Chapter 27:

CH 22 It Matters More Than You Think

The Wildworld

#Aiden

"⚠️ NEW DIRECTIVE FROM TOWER HQ

OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE 7 MONSTER CORES

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!!! PROBATION ROUND 1 INITIATED !!!

!!! ELIMINATION PHASE COMMENCED !!!

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Penalty for Failure:

Harness will be withdrawn.

Consequence: Termination."

I stood and cracked the window. Sunlight slipped through the stained glass, slicing the gloom with unreal gentleness. It didn’t chase away the dark — but it did light the puddle of tears on the floor.

I hadn’t realized I’d been crying.

My ribs still throbbed from the descent. My shoulder popped every time I moved. The burn in my spine hadn’t faded since that last cast shorted half my nerves. It was getting harder to tell if the pain was real or just residual static.

And worst of all?

I was "cerimonially" grounded.

They only let me see the sun for thirteen minutes a day.

Not fifteen. Not ten.

Thirteen.

The number felt spiteful, like the Mergehold itself was smirking at me through its reinforced glass and steel teeth. The yard wasn’t even a yard—just a rectangle of dead grass bordered by walls tall enough to shame a cathedral.

I stepped out with my usual wobble, my weight shifting uncomfortably. The cold metal of the tracking band bit into the soft skin under my wrist. My glasses fogged immediately, which seemed rude considering the sun wasn't even warm.

They treated anything thing with electricty like contraband until it came to punishing people

Taylor stood by the doorway, one hand on the security panel, the other resting casually against her hip. She was small—maybe five-two—with a tired expression she tried to hide behind a clipped professional mask. But her eyes…

Her eyes always did too much talking.

They flicked to me with something like recognition. Or guilt. Or maybe hope.

“Rin,” she said softly, like the name mattered. “You have thirteen minutes.”

“I know,” I muttered, pushing up my slipping glasses.

Her gaze lingered too long again, tracing my face, my shoulders, the parts of me that had grown softer and much rounder since they put me up for this public punshiment which was funny considering I was now somethign like a patner with Mama. I wasn’t proud of it.

Her expression was searching me again and I hated that I didn’t know what she was searching for.

The door hissed closed behind me.

Just me.

Dead grass.

Walls that pretended to be sky.

Thirteen minutes.

My back cracked like cheap plastic as I breathed out and let the quiet hum in my bones rise again. The same hum that had started a week ago. The one the system kept whispering about.

[System Online]

CONSTRUCT FILE INCOMING

INFORMATION

Static flooded the edge of my vision, a faint electric blue line tracing the outlines of the world, as if reality had been sketched by an impatient artist.

The file blinked like a challenge. I blinked back, jaw tight.

"Whoa. Finally, some action," Lyra said, like she hadn’t been MIA for days. "I was beginning to think you'd died from boredom."

I stared at the alert. "You sent this?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Open it, genius."

I swiped into the doc manually. Most of the system's was still locked behind requests for authorization but I had mastered the layout well enough to ignore them and just open the schematic.

They were actually explaining bandwidth now? Four days late? Half the new initiates were dead because they couldn't imagine hard enough. He still remembered how the paste they made when they hit the ground.

I adjusted my glasses. Bandwidth, as the file described, was the emotional flux capacity of a human being malleable like clay. Using willpower combined with the watch, or harness, you could then shape it almost like it was matter.

"Build it with your will. Yeah. Real practical," Lyra muttered. "Maybe next they'll tell you to dream a Battleship into existence."

I pressed a hand to the cracked glass and laughed. It came out dry. Bitter.

“Will you just shut up already?”

“Make me.”

I sighed. “You live rent-free in my head. The least you could do is be useful.”

I closed my eyes.

Then opened them again.

And there it was.

A leaf.

Floating down from the one pathetic tree in the corner.

Except I didn’t see the leaf.

Not really.

I saw its structure.

Its thickness, the way its veins branched. The tensile strength of its tissue. The exact arc gravity demanded of it.

All laid out in glowing blue, like a 3D engineering schematic only I could see.

Trace it.

The voice wasn’t human. It wasn’t exactly the system’s neutral tone either.

More like my own thought—but sharpened, repurposed.

My heart thudded. I swallowed hard.

If I was right, if this worked…

I reached out.

The leaf hit my palm—

And instantly dissolved into blue dust.

My breath caught.

In my other hand, something solid took shape. I didn’t shape it. I didn’t design it.

I simply replicated what I’d seen in the world’s blueprint.

A perfect copy of the leaf, solidified from shifting blue luminescence.

It glowed faintly, humming with stored intent I didn’t remember putting inside it.

Then:

[Trace Executed: Quality—Acceptable]

I stared at the thing trembling in my fingers.

“I… made that,” I whispered.

The air vibrated softly—like it was listening.

This was more than Watcher's stuff

The ability to take the blueprint of anything real and give it back to the world in pure bandwidth

But that wasn’t the limit. Not anymore.

The system had said my scope was broader.

So I pushed.

There was a cracked patch of concrete near the wall. I crouched—my knees protesting—and pressed two fingers to the fractured line.

The blueprint burst open in my mind:

Pressure points, density, the memory of stress that created the crack.

I inhaled.

I exhaled.

And the world tightened around me.

[Warning: Energy Expenditure High]

[User Physiology: Suboptimal]

“Yeah, well, welcome to my body,” I muttered. It wasn’t like I could jog my way out of this prison.

I pushed anyway.

Blue energy rippled out of my palm—like a breath the world didn’t know it was holding.

The crack in the concrete sealed itself, smoothing over until it was perfect, seamless, like the damage had never existed.

My grin didn’t even finish forming before the world jolted sideways.

A crack—sharp and wet—exploded across my cheek.

My head snapped to the left, glasses twisting halfway off my face as pain flared hot and blooming. For a second, I didn’t even understand what happened.

And then I saw him.

Roan.

Standing in front of me.

A thin baton—no, a stick he must’ve broken off the old tree—rested lazily in his hand. His black uniform looked pressed, perfect, untouched by the filth of this place. His hair slicked back like he was royalty slumming in a prison.

His eyes, cold and pale, drank in the sight of me like I was something he’d already decided to break.

I blinked.

And he wasn’t there.

I whipped around, heart pounding.

Roan now stood all the way across the yard, near the wall where he’d been urinating earlier. He shook off the last drops like nothing had happened, zipping up his uniform trousers with bored indifference.

My palm came away bloody when I touched my cheek.

The shock hit me late—like sound trailing behind lightning.

How did he—?

Roan slipped a small bronze pendant clock into his pocket with exaggerated care. He gave the pocket a pat, the way someone might soothe a sleeping animal. Then his gaze lifted to me.

And he smiled.

Not with his mouth.

With his eyes.

He dragged a single finger across his throat—slowly, deliberately—never breaking eye contact.

The yard tilted around me, nausea coiling in my stomach. Something primal in me understood: whatever Roan did, however he did it, it wasn’t supposed to be seen.

Which meant I wasn’t supposed to still be alive.

The door hissed.

Taylor stepped in, black uniform crisp, tablet in hand. She froze for half a second—an infinitesimal flicker—when she saw the blood dripping down my jaw.

Her voice didn’t rise, didn’t sharpen, didn’t accuse.

Just:

“Rin… what is going on?”

Roan answered before I could breathe.

He strolled across the yard, every movement too smooth, too aristocratic for someone who lived in a metal box. When he stopped beside me, his presence felt like a shadow leaning too close.

“You,” he said to me, voice like velvet dipped in command. “Are the new waiter. You should be learning from your fellow waiters… not talking.”

Waiters.

Their word for the teenage guards assigned to watch over the awakened kids.

Black uniforms for the real ones.

White for the reserves.

And me?

Just another lab rat in white.

Taylor’s eyes darted between us—calculating—but before she could speak, another figure strode in from the corridor.

Roan’s waiter.

A boy maybe sixteen, golden uniform, posture rigid, eyes deadened by a kind of practiced obedience.

He didn’t even look at me.

He didn’t even flinch at the blood.

He just sighed—deep, exhausted—and said:

“Roan. Shut up.”

Roan’s jaw twitched. Just a little. But he stepped back, the royal mask cracking for a fraction of a second.

The boy in golden didn’t wait for a response.

Didn’t acknowledge Taylor.

Didn’t care.

He simply turned and walked out.

Roan followed him with a stiff, angry elegance—like a prince insulted in front of peasants—black uniform swaying, pendant clock ticking softly in his pocket.

Taylor watched them go.

Then she looked at me.

Her eyes didn’t say recognition this time.

“You alright?” she asked, that too-familiar softness threading into her voice again.

Her gaze locked with mine.

I straightened, wobbling a little.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I’m fine.”

She said nothing.

Just gestured to the door.

“Time’s up.”

Thirteen minutes.

As I stepped past her, she hesitated.