Novel Full Chapter 337: Origin
Capítulo 337: Origin
…It was concern.
And now, in this silence—no eyes on him, no voices riding his shoulders—Damien could finally feel it.
Just how off everything still was.
His core wasn’t in pain. It wasn’t flaring. But it wasn’t sitting clean either. There was a subtle misalignment, like wearing a suit that almost fit—but not quite. A fractional mismatch between breath and energy. Between muscle and mana.
He brought one hand to his chest.
The pulse was there.
Not the heartbeat. The other one.
The Blueprint’s echo. Quiet. Present. Pacing behind his ribs like a caged tide.
Damien exhaled again, slower this time, and let his head tilt back slightly.
He still hadn’t checked the logs.
Not since it ended. Not since the system had reappeared—its presence humming like a second spine threading beneath his skin.
There had been… a lot. He remembered that much. Panels flickering at the edges of his vision. Notifications stacking so fast he couldn’t parse them. Not with Kael and Dominic watching. Not when his knees had barely stopped trembling.
His senses then were still catching up. His body didn’t know what it was yet.
Even now, that delay lingered.
A strange haze behind the eyes.
Like he was sitting in a body that remembered what it used to be but hadn’t finished becoming what it was now.
He lifted his hand again, holding it palm-up.
A faint shimmer curled at his fingertips.
Not fire. Not air. Not water or shadow.
Just… mana.
Untethered. Calm. Waiting.
Damien furrowed his brow.
Even that was strange.
Before, mana resisted. It had texture. Behavior. It leaned left or surged forward or recoiled from his touch.
Now?
It watched.
No tension. No fear. Just patience.
It was as if the whole world had agreed to wait for him.
And yet he hadn’t caught up to it.
‘System,’ he thought—but didn’t say aloud.
And like it had just been waiting for the silence…
Ding.
The sound wasn’t loud. Wasn’t jarring. Just… definitive. Like a seal clicking into place.
A soft flicker lit the corner of his vision. Not intrusive. Not forceful. It hovered—subtle, refined—until he let his focus settle on it.
Then, one by one, the panels began to rise.
No fanfare.
Just a clean, deliberate cascade.
[System Notice]
[Congratulations. You have completed Awakening.]
[Synchronization Achieved.]
[New Systems Unlocked.]
[Initializing Updated Status Window…]
Damien didn’t flinch.
But his jaw ticked once.
There it was—the hum. The interface threading back into his mind like a wire slotting perfectly into place.
This wasn’t just a screen anymore. It felt integrated. Synced.
No more flicker. No delay.
Just clarity.
The updated window unfolded:
——————-
[STATUS]
[Synchronization: Complete]
▶ Name: Damien Elford
▶ Age: 17
▶ Awakened Rank: G–
▶ Awakened Potential: ?????
▶ Level: 5
▶ SP: 1000
Traits:[Reforged One] [Does Not Bend] [Singularity] [Sociopath] [Anarchist] [Neural Predator] [Limit Breaker] [Resonance of Fate]
Passive Skills:
[Merchant’s Intuition] [Physique of Resistance] [Predatory Focus]
—————————-
[Attributes]
▶ Strength: 15 (+3)
▶ Agility: 15 (+3)
▶ Endurance: 15 (+3)
▶ Will: ??
▶ Intelligence: ??
▶ Charm: 12
▶ Luck: 10
▶ Mana: 14
▶ Magic Power: 17
————————-
He stared at the status panel, expression unreadable.
So that was it.
G–.
The system didn’t sugarcoat. Didn’t inflate.
Everyone started here. Even the monsters in human skin, the legends dressed in restraint—they all began at the bottom once they Awakened.
And Damien?
He wasn’t an exception.
Just a fresh record in the database now. One more low-rank to shuffle through the meat grinder.
He gave a soft exhale through his nose, a flicker of something like a smirk tugging at his lip—not amusement. Just familiarity.
Of course.
What else would it be?
The rank didn’t bother him.
But the Potential?
????
His gaze lingered on that one line.
He wasn’t surprised. Not really.
Not after everything.
Damien’s eyes stayed on the line.
[Awakened Potential: ?????]
No number. No classification. No neat little tier to file him under.
Just uncertainty.
But not the System’s.
Theirs.
He leaned back slightly, spine settling into the ambient hum of the stabilizers, hand still hovering palm-up. The shimmer at his fingertips pulsed once, then faded, like a breath being held.
His mind was already spinning.
“So,” he thought, “my assumptions were right.”
The Sanguis Bath.
The Cradle.
The infection. The trials. The failsafe that tried to erase him just as his core began to hold form.
It had all been planned—not by one person, but by a structure. A hierarchy designed to maintain control. Predictability. Outcomes that could be shaped, sold, or silenced.
And what better way to guarantee that than by poisoning the forge itself?
Most who entered the Cradle never came back. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was a mechanism. The bath, with its psycho-reactive compounds, had been the primer—the rot introduced into the system before it even booted.
And those who couldn’t survive that early mental fracture?
They were never meant to.
Damien had come dangerously close.
He remembered it now in full clarity—how the walls of reality had bent around him inside the Cradle. How his thoughts had started echoing with voices that weren’t his, doubts that hadn’t grown naturally, fears that felt placed.
They hadn’t come from inside.
They had been installed.
He traced that feeling back through the flood of memories—the colossus whose very presence made him feel small, the invisible predators that whispered promises of collapse, the silence that filled his ears until the only thing left was the sound of his own sanity wearing thin.
It hadn’t been a test.
It had been a grindstone.
And the infection?
That had been the sand in his gears.
The little push to make sure he didn’t quite catch the rhythm. That he hesitated. That he snapped.
But instead?
He adapted.
Each pressure point—each edge where he should have cracked—he turned into a grip. A foothold.
He survived into power.
He learned to breathe mana not because someone showed him how—but because he would have died otherwise.
He learned to channel it through limbs, circulate it like blood, build a core from nothing—because pain made him.
And now?
Now the system stood in front of him, blinking back that same confusion.
It didn’t know what to make of him.
And he liked that.
The silence in the room stretched, thick with hum and charge, until—
Ding.
Another window unfolded—slower this time. As if the system were pausing first, choosing its wording more carefully.
————
[New Category Unlocked]
[Elemental Affinity: Evaluating…]
. . .
. . .
[Primary Affinity: ORIGIN]
—————
Damien blinked once. No reaction. No smile. But his breath slowed, deepened—his ribcage expanding just a fraction more deliberately.
Origin.