Cold mud pressed against my cheek, smelling of rotten cabbage and old copper.
Gasping for breath, I tried to push my body up, but my muscles screamed in protest.
Rain dripped from a rusted pipe overhead, splashing cold drops onto my neck and mixing with the sweat on my forehead.
"Get up, trash," a voice boomed from above, heavy and metallic.
Iron-toed boots clicked against the wet cobblestones, stopping mere inches from my face.
Looking up, I squinted through the dim light at the towering figure of Lord Valerius.
Golden armor clad his massive frame, gleaming despite the filth of the narrow alley.
He carried a heavy halberd in his right hand, the blade etched with glowing runes of pure light magic.
"An F-rank insect," Valerius spat, his lip curling in utter disgust as he kicked my ribs.
Pain flared like a white-hot iron, forcing a ragged scream from my throat as I rolled onto my back.
"Attribute Archive," the captain sneered, reading from a glowing crystal slate in his left hand.
Ridicule dripped from his voice, thick and suffocating.
"A useless, pathetic ability that can't even light a candle, yet you somehow managed to murder a high-born student at the Academy."
My mind raced, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of my memory.
Only hours ago, I had been a student at Aether Academy, trying to survive.
Marcus, the duke's third son, had cornered me with a dagger, laughing as he tried to carve his initials into my chest.
Desperation had forced my hand.
Activating my supposedly useless F-rank skill, I had touched the rusted iron bracket beside me, extracting its [Brittle] attribute and merging it with Marcus's expensive steel blade.
When he lunged, his weapon shattered into dust, and in the ensuing panic, I tripped, pushing him backward over the balcony.
It was an accident, a desperate bid for survival.
But the Academy instructor who found us didn't see it that way.
Finding a dead noble and a terrifyingly shattered weapon, the instructor had panicked, screaming about forbidden dark magic and ancient curses.
"I didn't murder anyone," I croaked, my throat feeling like sandpaper.
Valerius didn't care.
He grabbed my collar with a gauntleted hand, lifting me effortlessly off the ground.
Air ran short as the metal collar of my tunic dug into my windpipe.
"Tell that to the gods, boy," Valerius growled, his breath smelling of stale ale and onions.
Dragging me toward the mouth of the alley, he threw me forward with terrifying strength.
I tumbled through the air, crashing hard against the wet, muddy ground of a wider street.
Mud splattered across my face, filling my mouth with the taste of copper and rot.
"Welcome to the Under-District," Valerius barked, his laughter echoing off the damp stone walls.
"This is where the garbage of Aetherion belongs. Try not to die in the first five minutes."
With a heavy clang, the iron gate separating the pristine upper city from the slums slammed shut.
Darkness swallowed the street, broken only by the flickering green glow of dying mana lamps.
Slowly, I dragged myself to a sitting position, my body trembling with exhaustion and cold.
Water pooled around my knees, black and greasy with coal dust.
Looking around, I realized the true horror of my situation.
Dilapidated buildings leaned against one another like rotten teeth, their wooden frames warped and decaying under the constant rain.
Shadowy figures lurked in the deep recesses of the doorways, their hollow, hungry eyes watching my every move.
Fear, cold and sharp, wrapped around my chest, squeezing the breath from my lungs.
I was completely, utterly alone.
My F-rank skill felt like a cruel joke in a world where power was everything.
To survive here, I needed to understand my power better.
Back in my old life on Earth, I had been an ordinary salaryman, constantly overlooked and discarded by my superiors.
When I died and woke up in Aetherion, I thought my F-rank status was just another cruel cosmic joke, a continuation of my insignificance.
But my deep-seated fear of powerlessness had forced me to study my skill relentlessly, searching for a loophole.
I had spent hours in the Academy library, secretly testing [Attribute Archive] on various mundane objects.
It didn't take long to realize that my skill wasn't just a reading tool.
It was an extraction and transfer mechanism, a power that could rewrite reality if used with enough precision and calculation.
Closing my eyes, I focused on my internal status, forcing the interface to appear before my mind's eye.
A translucent blue screen materialized in the darkness, glowing faintly.
---
Name: Lucien Vale
Class: None
Skill: [Attribute Archive] (Rank F)
Stored Attributes:
- [Brittle] (Common) x 1
---
This screen was basic, almost insulting compared to the flashy, multi-layered interfaces of the noble students at the Academy.
But they didn't know the truth.
They thought [Attribute Archive] only allowed me to look at objects and read their descriptions.
They didn't know I could actually reach inside the object's conceptual code, pull out an attribute, and store it in my mental archive.
Even worse for them, they didn't know I could paste those attributes onto other things, merging them to create entirely new properties.
"Hey, look at this one," a raspy voice whispered from the darkness nearby.
"Fresh meat. Looks like he's from up high," another voice replied, followed by a wet, hacking cough.
Two figures stepped out of the shadows, their clothes tattered and soaked in grease.
One of them carried a rusted iron pipe, while the other brandished a jagged piece of broken glass.
They moved with the slow, deliberate confidence of predators cornering a wounded animal.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I needed a weapon, anything to defend myself.
Groping in the mud, my fingers brushed against a discarded wooden leg from a broken chair.
I focused my mind on the wood, activating my skill.
---
Object: Decay-Ridden Chair Leg
Attributes:
- [Rotten] (Common)
- [Splintered] (Common)
- [Lightweight] (Common)
---
"Extract," I whispered under my breath, my mind latching onto the [Splintered] attribute.
A strange warmth flowed through my fingertips, and the wooden leg in my hand suddenly became smoother, its rough, jagged edges disappearing as the attribute was pulled into my soul.
---
Attribute Extracted: [Splintered] (Common)
Stored Attributes:
- [Brittle] (Common) x 1
- [Splintered] (Common) x 1
---
This wooden leg now felt light and blunt, almost useless as a weapon.
But I wasn't finished.
I looked at a sharp, rusted nail protruding from the brick wall beside me.
Focusing my mind, I targeted the nail.
---
Object: Rusted Iron Nail
Attributes:
- [Rusty] (Common)
- [Sharp] (Common)
- [Metallic] (Common)
---
"Extract," I muttered.
This [Sharp] attribute flowed into my archive, leaving me with a dull, blunt metal spike on the wall.
Now, I had the pieces I needed.
I focused on the smooth, useless chair leg in my hand.
"Apply: [Sharp] and [Splintered]," I commanded in my mind.
A faint, violet light flickered across the wood, invisible to the two thugs approaching me.
Suddenly, the blunt wood warped, its tip sharpening into a lethal, jagged point that bristled with razor-sharp splinters.
It was no longer a rotten piece of furniture; it was a deadly, improvised spear.
"Stay back," I warned, raising the weapon, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound brave.
Both thugs stopped, squinting at the weapon in my hand.
"Where did he get that?" one of them whispered, his confidence wavering as he stared at the wicked, unnatural point of the wooden spear.
"He's a mage," his companion hissed, taking a step back. "He conjured a weapon out of nothing. I told you, those bastards from the upper city are all dangerous."
They hesitated, exchanged a tense look, and then slowly backed away into the shadows, disappearing as quickly as they had arrived.
A long, shuddering breath escaped my lips, and I collapsed against the brick wall, the adrenaline leaving my body in a rush.
I had survived the first encounter, but I knew I wouldn't last long if I stayed in the open.
My body was still broken from Valerius's beating, and the cold was seeping deep into my bones.
I needed shelter.
Dragging my feet, I began to walk down the narrow, twisting streets of the Under-District, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of danger.
Rain continued to pour, washing the filth of the upper city down the gutters and into the lower streets.
Every corner I turned revealed more misery.
Children huddling under pieces of canvas, men drinking rancid alcohol to forget the cold, and women staring blankly into the dark.
This was the underbelly of Aetherion, a place where the gods had turned their backs.
As I walked, I noticed something strange.
Many of the people I passed weren't just looking at me with hunger or malice.
They were looking at me with fear.
Whispers followed me like a physical weight, passing from doorway to doorway.
"Is that him?" a woman whispered, pulling her child closer.
"The one who destroyed the War God's blade?" a man replied in a hushed, terrified tone. "They say he did it with a single touch. They say he's a demon in human form."
"He's come to take over the Under-District," another whispered.
My jaw clenched.
Rumors had already spread down here, but they had mutated into something far worse.
Instead of a pathetic F-rank student accused of a crime, they saw a terrifying, black-market mastermind.
They thought I was a monster.
I wanted to scream, to tell them that I was just a terrified teenager trying not to freeze to death.
But I knew better.
In a place like this, fear was a shield.
If they thought I was a dangerous monster, they might hesitate to attack me.
So, I kept my mouth shut, pulling my torn collar up to hide my face and walking with as much confidence as my aching limbs could muster.
Eventually, I reached a small, abandoned plaza where a single, flickering mana lamp cast long, distorted shadows across the cobblestones.
On the far wall, a massive brick structure was covered in layers of peeling advertisements and official notices.
One poster in particular caught my eye.
It was fresh, the paper barely damp despite the heavy rain, suggesting it had been put up only hours ago.
Walking closer, my breath hitched in my throat as I read the words printed in bold, black ink.
A tattered flyer, plastered to a crumbling wall, depicts a monstrous, shadowed figure with glowing red eyes and a caption that reads: 'THE SHADOW LORD - WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE.' Below it, a chillingly familiar silhouette.