Kai stared at the faintly blinking tab:
[Factory Design Concepts: Locked – Tier I Authorization Required.]
He had no idea what a factory truly was. The system offered no definition, only a barrier. The icon glowed
dimly, as if mocking his current status—an orphan squatting in alleys, piecing together his next breath.
The high and mighty probably had entire sects to manage these so-called factories. What did they even
make? Magical furnaces? Spirit ore refineries? Would he even live long enough to know?
He closed the interface with a sigh and turned back to his present reality: a half-collapsing shack, three
stolen chunks of charcoal, and a growing urge to create.
[New Mission Available: Craft a Low-Tier Stabilizing Pill Prototype.]
[Reward: Crude Refining Stove + 25 CP.]
Stabilizing pills were used to calm internal spiritual turbulence after breakthroughs. Nothing special,
nothing rare. But even common things could make a difference for common people—if they were made
right.
Kai accepted the mission without hesitation.
The recipe looked simple at first glance: Spirit Gel Root, Boneflower Seed, Coldleaf Dust, and a drop of
refined binding water. Things even a street vendor might discard. But the real challenge wasn't ingredients.
It was equipment. He had none.
No cauldron. No flame bed. No binding water.
He scavenged.
He knew the alleyways behind the alchemy quarter well enough. He'd begged there, stolen crusts there,
watched failures be tossed into the gutter. And failures meant waste.
Behind a ruined vendor stall, he found a cracked crucible discarded as useless. It would leak under
pressure, but if patched with clay and powdered shell, it might hold long enough to get the job done.
Further digging through refuse revealed shattered pestles, scorched mixing bowls, and a few shards of
spirit clay. He sorted them all by touch—his Structural Intuition humming with faint certainty as his hands
passed over items most wouldn't give a second glance.
He returned to the junk merchant, Old Hanmi, whose crooked teeth seemed to grow more uneven every
time she smiled.
"You again?" she said, squinting one eye. "What now?"
"I need char-dust. A bent metal scoop. And binding resin—if you have any."
She picked through his scavenged finds, clicking her tongue. "You're not an alchemist. You're a dying rat
with delusions."
"I'm a customer," he replied.
That got her attention.
She traded him what he asked for—no smile this time, only silent curiosity.
"You planning to poison someone?"
"Only myself if this fails," Kai muttered.
He returned to his shelter—a sunken corner of the outer district where the bricks were half-dissolved by
time and weather. It had a roof, if you could call the bent boards overhead protection. Still, it was his.
He formed a pit in the dirt, using bricks stolen from a collapsed garden wall to prop the crucible. The bent
scoop would serve as a ladle. He crushed the herbs with a salvaged stone.
Everything smelled wrong.
His fingers were sticky with half-dried resin. The Boneflower seeds left a faint bitter coating on his tongue
just from touching them. The Coldleaf made his nails sting. But he worked through the night.
His first mixture burned. Blackened. Then went gelatinous and exploded in a puff of smoke that clung to his
nostrils.
The second cracked the crucible with a sound like breaking ice.
He patched it. Waited for the clay to cure. Tried again.
By the fifth attempt, the mixture settled. It rolled slightly in the crucible—forming a sludgy orb that glowed
faintly green.
Kai's heart pounded as he watched it stabilize.
[Spiritual Stability: 41% – Low-Tier Acceptable.]
He let it cool, whispering a silent prayer.
When he picked it up, it was warm—like holding a stone that had absorbed the last light of the day.
[Mission Complete. Reward Granted.] [Acquired: Crude Refining Stove. +25 CP.]
A flicker of light danced in the corner of the shack. And there it was.
The stove.
Small, rust-lined, with a narrow spirit channel inlet. Its mouth glowed slightly as if eager to be fed.
Kai reached out, hand trembling.
It wasn't a weapon. Not a sword or spear. Not something a hero would wield.
It was better.
It was a tool.
He smiled.
And in the early morning hours, as the city awoke in choking smoke and cold wind, Kai—an orphan with no
background, no luck, and no sect—made the first real step toward his own domain.
He was building.