Riven stopped in front of the storage unit and scanned the stones laid out across the table.
"I need something cheap," he said.
The man behind the table didn't bother looking up for long. He pushed a few stones forward, each carrying a faint glow. "All F-tier. Unverified. Eight hundred."
Riven picked one up.
The system responded immediately.
[Skill: Steady Grip]
[Tier: F]
[Status: Stored]
Same skill as before.
But this one wasn't clean. The glow inside the stone was uneven, not unstable, but not as refined as the one he had sold through the auction.
"Unverified," Riven thought. "That explains it."
"Seven-fifty," he said.
The man shrugged. "Take it."
The exchange ended there. Credits transferred, stone handed over, no questions asked.
Riven stepped away and moved toward the quieter section behind the storage rows. He didn't need complete privacy—just enough space to focus without someone watching too closely.
He took the stone out again.
Steady Grip.
A full skill, stored and ready.
The strands appeared inside the stone, layered tightly together, forming a stable structure. Seeing it like this was starting to feel natural, even if it still didn't make sense.
Riven shifted his attention to the strand he had taken earlier.
Then he moved it.
The strand slid toward the structure inside the stone and paused, hovering just outside it.
For a moment, nothing happened.
"Come on…" he thought, narrowing his focus.
He adjusted his attention, trying to guide it into place.
The structure responded.
A small gap formed between the strands of Steady Grip, subtle but clear enough for the loose strand to move toward. It slipped in, not perfectly aligned, but close enough to hold.
The light inside the stone flickered.
[Core skill detected]
[Strand integration in progress]
Riven's grip tightened slightly.
The strands shifted around the new addition, the structure adjusting as if it was trying to settle into a new shape. It didn't collapse, but it didn't stabilize immediately either.
[Core stability: low]
"Don't fall apart now," he thought.
Riven held his focus, keeping the strand from slipping out.
The tension built slowly, not physical, but enough to make him concentrate harder. The strands inside the stone pulled tighter, adjusting around the change.
Then the flickering stopped.
The light steadied.
[Strand integrated]
[Core stability: stable]
Riven exhaled quietly.
"That worked…" he thought.
He looked down at the stone, watching the structure inside it. It was still Steady Grip, but not the same version he had bought. The strands were arranged differently now—denser, more responsive.
He checked the system again.
[Skill: Adaptive Grip]
[Tier: E]
[Status: Stored]
Riven's eyes stayed on the display for a second longer than necessary.
"The name changed," he thought. "And the tier…"
He turned the stone slightly in his hand, watching the glow shift. There was no visible difference from the outside, but the structure inside it was completely different now.
He hadn't upgraded it.
He had changed it.
Riven considered absorbing it, just to confirm how it felt in use, but stopped himself.
"That would bind it," he thought. And the process to put it back into an empty stone is not something he wanted to go through right now.
He lowered his hand instead, running through the implications.
He had taken a piece from one skill and added it to another. The result wasn't unstable. It wasn't broken. It was better.
And the system recognized it as something entirely different.
"That's a problem," he thought.
If he took this to an official auction, it wouldn't pass as a normal Steady Grip. The evaluation would pick up the difference immediately. The structure wouldn't match any known version, and there would be no record explaining how it changed.
"That gets traced," he thought. "Easily."
Riven closed his hand around the stone, his thoughts settling into something more focused.
Selling it the way he sold the first one would put him under scrutiny he couldn't handle.
Keeping it didn't help him either.
He needed a way to move something like this without it being traced back to him. A place where the result mattered more than the origin.
"The streets," he thought.
Riven slipped the stone into his bag and stepped back toward the main street.
The official market depended on records, verification, and consistency.
"What I have doesn't fit any of that," he thought. But there was a skip in his step despite his usual calm demeanor, he knew that the path he was walking would either get him to the top of the world or fade into history without anyone knowing the feats he could accomplish.
Either way his boring days of dungeon scavenging were coming to an end.