The air in the academy training yard smelled of ozone, scorched earth, and sweat.
Elian sat on a wooden bench, wiping soot from his forehead with a ragged cloth. At his feet lay a creature roughly the size of a housecat. It had dull, ash-gray fur, a scrawny tail, and eyes that looked perpetually exhausted. This was Ignis, an Iron-Rank Ash Fox.
"Again, Ignis," Elian said, his voice gentle but firm. "Just one more time."
The fox let out a pathetic yip, opened its jaws, and coughed. A tiny, pathetic spark—barely enough to light a candle—sputtered into the air and immediately died.
[Skill: Ember (Common) - Mastery: 12%]
Elian sighed, tossing a small piece of dried meat to the fox, which eagerly snapped it up. Across the yard, his classmates were commanding armored bears and wind-hawks, their beasts unleashing torrents of magic that drew applause from the instructors.
Tomorrow was the Mid-Year Assessment. If Elian couldn't get Ignis to produce a sustained flame, he would be demoted to the Logistics track. He would spend the rest of his life shoveling beast dung instead of exploring the wilds.
"We need a catalyst," Elian muttered, pulling his leather coin pouch from his belt. It was depressingly light. He had exactly three copper coins. A basic Iron-Rank Fire Core cost ten coppers.
Desperation gnawing at him, Elian packed up his things and left the academy grounds, heading toward the slums of Oakhaven. There was a black-market scrap vendor there who sold "dead" cores—shattered fragments of monster cores that had lost 99% of their mana. They were useless to normal Beastmasters, used only as cheap fertilizer for magical plants.
An hour later, Elian was handing over his last three coppers for a handful of dull, cracked, gray stones.
"Don't know what you plan to do with that garbage, kid," the old vendor wheezed. "Ain't enough mana in them fragments to warm a cup of tea."
"Just experimenting," Elian lied smoothly, clutching the rough stones.
He hurried back to his cramped dormitory room. Ignis curled up on the threadbare rug, already asleep. Elian sat cross-legged on his bed, placing the cracked fragments in front of him. He picked up the largest piece, a jagged shard from a low-level Fire Slime.
As his fingers brushed the core, a sharp pain lanced through his skull. It wasn't the ambient mana of the core; it was something deep within his own soul reacting to the magic beast's essence.
Suddenly, the world around Elian turned a translucent, digital blue. A sound like grinding gears echoed in his mind, followed by a mechanical chime.
[Requirement Met: Magical Resonance Detected.]
[Booting Infinite Synthesis Matrix...]
[Host: Elian Voss]
[Contracted Beast: Ash Fox (Iron Rank)]
Elian gasped, dropping the core fragment. The blue screens remained floating in his vision. He waved his hand through them, but they were immaterial. A System? He had read ancient light novels from the Pre-Cataclysm era about such things, but they were just myths.
He focused his eyes on the floating text.
[Current Beast Skills:]
1. Scratch (Common)
2. Ember (Common)
[The Infinite Synthesis Matrix allows the Host to fuse skills. Fusion requires the consumption of Magic Beast Cores. Similar skills yield higher stability. Divergent skills yield mutations.]
Elian's heart hammered against his ribs. He looked down at the weak, sleeping fox, then at the handful of "useless" core fragments on his bed.
"System," Elian whispered, his throat dry. "Can I fuse [Ember] with [Ember]?"
[Analyzing...]
[Fusion Recipe: Ember (Common) + Ember (Common) = Fireball (Uncommon)]
[Cost to Fuse: 1 Iron-Rank Fire Core, or 10 Iron-Rank Fire Core Fragments.]
Elian quickly counted the fragments he had just bought. One, two, three... exactly ten.
He didn't have an overpowered bloodline. He didn't have a wealthy family. But looking at the digital prompt hovering over his sleeping, pathetic fox, Elian smiled. He had time, and he had a method.
"Ignis, wake up," Elian whispered, his eyes gleaming with a strange light. "We're going to be up all night."