1 Prologue I

Kai absent-mindedly chewed on a chunk of meat. It was tough as nails, cooked but yet to be braised. His way of checking for seasoning. He gave himself a curt nod. Not too salty. Almost bland. Just the way she liked it.

Meanwhile, he cut up some scallions atop a wooden cutting board packed with indentations and cracks from years of use.

>>>System: Level 1

Biomass Consumed. Current stock: 100/100

Analyzing biomass…

…

…

No bloodlines available for assimilation.

>>>

Kai continued cutting the scallions into nice, even little circles, just the way his mother had taught him when she still had the energy to cook, and he put aside the pile of green rings to the side with a swipe of his kitchen knife. The smell of simmering, spiced soy sauce-based broth in a water-stained pot wafted through the tiny confines of his apartment.

It had been a few days now since this voice started talking in Kai's head. It was a nondescript, androgynous voice that kind of sounded like the stereotypical, mechanical droning that A.I.s in sci-fi flicks had.

Human and yet inhuman in its complete void of inflection and tone.

Kai had to admit that at first, he had been thoroughly freaked out, waking up with the voice droning in his head about his status and health and whatnot. But that did not last long. Something about that voice calmed him, made him feel as if nothing at all was wrong that a totally random voice was constantly droning on and on in the confines of his head.

Which was a good thing, because it let Kai assess what the voice said with a clear and calm attitude, though he doubted that he was ever the type to really panic that much about anything. One thing was obvious, though – this voice did not speak just nonsense. And as far as he could tell, he was not going insane.

Kai took a look at the kitchen knife in his hand. A cheap thing that he had grabbed in discount at the local store a few years ago.

But he routinely sharpened and took care of it, really squeezing out every inch of its life, and even now, its edge had enough life to it to easily slice through most cuts of meat. Even the thick, wiry cut of chuck that now sat braising in the broth-filled pot, loosing the savory umami smell of cooking meat through the air.

With the slightest second of hesitation, Kai nicked his finger with the tip of the blade. Almost immediately, a thin line of red welled up, but then just as quickly, the wound closed up. Only a few little drew drops of blood remained as proof the wound had ever existed to begin with.

>>>

Host restoration initiated. Biomass consumed.

Current stock: 99/100

>>>

Kai instinctively put a free hand to his head, blinking. There was not just a voice, either, there were words. A black screen at the periphery of his vision that spelled out what he heard, though there was a slight delay as the glowing green words morphed from incoherent scribbles into recognizable English.

For the past few days, Kai had experimented with what this voice told him, and from what he could tell, he could do a few things with it. First off, he seemed to be able to generate some kind of 'stock' that he could visually see as a bar of green at the bottom of his vision.

Using the stock, Kai could get his body to heal scars and even a bout of cold that hit him a week ago, strapping him down with a nasty sore throat. The stock bar would go down, but then after eating food, it would go back up. He noticed that meat of all kinds raised the bar much more than other types of food, but even then, it took a full meal for him to raise the bar even by a measly five points.

In other words, it was much harder for him to replenish the bar than it was for him to use it up to heal himself.

Another thing – as the days passed, Kai felt himself get stronger physically. He had always been a scrawny kid, more skin and bone than muscle and brawn.

All those years skipping meals and staying up through late nights to study and make something for himself did a number on him, but finally, it was like his body was getting the love it deserved.

Muscle started to pad his bones, filling him out to the point where he looked like he at least went to the gym regularly.

Kai shrugged as he took the pile of scallions, cupping them in a hand as he dropped them into the boiling beef stew. He was not going to afford a trip to the doctor to get his body checked up. He would have gone if he were on the literal verge of death, but nothing less than that.

Aside from these details, he had not been able to figure out much more about this voice, this thing that called itself a 'System'.

Trying to communicate it out loud or mentally yielded zero responses, and it seemed entirely automated to react only in response to certain stimuli like eating food or willing his wounds to heal.

It had mentions about 'bloodlines', but he had no idea what this meant, and it was nearly impossible to do any sort of research on it with how vague a term that was.

Not that he had not tried. He had spent probably a dozen hours by now trying to figure out what was going on by trawling through the web, looking for any similar cases to himself, what his voice meant by what it said, and so on and so forth, but no dice.

This was not to mention that whenever he seriously sat down to think about this thing, his mind just felt…calm. Almost tranquilized, in a way, as if the system were responding to his suspicions and actively easing his mind, making him less suspicious, more accepting.

In a way, Kai was thankful for that, because above all else, he had to take care of his mother.