The silence returned—but it wasn't peaceful.
It was watchful.
The kind that came before the next scream.
Dominic rolled the beast's corpse off his chest with a ragged groan, spitting blood and ash. Every inch of his body burned. His muscles trembled from overuse, and the wound in his thigh pulsed with heat and pressure like it had a heartbeat of its own.
No more roars.
But that didn't mean safety.
The rocky terrain around him was broken—riddled with craters, blood-slicked stones, and jagged cliffs that clawed up toward a crimson sky. Heat waves rippled through the air from the scorched soil. A sulfuric stench hung heavy, making every breath feel like a punishment.
He wiped blood from his eye and forced himself to stand. His legs buckled.
He cursed under his breath, gritted his teeth, and walked.
He needed shelter. Now.
The Dormant Realm wasn't just home to beasts. It was alive itself—hungry. The ground cracked beneath his steps, unstable and hollow in places. One wrong move could send him tumbling into some cavernous pit filled with gods-know-what.
He limped across the cracked slope, navigating the treacherous terrain by instinct more than vision. The air grew colder the farther he moved. Mist crept in from the edges of his vision, low and thin, but it clung to the ground like it was hunting something.
Finally, he saw it.
A cleft in the stone—half-hidden by boulders and thorns, like the land itself wanted to swallow it. It was no more than a narrow slit, but enough to crawl through. He hesitated, listening for growls, wings, any sign of life.
Nothing.
Dominic collapsed against the entrance, panting. His body screamed for rest. But he reached down, grabbed a stone, and wedged it into the dirt behind him. Just in case.
Inside, the cavern was damp and cold. Water trickled from cracks in the wall, and faint glowing moss gave off an eerie green light. The walls pulsed slightly, as if alive.
But it was safe. For now.
He crawled into the corner, curling his back against the rock.
[Feral Tier Absorption: 87%]
[Stats Update — STR: 14 | AGI: 12 | END: 15 | INT: 9]
[Warning: Internal injuries critical. Blood loss approaching danger threshold.]
His body trembled.
Not from fear.
But from rage. From survival. From the primal, stubborn refusal to die.
He looked at his blood-streaked hands.
"This body… isn't mine," he muttered.
But it was becoming his.
One kill at a time.
Time to get—my beautiful loot
Dominic staggered back into the open, boots crunching on blackened gravel as smoke still curled from the bodies around him. The air stank of ozone and burnt fur, thick enough to choke on. His vision swam, muscles twitching with every step, but he didn't stop.
He couldn't.
He limped toward the nearest corpse—a Raftbeast, its jaws still frozen in a snarl. The beast's body radiated residual energy, pulsing faintly like a dying star.
He knelt, his bloodied hand pressing against the beast's cooling flank.
Warmth surged into him—violently.
[Absorption Initiated…]
[Feral Tier +3% → 90%]
His breath hitched. His bones ached as if they were swelling, stretching.
He moved to the next one, with shattered limbs and half its face missing. He didn't flinch. Just touched.
[Feral Tier +2% → 92%]
"Come on…" he hissed.
The world blurred around him. Not from magic, but from blood loss.
One by one, he crawled through the battlefield, dragging his battered form over corpses and stone, forcing his hands onto the broken beasts who had nearly torn him apart.
[Feral Tier +2% → 94%]
[Feral Tier +1% → 95%]
[Feral Tier +3% → 98%]
[Feral Tier +2% → 100%]
A sharp pulse went off in his chest like a bell struck too hard.
[Feral Tier: Fully Absorbed]
[Stat Bonus Unlocked: +3 to All Base Attributes]
[Updated Stats — STR: 17 | AGI: 15 | END: 18 | INT: 12]
His body shook—every nerve alight with the aftershock of evolution.
But it didn't erase the pain.
Didn't fix the gash in his thigh.
Didn't clean the blood smeared across his face.
He was stronger—but still human.
Exhausted. Wounded. One bad encounter away from dying for real this time.
His knees buckled.
He turned his head toward the distant cleft in the rock—the faint green glow still visible like a lighthouse through smoke and ruin.
"Not yet," he muttered, dragging himself toward shelter.
But behind him—a single corpse twitched.
And the mist was creeping closer again.
The crevice yawned like a wound in the hillside—jagged, dark, offering shelter from the cold wind and prowling death. Dominic half-stumbled, half-fell inside, collapsing against the rough stone with a grunt.
He was shaking.
Not from fear.
From survival.
His body had been pushed to its limits. Blood dripped steadily from a gash along his thigh. His knuckles were split. One rib—maybe two—ached sharply. Each breath tore through him like dragging air through thorns.
Leaning back, his head rested against the cold stone.
Finally—he let the stillness wrap around him.
Minutes passed.
Then—
[System Status Update Available]
[Memory Sync: Partial Recovery Complete]
[Mutation Scan Complete — Anomaly Detected]
Review changes? [Y/N]
He blinked. Slowly raised a hand.
"Y…"
A translucent window blinked open before his eyes.
Name: Dominic Solari
Power Level: Dormant
Stats: STR 17 | AGI 15 | END 18 | INT 12
Absorption:
Feral Tier — 100%
Dire Tier — 0%
Genetic Mutation: ACTIVE
Source: Unknown Energy Signature
Effect: Cellular restructuring, neural expansion, removal of potential limiters
Result: Evolution potential increased. External mutation observed.
He stared at the final line.
External mutation…?
His fingers trembled as they ran through sweat-drenched hair—and froze.
It wasn't black anymore.
A lock shimmered—silver, like moonlight caught in glass.
His eyes widened.
"What the hell…"
It wasn't dyed.
It wasn't fading.
It was changing.
From the roots.
My beautiful hair.
He pulled up his sleeve, inspecting his arm. Beneath dried blood and grime, faint threads of glowing silver pulsed under his skin—like veins carrying more than blood.
His heartbeat slowed—steady now, heavier. Like a machine under pressure, each beat powering more than just flesh.
[Memory Fragment Detected — Accessing…]
Images flooded his mind—clearer this time, sharper.
A sprawling city on Planet Terros, the Fourth Sector Public District.
A cramped apartment where a tired woman and a small girl waited.
Flickers of a father's face—missing for nine years, swallowed by shadows and lies.
School halls where he studied hard before fate forced him out.
The weight of responsibility pressing down—training himself, preparing to enroll in the military academy, readying for the war that awaited.
The Federation's history played like a distant echo:
How humans, after a century of brutal war with the alien Ak'itae, clawed back from near defeat.
How ancient blueprints led explorers to the Dormant, Awakened, Empowered, and Ascendant Realms—each more deadly than the last.
The harsh truth: technology stopped working within these realms, forcing reliance on teleporter gates and nanotech blood-assistants.
The Federation's fragile peace, a cold war of survival stretching across the stars.
His system pulsed faintly, the nano-bio-bot inside him whispering status updates he barely noticed.
Energy Signature: Residual Antium detected — source unknown
Mutation: Active, cellular restructuring ongoing
He shivered, not from cold, but from the weight of it all.
Antium—his old life's energy—still flowed within, changing him from the inside out. But this memory… this reality… was all he had now.
His past his gone.
He lost his family in his previous life but now—
He was Dominic Solari.
He was the son, the brother, the survivor.
And the Dormant Realm was only the first step.
Dominic flexed his fingers, eyes narrowing at the flickering system display hovering faintly before him.
Absorption: Feral Tier — 100%
Dire Tier — 0%
He glanced down at the lifeless beast's corpse sprawled near the cave entrance — its rough, scaled hide marred by deep gashes where he'd fought tooth and claw.
Normally, the others he'd heard about… they had to devour the beast's flesh to absorb its essence, painfully consuming what they killed to gain power.
But Dominic? He'd only needed to touch the beast's corpse — his skin against its fading warmth.
His pulse quickened as understanding dawned. This wasn't the norm. This was… different.
A spark of something wild and reckless flickered in his chest — this strange, silent cheat gifted by the remnant Antium energy that had come with him from the other world.
He wasn't just another recruit or survivor. He was something else entirely.
Something... dangerous.
And that truth settled over him like ice.
Because in a realm where strength meant survival, that difference could be a blessing... or a curse.
He stared at his hand.
Still faintly glowing… still warm from contact.
It wasn't supposed to work that way.
He'd read everything in the Academy prep files before entering the Dormant Realm—even if he wasn't a cadet yet, he'd been preparing. Everyone knew the basic process: defeat a beast, butcher its body, consume its heart or essence core, endure the agony of gene fusion... and hope you survived the devouring process.
But all he did was touch it.
Just touch it.
And the energy flowed into him like water into dry sand.
No pain. No digestion. No resistance.
Just… absorption.
Like he was built to consume.
Why?
What the hell am I?
His eyes fell to the silver-veined patterns pulsing faintly under his skin, disappearing into his wrist like river trails feeding into a sea. The mutation was tied to this... to whatever the Antium energy did to him during the transmigration.
A cheat. That's what this was. A cheat in a world where the rules were merciless.
But cheats come with prices.
He leaned his head back against the cave wall again, the stone cool against his skull.
The wind outside howled like a grieving beast.
His thoughts began to drift…
To the memories the system had dropped into his mind like scattered puzzle pieces—
The school in Public District 4 on Planet Terros.
His mother's callused hands, always working.
His sister's laughter, bright even in a home darkened by loss.
His father… gone without a trace.
The Company. The lies.
The City Lord with his forged debt papers.
He hadn't remembered all of it at first—but now it was trickling in.
That's right... This body—I was supposed to enter the military academy next month.
I had one shot… to rise up, clear our name… maybe find the truth behind Father's disappearance.
I have a new family now I should cherish it.
And then...
That explosion. The dome of light. The tearing.
He was yanked from one life into this fractured, savage hellscape.
Why me?
The thought hung unanswered in the dark, like a question the universe refused to echo.
His eyes fluttered.
He tried to stay awake. To piece together more of the memories. To think, plan, adapt.
But his body was done.
He'd been ripped apart, remade, and thrown into battle without rest. Pain still pulsed like distant thunder in his bones.
Sleep pulled him under like a tide—slow, inevitable.
And as the wind whispered outside and the silver glow beneath his skin dimmed...
Dominic Solari slept.
Not peacefully.
But alive.
Then—darkness.
And in the darkness, something stirred.
A dream.
No, not quite a dream—something deeper.
He stood on nothing. The ground beneath him was glass, reflecting the stars above. Galaxies swirled in the sky, and colossal rings of fractured planets hovered around the edges of his vision.
A voice—not words, but understanding—flowed into his mind like a stream of knowing.
This is the Human Federation. A star-faring empire clawing for survival and supremacy.
Scenes unfolded before him—cities carved into floating asteroids, orbiting twin suns. Fleets of warships leaping between systems. Great monuments dedicated to fallen heroes, and the cold, scarred moons that bore the mark of the Ak'itae war.
He turned—his feet moved though he stood still—and saw the Four Realms.
The Dormant Realm—cracked, bleeding energy like mist, full of beasts born of primal chaos.
The Awakened Realm—distant, gleaming with storms of light and gravity bent like silk.
The Empowered and Ascendant… far too distant to be seen. Only echoes.
Then came Terros. His home planet.
Concrete, dust, rusting steel towers. The scent of zoba fruit. His mother's weary smile. His sister's laugh, bright like sunlight. And the broken home left behind by a missing father and a stolen legacy.
He turned again—and saw himself.
A boy wrapped in starlight and silver strands. Something inhuman humming beneath his skin. Dominic Solari, mutated by the remnant spark of Antium, reborn in a world of war and wonder.
The dream cracked.
The stars faded.
His body slumped deeper into unconsciousness.
And in the silence of that crevice… only the slow rhythm of breath remained.