Darkness was all Seed could see, accompanied by a splitting headache that shattered his sense of reality. His body felt as though he were strapped to a runaway electric railroad, every nerve ending firing at once in a chaotic, burning rhythm.
He snapped his eyes open in shock, gasping frantically for air. His skin was scalding hot from pushing his Adrenaline Heart to its absolute limit inside the nightmare, his chest heaving violently as his pulse hammered past 160 BPM.
Panic surging, his hands flew to his throat and chest. He clawed frantically at his collar, searching for the gaping hole where Eeyore's claws had pierced his ribs—for the shredded cartilage where jagged teeth had crushed his windpipe.
Nothing. There was no blood soaking his shirt. No torn muscle. Just smooth, sweat-drenched skin beneath his trembling fingers.
He scanned the dark dorm room, his frantic eyes locking onto a tall, motionless silhouette standing near the far wall. Draped in dark fabric, its presence seemed to suffocate the shadows around it.
"Eeyore..." Seed mumbled, his heart skipping a sickening beat.
He squinted hard through the dim moonlight filtering through the blinds, his chest tightening—only to realize it was just his coat hanging on the wall hook. Across the room, Jay let out a heavy, rhythmic snore, shifting under his blanket without a care in the world.
Seed slumped back against his headboard, staring down at his pale hands.
"I died," he whispered. He paused for a second, his facial expression shifting from lingering terror into cold, razor-sharp focus. "The system said I died."
He opened and closed his palms slowly, testing the strength in his fingers.
"How could he do such a thing to me?"
Slowly, his eyes began to change. His pupils dilated into pitch-black voids, while his natural brown irises bled into an intense, fiery red.
"Aren't I supposed to be on their good side?" Seed muttered, his voice dropping to a low, venomous rasp. "Aren't I supposed to trust them so I can conquer this world like they want me to?"
He grabbed his head, digging his fingers deep into his hair as the burning heat in his veins cooled into something far heavier and sharper. A dark, unsettling smile crept across his face—the smile of someone staring straight into the future and liking what he saw.
"Eeyore... how dare you do this to me."
The fear was gone. In its place stood pure, unyielding ambition.
"I may not have many titles yet. I may not be strong enough today. But to tell you the truth, Eeyore—you just gave me a reason to become stronger. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... but I will kill you."
Then, a familiar, crystalline chime resounded inside his mind.
[Night Collar, Seed. Your Nightmare Trial is over. Receive your boon.]
Seed's eyes widened in the dark. He read the shimmering words over and over again, his red irises reflecting the faint glow of the screen.
"A boon..." he breathed out, a sharp grin stretching across his face. "I actually got rewarded for that."
Yes, I heard Eeyore muttering something about a trial right before everything went black, Seed thought, leaning back as his pulse slowly began to steady. I have no idea how I passed when I literally died in that damn nightmare... but the idea of gaining a boon from it is quite nice.
Before he could even finish the thought, the blue system screen flickered violently, shifting from cool azure into a deep, arterial crimson. Three new notifications locked into place in front of him:
[True Name Awakened: The Defiant Pulse]
You faced an executioner of your own bloodline, tasted death, and chose vengeance over submission.
[New Core Attribute Unlocked: Mutation (Base: 10)]
Governs cellular malleability, predatory bone-and-sinew restructuring, and ancestral trait manifestation.
[Symbiotic Relic Bound: The Marrow-Hound]
A living biological weapon forged from Night Collar tissue. Resides within the host's vascular system. Can manifest externally as a predatory stalker-beast or calcify into any melee armament envisioned by the host.
WARNING: Requires regular intake of raw flesh or blood. Starvation will cause the symbiote to consume host HP.
Seed barely had half a second to read the final warning before an agonizing, white-hot cramp tore through his right shoulder.
"Gah—!" Seed clamped his left hand over his mouth, swallowing a scream so he wouldn't wake Jay.
He collapsed sideways onto the mattress, his spine arching violently as the Mutation attribute took root in his cells. It didn't feel like a normal system upgrade; it felt like liquid fire had been injected directly into his bone marrow.
He watched in horrified fascination as the skin along his right arm rippled like boiling water. Beneath the pale surface, thick, dark-crimson veins bulged outward, twisting and braiding themselves around his radius and ulna like living steel cables. His bones groaned, micro-fracturing and knitting back together in fractions of a second as the Marrow-Hound burrowed into his vascular system, carving out a permanent home inside his flesh.
Sweat poured down his face, soaking into his pillow as he bit down hard on his own knuckle to muffle his ragged groans. His teeth elongated slightly against his lip, drawing a thin trickle of copper-tasting blood.
It's rewriting me, Seed realized through the blinding haze of agony, his red eyes wide and watering as his forearm muscles twitched uncontrollably. It's tearing my arm apart from the inside just to fit inside my veins!
For ten agonizing seconds, it felt as though his arm were being crushed in a vise while jagged needles scraped against his bones. Then, just as abruptly as it had begun, the searing heat vanished—replaced by a cool, predatory hum beneath his skin.
Panting heavily, Seed slowly pulled his bitten knuckle away from his mouth and lifted his trembling right arm into the moonlight.
The bulging veins had settled back beneath his skin, leaving behind only a faint, web-like pattern of dark crimson lines coiling around his wrist like a living brand. When he focused on it, he could feel a second, slower heartbeat pulsing inside his forearm—a steady, rhythmic thump that beat in perfect sync with his own Adrenaline Heart.
And beneath that pulse, he felt something else: a sharp, gnawing hunger that made his stomach twist.
Seed stared at his arm, his chest still rising and falling rapidly in the dark room. He flexed his fingers, feeling the lethal, coiled power waiting just beneath his flesh.
"A weapon that feeds on blood and flesh..." Seed whispered softly, the dark grin returning to his lips despite the lingering ache in his bones. "Good thing I'm already a monster."