Ezikeil moved through the forest like a shadow that had remembered it once had a body.
Days had passed since he first stepped into these woods and began hunting. In that time, he had killed enough monsters to know this world's basic rhythm—weak things lurking at the edges, stronger ones deeper within, all of them saturated with magicules that he could pull apart and devour. The seed of power inside him had grown heavier with each hunt, turning slowly into a core that responded when he called.
His body had changed with it.
The new flesh no longer protested every circulation of magicules. The makeshift paths he forced the energy along had carved faint grooves into muscle and bone. It was rough, imperfect, but it was becoming something close to meridians again.
He stood now at the edge of the deeper forest, where trees grew thicker and darker and the air felt like it might cling to the skin if touched. Behind him lay the valley he had drained partially of magicules—a place that would slowly recover over months. Ahead, civilization waited.
He turned away from the denser interior, heading back toward the human roads.
Power alone was never enough.
In his previous life, he had learned early that strength without information was just a blunt weapon. To rule, to control, to survive when eras changed, one needed to know how the world moved: who ruled whom, which forces were rising, which were rotting from the inside.
He intended to learn this new world just as thoroughly.
The forest slowly thinned around him. Roots grew less tangled, underbrush parted more easily. The trees no longer drank magicules as greedily. Birds grew noisier, their calls more mundane. The smell of smoke and livestock drifted faintly on the breeze.
By midday, he saw it.
A small human settlement squatted between the edge of the forest and a shallow river—a ring of wooden palisade walls, barely tall enough to deter mid-sized monsters. Watchtowers rose every few spans, each topped with a bored guard leaning on a spear. Inside, he could see the tops of simple houses and the faint outline of a single stone building, perhaps a temple or administrative hall.
It was no city. Barely a town.
It was enough.
Ezikeil approached openly along the dirt road.
Two guards at the gate straightened as he neared, hands going to the hilts of their swords. They wore mismatched armor—chain and leather patched together, clearly not elite soldiers. Their faces were sunburned, eyes suspicious.
"Halt!" one barked. "State your business."
Ezikeil stopped a few paces away.
"I'm passing through," he said quietly. His voice held no plea, no warmth—only flat fact.
One guard squinted. "You don't look like you're from around here. No pack, no shoes. Where'd you come from?"
Ezikeil considered how much to say.
"A village south of the forest," he replied. "It burned."
Not a lie.
The guards exchanged a glance. One's shoulders twitched in a half-shrug; he had likely seen too many burned villages to care much anymore.
"Name?" the other asked.
Ezikeil paused, then answered simply, "Ezikeil."
The word settled between them like a stone dropped into shallow water. The guards didn't recognize it. Good.
"Any weapons?" the first guard asked.
Ezikeil lifted his empty hands.
The second guard frowned. "You planning to just… walk in like that? No supplies? No coin?"
"I'll find what I need," Ezikeil said.
Something in his tone made both men stiffen, though they could not have said why. He did not raise his voice, but there was a weight to it, a quiet certainty, like a man who had never once considered failure as an option.
The first guard took a half-step back without realizing it.
"Fine," he muttered. "But don't cause trouble."
Ezikeil inclined his head once and walked past them through the gate.
Inside, the town hummed with the low murmur of ordinary life. Children ran through the mud, shouting. Women carried baskets of laundry toward the river. Men hauled crates, repaired wagons, argued over prices. Smoke rose from chimneys. Chickens clucked underfoot. Everywhere, the faint buzz of low magicules drifted, so weak in most humans that he could barely detect them.
He moved toward the center, blending into the crowd as much as a tall, ash-skinned man with red-tinged eyes could. People glanced his way, assessed him, and dismissed him as another refugee. This world had too many already.
He found a tavern near what passed for a main square.
The building was half-timber, half-stone, with a creaking sign hanging from rusted hooks. Inside, the air was warm and thick with the smell of stew, cheap ale, sweat, and wood smoke. Rough wooden tables filled the room, most occupied by laborers or travelers. A few better-dressed types sat near the back—merchants or minor officials.
Ezikeil took a seat in a corner, back to the wall, facing the door.
He ordered nothing.
The tavern keeper eyed him, but he slid a small pouch—taken from a bandit corpse days ago—across the table. The clink of coins softened suspicion. She left him alone.
He closed his eyes halfway and listened.
"—goblin nest near the east ridge again. If the guild doesn't post a request soon—"
"—heard a pack of direwolves took down a merchant caravan. That's the third one this month—"
"—some noble's son in the north wants to raise his own army. Bastard thinks he can tax adventurers—"
"—the church says summoning demons is on the rise. Heresy, they say. Like we don't have enough problems—"
Voices flowed around him, disjointed but informative.
He learned the town's name—Kelder. A frontier settlement owned by a minor baron whose primary interest was taxing trade and pretending bandits didn't exist as long as bribes arrived on time. There was a small Adventurer Guild branch, understaffed and underfunded. Most requests were low-level monster hunts, escort jobs, or guard duty.
Rumors of stronger beings floated through the talk like fog.
Someone mentioned a wandering mage who could cast firestorms. Someone else spoke of a traveler who claimed to have seen a Demon Lord's castle in the far west. Another whispered about the capital city of a distant kingdom where knights trained under holy blessings.
Ezikeil listened to all of it.
He did not smile. He did not frown. His expression remained steady, a calm surface over calculating depth.
Eventually, when he had gathered enough fragments to construct a basic map in his mind, he rose and left.
The guards at the gate glanced at him as he passed out again. One started to say something, then stopped, throat suddenly dry when Ezikeil's gaze brushed over him.
Outside, the sun dipped toward the horizon. The sky turned gold and then slowly red. Shadows lengthened across the fields.
Ezikeil walked along the outer wall, eyes half-closed, senses extended. He traced the faint currents of magicules around the town. They were weak, but there—more than in the open fields, less than in the forest.
Then he felt it.
A small, jagged pulse of power moving low to the ground. Hungry. Hesitant. Skirting the edge of the fields toward the livestock pens near the wall.
A weak monster.
He turned and moved silently toward it.
The creature revealed itself a few moments later—a scrawny, green-skinned goblin creeping through tall grass, yellow eyes fixed on a lone sheep that had strayed from the herd. Its teeth were sharp, its knife a crude piece of chipped stone. It moved with furtive wariness, glancing constantly at the wall for signs of humans.
The guards above were talking to each other, not watching.
Ezikeil stepped between the goblin and its prey.
The goblin froze.
It stared up at him, knife lifting reflexively. Its body trembled, but it did not run. At this range, he could feel its core—a trembling bead of magicules nestled in its chest. Pathetic. But alive.
He regarded it calmly.
In another mood, in another life, he would have killed it in a single motion and moved on. Even now, part of him saw nothing but a trivial nuisance. Yet Rian's words echoed faintly in his memory.
"Naming binds souls, makes monsters evolve fast."
He had thought of those words as superstition when he first heard them. Then he learned that this world had rules enforced by something like a system. Skills. Gifts. Titles.
If names could shape power here, they were not just sentiment.
They were tools.
Ezikeil moved before the goblin could decide whether to flee.
His hand clamped around its throat, lifting it easily off the ground. The goblin thrashed, kicking weakly. Its knife dropped into the dirt. It clawed at his wrist, but his grip did not budge.
Up close, its breath smelled of raw meat and rot. Its eyes held more fear than hate, but there was a glimmer of cunning there. Not much. But more than an animal.
Ezikeil tilted his head slightly.
He could crush its neck now and take its magicules. The gain would be negligible.
Or he could try something else.
A name.
Names had power in his old world too—ceremonial, symbolic power. Here, they seemed to have literal weight. If binding a name to a core could force it to grow, then the one who gave that name could grow his own influence, indirectly.
He did not care about companionship. He cared about control.
He stared into the goblin's eyes and spoke.
"From now on," he said quietly, "you are Var."
The word left his mouth and struck the goblin like a hammer.
It spasmed in his hand. Its eyes rolled back, then flared bright. The air around them trembled as if someone had plucked an invisible string. Magicules rushed inward—drawn from the surroundings, from the forest's edge, from the town's thin layer, and most sharply from Ezikeil himself.
He felt the drain instantly.
The core inside him lurched, a chunk of his gathered power ripped free. His limbs went slightly heavy, as if he had just unleashed a high-level technique on an unworthy opponent. It was not crippling, but it was noticeable.
The goblin's body convulsed.
Its scrawny frame bulged, muscles thickening slightly. Its spine straightened. Bones popped audibly as they shifted. Its green skin darkened a shade, and its yellow eyes cleared from muddy to sharp. The crude, on-the-edge-of-collapse aura around its core solidified into something more stable.
A subtle, unreal voice brushed the edge of the world—presented for the reader, not for him:
[An individual has been Named. Magicules surge. Evolution process: Initiated.]
Ezikeil did not hear the words. He only felt the aftermath.
The goblin's thrashing slowed, then stopped. Its hands, still gripping his wrist, lowered in submission. Its gaze met his again—no longer glassy with panic, but fearful with awareness.
He released his grip, letting it drop onto its feet.
It stumbled, then caught itself quicker than before. Its new strength grounded it. It looked up warily, chest heaving, knife forgotten in the grass.
Ezikeil observed.
"How do you feel?" he asked, not because he cared, but because he wanted data.
The goblin stared. Its mouth worked uselessly for a moment, then it managed a rough, broken sound.
"Str… strong…" it rasped.
Its own voice startled it.
Interesting.
Ezikeil folded his arms.
"Sit," he said.
The command was simple. Not a threat, not shouted. Just spoken.
Var dropped to a sitting position immediately, more reflex than choice. Its body moved before its mind had fully caught up. Confusion flickered across its face. It looked at its own hands as if they belonged to someone else.
Ezikeil's eyes narrowed.
He felt something faint—like a thread connecting them. It tugged when he gave the order, a subtle pull in the direction of obedience. Not absolute, but real.
He had bound it.
At a cost.
He glanced inward, examining his own core. The drain from naming Var had left a hollow dip on one side of the seed, already slowly filling as ambient magicules seeped back in. It would recover, but the message was clear: naming was expensive.
Too expensive to waste.
Ezikeil looked down at the goblin.
"If you prove useful, you will keep that name," he said evenly. "If you do not, I will tear it back out of you."
Var swallowed audibly.
It did not nod. It did not smile or whine. It merely lowered its head slightly, shoulders hunched in a posture that was more submission than anything else.
"Good."
Ezikeil jerked his chin toward the forest's edge.
"Listen," he said. "You know these woods. You know the paths, the smells, the dangers. From now on, you will watch for me."
He pointed toward the road that led to town and the distant hills beyond.
"Humans pass there. Monsters pass there. You will watch both. You will remember faces, armor, weapons. You will remember which direction they go."
Var blinked slowly, absorbing this.
"If something strong comes," Ezikeil continued, "you will come find me. If something weak comes, you will stay hidden and keep watching. Understand?"
Var hesitated, then nodded slowly.
"Un… der… stand," it forced out.
The effort of speech looked painful, but it managed.
Ezikeil turned away.
He took a few steps, then paused, glancing back once.
"Do not attack the town," he added. "Do not hunt their livestock. That will draw attention I do not need yet. Hunt elsewhere. Eat elsewhere."
Var nodded more quickly this time.
Ezikeil walked away, leaving the goblin crouched in the grass, eyes fixed on his back with a mix of fear and awe.
He could feel the faint thread of connection between them even as distance grew.
It did not chatter in his mind. It did not speak in words. But it was there—a line that might one day carry more than obedience.
For now, it was enough.
As he moved, he turned his thoughts inward again.
Naming, he concluded, was a double-edged blade. It created loyalty, forged weapons, extended his reach. But every name drained his core. If he named recklessly, he would weaken himself more than his enemies could.
He would name only when necessary.
Only those with potential.
Only those that could become extensions of his will.
A dog that learned to bite where he pointed would be more useful than a hundred beasts that bit at anything that moved.
He spent the rest of that day walking the borders of the town and the forest, senses stretched wide.
He noted the rhythms of the guards' patrols. The times when the gates closed. The number of torches lit along the walls. The routes merchants took, heavy with goods. The places bandits might logically watch from.
Var shadowed his commands well.
Each time Ezikeil returned to a prearranged spot near the forest's edge, the goblin was there—breathing harder, carrying new scents, having watched roads or trails as instructed. It reported in broken words and gestures, but its memory was sharp for a creature that had been little more than a beast days ago.
Ezikeil listened, discarding useless details, storing valuable ones.
By nightfall, he had a rough mental map of the area.
One road led north to a larger town, where an Adventurer Guild proper existed. Another led west toward a minor noble's estate, likely the baron who owned this frontier village. To the south, the burned ruins of Havel. To the east, deeper into monster lands he had not yet explored.
He had no reason yet to pick a direction based on emotion.
He would choose based on profit.
As the sky darkened and torches flickered along the town's walls, Ezikeil stood once more at the edge of the forest, Var crouched nearby like a nervous shadow.
He looked outward.
This world had given him rules: magicules, skills, names, evolving monsters, Demon Lords whose full nature he did not yet understand. He had been forced into its structure by chance—or fate, if such a thing existed.
He did not resent it.
Resentment wasted energy.
He would learn the rules. Then he would bend them. Then he would break them where necessary.
Behind him, the goblin shifted.
Ezikeil spoke without looking back.
"Stay alive," he said. "If you die quickly, you were a poor investment."
Var made a quiet sound that might have been a strangled laugh or a whimper. It nodded anyway.
Ezikeil began to walk, slipping once more into the shadows between trees, the faint pull of a newly forged bond and the steady pulse of his growing core inside him.
He had taken his first step into this world's system of names not as a hero blessing a companion, but as a warlord crafting a weapon.
And the Cardinal World, still ignorant of him, continued to turn.