Maledic had already left — it had only taken him hours to learn what Landen still hadn't. Landen checked the clock. He technically had six hours until his real deadline, but the meeting with Drex was in three hours. He needed to master the first step before then.

Hours earlier, under Halvek's instruction, Landen had entered his own core similar to how he entered the MOBA Training System — a projection of himself in spiritual-energy form, slipping past thought and into flesh. The only difference was that there was no time acceleration here.

Now he stood before his dantian, staring at it in confusion.

According to Halvek, accessing the dantian should have been simple. The dantian was supposed to manifest as a mass of light, something he could reach into and draw energy from. But what Landen saw was nothing like that. His dantian was a solid, physical core, completely void of any openings.

He had tried following Halvek's instructions again and again, reaching toward it and attempting to draw energy from within, but got nothing every time.

"Halvek's instructions don't match what I'm seeing," Landen said.

"That could be because your dantian isn't like the others," the girl’s voice of the system echoed through the area. "From what I understand, when the Lord brought you here, he had to design and install your dantian from scratch. It is considerably more sophisticated than a conventional dantian."

“He couldn't just give me a normal core like everyone else?"

"Then your MOBA System would not function. The Lord created both your dantian and your System. This structure was specifically designed to support it."

With that, Landen watched his core in a new light. The energy didn't flow like water through it; it flashed in precise, hyper-fast bursts through a dense, geometric grid. It looked like a living metropolis with buildings and highways, parallel street lanes, and an interstate. Then he realized it wasn't a city.

“It's a circuit board,” Landen said. "Wait... if the core is hardware, that means the system is compiled code."

“I am unfamiliar with those terms,” the System said.

Landen focused down to the sub-micron scale. The structure wasn't random — it repeated, node after node, in patterns he recognized from a life he hadn't touched in years.

“Bob built the dantian using micro-spiritual transistors—essentially a biological integrated circuit.”

“What are transistors?” the system asked.

“Think of them as tiny switches that open and close a pathway, but transistors switch based on electron voltage, whereas these switch by spiritual energy, more specifically light and dark energy. And that means—” His voice raised an octave. “Ones and zeros!”

“And that is exciting. Why?”

“It’s a computer! Since it’s hardware running code, I don't need to cultivate it. I can reverse engineer it."

The familiar rush of his younger years flooded back. Long before gaming consumed his life, Landen had been obsessed with computers. He had studied computer engineering at a young age, teaching himself how software interacted with hardware long before most kids his age knew what a computer was. While other kids played sports, he was inside reworking circuit boards, writing custom scripts, and building video games to sell online. This was home turf. He just hadn't expected to find it inside his own chest.

"System," he said. "Is anything running right now? Any ability, any process?"

“Nothing at the moment.”

“Good,” he said, noticing something. Although the dantian appeared idle, certain pathways were still pulsing with precise, rhythmic square waves.

“Clock signals,” he whispered.

Every processor needed a timing source — some baseline pulse to keep every switch flipping in sync. And where there was a clock, there was something being timed. He traced the densest cluster of pathways, the place where the most lines converged.

"This is it,” he said, “the core logic. The CPU. System, execute the Fist Ability - Cultivation.”

When the System executed the command, a specific section of the board lit up. Repeating the action triggered the exact same area as expected. But when he had the System try a different command, an entirely different section lit up instead. Switching between the two abilities, he watched closely for a pattern.

The flow of energy repeated the same path each time an action was performed. But one important thing stood out. At the end of each transmission, a single pulse of light always traveled back to the core.

“That has to be it — the diagnostic signal.”

“Please explain,” the system asked.

"Every stable system runs a built-in diagnostic signal. It's how it confirms an instruction actually completed. If something goes wrong, the system can use that pathway to report the failure. Since I’m currently made out of spiritual energy, I should be able to touch this line and trigger a reaction.”

Landen reached out to touch the signal.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the system said. “If you are incorrect, inducing a fault state could cause irreversible spiritual damage.”

Landen paused and thought for a second.

“You’re right. An energy short could brick the board, or worse it would kill me.” He studied the board’s traces again. “But I’m confident this is a feedback line. It’s waiting for a confirmation signal that everything downstream has completed correctly. If I could interrupt that signal at just the right moment, the self-test should detect the fault and force the system to respond.”

He stared at the line for another second. “I have to try,” he said. “System, repeat the action. Don’t stop.”

Light shot out from the core, and the moment the return signal came, he tapped the trace, sending microscopic amounts of energy right on the clock edge.

Instantly, his physical body violently jolted. The entire circuit across the dantian flared red, and a window opened in his vision with lines of text scrolling across it.

“An error log,” he said. Then—

| SYSTEM SHUTDOWN INITIATED |

“What, No!”

Everything went dark. Total silence, total black.

"Did I just kill myself? … System — are you there?"

A few seconds later, a new window appeared.

| SYSTEM REBOOTING |

A few lines of text scrolled through the window, then…

| SYSTEM MESSAGE |

| USER AUTHENTICATION: VERIFIED |

| ESSENCE INPUT: ACCEPTED |

| TECHNIQUE REQUEST: INVALID |

| HARDWARE FAULT DETECTED: SELECT BOOT MODE |

|[ AUTOMATIC RECOVERY ] | [ MANUAL DEBUG MODE ]|

Landen nearly laughed out loud. "Manual. Absolutely manual."

| MANUAL DEBUG ENGAGED |

A moment later.

| SYSTEM ONLINE |

The familiar MOBA System interface flickered before him — except now there was a new tab at the edge of his vision.

|[ SYSTEM API ]|

“System, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” she replied. “Everything went dark there for a second. What happened?”

“We got in,” Landen said, opening the new tab.

“What’s API?” the system asked.

“Application Programming Interface. It's a way for outside code to talk to the dantian without tearing the whole thing apart. Bob must have developed this in case he ever needed to come back and fix something. Thanks, Bob, you’re a true engineer.”

The terminal displayed a live memory map alongside a stream of spiritual code:

// HARDWARE REGISTRATION INTERFACE - DEBUG

// TARGET: DANTIAN_CORE_V2.0

“This is it,” Landen said, staring at the syntax. “It’s low-level code, but the structure looks like standard object-oriented logic. The syntax is completely foreign to me, but the underlying programming principles are the same.”

Landen blinked as if his eyes were already straining from looking at the code. “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve done any serious programming, but give me the syntax, and I can figure out the rest.”

He went back to the start of the code. “System, execute the Cultivation routine. But this time, step through the instructions one clock cycle at a time.”

A pause. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

The terminal highlighted one line at a time, each one glowing gold for half a second as the system stepped through the code.

For the next few hours, Landen completely lost himself in the code. He and the System walked through instruction sets, mapped memory addresses, and identified the raw registers controlling the dantian's main output gate. By the time he had mapped the system calls for energy extraction, he was exhausted, but his mind was crystal clear.

"Close the step debugger," Landen ordered.

“What will you do next?” the system asked.

“I’m going to create my own entry point into the dantian.”

“Well, I should warn you. You have forty-five minutes remaining before your meeting with Drex.”

“Forty-five minutes is plenty of time,” Landen said.

He got to work. Code filled the screen.

Minutes later, he created a bypass routine that accessed the core's output register directly, avoiding Bob’s complex security checks. From there, he customized a GUI that gave him direct control over the functions he needed.

His analysis of the architecture revealed that the dantian was essentially a hybrid of programmable gate arrays organized around a central processing unit. This meant that the hardware he needed was already there. He simply had to identify the unused logic and switches and redirect them to perform the functions he wanted.

| BUILD SUCCESSFUL: 0 ERRORS, 0 WARNINGS |

| COMPILING CUSTOM DRIVER... LINK COMPLETE. |

"Compile and deploy," Landen said. "Please work..."

The terminal window collapsed, and Landen opened his eyes, back in his real body. His heart raced as he quickly browsed through his system to see if it worked. Inside the Abilities section, a new option appeared in the corner.

|[ Hello World ]|

He opened it and found a single dial labeled: Essence Extraction. Twisting the knob to the first notch, a small sliver of energy poured out of his core and into his chest.

“It worked,” he said with a smile, feeling the warmth of the energy spread through his chest. But the relief was short-lived. Drenched in sweat and exhausted from the ordeal, he swayed while he sat, barely able to keep himself upright.

Fortunately, Halvek’s task had only required him to accomplish the first step of the ability: accessing his dantian. That simple objective had made the programming problem far more manageable.

He glanced at the clock. “Ten minutes left," he said, struggling to breathe.

He barely had time to react before the floor beneath him lit up. Symbols appeared one after another, forming a glowing circular formation. The array pulsed with energy, and a cylinder of light surged upward, enveloping him completely, then teleporting him out of the battleroom.

When the light faded, he found himself inside the staging area.

“I’m back,” he said, glancing down at his body. Despite being out of the Battle Room, the exhaustion remained. His body felt drained, and his mind was near its limits.

Walking toward Drex's battle room, he spotted a familiar face waiting by the door.

“Hey, you must be Landen,” the guy said, reaching out a hand.

Landen took it, looking up. The guy was easily a full head taller, with clean-cut brown hair parted to the side. Landen recognized him. "Yeah. You're Hero, from the fitness center."

Hero wasn't wearing the standard black freshman uniform. Instead, he wore the red trim of a junior.

"I'm assigned to oversee your session with Drex today," Hero said, scratching the back of his head with a goofy, easygoing laugh. "Last time you passed out, Drex had to stand around waiting for you to revive. He asked me to cover the observation desk in case you go down again."

"That's not going to happen this time," Landen said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"Glad to hear it!" Hero slapped a hand onto the access panel, and the heavy doors slid open.

After suiting up, they rode the staging elevator up together. Hero kept glancing at Landen, clearly trying to place him. Then he snapped his fingers.

“I remember you. You’re the rookie who benched two-thirty-five.” He grinned. “You’re going to be a monster if you keep pushing yourself like that. I heard you caused quite a commotion with the punching bag.”

He threw two quick punches through the air. The movements were so fast and forceful that Landen could feel the power behind them.

“Fair warning — Drex is in a mood today, worse than usual. Rule of thumb: if you see him, hear him, or even sense him coming, run."

Landen gave him a flat look. "Thanks. Really helpful."

“No problem,” Hero said, slapping him on the back.

— — —

Landen entered the same forest as before, but this time, he was on full alert. He glanced back at Hero.

“Good luck!” Hero called out with a grin, waving him off.

This guy makes it seem like this is supposed to be fun.

Landen returned the gesture with two thumbs up and an awkward smile before turning back toward the forest.

As he approached the area where he had encountered Drex last time, he slowed his pace and prepared himself for the worst.

“Cultivate,” he whispered, activating his skill.

The moment he spoke, a familiar chime sounded in his head.

Landen froze.

He knew exactly what that sound meant.

It was the same quest as before.

And that could only mean one thing.

Run!