The walk from the East Gate had taken place in an increasingly heavy silence. As the torches of Coldvale faded behind him, darkness had reclaimed its rights, swallowing the dirt path. The cold had descended suddenly, biting at the exposed parts of his face. When Adrian finally reached his destination, night was absolute. Under the feeble moonbeam piercing the clouds, the East Orchard was no pastoral garden.

  It was a dark expanse of twisted trees, trunks gnarled like old arthritic joints. The air was heavy, stagnant, saturated with the sickly-sweet smell of fermenting fruit and resin.

  Adrian stopped at the edge.

  He didn't charge in headfirst. He crouched behind a low dry-stone wall, adjusting the strap of his backpack.

  To a standard human eye, the trees were just impenetrable masses of shadow. Adrian didn't risk lighting a torch.

  "IRIS, increase light compensation."

  [RESIDUAL LIGHT AMPLIFICATION +200%]

  The gnarled trunks stood out from the black background with greater sharpness.

  The silence wasn't total. There was a constant rustling, a dry, rhythmic click-clack that didn't come from the wind. It was the sound of thousands of mandibles shearing wood.

  "IRIS, acoustic analysis. Source triangulation."

  [AUDIO SCAN ACTIVE] [MULTIPLE SOURCES DETECTED]

  [DENSITY: HIGH] [AVERAGE DISTANCE TO NEAREST TARGET: 12 METERS]

  Adrian took out his first empty vial and uncorked it. He wedged it into his belt, ready for use.

  He gripped his pick-hammer. The ash handle, warmed by his hand, offered a solid grip. The vinegar-cleaned steel didn't shine under the moon; it absorbed the darkness.

  Adrian observed the beetle. A standard adventurer would see a monster and strike the shell. He visualized the impact: a mace hitting that convex obsidian plate. Kinetic reflection. The shockwave would travel back up the weapon, paralyzing the wielder's arm, leaving them open to the mandibles. Brute force against a biological structure evolved to withstand falling trees was a waste of calories. Efficiency coefficient: Zero.

  Time to test the theory.

  He moved forward, his greased buffalo boots muffling his steps on the humus.

  He spotted his first target on the trunk of a dead apple tree.

  The Ironbark Beetle was massive. The size of a house cat, it possessed a black, glossy carapace that seemed carved from obsidian. Its mandibles, ten centimeters long, shredded the bark with disconcerting ease.

  It was a biological tank.

  Adrian observed it. A classic adventurer saw a monster. Adrian saw a structural problem.

  "IRIS, display structural schematic. Highlight zones of least resistance."

  The interface overlaid a red wireframe mesh onto the insect. The dorsal carapace was a continuous plate, impenetrable to a dagger. Striking there was a waste of kinetic energy.

  But between the thorax and abdomen, and at the leg junctions, the mesh turned yellow.

  [JOINT ARTICULATIONS: STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS]

  [VENTRAL PLASTRON: DENSITY REDUCED BY 40%]

  The beetle stopped eating. Its antennae vibrated. It had sensed a disturbance in the air. Or perhaps the smell of mutton grease.

  It pivoted slowly on the trunk, facing Adrian. It emitted a strident hiss.

  Adrian didn't move. He waited.

  The insect, confident in its armor, detached from the trunk and fell to the ground with a heavy thud. It charged.

  It wasn't a fast run, but it was an inexorable advance. A miniature war machine.

  "IRIS, trajectory and impact zone."

  [RECOMMENDATION: USE HAMMER SPIKE]

  He didn't try to dodge gracefully. He used gravity.

  The moment the beetle came within range, Adrian cocked his swing.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He wasn't a fighter, but as he stared at the flashing yellow dot on the insect's nape, he felt an icy impulse run down his forearm. His muscles seemed to lock themselves onto a trajectory he hadn't consciously plotted.

  The hammer pivoted with unnerving fluidity, and the spike struck exactly where the interface dictated.

  CRACK.

  The sound was that of a nut breaking, amplified ten times. The steel point perforated the joint membrane, severing the main nerve ganglion. The beetle froze instantly, legs folding underneath it. Immediate brain death.

  [TARGET NEUTRALIZED] [ENERGY EXPENDITURE: MINIMAL]

  Adrian exhaled. He wasted no time celebrating. He knelt. He drew his dagger.

  He couldn't take the whole beetle; it was too heavy and cumbersome. He had to extract what had value.

  He flipped the beast over. with precise movements, guided by IRIS projecting cut lines onto the flesh, he sliced open the belly.

  First, he recovered the acid gland, a small yellow sac located near the mandibles. He slid it delicately into a vial, which he recorked with care. It was a powerful natural solvent.

  Next, he tackled the dorsal carapace. Leveraging with his dagger, he detached the main plate in a single piece. It was light, incredibly rigid. Perfect raw material for his future balm.

  He wiped his blade on the grass and stowed the plate in his bag.

  One. He needed twenty.

  He stood up and pushed deeper into the orchard.

  As he advanced, the atmosphere changed. The trees were tighter, the shadows denser.

  Combat became an industrial routine.

  Ground impact. Shock. Perforation. Harvest.

  By the twelfth beetle, Adrian began to feel fatigue in his right shoulder. The hammer weighed nearly two kilos. Repeated fifty times, the movement became an endurance test.

  He paused near an old oak to take a sip of water.

  "IRIS, status report."

  [MUSCLE FATIGUE: 42%] [CARAPACE STOCK: 12/20]

  He resumed.

  The rhythm had become hypnotic. Spot, strike, harvest.

  Adrian was on his sixteenth carapace when the silence broke.

  Not a subtle rustle. A sharp screech, followed by a guttural curse.

  Ten meters away, behind a dead apple tree, a greenish silhouette surged. A Goblin.

  This wasn't a legend's monster. It was a filthy creature, one meter twenty tall, dressed in leather rags, holding a studded club. It was rummaging through a trunk not far from Adrian.

  Both froze.

  The Goblin blinked its yellow eyes, surprised to see a human in its hunting territory. Surprise instantly gave way to opportunistic malice. To it, Adrian wasn't a warrior in shining armor, but skinny prey with a full bag.

  It let out a yelp and charged.

  Adrian didn't panic. He lacked a fighter's instinct, but he had the processor.

  "IRIS, combat mode. Trajectory prediction."

  The world slowed imperceptibly. Red lines drew themselves in Adrian's field of vision, anticipating the creature's chaotic run.

  [TARGET: GOBLIN SCOUT (GRADE 0.4)] [WEAPON: CLUB]

  [REACH: 80 CM] [IMPACT PROBABILITY: 98% IF STATIONARY]

  The Goblin was fast, vicious. It raised its club for a skull strike. Adrian didn't try to parry—he didn't have the strength to block the shock.

  A blue line appeared on his retina: Left side-step. 30-degree incline. Adrian blindly obeyed the neural instruction. He took a side step, crisp, economical.

  The club sliced the air five centimeters from his ear. The creature's breath, reeking of rotten meat, lashed his face.

  The Goblin, carried by its momentum, stumbled. Its flank was exposed.

  IRIS illuminated a precise point at the base of the creature's neck, where the vertebrae protruded.

  Adrian didn't need brute strength; he needed precision.

  As he swung, a violent, icy current hijacked his nerves. It wasn't him striking anymore; he was a passenger in his own flesh. IRIS forced his wrist to twist, locking his muscles with painful rigidity to correct the trajectory. It felt intrusive, like a puppet string being yanked hard. The movement lost all human hesitation and became a mathematical absolute.

  The spike sank exactly into the designated cranial suture.

  CRACK.

  The sound wasn't crisp. It was soft, wet. That of bone giving way under metal.

  The Goblin collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, dead before even hitting the ground. The nervous system had been severed clean.

  [THREAT NEUTRALIZED] [ENGAGEMENT TIME: 2.4 SECONDS]

  IRIS suddenly released control. The mathematical coldness vanished, slammed back by biological reality. The smell of ozone and wet fur hit him all at once.

  Adrian staggered back, his breath hitching. He stared at the corpse, his hands trembling violently now that the AI wasn't steadying them. He wiped bile from his lips. Focus. He forced himself to approach the corpse.

  He searched the creature's belt. Nothing. Three yellowish teeth shone in the goblin's jaw. At first glance, the glint mimicked gold, but IRIS's spectral analysis was immediate.

  [ANALYSIS: YELLOW BRASS ALLOY (COPPER-ZINC). TRACES OF GILDING BY EVAPORATION]

  A fake fortune. This goblin was just a scavenger who had salvaged the debris of an unlucky miner. For Adrian, it wasn't treasure, but potential copper coins to fund his first solvents.

  Then, he remembered a note from the Almanac scanned earlier: "Mana-impregnated creatures often develop a core near the sternum."

  He used his dagger. This wasn't butchery; it was biological mining. He incised the chest.

  In the center of the creature's viscera, a small stone emitted a pulsating glow. Adrian cleaned it with the back of his sleeve. It wasn't a gemstone, but a storage organ.

  [ALERT: MINOR ENERGY CORE DETECTED. ETHERIC DENSITY INDEX (EDI): 0.4. STATUS: CRITICAL STRUCTURAL DEGRADATION. CRYSTAL MATRIX LEAKING.]

  "A draining biological battery," Adrian murmured. "Useless for prolonged use."

  [NOTE: ITS ABRUPT DISCHARGE CAN BE USED AS AN UNSTABLE CAPACITOR FOR A KINETIC OR LUMINOUS OVERLOAD EFFECT.]

  He wiped it and slipped it into a secure pocket.

  He quickly finished his beetle harvest. The insects began to hide, spooked by the smell of Goblin death.

  He checked the contents of his bag one last time. The heavy clatter of twenty carapaces against the stolen mana stone and the false-gold teeth was a reassuring weight. It wasn't a fortune, but it was the first brick of his foundation.

  He checked the sky. The moon was high. Time to move. The orchard was just the warm-up.

  He returned his hammer to his belt, adjusted his pack, and turned his gaze toward the dark hills in the East.

  The Weeping Caves awaited him. And with them, the ingredients for his true power.

  He resumed walking, leaving the Goblin corpse to the tree roots. Nature recycled everything, and Adrian intended to do the same.

  "Just a few more carapaces..."