Roric's smirk twisted under the luminous green glow of the Thalasian canopy. His team, four hulking figures clad in reinforced synth-armor, advanced with predatory slowness. Each carried a lum-cannon, their muzzles humming faintly. Kavi instinctively stepped in front of Miri, shielding her smaller frame. The air, thick with golden pollen, tasted of ozone and dry metal. “Well, well,” Roric’s voice, amplified by his helmet’s modulator, boomed across the spongy moss. “Look what we have here. The toymaker and his precious bounty. Such a shame. We could make this easy, Kavi. Just hand over the girl, and we’ll ensure your decommissioning is… swift.” Miri clutched the back of Kavi’s worn tunic. He felt the tremor in her fingers. “You won’t get her,” Kavi said, his voice softer than Roric’s, but threaded with an unexpected steel. He had no weapon, only the faint hum of his ability resting inert in his core. Roric chuckled, a harsh, grating sound. “Fool. What will your little parlor trick do? Forge a twig? A tear?” He gestured with his lum-cannon. “You’re outmatched, boy. Every team in the Concordance wants that bounty. We just got here first.” One of Roric’s team, a broad-shouldered woman with a scarred jaw, raised her weapon. The hum intensified. Miri gasped. Before she could fire, a sharp crack split the shimmering air. A concentrated pulse of kinetic energy, not from Roric’s side, ripped through the woman’s lum-cannon. It exploded in a shower of sparks and shattered synth-fragments. She cried out, clutching a smoking hand. Roric spun, his eyes narrowing. From the dense, bioluminescent foliage to their right, a figure emerged. Aisun. The hunter was a gaunt man, his face a map of sun-scorched wrinkles, his long-range coil-rifle held with casual authority. He didn’t even look at Roric. His gaze, sharp as flint, fixed on Kavi. “Move it, Conduit scum,” Aisun grunted, his voice raspy. “The boy has a use. You don’t.” Roric's face darkened. “Aisun! Interfering with a team bounty? You’re asking for trouble.” Aisun ignored him, adjusting his grip on the coil-rifle. “This bloom’s no joke. Don’t waste my time. Get out, or I’ll start aiming for heads, not hands.” Roric weighed his options. Aisun was a known quantity, a lone wolf with a fearsome reputation for marksmanship. Engaging him meant casualties, and potentially losing Miri to another team while they were distracted. With a snarl of frustration, Roric waved his team back. “This isn’t over, toymaker,” he spat, before retreating deeper into the luminous, tangled thicket. Their footsteps quickly faded. Kavi let out a steady, measured breath. Miri pressed closer. “Thank you, Aisun,” she whispered. Aisun barely spared her a glance. His eyes, the color of aged moss, locked onto Kavi. “Don’t mistake it for kindness, boy. I need your skill.” He lowered his rifle slightly, indicating a torn sleeve on his arm, revealing an angry, festering cut. “I need bandages. More than one. And I need them now.” Kavi nodded, understanding. Aisun had seen him replicate the anti-toxin in the Hub. It made sense; an injury like that, left untreated, could turn fatal quickly in this environment. “I can help. But we need to move. Away from here.” “No argument,” Aisun said, already turning. “This way. The Whispering Falls are two kiloms north. Good place to set up a temporary camp. Less of these… bloom-addled idiots.” They moved through the Thalasian woods, the air growing heavier, the golden dust clinging to their clothes. Aisun walked with a silent, economical stride, his eyes constantly scanning the vibrant, alien flora. Kavi kept Miri close, his pulse high from the encounter. He managed to replicate a stack of sterile bandages for Aisun as they walked, keeping the motion masked beneath his cloak. Aisun took them, grunting his approval, and applied them with practiced efficiency. As the ambient light shifted from golden to a deep, resonant violet, Aisun spoke again. “You want to keep her safe, boy? You need to understand this place. The System isn’t just about clearing Scenarios. It’s about finding the keys. The leverage that matters.” He pulled a thick, leather-bound book from a deep pocket in his worn vest. Its pages were brittle, stained with countless biomes. “This is a bestiary. System-sanctioned, mostly. Filled with horrors that can kill you. And anomalies that can… change fates.” Kavi glanced at the book, its cover etched with faded runes. “Change what?” Aisun hesitated, his gaze distant. “My daughter. Lena. Her Class… it bound her. Took her. The System promised a solution, a ‘Seed of Reversal’ for those who prove their worth. A legend. Supposedly, it can undo a Class binding. I’ve been chasing rumors of it for years, across a dozen Scenarios. Every page in here, every creature, every anomaly… it could be a clue.” His voice, usually gruff, held a raw edge of longing. “I need that Seed. More than I need to survive.” They reached a small grotto behind the cascading, luminescent water of the Whispering Falls. The roar of the water muted the sounds of the woods, and a cool mist cleared some of the oppressive pollen. Aisun set about preparing a temporary shelter. Kavi, still thinking about Aisun's daughter, sat beside Miri. He looked at the bestiary Aisun had laid open, its pages filled with intricate, hand-drawn sketches and detailed notes. One particular page caught his eye. It described a creature called the ‘Spore-Lurker’. A fungal predator, it moved by burrowing beneath the spongy ground, emerging to spray a blinding neurotoxin. The notes detailed its acute sensitivity to specific pheromones released by the *Faelight Bloom*, an azure, trumpet-shaped blossom that pulsed faintly. It also described how the Spore-Lurker would aggressively follow the scent trail, thinking it was prey. Kavi’s mind whirred. His skill had always been directed at whole objects. A vial. A bandage. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was about *information*? About *parts*? He reached out, his fingers hovering over the brittle page describing the Spore-Lurker. A faint blue glow emanated from his palm, the familiar warmth of his skill. He focused, not on the entire book, but on that single parchment, the precise glyphs, the detailed sketch of the blossom and its pheromones. He felt a minute drain on his core, far less than duplicating an entire vial. When he pulled his hand away, a shimmering, translucent blue facsimile of the page hovered in the air. It contained every detail, every sketch, every note, perfectly rendered. [Skill Proficiency Increased: Object Duplication (Sub-component Replication unlocked)] Kavi stared at the floating page, then back at the original in Aisun's book. A grin, rare and wide, spread across his face. He quickly made two more copies, pressing the translucent pages against his tunic, where they dissolved into faint blue light, absorbed into his inventory. His skill wasn't useless. It was a blank canvas. He rose, his mind racing. He knew exactly what he needed to do. He searched among the phosphorescent growth near the falls, identifying several clusters of Faelight Blooms. He plucked a handful, their trumpet-like petals moist and cool against his fingers. Back at their makeshift camp, using a sharp stone and a piece of discarded synth-sheeting, he meticulously crushed the petals, extracting their potent, cerulean-scented sap. He then smeared the sap onto small, dry leaves from a nearby shrub, creating crude, pungent lures. Aisun watched him with a raised eyebrow, but said nothing. Kavi then moved away from the falls, deeper into the brush. He began strategically placing the sap-coated leaves along a specific path, a winding trail that led directly towards where Roric’s team had retreated. Each lure was placed to stretch the scent trail, drawing the burrowing predators like an invisible string. He returned, breathless, just as the violet twilight gave way to the inky dark of the Thalasian night. Aisun was sitting cross-legged, cleaning his rifle. He looked up as Kavi approached. “What did you do, boy?” he asked, his voice devoid of judgment, only a keen curiosity. Kavi allowed himself a small, defiant smile. “I gave Roric a housewarming gift.” Almost as if on cue, a low rumble began to emanate from the direction Kavi had just come from. The ground beneath them vibrated subtly. Then, a series of muffled thuds, growing rapidly louder. A high-pitched shriek, distinctively not human, tore through the night. Then another, closer. Followed by the frantic crackle of lum-cannons, a desperate, uncontrolled barrage. Screams, raw and terrified, ripped through the air. Kavi met Aisun’s gaze. The old hunter’s eyes, usually so impassive, held a glint of something new: respect. The screams intensified, then abruptly choked off, replaced by the wet, squelching sounds of something massive moving through the undergrowth. [Team Roric has been decommissioned.]

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