A Point that Matters

The seasons turned slowly in the wild reaches beyond Cardinal Peaks, but Kaiden felt every day of them.

The forest had become his world. His training ground.

His sanctuary.

His proving field.

While most children his age tracked passive growth, Kaiden's Ki Card was a lesson in microscopic patience:

+0.0001 Intelligence

+0.00004 Agility

+0.000002 Strength

The numbers crawled.

One training session after another.

Weeks.

Then months.

Nearly a full year.

Every stat he earned came from effort most would call obsessive. And for what?

The system laughed in decimals.

Others gained full points just by leveling. Kaiden had to bleed for every drop.

He had earned each of them.

There were nights when even he questioned the point of it all.

The blazing drive was reduced to embers.

[ Niklaus ]

"You're doing what no one's ever done, boy."

"Of course it's going to feel like madness."

"Don't tell me this is all that you have."

[ Kaiden ]

"It's not just madness..."

"It's invisible. It's like..."

"I'm bleeding into something that won't even bleed back."

"Feels..."

"Useless..."

But he never stopped. Not by a long shot.

He cataloged every relic. Logged every loot. Studied terrain.

Observed mutated zones left in the wake of Voidspace's earlier surges.

He trained his movements.

Balance drills, repetition strikes, obstacle runs through hostile terrain.

He mapped the forest like it was an opponent, not a setting.

His only companion in all this was time.

And time was a cruel teacher.

Until the spider.

◈◈◈

It happened on a day like any other — mid-spring, haze in the morning, warmth by noon.

Nik had gone ahead to scout an old Concordium outpost rumored to hold leftover analysis tools.

Kaiden stayed back to run his drills.

Then came the cry.

It wasn't a yell.

It was Nik's whistle. Sharp. Short.

A code Kaiden knew by heart.

Trouble.

He dropped his stance and ran.

He found Nik slumped beneath a tree. A thick black fang was embedded in his leg.

His dagger was still lodged in the skull of what had attacked him.

A spider — no, a monster. The size of a barrel, maybe larger.

Black as obsidian. Veins of sickly green pulsing beneath its chitin.

Its name blinked faintly in Kaiden's vision:

[ HEART ]

[ Spider: Varnyx the Burrower: Unique ]

Classification: Stealth

Behavior: Aggressive

Weakness: Unknown

Mortality: Critically Wounded

But Nik was worse.

The poison had already paralyzed his lower half.

[ Kaiden ]

"POPS!"

[ Niklaus (gritted) ]

"Trapdoor..."

"Sneaky bastard..."

"Didn't sense it..."

Kaiden's hands trembled as he opened his inventory — nothing useful.

No antidotes.

No nullifier relics.

No curatives.

Nothing.

Just a shaking hand, a cracked Ki Card... and months of meaningless decimals.

The Widow Burrower twitched.

Still alive.

Kaiden took a breath.

Everything in him screamed: Run.

But he remembered.

The drills. The pain. The effort.

The weight that never seemed to matter.

He clenched his fists.

[ Kaiden ]

"No..."

"Not this time."

"If all that pain was worthless..."

"Then this would be too!"

He stood.

Faced the spider.

Didn't try to analyze it.

He moved.

Every motion wasn't graceful, but it was focused. Controlled. Efficient.

He wasn't faster than the spider.

He was resolute.

It pounced.

Kaiden slid beneath its lunge, rolled, and brought his blade in an upward arc.

One leg — gone. Just like that. His dagger was surprisingly sharper than it ever was.

The spider screeched, flailing.

Another lunge — he ducked, countered, struck again.

Green ichor sprayed across his tunic.

It snapped at him. Venom mist hissed past his face.

[ Kaiden ]

"You'll have to do better than that..."

"Itsy bitsy."

He parried the fangs with the edge of his dagger — sidestepped another strike.

One mistake — just one — and it would tear his throat out.

A leg clipped his ribs.

Kaiden hit the ground hard.

Rolled.

Came up bloody.

"That will surely leave a mark..."

He was bleeding, shaking, barely seven...

But standing.

The spider bore down on him.

Kaiden met it halfway.

He leapt — blade-first into its shadow.

Dove beneath the fangs. Rolled under its bulk.

Drove the dagger into the thorax seam.

The spider shrieked.

Twitched.

Still not dead.

It reared back.

Kaiden didn't wait.

No pause.

No hesitation.

He surged upward — dagger plunged deep into the soft slit beneath its mandibles.

The creature convulsed.

Collapsed.

Dead.

Kaiden dropped to his knees beside it.

His sweat and blood mixed with the pulsing ichor.

Then — a shimmer.

[ HEART ]

[ Spider's Ichor (Condensed) ]

Durability: 20/20

Market Value: 5 silver

Grade:  Uncommon

[ Passive ] +1 Agility

Kaiden blinked.

Rubbed his eyes.

And blinked again.

[ Kaiden ]

"Plus..."

"One..."

"Point."

His hand trembled as he tapped his Ki Card to see his HEART status.

[ HEART STATUS – UPDATE ]

Name: Kaiden Stagin

Health: 7/50

Energy: 12/50

Attributes: [ STR: 1.0519 | AGI: 2.0904 | INT: 1.0778 ]

Trait: Void of Aena (Sealed Functions: 85%)

Subsystem: Voidspace

Skill: Identify

[ Kaiden ]

"It really is..."

"Plus one Agility."

"Finally..."

"It means something."

Nik coughed weakly behind him, chuckling.

[ Niklaus ]

"You always had it in you..."

"Just needed the right reason."

Kaiden smiled, tears threatening to break loose.

He wasn't just chasing stats.

He was building them.

The right way.

From that day forward, he would never look at effort the same. Because now he knew that there was a point to it all.

And it only took one to prove it.

Nik spent the next three days recovering under Kaiden's care. Kaiden crushed relic herbs, crafted poultices, cleaned the wound hourly. Cycled through every curative they had until one finally worked.

[ Niklaus ]

"Not bad… for a field medic."

"Might want to work on your bedside manner, though."

[ Kaiden ]

"Right after you work on not getting poisoned."

"...Or jumped by a spider."

Nik laughed.

The forest echoed with their voices again.

But something deeper had shifted.

That night, Kaiden sat alone.

The Spider's Ichor glowed faintly in his palm.

His first real stat gain.

A whole number. Solid. Tangible.

He opened his Ki Card, curious what the system had to say.

[ Passive Web: Flickering Response ]

Note: Emotional resonance detected in recent artifact sync. Possible evolution route established.

Kaiden stared at the message.

[ Kaiden ]

"So..."

"I guess it's not just effort."

"It's intent."

The forest rustled softly.

A windless stir.

Far away — unseen by either of them — a warped zone pulsed. Rhythmic. Like a heartbeat. It echoed through the air, an otherworldly thrum vibrating at the edge of awareness.

Voidspace was listening.

Its presence — silent but vast — dwelt in the cracks between reality.

It remembered.

The whispers. The pain. The fight.

The stories untold.

And one boy, who had finally made it matter.

He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the ichor still pulsing in his palm — and for the first time, the void inside him didn't feel empty at all.

One point was all it took to prove the rest were never wasted.