The grey light of dawn found Ali already awake. Every movement was a stiff, rusty protest. The cold had settled deep into his joints. He could hear the steading coming to life: the low murmur of voices from the longhouse, the clatter of a pot, the distant sound of an animal—a thick, guttural grunt from somewhere inside the compound. He didn't know what kind of animal. Just that it was alive, domestic, and secured behind walls.
His first coherent thought was of the sigil. The glaring red eyes of Commander Igris felt like a beacon screaming "alien." With stiff fingers, he wrestled his hoodie off, turned it inside out—the lining was a faded, mottled grey—and pulled it back on. It looked bizarre, the seams and tags on the outside, but the alien iconography was hidden. It was a small shield.
Next, he took a handful of the stale water from the clay cup left from the night before. He scrubbed it over his face, wiping away the crust of sleep and dirt, and carefully cleaned the worst of the grime and berry stains from his hands. The water in the cup was now muddy. He set it aside.
System. Full physiological scan. And show me a set of stretches or micro-movements I can do right now, in this space, to maximize mobility and minimize injury risk for manual labor. Don't make it look like anything strange.
[Scanning...]
Status: Severe muscular micro-tears (deltoids, latissimus dorsi, lumbar group). Elevated inflammation markers. Hydration: low. Energy reserves: critical.
[Prescribing Regimen: A series of isometric tensions and minuscule range-of-motion rotations. Focus on spinal alignment and shoulder mobilization. Performed slowly while seated or standing at rest, they will appear as fidgeting or shifting against pain.]**
Ali began, subtly tensing and releasing muscle groups, rolling his shoulders in tiny, slow circles. The pain was sharp, but he felt a slight increase in pliability, a reduction in the feeling of being completely seized up.
As he worked, Kaelen emerged from the longhouse. His eyes swept the yard and landed on Ali in the shed archway. He noted the inside-out hoodie, the cleaner face. His expression didn't change, but his gaze lingered a second longer than usual—assessing the change in behavior.
"Midden pit," Kaelen grunted, pointing to the far southeastern corner of the palisade, near where the animal pens stood empty. "Bryn will show you. You dig, you fill the barrow, you haul it to the compost heap beyond the east wall. You'll have a guard." The implication was clear: the work was outside the wall, a test of trust and a statement of his value. He was being allowed outside, but only to handle filth, and under watch.
Bryn appeared, looking annoyed at the duty. He carried two tools: a long-handled spade and a wide, shallow wooden barrow on two crude wheels.
"Come on, then," Bryn said, no greeting. "The pit's full. Needs turning and moving. You'll stink by noon."
Ali took the spade from Bryn, its wooden handle rough and slick with old sweat. The midden pit was a raw wound in the earth, about four feet across, filled with a dark, conglomerate mass that gave off a sweet, rotten, and deeply foul odor. Flies buzzed in a lazy cloud.
He looked past Bryn to the palisade. There was indeed a smaller, narrow gate here, just wide enough for the barrow. It was bolted from the inside. Beyond it, through the gaps in the logs, he could see not a path, but a scrubby cleared area that quickly gave way to the relentless green of the forest. This was the backside. No roads. Just more trees, a bit thinner here. The steading was an island.
System, he thought, planting the spade and leaning his weight on it. It sank in reluctantly. A question. I'm a frail ass human. But by doing this, eating their gruel, resting, my body will adapt, right? I'll get stronger? Build muscle? Or are you just going to make me so efficient I never need to?
[Physiological Adaptation Query.]
Answer: My optimizations prioritize energy efficiency and injury prevention. This redirects stress to more resilient tissues and improves neural recruitment of existing muscle fibers.
However, consistent overload (this labor) combined with adequate caloric/protein intake (the stew is barely adequate) and recovery (poor) will trigger hypertrophic adaptation—muscle growth. The process will be significantly slower than unoptimized training, as I am minimizing the damaging micro-tears that drive explosive growth. You will not become bulky. You will become denser, more resilient, and fatigue-resistant. Strength gains will be linear and modest, tied directly to skill level increases. You are being forged for endurance, not power.
Fine. Dense and resilient is better than dead. Let's focus on technique.
[Primary Focus Confirmed: Technique.]
[Initiating real-time optimization for: [Digging] / [Barrow Handling].]
Ali's first few shovelfuls were awkward, throwing too much with his arms. A subtle tension in his core, a shift in his foot placement, and he felt the load transfer to his legs. He wasn't lifting the muck; he was using his weight to pivot it up and out. It was still vile, heavy work, but less jarring.
He filled the barrow about halfway, aware of its balance. He looked at Bryn, who was leaning against the palisade, his expression one of bored disdain.
Ali decided on minimal, functional communication. He needed to know the parameters.
"Where, exactly, past the gate?" he asked, his voice neutral. "The compost heap. Is there a mark?"
Bryn blinked, as if surprised the tool could speak. He jerked his thumb toward the small gate. "You'll see it. A piled mound, taller than you. Dump it there. Not around it. On it. Then back. Don't wander. Don't look too long at the trees." He unbolted the gate, opening it just enough for the barrow. He didn't step outside. He would watch from the threshold, his hand on his belt knife.
Ali nodded, gripped the barrow's handles, and pushed. The wheels were uneven, the axle complaining. The System nudged him—a slight adjustment in grip to counteract the pull to the left, a different distribution of his pushing force. The barrow rolled forward, out of the palisade and into the open air.
The cleared area was about twenty paces deep, stumps and burned scrub. Beyond that, the forest waited. The compost mound was obvious—a large, dark, steaming pile thirty feet from the wall. The air here was fresher, but carried the earthy, decaying smell of the mound.
As Ali dumped the first load, his eyes scanned. East. The forest here was different. Younger trees. More sunlight. He saw stumps—they harvested here. A few crude, weathered stakes marked what might be a snare line. This was their resource side. The front gate faced the dangerous deep wood where goblins and wyverns roamed. This back area was their larder and workshop.
He wheeled the empty barrow back. Bryn watched him enter, closed and re-bolted the gate.
"Faster," was all Bryn said.
The cycle began. Dig, load, wheel out, dump, scan, return. Each trip, Ali focused on a micro-technique: the angle of the spade, the load distribution in the barrow, his breathing rhythm. It was mind-numbing, but his mind was actively engaged in the numbness, sculpting it into data.
[Skill Formed: Manual Labor - Digging (Level 1, Tier 0 / Rank F- | Lesser)]
[Skill Progress: Manual Labor - Barrow Handling (Forming... 65%)]
[Brawn Tasks Branch Proficiency: +0.3%]
The morning wore on. The pit deepened. The compost mound outside grew. Ali's body screamed, but it was a structured scream. He was learning the lexicon of his own misery.
Around what felt like midday, Elara approached. She carried a single clay cup of water and a small, hard-looking biscuit. She placed them on a cleanish stump near the pit, not handing them to him.
"Your midday," she said, her eyes not on his face, but on his hands gripping the spade, on the sweat-soaked back of his inside-out hoodie, on the progress of the pit. Her assessment was of the work, not the worker. She turned to Bryn. "Don't let him linger. The east-wall timber needs checking before dusk."
She left without another word.
Ali stopped. He drank the water. The biscuit was dense, gritty, and nearly flavorless, but it was calories. As he ate, leaning against the palisade, he looked from Bryn to the gate, to the forest beyond.
Bryn finished his own ration. "Right," he said. "Wall check. You'll come. Need to move some fallen timber. Your pit's deep enough."
They walked along the inside of the palisade. Here, the sharpened logs showed more wear—green moss, dark stains of moisture, a few with hairline cracks. Bryn stopped at a section where a sizable branch from a tree outside had fallen, striking the wall and leaving a deep gouge in one log. Another log beside it was discolored and soft at the base, rotting.
"We need to brace this," Bryn said, more to himself than to Ali. "Father cut a replacement log last week. It's at the woodpile. You'll help me carry it."
The log was immense—twice as thick as Ali's thigh and longer than Bryn was tall. Bryn squatted at one end, lifting it with a grunt onto his shoulder. He gestured for Ali to take the other end.
Ali's back cried out in protest. He tried to mimic Bryn's posture, but his lift was pathetic, barely raising the log off the ground. Bryn's end dipped, and the full weight slammed into Ali's shoulder, buckling his knees.
"By the Hearth!" Bryn swore, letting his end drop. "It's like lifting with a sick maiden. Get under it! Use your legs, not your spine!"
[Critical Inefficiency: Collaborative Lifting. Incorrect load distribution. Risk of spinal compression fracture: high.]
[Recalibrating...] The System fed him a new kinetic model. It wasn't about raw strength here; it was about triangulation and leverage. Ali was to position himself not as a mirror to Bryn, but at a slight offset, using his body as a living fulcrum to redirect the weight onto his skeletal frame rather than his muscles.
On the second attempt, they lifted. Ali's legs trembled, but the weight, while crushing, felt distributed. They shuffled the log to the wall. Under Bryn's terse directions, Ali held the rotten log steady while Bryn secured the new one alongside it with leather straps and wooden pegs. The work was precise, demanding a different kind of focus—not just power, but controlled stability.
[Skill Formed: Manual Labor - Collaborative Lifting & Bracing (Level 1, Tier 0 / Rank F- | Lesser)]
[Brawn Tasks Branch Proficiency: +0.5%]
[Note: This skill synergizes with [Log Transport] and [Digging]. Minor efficiency bonus detected across all three.]
As they worked, Ali's proximity to the wall allowed him a closer look. He saw notches cut into some logs at regular intervals—handholds for climbing to the platforms. He saw smears of a dark, waxy substance on others, likely some form of primitive waterproofing. And in the gouge left by the branch, he saw something else: embedded in the wood were a few short, coarse, grey-brown hairs, thick as wire.
Bryn noticed his gaze. "Boar-mark," he said shortly. "Big one. Rubbed against the wall last season. Didn't get in." He said it with grim satisfaction, as if the scar on the wall was a trophy.
They finished the bracing as the afternoon light began to fail. The pit still had a bottom layer to turn, but the day's main labor was done. Ali was a hollow vessel of fatigue, stinking of decay and sweat.
Kaelen did his evening round. He inspected the newly braced wall section, gave a curt nod to Bryn, then looked at the midden pit, now significantly emptied and tidied. His eyes finally landed on Ali.
"You can follow instruction. You learn. Slowly." It was the closest thing to acknowledgment Ali had received. "Your bowl is by the shed. Eat. Then sleep. Tomorrow, the south pasture fence needs mending. More hauling. Less filth."
Ali retrieved his bowl of gruel—identical to the night before—and retreated to the wood-shed. He ate in the dark, the sounds of the family finishing their own meal in the longhouse a low, indistinct murmur of a life he was not part of.
System. End of day report.
[Daily Summary - Day 2 at Blackridge Steading.]
Skills Gained:
*Manual Labor - Digging (Lv.1)*
*Manual Labor - Collaborative Lifting & Bracing (Lv.1)*
*Manual Labor - Barrow Handling (Lv.1)* - (Formed during final trip)
Branch Progression: Brawn Tasks Proficiency: 0.8%
Physiological State: Extreme fatigue. Muscular adaptation initiated (minimal). Caloric balance: slightly negative, but improved from previous day.
Social Standing: Incremental shift from 'active liability' to 'marginally useful burden.' Conditional tolerance continues.
Threat Data Logged: 'Boar-mark' indicates presence of large, aggressive megafauna. East-side forest is actively exploited but not without danger.
Conclusion: Foundational grind is operational. Efficiency is increasing. Survival probability for the next 72 hours has increased by 7%.
Ali set the empty bowl aside and lay down on the straw. The cold was immediate, but the fatigue was deeper. His hands throbbed, his shoulders burned, but beneath the pain was a new, hard layer of something that wasn't strength, but wasn't quite weakness either. It was the first deposit of resilience.
He had turned shit into data, humiliation into a fractional percentage of proficiency. It was a vile, degrading alchemy. But it was working.
He closed his eyes. Tomorrow, there was a fence.