SSS Rank: Spellcraft Sovereign
Chapter 127: Discovered (1)

Chapter 127: Discovered (1)

Lucen stumbled forward, boots crunching on gritty sidewalk tiles.

He looked up at the faded skyline.

"God, I missed ugly concrete."

A second later, Varik stepped through behind him. Coat singed, knuckles scraped, that usual half-bored look back in place.

Lucen gave him a look.

"Next time you say ’training trip,’ I’m checking your definition of ’training.’"

Varik just said, "You survived."

Lucen snorted.

"Barely."

Then he glanced at his system panel, finally back online.

[QUEST COMPLETE: UNSTABLE RIFT – VARIANT ROUTE CLEARED]

[+1240 EXP]

[+4 Class Skill Tokens]

[+1 System Flag: UNIQUE PATH – CATALYST SYNCED]

[+Compensation Stored – Retrieve at Nearest Guild Hub]

Lucen blinked.

Then whispered, "Wait. I actually got paid this time?"

Varik nodded once. "Bonus, too."

Lucen rubbed the side of his face.

’I’m buying something stupid.’

Varik turned toward the street. "Let’s go. You’ll want to eat before this next update hits."

Lucen squinted. "What update?"

Varik didn’t answer.

Just started walking.

Lucen followed, still mumbling.

"Better be a food update. I swear."

—

They stopped at a street stall that smelled like pepper oil and melted mana salt. It didn’t have a name. Just a flickering sign that said "FOOD" and a guy in a greasy apron who looked like he hadn’t blinked since dawn.

Lucen sat on one of the bolted-down stools, legs stiff, arms loose. The tray in front of him held something that looked like meat, but might’ve been reprocessed dungeon protein. Didn’t matter.

He ate it like he’d earned it.

Beside him, Varik didn’t touch the food. Just sat on the edge of the curb with a drink bottle balanced on his knee, eyes scanning the flow of low-levels and guilders moving up and down the late-night walkway.

Lucen didn’t speak for a bit.

Let the salt and whatever-passed-for-fat soak in.

Then, without lifting his head, he tapped open his system.

Soft pulse. Dim blue light.

No fanfare.

Just numbers.

[System Sync Complete]

[EXP Gained: 1120]

[Perk Bonus Applied: +XP Retention 3%]

[Skill Tokens Acquired: 4]

[Flag Notice: RIFT ANOMALY – CATALYST TYPE RECOGNIZED]

He blinked once.

’Catalyst type?’

He hadn’t seen that flag before. Not in any of the sim archives or theory grids.

The system kept going.

[Class Tree Updated: Catalyst Node Unlocked]

[Warning: Anchor Chain – Unstable]

[Fragment Perk Revealed: Spell Chain Conversion (Locked)]

Lucen slowly exhaled through his nose.

"Varik," he said. "What the hell’s a Catalyst Node?"

Varik didn’t look over. "Your system thinks you’re more dangerous than usual."

"That’s not comforting."

Varik’s mouth twitched once. Maybe a smirk. Maybe nothing. "It’s not supposed to be."

Lucen dropped his fork onto the tray.

Then stared at the pulsing anchor node. The structure around it didn’t look like a normal perk grid. More like a branching weave. Parts of it rotated. Others flickered in and out. Recursive loops instead of lines.

’This thing looks like a mana equation that flunked geometry.’

He tapped once. A tooltip appeared.

[Spell Chain Conversion: Allows user to link multiple spells into a chained sequence. Cooldown shared across entire chain. Timing required. Instability risk increases with chain length.]

Lucen raised his brows.

"That sounds unfair."

"Exactly," Varik said.

Lucen kept staring at it. The node shimmered faintly, like it knew it was being watched.

’So I chain spells together. Stack them. Auto-link with tighter timing.’

Another line of text appeared below the main node.

[System Warning: Fragmented Structure. Risk of Spell Feedback and Internal Looping. Use cautiously.]

Lucen snorted. "So it’ll kill me if I mess up."

"Yup," Varik said casually. "Sounds like growth."

Lucen dragged a hand down his face. Then picked up one of the four glowing tokens that had materialized beside the main tree. They hovered in the air like tiny burning dice, ready to be slotted in.

He didn’t move yet.

Just muttered, "Do people usually get this much off one rift?"

Varik glanced sideways. "That wasn’t a rift. That was a sink."

Lucen blinked. "Cool. That’s worse."

Varik nodded once. "Much."

Lucen leaned back on the stool, letting the tray sit against his lap.

"Let me guess. The NPC wasn’t normal either."

"Nope."

"So what, some glitched construct thing?"

"Maybe," Varik said. "Or something older."

Lucen didn’t like that.

Anything Varik called "older" was usually followed by a sword going through something’s eye.

Still... he tapped one token. Slotted it gently into the left node on the Catalyst Tree.

The system flared once.

Then hummed, like it approved.

He didn’t feel stronger yet.

But he did feel... wider. Like there were more ways to move now. More paths to step into if he looked for them.

He finished the rest of the food in silence.

Then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s head back before another wolf jumps out of the ceiling."

Varik stood too. "You were fine."

"I was stalling."

"You were learning."

Lucen snorted once. "And you were bleeding."

"Didn’t stop me."

Lucen cracked his neck.

Then started walking.

’No credits. No sponsorship. No guild offer. Just a perk that might implode my brain and four tokens that I don’t know how to spend without a PhD in glyph calculus.’

He smiled slightly.

’Best payout I’ve had all month.’

—

Up on the forty-first floor of the Starweld Guild Spire, the windows dimmed automatically when the sun passed the tower’s midpoint. But the woman at the desk hadn’t looked up in over an hour.

Taira Vellin sat leaned into the light of five overlapping projection panels, one boot up on the polished steel desk, one hand tapping a glass stylus against her thigh.

Her hair, ash-white, not dyed, was tied back in a series of short coils.

The kind that looked like they belonged to someone ready to spar between meetings. She wore a sleeveless black combat vest over a half-zipped flightsuit.

Not for show. Her license ring marked her an SS.

And no one needed reminding.

The room was quiet, except for the hum of the newsfeed cycling live raid logs and a soft buzz from the emergency alert glyph pinned near her comms tray.

A knock hit the door.