For a long moment, Kage didn't move. The world, which had been a cacophony of failure and frustration just seconds ago, was now eerily silent. The only sounds were the gentle babbling of the stream and the faint, resonant hum that seemed to emanate from the herbs in his hand.
His processor, the hyper-analytical mind he called the Operator, was rebooting. It had encountered a fatal error—an event so far outside its predictive model that the entire system had crashed. Now, it was coming back online, frantically trying to build a new hypothesis from the wreckage.
He looked at the glowing system notifications one more time before they faded, memorizing every detail.
Conceptual Resonance. Not RNG. Not luck.
Quality Increased. A tangible, material benefit.
New Keyword: [Growth]. A new tool.
He forced his inventory open. The three herbs sat in their own slot, visually distinct from any common material.
[Sunpetal Herb (High Quality)]
Type: Crafting Material
Description:A common herb used in basic health potions. This specimen seems unusually vibrant, pulsing with a gentle, golden light.
Special Effect: When used in Alchemy, increases the efficacy of the resulting potion by 15%.
He read the standard system description, his mind already processing the 15% efficacy boost. It was solid. But beneath the clean, functional text, another line had appeared. It was written in a faint, italicized script, as if annotated by a ghost in his own interface.
A fleck of captured sunlight, stubbornly blooming.
Kage's eye twitched. It was useless, poetic flavor text. He dismissed it as a system-side effect of his bloated Artistry stat, another piece of inefficient decoration he was now forced to endure. But the words lingered, an unwanted footnote in the clean ledger of his mind.
Kage opened his Class menu and navigated to the Poet's Lexicon. There, at the bottom of the short list of primordial concepts he'd been given, was a new entry.
[Conceptual Keyword: Growth]
The principle of expansion, vitality, and development. The force that drives a seed to sprout and a kingdom to rise.
Resonance: 3% (Academic)
Three percent. A pathetic number.
The Operator's new hypothesis formed, cold and sharp in the chaos of his mind.
It's not random. The trigger was a specific, psycho-reactive state: raw, unfiltered intent. A system that responds to pure emotion? Inefficient. Unreliable. Unpredictable... but exploitable.
He replayed the moment in his mind. The white-hot anger, the scream of pure desperation—Just. WORK.—hadn't been a command he typed. It was a command he felt.
The initial emotional surge must have acted as an undocumented, massive, temporary buff to a hidden 'intent' parameter. That surge met the conditions to unlock the keyword and establish its base resonance. A fluke. But a replicable fluke?
The world, which had been a locked prison, had just revealed a crack in its wall. A crack he could widen.
He was no longer a defeated player. He was a scientist in a laboratory of one, and he had just stumbled upon a groundbreaking theory.
His gaze fell upon the remaining patch of [Sunpetal Herb]. His experiment was ready to begin.
First, he tried to replicate the trigger. He closed his eyes, reached into his memory, and tried to conjure the same feeling of white-hot rage and desperation. He thought of his mother's mounting bills, of the years he'd sacrificed, of the humiliation of his useless class.
Nothing.
The memory of the emotion was there, but the raw, visceral feeling itself was gone. Trying to force an emotion on command was like trying to bottle lightning. It was a fool's errand. The Operator clinically discarded the method. Unreliable. Inconsistent.
There had to be another way. A more controlled approach.
He knelt again, his eyes fixed on a single [Sunpetal Herb]. He didn't try to feel anything. Instead, he pulled up the [Verse-Crafting] interface. He now had a tool in his Lexicon. He had to test it.
He wrapped his will around the very idea of [Growth], channeling it into a sharp, pointed spear of pure intent.
He thought of his EXP bar, inching its way forward. Growing.
Title: Command to the Flower.
Poem: Growth.
There was no explosion of golden light. No deep, resonant chime. But a faint green shimmer enveloped the herb for a fraction of a second.
[-50 Awen]
[Harvesting Success!]
[Sunpetal Herb x2 acquired.]
[EXP +4 From Harvesting]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +1%]
Two herbs from a single node. A tangible improvement. Then, another line of text appeared, a quiet confirmation.
[Your intent is focused, but lacks the catalyst of true emotional resonance.]
Kage's lips tightened into a thin, grim line. The hypothesis was confirmed. Emotion wasn't the switch; it was the amplifier. The baseline effect was achievable through pure, cold focus.
He had a method. It was weaker, less spectacular, but it was reliable.
And reliability was a currency the Operator understood better than gold.
He began to work. Methodically, he moved through the patch of herbs, node by node. For each one, he repeated the process: kneel, compose the simple, one-word verse, and gather.
He established a rhythm: cast, gather, then wait, his eyes watching his Awen bar tick slowly upward with his [Poetic Spirit] passive before moving to the next node.
[Harvesting Success! Sunpetal Herb x1 acquired.]
[EXP +2 From Harvesting]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
[Harvesting Failed.]
[Harvesting Success! Sunpetal Herb x1 acquired.]
[EXP +2 From Harvesting]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
The stream of notifications was a steady, satisfying drip of progress. It was nothing compared to the flood of experience points he could gain from slaughtering mobs as a Warrior, but it was forward momentum. A tiny trickle, perhaps, but a trickle was infinitely better than stagnation.
His inventory slowly filled with herbs, most of them standard quality, but his focus was on the small blue bar at the bottom of his vision.
[+2 EXP]
[+2 EXP]
[+4 EXP]
[+2 EXP]
The initial discovery had granted him 6 EXP. He needed 100 to reach Level 2. The slow accumulation was agonizing, yet he persevered with the unflagging discipline of his kendo training. Each gather was a kata. Each success, a perfectly executed strike.
After twenty minutes of intense, mind-numbing focus, he harvested the last Sunpetal from the stream bank.
The Resonance next to [Growth] has increased to 4%. A paltry 1%.
Safe to assume that it grows with the usage… for now.
His EXP bar was at 98/100. He stared at it, a flicker of his old frustration returning. He needed one more success, one more node. He scanned the area. There. A single, overlooked herb tucked behind a rock.
He repeated the ritual one last time. Focus. Intent. Gather.
[Harvesting Success! Sunpetal Herb x1 acquired.]
[EXP +2 From Harvesting]
[Harvesting (Basic) EXP +0.5%]
The bar filled. A cascade of soft blue light washed over him, and the triumphant chime he had been desperately yearning to hear finally rang out.
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 2!]
[You have unspent attribute points.]
His health and Awen pulsed, filling to their new maximums.
HP: 120/120
AWN: 320/320
A smile, the first genuine smile since he'd been shackled with this class, almost touched his lips. It was just one level. A pathetic, meaningless level gained from picking flowers. But it was a victory. It was proof.
And it was data.
His mind replayed the last twenty minutes, the Operator processing the results of his experiment with a new, intense focus. The system had allowed him to apply a buff to a gathering attempt. The target of his verse wasn't a mob or a player. It was an inanimate, non-hostile world object's function.
The implications of that single data point were staggering.
His thoughts began to race, connecting dots with lightning speed. If the Verse-Crafting system can target a herb node, what are its limitations? Can it target a lump of ore at a forge? An alchemist's vial? Can I use [Shape] on a piece of wood? Can I apply [Strengthen] directly to a finished blade?
He pulled up the description for [Conceptual Purity]. Exclusive materials that only I can get. He had seen it as a simple money-maker, a way to sell rare mats to other players. He was thinking too small.
Maybe this class isn't as garbage as I assumed it to be… Still, even with a normal Warrior class I would be miles ahead by now.
Without hesitation, he opened his character sheet. Two precious points blinked, waiting to be assigned. The impulse was automatic, a ghost of a thousand past games, a reflex born from years of playing melee combat classes. His mind immediately moved to assign them: One point into Strength. One point into Agility.
He hovered over the confirm button.
And he stopped.
The Operator's cold logic asserted itself. What would one point in Strength give him? One point of base damage. An extra point of Agility would barely register. He was trying to patch a sinking battleship with a roll of tape. His combat stats were a dead end, a relic of a build that no longer existed.
He looked at the Artistry stat. Thirty points. That was the source of his Awen regeneration. The source of his new, bizarre power. The class was designed to scale with it. Fighting the system was inefficient. The most optimal path to Level 25 was to abuse the very mechanic he despised.
His jaw tightened. It was a bitter pill. He moved the two points.
Artistry: 30 -> 32
He felt a tangible, if small, increase in his Awen. It was a cold, grim feeling of making a necessary, tactical sacrifice.
This is the path of least resistance. He told himself. The only path.
He had a plan. He had a method. And now, he had a strategy, however disgusting he found it.