. “Level one. Still.” His voice wasn’t cruel, but the edge was sharp enough to cut. “You know what that looks like, right? Every day you go in, every day you come out, and nothing—”
“Martijn,” his mother said, her hand tightening on his arm as she set her cup down hard. The clink rang through the room.
“—changes,” he finished, ignoring her. His fists pressed into the table. “Everyone else is moving forward. You think you can just sit there, poking at rocks—”
“He’s not doing nothing,” Saskia cut across, too bright, too quick. “He’s got… what? Some crafter trick, right, Remy?” She leaned forward, elbows bouncing, hair in her face. “Tell him, you’re working on something.”
“Saskia–”
“I thought crafting would be good, not—” Tomas stopped, shaking his head. “Didn’t know it would hold you back like this.”
Their mother’s lips pressed tight. “Rembrandt, you don’t have to pretend. We can talk to the coordinators, maybe—”
Rem blinked. His pulse jumped once, then steadied. He didn’t look up.
“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Saskia said, half on top of her mother’s voice. “Right, Remy?”
The crumbs blurred under his fingers. They thought he was failing. They didn’t see the data, the tests, the long hours. They couldn’t.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Rem paused, blinking. His reply came slower, quieter. y
He raised his head. “I’ve made you all worry,” he said. His voice was quiet, but even. “For that, I’m sorry. My crafting skills use XP. I could have leveled a week ago, but I’ve been practicing because there’s no danger in this challenge, and I doubt I’ll get a better chance to grind my skills.”
The lie landed cleanly, already rehearsed. They all moved at once—Tomas shifting, Saskia leaning forward, their mother’s fingers twitching—but he kept speaking.
“I’ve hit a cap on what I can do with the materials here, so… tomorrow.”
The word hung in the air.
“Tomorrow?” his father repeated, suspicion narrowing his eyes.
“Tomorrow’s the day.”
Saskia grinned, seizing it like sunlight. “See? I told you! He has a plan.”
Their father exhaled slow, some tension bleeding away. Their mother’s gaze softened, not convinced, but willing to hope.
Rem didn’t add more. He didn’t need to. The word had done its work.
t
The next morning, Rem’s steps were light, steady. He kept pace with the crowd funneling toward the square, no rush in him now. Where once he would have pushed and stumbled, today he moved with the current, unhurried.
The line at the arch stretched twice as long as it had a week ago, yet it flowed smoothly. Union representatives in crisp charcoal gray coats walked the edges, calling orders with clipped efficiency. They broke up knots before they formed, waved teams forward, hushed disputes with sharp words. What had been chaos two weeks ago was routine now, practiced as the lifts. To Rem, fresh from the silence of the ravine, it all felt like noise. The chatter, the laughter, the calls of trade — a whole city buzzing while he carried the quiet of stone and water inside him. The contrast left him both unsettled and faintly amused, like he was slipping between worlds.
The plaza had changed too. Stalls had multiplied, their signs painted clean, prices nailed into place. Artisans worked in plain sight, hammering, weaving, mixing to tempt buyers. Children darted through the gaps with baskets and pitchers, their laughter bright against the hum of trade.
“Need more vials today, Rem?” a glassblower called.
“Fresh reagents for you,” an alchemist added, tapping a crate.
He knew them all now. He had bought from nearly every stall at least once, scraps and shavings, jars and vials, oddments no one else cared for. Faces turned as he passed, greeting him like a familiar customer. None asked why he needed such strange assortments.
“Level one and still shopping?” someone jeered from a nearby stall. Laughter followed, quick and dismissive.
Rem only smiled, the corner of his mouth tilting up. “Feels like today might be my day,” he said lightly, and walked on.
The arch loomed ahead, its glyphs pulsing in slow rhythm. Union officials kept the line flowing, ticking names in ledgers, waving citizens forward one after the other. When his turn came, Rem stepped beneath without hesitation.
[SYSTEM INTERFACE — TRANSPORT MENU]
Available Destinations:
? Storage Locker (Ref: LOC-ST/001)
? Challenge Level 1 — Passes Remaining: 1 (Ref: CH-001/DAILY)
Storage Locker, he thought, and the world shifted.
The locker resolved around him: a long stone chamber, narrow and dim. The ceiling arched overhead in rough-hewn blocks, old-world craftsmanship pressed into function. Light seeped from nowhere obvious, a muted glow that barely reached the corners, softened further by the green tint of slime cores stacked along the walls. The air was cool, dry, tinged faintly with mineral dust.
Shelves ran the length of both walls, carved wooden cubbies packed with his work. Large jars of cores glowed faintly in ordered rows, thousands of them, their light glimmering like bottled fireflies. Ranks of healer vials lined another shelf, crimson liquid catching the glow. Other jars held liquids of less certain purpose: cloudy whites, oily greens, shimmering golds. Bundles of scraps filled the gaps, each one labeled in his neat hand.
Down the middle ran a long, low stone table, its surface scarred and stained from use. This was where he laid out the day’s gear, where he spread specimens to study, where the system should place his challenge rewards he was told.
He lingered there. The silence pressed close, comfortable, unlike the plaza’s chaos. This place carried his fingerprints in every line of charcoal, every smudge on the wood. His shelves were a map of persistence.
Rem moved to the section that held his menagerie, filled with jars and vials. They contained his most promising merges. “Still kicking,” he murmured, thumb against the glass of the translucent spider’s jar, its clear legs twitching to spin threads invisible until the light caught them. Above sat his notebooks. Two filled, pages swollen with ink and charcoal, the true wealth of his weeks: neat columns of experiments, failures cataloged as carefully as successes. Beside those, a stack of empty ones waiting their turn. He let his fingers rest on the covers, a small satisfaction curling in his chest. To anyone else this might feel like a crypt. To him, it was a cathedral. A sanctuary earned by repetition and grit.
He smiled, just once, and got down to business. Satchel light with only his canteen inside, shovel in one hand, bucket in the other, he stepped to the glyph plate.
Okay, Rem. Speed run.
The ravine unfolded around him, familiar ground. This time he didn’t pause. He sprinted to the brook’s center, shovel biting deep. Rocks flew, water widened, the basin took shape in minutes instead of hours. His muscles, hardened by two weeks of grinding, answered each demand with precision. No falter, no wasted motion. Every swing was efficient, every step sure. He felt the difference — where once he had flailed, now he flowed.
Back at the start he swept through the ravine, fast and confident, scooping slimes into the bucket one after another. By the time he returned, the pail quivered with bodies.
Stab. Split. Stab again. Dozens writhing now, weak and trembling. He dumped them into the pool and stepped back.
The water churned. Slimes swelled, ballooning grotesque. A chain of wet pops cracked the air, spraying green mist.
Cores rained down across the bank.
[COMBAT LOG]
? Target Eliminated: 20 Level 1 Slime.
? Reward: 100 XP.
Compliance reference: Combat Resolution §9.1.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — CHALLENGE COMPLETION]
Challenge Level 1 — Status: Completed.
Reward: 30 XP.
Record established: Completion time 17 minutes (Ref: REC-CL1/017).
Compliance reference: Challenge Resolution §9.7.
Relief rushed through him, fierce and unstoppable, until it crested too high—like the swelling slimes themselves—then burst, flooding him in a wave of cold clarity. He staggered, shivering, and knew he had changed.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — SUBJECT REGISTRY]
License: Thrive System [Provisional] (Ref: LIC-TH/PRV).
Name: Rembrandt de Vries.
Race: Human (Enhanced).
Level: 2.
Class: Error — No class found (Ref: SYS-ERR/CL-404).
[ASSESSMENT LOG — STATISTICAL INDEX]
Strength: 10.
Agility: 10.
Vitality: 10.
Intelligence: 12.
Perception: 12.
Essence Control: 11.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — SKILL REGISTER]
Class Skills: Error — No class found (Ref: SYS-ERR/CL-405).
General Skills:
? Inspect — Present system-registered item details (name, type, durability, level, traits).
Interface only. Accessible only within Thrive-enabled regions.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — EXPERIENCE]
Current XP: 0.
XP to next level: 200.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — ANCILLARY DATA]
Challenge Passes Remaining: 0.
Clear Record:
? Challenge Level 1 — Completion Time: 17 minutes.
Compliance reference: Oversight Queue §8.2.
Rem frowned. His stats hadn’t risen. Average now. Ordinary. Maybe even reliable. But he knew everyone got stats when they leveled. Some even had free stats they could allocate wherever they wanted.
Leveling hadn’t raised his stats at all. And, no new skills. Just empty space where growth should be.
“No. Our growth path is not compatible with whatever subsystem allows normal advancement under Thrive, Rem answered.
The disappointment pricked at him faintly, but curiosity followed fast. Because when he summoned the merge domain, the cube floated in the air, clear and steady, humming with a weight it hadn’t carried before.
He sat up straight, heart kicking once against his ribs.
“…That is new.”
