The market district of Oakhaven was a migraine made manifest—a physical wall of sound built from ringing hammers, high-pitched haggling, and the overlapping shouts of players hawking wares. The air tasted of coal smoke, roasting meat, and the faint, sweet tang of potions. For most, it was vibrant. For Kage, it was a data storm to be filtered.
He moved through the chaos like a ghost, his path a calculated line toward the forge district. Gaze fixed, mind processing the next five steps. The plaza humiliation was a closed file, archived under 'motivational data.' It had served its purpose, refining his objective from mere survival to absolute mastery.
He found the Orc blacksmith, Grak, pounding a glowing piece of iron into the shape of a breastplate. Sparks flew, each one a tiny, dying star against the Orc's green, muscular frame. Grak paused, setting his hammer down with a heavy thud as Kage approached his vendor stall.
"Hmph. Back so soon?" the blacksmith grunted, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a leather-bound hand. "Break another one already?"
His eyes, sharp and surprisingly perceptive, scanned Kage from head to toe. They lingered a second too long, as if cataloging something new. A deep, guttural sound, somewhere between a cough and a laugh, rumbled in the Orc's chest.
"Change of heart, eh? A poet with a sword." Grak shook his massive head and turned back to his anvil, dismissing Kage as another flighty adventurer.
Kage offered no reply. The Orc's opinion had a market value of zero. His attention was locked on the virtual vendor window that had materialized before him, his mind running a cost-benefit analysis. He sold the various fangs, pelts, and beast cores he'd collected on his journey, keeping only the Wyrmling Heart.
Then, he reinvested.
His analysis was clear: gear upgrades before Level 4 yielded poor returns. The stat gains were minimal compared to the escalating cost. A future power spike, however, was a logical certainty. A short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.
His eyes scanned the list of wares. He bypassed the cheap, available-now items and tabbed over to the Level 4 equipment. He noted the prices seemed… off. The cost of a [Novice's Rusted Sword] was lower than he remembered.
A discount? Why?
His mind connected the dots. The premium Old Anya paid for his herbs. The slight deference in the guard's posture as he re-entered the city.
Fame.
His 300 Fame was generating a passive discount with NPC vendors. A small, almost negligible advantage, but an advantage nonetheless.
He selected two items.
[Level 4 Iron Sword]
[Level 4 Hardened Leather Gloves]
[Novice's Iron Sword]
Quality: Common
Type: One-Handed Sword
Weight: 2,3
Physical Attack: +19
Attack Speed: +8%
Durability: 40 / 40
Requirements: Level 4, 12 STR
Description: A novice's standard-issue Iron Sword.
[Novice's Hardened Leather Gloves]
Quality: Common
Type: Gloves
Weight: 0,6
Armor: +3
Physical Damage: +2
Durability: 20 / 20
Requires: Level 4
Description: Mass-produced leather gloves. Couldn't get more basic.
He couldn't equip them yet, but they sat in his inventory as a down payment on future efficiency. A promise of competence. A tangible step back toward the player he used to be. The purchase cost him 4 silver and 80 copper.
Twelve STR requirement… There goes my plan to all-in Artistry.
He also got [Basic Sickle] for a dozen copper to significantly boost the gathering probability. He couldn't afford to use 50 AWN everytime he tried to harvest something.
The rest of his liquidity went into insurance. He equipped the cheap [Novice's Rusted Sword] he'd been forced to use, its pathetic stats a constant, grating reminder of his current state. He gave Grak a curt nod—a wordless transaction of acknowledgment—and turned. The blacksmith just grunted, and the rhythm of the forge resumed as Kage melted back into the river of players.
He bought five [Minor Healing Potions] at 'Pip's Provincial Papers & Potions', a necessary buffer against the system's inherent inefficiency. His net worth plummeted to a handful of copper coins. He was, for all intents and purposes, broke again.
***
The road to the Goblin Mines cut through sprawling forests and wound into rocky foothills. The world was a living server, a stream of players flowing toward their own objectives. Kage passed through them, a silent observer charting a different course.
As he crossed a wide plain, panicked shouts echoed from the distance.
"IT'S A FIELD BOSS! GOREFANG THE TUSKER! LEVEL 20!"
"WE NEED A TANK! WHERE ARE THE HIGH LEVELS?!"
"Bro… are you okay? We probably need half the starter zone to kill a field boss…"
Kage paused, his eyes scanning the horizon. He saw it: a boar the size of a carriage, with tusks that glowed a faint, menacing red, rampaging through a terrified crowd of low-level players. He filed the data—name, level, location, likely abilities—and dismissed it.
A field boss. A distraction. He adjusted his course to give the chaos a wide berth and continued on his path.
Later, hidden in a thicket, he watched a party of four clumsily engage a pack of corrupted trees. The tank wasn't holding aggro, the mage stood too close, and the rogue kept breaking their own crowd control with sloppy AoE attacks. They were wasting mana, health, and time. Kage observed their tactics, cataloged their mistakes, and moved on.
The wilderness was his new laboratory. Combat was no longer about grinding EXP; it was about rigorous experimentation. He sought out new test subjects.
[Gravewood Creeper - Lvl 3]
HP: 170/170
Plant-type mob. Slow, tough, its bark-like skin suggesting high physical defense. A perfect baseline. Kage stood before it, pulling up the [Verse-Crafting] interface.
Title: A Demonstration of Frailty
Poem: Weaken
He focused his intent and confirmed the composition.
[Ambiguous Target in Title. Intent is lacking. Defaulting to Caster.]
[-50 AWN]
A sickly purple shimmer washed over him.
[You have been afflicted with [Weakened]!]
[Physical Damage -5% for 15 seconds.]
Kage froze, a look of pure, dumbfounded disbelief on his face.
He had just debuffed… himself.
The Creeper, oblivious, continued its shambling advance. Kage let out a silent curse and was forced to back away, waiting for the humiliating debuff to wear off.
This at least confirms the purpose of the title from before.
Fifteen seconds later, the purple aura faded. He faced the Creeper again, his expression now one of cold, clinical focus. No more ambiguity. No more thematic nonsense. Just a direct command.
Title: Creeper
Poem: Weaken
This time, the system responded differently.
[Composition Weak. Awen Cost Increased.]
A faint, sickly purple shimmer enveloped the Creeper for a few seconds.
[-70 AWN]
[Weaken applied. Target receives 5% more damage for 15 seconds.]
A crippling forty percent penalty. He swung his rusted sword.
[-11 HP]
He swung again a moment later without the debuff.
[-10 HP]
Functional, but barely. A single point of extra damage for a drastically increased Awen cost. Hideously inefficient.
The system punishes imprecise intent.
He dispatched the Creeper with several more tedious swings, calculating the disastrous time-to-kill ratio. This wasn't a sustainable combat model. He needed a better syntax.
His next test subject was near the cliffs leading to the mines: a Cliffside Scavenger, a Level 2 beast-type mob, reptilian and fast. A perfect target for a control-based spell.
The Title must be a direct command, a clear statement of intent. He waited for the Scavenger to aggro, its beady eyes locking onto him. As it lunged, he calmly willed his most precise command yet.
Title: Bind Scavenger
Poem: Bind
He slammed his will into the composition.
[Composition Functional.]
Success.
[-50 AWN]
The ground beneath the charging Scavenger erupted. Thin, barely visible thorny roots, ghostly and ethereal, shot up and coiled around the creature's legs. The Scavenger thrashed for a fraction of a second and broke free.
A flicker of grim satisfaction. Good. A clear [Verb] + [Target] syntax is the baseline for efficient casting. The logic is consistent.
He now had a working model. He was no longer fumbling in the dark. He was beginning to understand the grammar of his new power.
Suddenly, the now-familiar sound rang again.
[REGIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT (Whispering Woods): A new path has been forged! Congratulations to the player Silas for being the first to navigate the treacherous Wyvern's Pass and discover the hidden zone: The Sunken Glade!]
[Region] Parmezano: Wyvern's Pass?? Where is that? Is that the bugged cliff behind the starting town?
[Region] FlowerPicker666: ooh a hidden zone! i wonder what kind of flowers grow there! C:
[Region] KineticMaster: WTB map location for Sunken Glade 10 SILVER DM!!
[Region] Horruclus: yo guys dont bother, Silas is that crazy explorer from Dominion's Fall who spent 12 hours trying to climb the world tree. the zone is prob full of lvl 30 monsters. it's a death trap.
[Region] Oppression: ^ this. let the weirdos find the stuff, we'll go there when we're high enough level lol.
Kage filtered out the noise. Death trap? He scoofed. It was an alternate route to power.
This was different from Uma's achievement. This wasn't about following the prescribed path faster than anyone else.
A flicker of something akin to professional respect passed through Kage's mind. His methodology is sound, the Operator noted. He is not following the herd.
The knowledge focused him. There were others out there, running their own race on their own unique tracks. The competition was steeper than he had imagined. He had to be smarter. He had to be more efficient.
The rest of the journey was work. He was a scientist in the field. He logged Awen costs, damage outputs, effect durations, and cooldowns.
Through frustrating, methodical trial and error, he was building The Operator's Guide to Poetry.
Every fight was a data point. Every mob a test subject. And eventually, he reached his goal.
The entrance to the Goblin Mines was pure chaos.
Dozens of players swarmed the craggy area, a bustling anthill of desperate ambition. The air was a wall of noise, shouts cutting through the din.
"LFP TANK FOR MINES! HAVE SHIELD!"
"HEALER LFG! KNOW THE PULLS!"
"WTB MINOR HEALING POTS, PAYING PREMIUM!"
Players huddled in groups, inspecting each other's gear, arguing over loot rules before they'd even stepped inside. The ground was littered with the pixelating corpses of those who had underestimated the goblin patrols, their bodies a grim, temporary warning.
Goblins. The shitter mobs of every game.
Kage moved to the edge of the staging area, his eyes scanning the mob patrols. He identified an outlier: a single Goblin Scout that periodically broke from its group to scout a secluded ridge. An isolated target.
[Goblin Scout - Lvl 5]
HP: 200/200
He waited for his moment, slipping away from the crowd unnoticed. He intercepted the scout a hundred yards from the nearest player group.
The goblin hissed, raising a crude, sharpened bone dagger.
Kage was already composing.
Title: Weaken Goblin
Poem: Weaken
[Composition Functional.]
[-50 AWN]
[Weaken applied. Target receives 5% more damage for 15 seconds.]
The goblin shimmered with purple light just as it lunged. Kage didn't bother with a parry; his nerfed Agility made the timing window too tight. He sidestepped, letting the dagger slash through empty air, and brought his rusted sword down in a clean arc.
[-18 HP]
The Weaken debuff, combined with the goblin's low armor, made his pathetic weapon surprisingly effective. He fell into a simple rhythm of sidestep-and-strike, chipping away at the goblin's health until the creature fell with a final, gurgling cry.
The combined EXP from his methodical journey culminated in that kill. A cascade of soft, blue light washed over him as a familiar, satisfying chime echoed in his ears.
[You have defeated Goblin Scout!]
[EXP Gained: 40]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 3!]
[You have 2 unspent attribute points.]
He immediately opened his character sheet, the surrounding noise fading into an irrelevant hum. Two points. A chance to reclaim a sliver of what he'd lost.
His fingers twitched—a ghost of muscle memory from years of playing high-octane melee classes. The swordsman in him yearned for it.
His jaw tightened.
That path was closed. Investing in STR or AGI outside of item requirements now was an act of defiance against his new reality. An inefficiency. A hybrid build at this stage was a path to mediocrity. The cold logic of the Operator asserted itself.
He dumped both points into his new primary stat.
Artistry: 32 -> 34
He closed the menu, his face a mask. The choice was made. As the window faded, he caught a flicker of movement at the edge of his vision. The infuriating silver filigree that now bordered his interface, the one he had dismissed as a chaotic mess, seemed to... resolve itself.
For a fraction of a second, the creeping vine-like patterns tightened, their lines flowing into a design that was both organic and strangely mathematical. It resembled a fusion of a sprawling tree root and a perfectly logical circuit board.
The Operator in his mind logged the change with a detached curiosity. The aesthetic was still inefficient, but it was no longer random. It was developing a grammar. A logic. And anything with a logic could, eventually, be understood.
And exploited.