Four hundred copper kepeng clattered onto the polished ironwood counter, every single coin Bayu owned scraped from his footlocker.
"All of it," Bayu said.
The clerk at the lower-tier provisions depot scowled, adjusting brass spectacles perched on a flat nose. "Twelve bags of dried Lindu gristle and forty jars of fermented cloud-carp roe? Boy, this is refuse for draft-striders. If you want spirit nourishment, buy a single polished moon-seed like the other fledglings."
"Wrap it up," Bayu said evenly. His ribcage still burned from the fraction of divine heat that had saved Ratna hours ago. The taste mattered little; he needed mass.
A heavy slap caught him between the shoulder blades, knocking him forward against the bags.
"Have you finally lost your mind, Bayu? Or did the infirmary fumes rot your common sense?"
Jaka Guntur stood there with a split-toothed grin, broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway, a pair of wooden bludgeons slung over his back. He leaned over the counter, poking one of the burlap sacks with an unwashed thumb. "Lindu gristle? Cloud-carp guts? That swill has trace spirit vapor so thin even a blind earthworm would spit it out. Buy two meat buns instead. At least your stomach won't stage an open rebellion."
"Help me carry this to the eastern yard," Bayu replied, hauling three sack-handles into each fist. "Or walk away."
Jaka snorted, picking up the remaining wicker crates under sheer momentum of habit. "If you drop dead from food poisoning before midterms, I'm taking your extra tunic. Remember that."
The eastern practice yard sat deserted beneath the violet tint of midday clouds. Pradipa's basalt training dummies stood in silent rows, reinforced with zinc bands to absorb blows from intermediate martial techniques. Bayu dropped his load beside the lowest tier of stone posts, ripped open the first jar of pickled carp roe, and tipped it down his throat.
It tasted like swamp brine and spoiled lard. He swallowed it in three heavy gulps, gagging on the oil, before tearing into a strip of dried Lindu tendon that felt like cured boot leather.
"By the Ancestors, slow down!" Jaka yelled, stepping back with genuine disgust. "You look like an escaped street-dog!"
Bayu did not slow. He tore through the tough flesh, chewing only enough to clear his throat.
[Essence Absorption Activated.]
[Consumable: Cloud-Carp Roe (Rank 0). Multiplier: x100.]
[Esensi Reserve: +40 units.]
A small warmth pooled in his solar plexus, expanding like steam in a sealed kettle.
[Consumable: Stalker-Lindu Gristle (Rank 0). Multiplier: x150.]
[Esensi Reserve: +120 units.]
Bayu grabbed another handful. And another. The jerky became easier to tear; his jaw worked faster, driven by an unyielding hunger that had nothing to do with an empty belly. His veins felt full, vibrating like taut lute strings under tension.
[Multiplier compounding: Devouring Momentum active.]
[Consumable: Stalker-Lindu Gristle (Rank 0). Multiplier: x300.]
[Esensi Reserve: +450 units.]
[Physical Density: +18%]
"Bayu?" Jaka's voice lost its playful rasp. The big boy backed away a full pace, his sandals scraping against stone grit. "Hey. Stop. Your skin..."
Faint copper vapor rose from Bayu's pores, hissing as it met the cool mountain air. He finished the last jar, wiping grease from his chin with the back of his forearm. The world had sharpened into terrifying clarity: the grain of the basalt before him, the rustling of pine needles three tiers above, the rhythmic thrum of his own blood.
[Esensi Reserve: 1,840 units.]
[Catalyst Primed. Threshold: 1.4%]
He ignored the last line. The Sunken Caldera demanded raw power. The Sunpetal Lotus would not yield to a weakling.
Bayu stepped up to the nearest training dummy. He didn't drop into the orthodox crane stance taught by Master Suro. He simply squared his shoulders and drove forward an ordinary, unrefined right punch.
*CRACK-BOOM.*
The air split with the sound of a thunderclap. The zinc bands snapped like dry twigs. The basalt dummy exploded into a hail of jagged gravel, the shockwave tearing forward to splinter the two dummies positioned behind it into jagged stumps.
A cloud of gray dust drifted into the breeze.
Jaka froze, mouth slack as he stared past the splintered fragments. His bludgeons slipped from his fingers, thudding onto the pavers. "What circle technique was that? You have no core for that! You're rank two hundred and nine!"
"Just digestion," Bayu said, rotating his wrist. His skin bore no scratch, the underlying bone solid as pig iron.
"Who authorized this disturbance?"
A cold, sneering voice sliced through the settling dust.
Walking down the pavilion steps was Danu Tirta, an upperclassman wearing the dark blue sash of the inner circle. At his hip hung an unbent kris with a silver hilt. Behind him trailed three juniors, all smirking with the practiced insolence of those who fed on scraps from the high tables.
"Destroying school property with cheap powder tricks, Kartika?" Danu stepped into the clearing, eyes drifting contemptuously over the empty jars and torn burlap sacks. "Or did you steal an explosive talisman from the alchemy vaults to pretend you're a real cultivator?"
"No talisman, Senior Danu," Jaka muttered, immediately dipping his chin in customary deference, his earlier shock buried beneath instinctive survival instinct. "Just an accident during conditioning. We'll pay for the stone."
"You couldn't pay for the stone if you sold your sister to the cloud-barges, fat boy," Danu snapped. He turned his gaze back to Bayu, tapping his scabbard. "A dreg remains a dreg. Kneel and scrub this platform with your tunic, Kartika. If you finish before sundown, I won't report your vandalism to the disciplinary pavilion."
Bayu looked at Danu. He looked at the junior’s fine silk trim, the posture of a man who had never felt the terror of watching someone stop breathing in a frost-choked room.
"No," Bayu said.
Danu’s mouth twitched. "What did you say?"
"I said no. If you want the ground cleaned, bring a broom and do it yourself."
"Impudent cur!" Danu's aura flared, a pale cyan wash of pressurized water-vapor swirling around his calves. The juniors chuckled, stepping back to watch the show. Danu surged forward, his hand forming a piercing palm strike aimed dead at Bayu’s collarbone—the 'Rushing Torrent Strike,' meant to crack bone and leave a victim wheezing for a week.
To Bayu, the technique looked agonizingly slow.
Every line of Danu’s posture leaked hesitation, wasted momentum, and arrogance. Bayu drew no blade. He never shifted his footing. He simply extended his left hand, caught Danu’s lunging wrist in mid-flight, and clamped down.
The sound of Danu’s wrist bone grinding together was loud enough to quiet the birds.
Danu's face drained of color, his sneer collapsing into raw bewilderment. "You—"
Bayu turned his hip and struck Danu in the chest with an open-palm slap.
A dull, ringing boom echoed across the flagstones. The cyan aura shattered like fragile glass. Danu flew backward through the air, clearing twenty paces before splintering the cedar balustrade. He tumbled down the grassy embankment, his kris spinning through the air and burying itself point-first into the sod.
The three junior lackeys stood paralyzed, their faces drained of color. They stared at Bayu as if looking at a Lindu in human skin.
"Take him to the infirmary," Bayu said, his voice flat and steady. "Tell Elder Padma he tripped."
Without a word, they scrambled down the slope, dragged Danu's limp body out of the brush, and fled toward the upper courtyards.
Jaka stumbled forward, looking at the broken balustrade, then at Bayu's hand, then at the empty sky. "You... you hit a top-fifty student. You threw him like a wet sack of grain. With one hand."
"I have to go to the Sunken Caldera, Jaka," Bayu murmured, his focus already drifting past the clouds toward the forbidden abyssal rift miles below their floating island. "I have to get stronger than that. Much stronger."
Jaka let out a wild, breathless bark of laughter, running a hand through his matted hair. "Stronger? Man, you're a freak! If this is what you do on rotten fish roe, we're raiding the banquet hall tonight!"
Bayu offered a faint, tired smile. The Sunpetal Lotus no longer felt like a phantom out of reach. For the first time in his life, his hands possessed the power to reach it.
Then the hair on the back of his neck prickled.
Bayu glanced up toward the shadow of the stone colonnade.
Standing beneath the overhang of the carved stone eaves was a youth in an ash-gray tunic. His arms were folded, a single obsidian ring resting on his left thumb. Wira Mandala.
There was no surprise on Wira's pale, angular face. No confusion, no alarm at seeing a bottom-ranked initiate shatter an upperclassman with a casual slap. Only a gaze of ancient, bitter venom—the look of a man who had seen this exact nightmare before and was already calculating how to butcher it.