[You must heal your body!]
[Adapt to the Hija countryside, home of Healer Rusty!]
[Don't forget to pay with Goldi!]
[You must adapt to the modern world!]
[You must learn the many unknown things!]
[Official Hunters are clever and cunning!]
[They've already been tagged with a soul number by the System, automatically assigned based on level—from 1 to 1000!]
Zhen staggered forward, barely keeping his balance as the System's voice kept droning in his head.
[You never lived the life of a normal human. You lived among beasts!]
[You may always win monster-hunting missions, but not all monsters are monsters!]
[Even Official Blood Hunters are hard to take down—especially when their skills evolve, along with their growing array of deadly techniques!]
From atop the Tapak Kuda hill, he looked out across the wide, green lowlands. Trees stretched into the distance, dotted with wildflowers in full bloom.
He was caught in a cruel dilemma—descend this hill to tend to his wounds as the System urged, even though he didn't trust it... or follow the path he always chose: meditation.
"What's happening to me? My strength is fading!" His fist pounded into the sand, which seemed to pity the lone Hunter of the North.
[Meditation can heal you, yes—but only when you're in the Northern Region!]
[Every Hunter has one skill tied to the land of their clan. That is an unbreakable law!]
[Run down the hill and you'll find Healer Rusty gathering herbs and flowers from the wild!]
[Hurry! Now is the perfect time!]
His face turned bright red, burning with frustration. The System's endless babble drove him mad.
Zhen drew his sword and slashed the air several times. His chest tightened; his ears rang. The pain piled on, thick and heavy.
"How the hell am I supposed to run? Can't you see my condition?"
He was in bad shape—far worse than anything he'd faced before. His body had weakened so suddenly, and the reason... was still a blur.
[You can still walk!!!]
[You can even crawl!!!]
A blank expression, betraying deep, hidden pain, crossed his face. Zhen sheathed his sword and forced himself down the hill. His legs trembled before even taking the first step, and his arm felt like it had already been shattered.
His head throbbed—as if struck by a massive wooden beam.
"So this… is what it feels like to be a Cursed Hunter? Was I truly born to be cursed?"
His once-sturdy frame now staggered, barely upright, held together by sheer will alone.
"I was sealed when I was only a year old—when that explosion happened. I was destined to hunt. To survive on raw fish and chunks of ice in the Northern Region!"
He stopped walking.
"Why must I face the endless games of this world? I only want to hunt!" His voice strained, footsteps heavy and bitter.
Then, as his sole stepped on a loose stone, a quiet cry echoed from a small rockslide. Nature does not always embrace—it bites, too.
Zhen fell.
His body tumbled, and his left arm struck the jagged root of a tree jutting violently from the earth, making his pale-white bone protest in silence. Blood ran from his temple, tracing a line down a face too calm for a wound like this.
He came to a stop amid thorny bushes and pale yellow wildflowers. His breath was ragged, chest rising and falling. The world tilted. His vision blurred.
And then… footsteps.
They approached with care, pressing gently into the grass, as if unwilling to harm even a blade.
"Who's there?"
The voice was gentle, like someone who could read the whisper of leaves and the hum of bees.
It belonged to a handsome young man wearing a tilted straw hat and carrying a woven basket filled with leaves and wildflowers. He was no hunter, nor was he a warrior. Yet his knowledge was sharper than any well-honed blade, and his heart broader than the green valleys stretching across the Hija countryside.
He was Healer Rusty.
He looked at Zhen, lying crumpled like a bird that had fallen from its nest. But Rusty knew—this was no ordinary bird.
"What kind of child walks into a forbidden land without first asking the roots?" he muttered, half to the universe, half to the wounds flooding the young man's body.
Setting his basket down, he knelt and pressed two fingers to Zhen's neck.
Still alive.
But barely.
"You carry a sword… Could you be an Official Blood Hunter?" Rusty's eyes fell to the blade lying beside him.
"There's magic burning inside your body, yet no trace of its source nearby. Is this child from the Eastern Region? Or…" His hand hovered just above Zhen's chest, sensing the irregular flow of energy within.
Rusty set down his basket and pulled out tiny golden-yellow flowers. He crushed them gently between his palms until a single drop of liquid formed. With delicate care, he dabbed it onto Zhen's cracked, bleeding lips—torn at the corner from the fall.
As Zhen's breath began to steady, his eyes flickered open for a moment. His vision was hazy, unfocused. All he saw was the silhouette of a man cloaked in lavender—like a heavenly flower swaying under moonlight. A calming scent of herbs filled his lungs.
"You… You're the Healer…?"
His vision collapsed back into darkness.
Rusty sighed, watching him slip under once more.
"Night is falling fast. I hope you've got plenty of Goldi to pay me with," he muttered, hoisting the young man over his back.
"But honestly, this isn't just about Goldi. This… this is about fate. Because you, boy, are my first patient in a thousand years."
Carefully, he carried Zhen—letting the boy rest against a back that bore centuries of knowledge and pain—down a narrow path winding toward the valley where he lived.
"The sky's unusually dark tonight," Rusty murmured, gazing up at the obsidian heavens.
"You know... even in the ruins of snow, something can still grow. Maybe you're one of them."
Crickets chirped along the trail, their rhythm soft and constant, like nature's own lullaby.
The wooden door creaked open, swallowing them into the warm glow of oil-lamps and the earthy scent of pine. The night fell silent in their arrival—only the crackle of fire in the hearth and the buzz of insects outside the window remained.
Zhen's body lay still upon the wooden cot, skin pale, faint blue veins crawling just beneath the surface—signs of foreign magic eating away at him from the inside.
Healer Rusty stood in the dimly lit room, beginning his examination of the weakened body before him.
His straw hat and long cloak had been set aside, revealing the figure of a young man with silver hair cascading down his back, eyes of glowing gold dimly lit like dying stars, and a face as sharply sculpted as the night sky itself.
There was no trace of age—only an ancient aura clinging to his presence.
"A thousand years," he whispered.
"At last... time has opened its doors once more."
He moved toward the back wall of the cabin, where shelves overflowed with bottles, dried herbs, tangled roots, and withered blossoms. In the center of the room stood a circular black stone table. Rusty retrieved a small ceramic jug and began laying out the ingredients for the potion.
A Black Wind Bloom from the Eastern Edge, sap from the Arula Tree that drips only beneath a full moon, bone dust of the Thousand-Claw Bird—extinct since the Third Sky Era. And finally, a single drop of his own blood.
His hands moved swiftly but gracefully. A small flame sparked beneath the clay stove, and violet steam began to rise. He whispered an incantation in a language long erased from human memory:
"The flesh torn, not by blade. The soul locked, not by chain. Let roots drink the poison of sorcery… And let the body return to breath."
The potion's vapor twisted into rings in the air, then slowly drifted toward Zhen's body. The mist seeped into his crown, into his wounds, into every open pore.
His body convulsed briefly. His breath—once flowing through his nose—stopped, just for a moment, before returning again, like someone surfacing after drowning in the depths of time. A pale blue light emerged from his chest—the inflamed magic was fighting back.
"You have… a tenant, I see." Rusty simply closed his eyes, continuing to chant under his breath.
A sigil of magic flared to life in Zhen's palm, merging with the firelight and the glow of the potion. The wind began to spiral within the cabin. Bottles trembled. Dried leaves rose and danced, as if to welcome a soul returning home.
Zhen gritted his teeth, breath suddenly vanishing, his body seizing once more—but Rusty stepped forward and placed a hand on his forehead.
"Shh. You only need to receive it. I've waited too long to let you slip away now."
In mere seconds, the magical light faded, swallowed as if by the earth itself.
Zhen's breath returned to normal, this time lighter, steadier.
His body still frail, but the raging magic within his soul had vanished.
"Sadly, the world appears cruel through your eyes," Rusty murmured as he sat down slowly, gazing at the young man with a sorrowful tenderness.
He turned toward a small potted flower in the corner of the cabin—the Timebloom—a rare blossom that only opened when destiny resumed its course.
And that night, for the first time in a thousand years, Rusty's Timebloom glowed softly—until dawn.