Hajin had the fire going by the time his hands stopped shaking, with venison over it on a stick that kept trying to roll.
He wound torn shirt around his ribs until the ends held, then went back to the panel waiting in front of his face.
'Most of it makes sense now,' he thought, turning the meat so the burnt side came up, 'which is more than anyone here ever did for free.'
[ Status ]
[ Name: Hajin ]
[ Class: Summoner (Awakened) ]
[ Rank: 1 shard (Wrong Rank Path) ]
[ EXP: 1,500 / 50,000 ]
[ HP: 34 / 100 ]
[ Stamina: 16 / 100 ]
[ Mana: 10 / 10 ]
[ Traits ]
[ Fragment's Blessing: ×10 Worth Gain ]
[ Summon Slots: 1 ]
"Thirty-four health," he said, bracing a palm over the bandages as one rib shifted, "so the deer nearly finished the job."
'And sixteen stamina after two days without food,' he thought while fat spat into the fire, 'at least the system is honest about the state of me.'
"Ten mana," he said to the panel, holding a finger up to the number as though it might move, "a village woman lighting a lamp carries more."
'And nothing says what the Blessing does,' he thought while the fat spat, 'so the generous line is the one with no explanation.'
[ Summoning Log ]
[ Previous attempts: 47 ]
[ Successful summons: 0 ]
[ Failure reason: System inactive; summoning ability remained dormant. ]
He read the last line three times before he trusted it.
'It was never me,' he thought while something loosened under the bandages, 'three years of being told I was born wrong, when the thing was only asleep.'
"Forty-seven," he said with a laugh his ribs made him regret, "and every one of those came with a lecture about wasted talent."
He turned the meat while he worked out whether the kill had woken the system.
[ Stream ]
[ Status: Active ]
[ Viewers: 0 ]
[ Soul Energy: 0 ]
[ Broadcasting host activity to designated world: Earth. ]
[ The stream transmits your actions, words and surroundings to Earth. Viewers may comment, engage and donate through the system interface. ]
[ Viewer count: 0 ]
"There is a whole second world of people," he said, reading the line twice with the stick held still, "and not one of them has looked at me yet."
'A world with no magic,' he thought at the zero, 'and I am insulted by strangers who do not know I exist.'
[ Earth donations are converted into stream credits. ]
[ Conversion: 1 Earth currency unit = 1 stream credit ]
[ Credits may become local currency or purchase system-shop goods. ]
[ Soul Energy is generated through stream viewers, gifts, and engagement. ]
[ Soul Energy fuels the Goddess Fragment Recovery bar. ]
"Their money becomes my money," he said, working it through with his eyes going down the panel, "so somebody watching me eat pays for a goddess."
He pulled the strip off the stick and bit into it before the heat left, then learned that two days of hunger improve anything.
Grease ran to his wrist while the other hand opened locked menus, though the inventory had only catalogued the meat, the sword and both Shards where they lay, without taking one of them in.
He went back to the plain status screen, then the line under his class shook and came apart while he watched.
[ Rank path mismatch detected ]
[ Current display: Shard Path ]
[ Recommended correction: Destined Path ]
[ Apply rank path change? ]
The meat stopped halfway to his mouth.
'A rank cannot follow a wrong path,' he thought at it, 'a rank is a rank, the way a hand is a hand.'
"Destined Path," he said, frowning at the panel until his eyes complained, "is this thing trying to flatter me now?"
He tapped the prompt twice, so the status screen folded away and left an explanation in its place.
[ Power in Ouro manifests through two recorded paths. ]
[ Common Path: Shards ]
[ Destined Bloodline Path: Rings ]
[ 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. ]
[ That bloodline follows the path of Rings rather than Shards. ]
'Bloodline,' he thought as the food went tasteless, 'so there was something in me the whole time they were deciding I was worthless.'
[ 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 agreed to it, "last?"
[ The Goddess of Reincarnation is the source of this system. ]
[ Your soul resonated with her fragment through the mark carried in your bloodline. ]
[ The bloodline remained dormant until bond initiation. ]
[ Rank manifestation can now be corrected to its proper path. ]
The status window came back with the wrong rank still in it, waiting on him.
[ Rank: 1 shard (Wrong Rank Path) ]
[ Correct to: 1 Ring ]
For a while he listened to the fire and thought about the elder reading him out of the family register without once lifting his voice.
"I do not understand a word of this," he said, reaching for the prompt with the arm that still worked, "so change it before I think about it properly."
[ Applying destined path... ]
Nothing happened at all, which gave him a few seconds to feel stupid.
Then something took hold of every bone he owned and turned, so the noise out of him was not one he recognised.
The stick dropped into the fire while his body locked and rolled him off the log, then pain went through him in waves that reduced his broken ribs to a complaint near the bottom of a long list.
Heat crawled up his back into his neck, then settled behind his teeth while the system took him apart.
[ Warning: correcting manifestation path ]
[ Reconstructing body for Ring alignment ]
[ Do not resist ]
"Do not resist," he said into the ground, fingers dug in to the second knuckle, "are you insane?"
He tried to curl inward, which moved something under his skin that had never moved before, so his shoulders came apart from the inside while fire ran down both arms into his fingertips.
'What the fuck is this,' he thought, though the words barely held together, 'they call this a path change while it feels like torture.'
[ Existing manifestation route incompatible ]
[ Shard alignment being removed ]
[ Ring alignment being established ]
Something tore through his chest deeper than flesh or mana had ever reached, while heat and cold traded places twice.
He clawed at his forearms and found channels moving under the skin with no business being there.
The fire smeared while he gagged into the ground, then cried out at an empty forest.
'Stop it,' he thought, with nothing behind the words except the need for something, 'stop, stop, stop.'
His heart slowed until the dark closed at the edges, then came back too fast.
Both arms convulsed while rings of pressure clamped around the new channels under his muscle.
[ Ring channels formed ]
[ Core route revised ]
[ Authority pathway opened ]
He understood none of it and hated the system too much to care what an authority pathway was, though sweat had gone through his clothes while tears cut lines in the dirt on his face.
The pain climbed again as every trace of mana in him pulled toward his chest, then went back out through his limbs until his scream ran out of breath.
Then it stopped without warning, so what was left was the fire and his own lungs working.
He lay with hands too weak to close, taking each breath as though a careless one might start it again.
A new golden line came up in front of eyes that would not focus on it.
[ Destined path correction complete ]
[ Current Rank: 1 Ring ]
[ EXP: 1,500 / 500,000 ]
"One Ring," he said with the laugh coming apart on the way out, "and you raised the target ten times, so thank you very much."
'I almost died over a change of wording,' he thought at the panel.
The dead goddess meant nothing to him, though her system was the first thing in nineteen years that had answered when he spoke to it.
He could carry her errand until he learned what she wanted, since the other option was a border slum.
[ Help revive the Goddess of Reincarnation. ]
"Understood," he said, pushing at the ground with an elbow that had opinions about the plan, "give me one moment."
The elbow folded and put him back down.
"Yeah," he whispered into the ground, the word arriving with no shape left, "sure, let me just..."
[ Stream status unstable ]
[ Host consciousness failing ]
[ Disconnecting broadcast... ]
The forest tilted sideways without consulting him.
The fire went to a smear of orange, the panel dimmed with it, and a second later there was nothing.
[ Stream disconnected ]