She glanced down at the beat-up, ninthhand wrist terminal on her left forearm—the scuffed, jury-rigged thing she'd frankensteined together from scrap parts during her first semester—and prodded the dim rune on its face. A flickering status panel stuttered to life, its glowing letters warping at the edges like a faulty projection.
Inherent Subject Traits:
[Desolation] – text dissolved into garbled runes @#&#
[Abyss-Touched] – glitched characters $#%#**
[Void Resistance] – distorted symbols $#@￥&@
[Abyss Resistance] – warped script $￥%￥@
[Dominion of Endurance] – fractured characters #&%*%#
Laia stared.
When had half of these even showed up?
She blinked hard, prodding the rune again as if the list would vanish if she jostled it hard enough. If the panel was to be believed, she'd already checked off Lord Thorne's year-long assignment on her very first day as his apprentice.
She shook the thought away at once.
No way, she told herself. They're probably garbage traits. Flukes. Useless side effects from the realm being thin. I'll do it properly. Follow the guide like everyone else.
She tucked her sleeve back down over the wonky old terminal and kept walking, already mentally flipping through the trait cultivation textbook Thorne had handed out after class. She'd figure out a proper, normal trait to work toward. One that was actually in the book. No weird glitchy runes required.
Deep beneath the hills of her divine realm, in the great storage cavern lined ceiling to floor with sealed tournament supply crates, a young stonehide drake stood rigid as a statue, his eyes squeezed shut. Saliva dripped steadily from his jaw onto the packed dirt at his feet.
The crates had been a revelation, back when the raiding party first hauled them home. For a people raised on void-jerky and black-rye porridge, the first time they'd pried one open and found frosted cakes, jars of golden jam, crusty white bread, and casks of spiced wine? It had felt like stepping into a story about the heavenly realms. They'd held a realm-wide feast that night, singing until dawn, convinced they'd never taste anything so fine again.
They'd been right. The very next morning, Borgul had locked every last crate away.
Divine Realm Edict Number Three, the notice nailed to the cavern wall read: Easy plenty softens the will. Hardship forges the claw. Luxury is a tool, not a right.
The drake in front of the crates had already been standing there for three hours. A bowl of lumpy black-rye mash sat at his feet, untouched. Stacked all around him were enough supply crates to feed his whole clan for a month. He did not reach for them. He did not even open his eyes.
Borgul leaned against the cavern entrance, his arms crossed, and nodded slow and satisfied.
Good, he rumbled to himself. The old dragon's trick works every time. Give them a taste of the good life, then put the good life right in front of them and tell them not to touch it. The ones that hold out? They're the ones worth keeping.
It helped, of course, that there weren't nearly enough crates to go around. Split across every soul in the realm, each person would get barely a bite. And with the surface farms still struggling to establish themselves, they couldn't afford to let anyone get used to soft living.
He gestured to the two sentries flanking the entrance.
Seal him in with the crates and the mash, he said. Three days. If he breaks into the stores before then, he gets extra tunnel-digging duty for a month. If he doesn't? He gets promoted to the foraging vanguard.
The sentries rumbled their assent. They rolled a great boulder across the cavern mouth, sealing the young drake inside with his temptation and his lumpy porridge. Through the stone, they could hear him growl in quiet, furious defiance.
Borgul turned to walk back toward the central cavern, already mentally scheduling the next batch of recruits for the trial.
It's for your own good, he muttered, half to himself. Every last one of you will thank me later.
If Laia had been watching, she would have recognized the faint, glowing title hovering over every drake who made it through the three-day trial: Dominion of Endurance.
But her beat-up old wrist terminal could barely render the trait names, let alone explain where they'd come from. She would never have guessed that her newest rare-tier trait had grown not from expensive rituals or blessed relics, but from a bunch of very stubborn lizards refusing to steal cake.
When she stepped through the door of her cramped dormitory that evening, the room smelled of burnt toast and stale coffee, same as always. Her three roommates were scattered across their desks, cramming for midterms, and looked up grinning when she walked in.
"Well, look who it is," one of them said, leaning back in her chair. "The tournament champion graces us with her presence. Thought you'd have moved into a fancy private suite by now."
Laia laughed and shrugged off her robe, tossing it onto the end of her bed. "Fancy suites cost crystals. This one's free."
They teased her a little longer, then went back to their studying. They'd been roommates for two years; none of them really cared about the tournament hype. Laia was still the same girl who hoarded leftover bread from the dining hall and fixed her own boots with string and glue.
She pulled out the thick leather-bound trait cultivation manual Thorne had distributed, flipped to the recommended first-trait page, and frowned.
Suggested First Trait: Elemental Resistance
Method: Daily exposure to controlled elemental baths in a dedicated attunement pool. One hour per day, standard timeline 12 months for single-element resistance.
Effect: Reduced damage from one chosen elemental type. Advanced practitioners may pursue full-spectrum elemental resistance.
Laia's eyes drifted down to the fine print at the bottom of the page.
Single-element attunement pool card: 500,000 divine crystals.
Full-spectrum attunement pool card: 20,000,000 divine crystals.
She closed the book.
Nope. Not reading any further. That one was expensive enough.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. Even if she could afford the stupid pool, there was no way her subjects would go along with it. Try to make a drake sit in a magic bath for an hour every day? They'd dig out the side of the mountain and escape before the water got warm.
And even if they agreed? She didn't have five hundred thousand crystals. She didn't have fifty thousand. She barely had five hundred saved up for next month's essence bill.
Whatever, she thought, closing the manual all the way. I've already got five traits. He can't kick me out for having too many, right?
Curiosity pricked at her, though. She flipped through the rest of the book, page by page, all the way to the index at the back.
Over a thousand listed traits. Common. Uncommon. Rare. Epic.
Not a single one of hers was in there. Not Desolation. Not Dominion of Endurance. Not even Void Resistance, which she'd always assumed was a standard rare-tier trait.
Laia frowned, tapping the cover of the book with one finger.
That didn't make sense. They couldn't all be useless. Void Resistance alone was supposed to be worth a fortune—your ticket into the Exile Marches, the difference between a safe posting and a death sentence on the border.
Maybe they're just rare, she told herself. Too rare for a student textbook. Or too obscure.
She set the book aside and reached into her satchel, pulling out the champion's reward card she'd stuffed there after the ceremony: Watchtower of the Northern Marches.
Effect: Automatically negates one void incursion per cycle when placed on a realm border. When deployed in a void environment, dispels all low-tier void fog in a one-mile radius for 15 minutes.
Laia stared at it.
Useless, she decided immediately. What good is fifteen minutes of clear air? It doesn't put food on the table. It doesn't pay the essence bill. It's just a fancy shield that breaks after one use.
Academy rules strictly forbade selling reward cards. Penalties were steep—fines, probation, even expulsion.
But… friend-to-friend gifts were allowed, weren't they? You gave someone a card as a present, they gave you a different card back. That was just… polite. That was just being friendly.
She twirled the card between her fingers, her brow furrowed in thought.
A mid-tier defensive building card like this had to be worth something. Maybe not a full element pool, but close? If she found the right person. Someone who needed a border defense tower more than they needed an attunement pool.
Murong Xue had a whole fortified border on her realm, didn't she? And she was rich. She could probably afford an element pool easy.
Or Soren. Shaw clan ran trade ships all along the void coast. They'd pay good money for a portable fog-clearing tower.
Laia tucked the card back into her satchel, a small, calculating smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Maybe the stupid first-place prize wasn't totally useless after all.
She just had to find the right person to trade it to.
Outside her window, the academy bells tolled ten o'clock. Down in her divine realm, a stonehide drake finally cracked open one eye, stared at the supply crates surrounding him, and settled deeper into his meditation. Somewhere in the caverns, a slime bounced lazily across a moss farm.
And in a quiet dorm room, the most unlikely champion in academy history plotted her first very polite, very friendly, completely rule-abiding card swap.