COZMART: Corner Shop of Visiting Gods

50 MINUTES AGO. ABYSSAL LEGION ENCAMPMENT.

The sun over the Southeastern Ridge was a wounded coin—cracked, bleeding rust across Demon Prince Cang's command ring. Wind carried the metallic tang of qi-saturated dust; every breath tasted like a forge.

Team 001 descended the iron stairs into the yard proper. Below, the "engine yard" lay down-slope: concentric terraces cut into the canyon wall, each tier bisected by copper gutters that pulsed with harvested blood.

Mortals—hundreds—were strapped into bronze harnesses. With every heartbeat, their life seeped outward, racing along runes toward obsidian cores. Where the ley-energy met those cores, it darkened, rot-red, before venting skyward in oily spirals.

Eathan's stomach lurched. "They're using the mortals to sculpt the island's qi—rewriting it for demons."

High above, a sand-glass sigil bloomed—molten crimson grains tumbling in mid-air.

[59:59] hissed to life.

Willow rolled her shoulders, cleaver resting against her back. "Priority—free the captives."

Finn's cursed eye flashed, reflecting the countdown. He swallowed hard but managed a nod. He stalked forward, boots splashing through diluted blood as he examined the engines.

"Engine logic's simple—blood primer, amplification mesh, siphon meridian, refine attribute." He knelt by a core, fingers tracing glyphs. "Snap one link and it re-routes. Efficient. Nasty."

"Lovely," Willow muttered. She raised her cleaver and hacked through a stone stanchion. The block detonated—then liquefied back into a glossy seal with a hiss.

High above, Cang leaned on a railing, six gauze-wings folded like an amused moth. "Engines bind to the island's heart," he called lazily. "Break one and you quicken its bleed. Touching, your effort."

Ignoring the demon prince's taunts from above, Finn focused an incision talisman on a glyph cluster; gold filaments lanced out, trying to corrupt the circuit. The array spat the intrusion back. A recoil rune slapped him across the forehead, leaving a smoking welt and one fewer eyebrow.

"Ow." He stepped back, wincing. "Okay, arrays bite."

Chewie shifted to pure violence—drop-kicking a conduit node. The platform cracked—and demon sentries vaulted in, glaives singing as they landed in a semicircle.

"Go," Willow grunted, stepping in front. Chewie flowed to her side, one small palm carving a red crescent through the air. Finn stood between them and the rig, talismans fanned like a deck.

The first demon lunged. Willow met him edge-on, cleaver catching the shaft and twisting, yanking him past as Chewie's glaive buried in his throat. Another demon feinted left—Finn pivoted, swept a foot and slapped a binding tag on his chest; the tag sizzled, then snapped, freezing him for a heartbeat. Willow took that heartbeat and ended his part in the conversation.

Three more pressed in. Chewie's crimson qi burst wide, a shockwave that staggered the line. Willow barreled through the gap, cleaver punching a path while Finn laid suppressive glyphs under their feet—slippery ink that sent clawed boots skidding. The rhythm emerged: Willow broke line, Chewie punished overextension, Finn clogged lanes—an ugly, effective trench ballet.

Eathan didn't join. He ran.

He skidded to the nearest rig. A little girl convulsed in the copper frame as the harness yanked a thread straight from her sternum. Eathan braced her shoulders and forced [Minor Reconstruction] into her—gold light knitting vessels faster than they tore—

—but the rig drank faster. The line ripped free again, silk through a needle.

Her lips moved soundlessly. Only he heard it—the plea that didn't make sound, only weight.

He staggered back, bile at the back of his throat, heart trying to claw out of his ribs. Another man nearby sagged visibly—skin slackening, cheeks collapsing, eyes sinking as muscle melted into shadow. The copper mesh thrummed, the gutter flashed, the core drank.

On the terrace above, Willow took a blade across her shoulder, spun, and returned the debt with interest. Chewie slid under a glaive, heel smashing a kneecap; her second palm caved a breastplate. Finn flicked a ward—and cursed as his right eye stuttered uselessly.

"Shield—come on," he hissed, slapping his cheek. Nothing. He backpedaled from a spear thrust, cheeks blazing. "It only boots when I'm about to die—apparently that's the fine print!"

"Consider dying closer to them," Willow barked, swatting another demon into a conduit.

"Pass!"

Eathan sprinted terrace to terrace, ripping at buckles, burning Qi Tokens into cracked ribs, sealing ruptured vessels one at a time.

Mortal Shock Detected!

[Humanity] has decreased by 1%! (67% → 66%)

It wasn't enough. For each he released, two more slumped. He watched faces cave, watched hands curl into claws that no longer held weight.

The yard sounded wrong now—too many throats, too many machines. Eathan tore his eyes away, rotating through his options with a frantic mind.

[Receipt Printer] was useless without barcodes; [Minor Reconstitution] only dealt with single targets; [Node Imprint] had no anchors to activate, and [Ledger Tap] was about as useful as a coupon book in this situation.

On the rail above, Cang tilted his head. "Strong hearts burn bright. You can always tell which ones scream prettiest."

Eathan's breath hitched. Something inside him snapped into a hard, bright line.

Slowly, he steered his gaze to the icon throbbing in the corner of his HUD, waiting.

[AUSPICE IGNITION (Lv. 1)]

▸ EFFECTS: All base stats x5; 50% damage taken is redirected as negative karma debt to the attacker; 'Cleansing Pulse" every 20s: purges demon arrays, snaps bindings, nullifies low-grade curses.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

▸ COST: 700 Karma, 70 Qi Tokens, 7% Humanity

▸ DURATION: 360 seconds.

▸ COOLDOWN: 72 hours.

▸ SIDE-FX: After-burn — [Calamity Radar] offline and critical-fail luck for 24 hours.

Proceed with [SKILL] activation?

Eathan's pulse drummed behind his ears. This skill was the one thing he had sworn—while sipping perfectly harmless breakfast smoothie back in the team lounge—to reserve for absolute catastrophe.

"Mister White is going to kill me for burning soul," he muttered.

Taeril's warnings flicked across his memory—then the little girl's blind eyes shoved it aside.

"...But if I don't, they'll be the ones to die."

Eathan quickly checked the rest of his [PROFILE]: Karma read 5960, Qi Tokens at 257, and [Humanity] was at 66%. Plenty of fuel—if he could stomach the price.

Finn, hair still smoldering, saw the panic on Eathan's face. "What are you—?"

"Something stupid." Eathan's thumb hovered, pulse hammering.

Proceed with [SKILL] activation?

The sand-glass overhead ticked past the ten-minute mark.

Eathan took a deep breath.

"Yes."

[Auspice Ignition (Lv. 1)] has been activated!

A bell as deep as tectonic plates tolled inside Eathan's skull the instant he confirmed the question. The world answered in layers:

First layer—numbers.

700 Karma has been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (5960 → 5260)

70 Qi Tokens has been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (257 → 187)

[Humanity] has decreased by 7%! (66% → 59%)

60% Threshold Breach: Physical Resonance Triggered!

Each value dropped like an elevator past its stop. He watched the digits settle as though they belonged to someone else.

Second layer—body.

His HUD flared sun-white; a second later, his boots left the ground, shadow peeling upward and coalescing into prism-like antlers that arced a whole arm's span over his head.

A lattice of golden glyphs chased his veins, racing from collar to fingertips like flaming circuitry. When it hit his heart, a pillar of white-gold lotus erupted dead center, punching through the engine canopy and straight into the dusk.

He inhaled sharply, as if struck by pain. Frosted breath coiled out, blooming into little auspicious nimbus-puffs that drifted off his lips. Stats multiplied by five scrolled across his vision:

[PRIMARY STATS]:

[Strength]: Lv. 38 → Lv. 190

[Agility]: Lv. 70 → Lv. 350

[Intelligence]: Lv. 50 → Lv. 250

The micro-display also displayed his vitals [HP] at 100% and then promptly short-circuited, too overloaded to re-render.

Externally, a bell-tone boomed—deep as monastery bronze. It was the skill's subset effect: Cleansing Field.

The first shock-ring expanded in a perfect circle, purging things deemed as "inauspicious"—demon glyphs, hex‐ink, even the copper stink hanging in the air within twenty meters. Stone engines cracked like brittle glass; harness locks sprang free, and a hundred mortals collapsed into the ground, wheezing but alive.

Fifty percent of the backlash didn't vanish; it rebounded as an invisible karmic debt. The nearest demon guards staggered, howling as the weight of stolen life force slammed back into their souls. Ranks buckled.

High on the balcony, Cang lost perch; crimson wings snapped open far too late, and he tumbled through drifting debris, cloak in tatters. He stared wide-eyed at the shining mortal, levitating above them all, who'd just rewritten the food chain.

The final layer—mind.

Floating above the battlefield, Eathan felt distance, as if it were something tangible. It was as if someone had slipped cold glass between him and the scene, sharpening colours, muting meaning. For example, he knew Finn was whooping somewhere to the left, that Willow's blade flashed orchid-violet as she guarded unconscious captives, that Chewie was barking orders in a dialect demons still feared—but the knowledge floated, untethered to feeling.

The world was sharp, oversaturated, yet every sensation came in a delay.

"I'm sorry."

A voice brushed his thoughts, feather-soft, every syllable soaked in centuries of guilt. The same hush, the same sense of sorrow he'd heard inside the Taowu rift.

Sorry for what? He tried to ask, but the words never left his lips. They drifted away, unimportant.

Another gong rolled out. Negative karma recoiled along invisible threads; demon spearmen dropped to their knees, coughing black sand. Up on the balcony, Demon Prince Cang flailed, red wings shredded by backlash. Eathan saw it, logged it, filed it beside the colour of the sunset—data, not emotion.

He should have felt triumph. Instead, a mild curiosity fluttered in the hollow where panic used to live.

***

The aurora-breach punched through nightmare ceilings all over the Realm-Barrier Games arena, piercing through the different scenarios that had stretched throughout the passage of time.

In a palace made of breaking jade, Erlang Shen paused mid-rebellion, spear tip dipping to the floor. Flames paused, and banners sagged as if the universe forgot to breathe. Team 002 stared in horror as their commander lifted his gaze, peering towards the gold seam splitting the bloodied sky.

In Team 008's nightmare, Lady Foxfire sat in an eternal tea garden, each blossom supposedly holding another lifetime of the same doomed lover. She rose from the garden pavilion. Petals all around her transformed into mirrors, collectively reflecting the distant lotus pillar. For one weightless second, grief was replaced by wonder.

Then, there was Team 006. In their scenario, their commander had abruptly frozen in place. Ao Bing knelt chest-deep in the black water of his flooded sea-court. His entire face was streaked in blood while the spectre of his father whipped him again and again. The ripple reached even there; the sea dragon prince blinked, accusation briefly forgotten.

The same thing happened to every commander from Areas 002 to 009. None understood why they had paused as they did, but instinct—older than their nightmares—made them turn their gaze upwards, beyond the fictitious sky.

On the outside, the RealmNet broadcast stuttered—three seconds of full static, then a complete server crash. Every single livestream collapsed simultaneously, which led the remaining chats to scrawl at lightning speed:

[@PingMePlease]: WHO GLITCHED THE STREAM?

[@ImmortalITGuy]: That wasn't us—ledger just spiked to Ω!

[@Mod-42]: Sit tight—we're verifying.

Far above mortal bandwidth, the jade servers flickered like an error code and thrummed awake at once. One line lit scarlet:

QILIN SIGNATURE DETECTED — PRIORITY Ω

A tall shadow leaned toward the console—features lost in back-light—and read the alert twice.

***

Back in the canyon, the lotus plume thinned to a torch. Eathan drifted down, toes brushing dust that still glimmered with purged sigils. Mortals wept around his ankles; their gratitude registered as pleasant background static.

Why am I doing this?

The thought glided in without warning, a genuine question, though somewhat out of place. He examined it the way someone might twirl a strange coin—interesting, but detached from need. Saving them had seemed vital moments ago; now it was merely the next item on a checklist he barely remembered writing.

His gaze drifted to the interface that hung at the edge of his peripheral vision.

[Humanity] at 59 %—just a number, yet the missing forty-one felt like frost creeping across glass. Somewhere deep within, he felt a ripple of delayed anxiety, yet he could no longer pin the reason for it. No wonder Mister White had warned him against overusing his [Humanity].

The whisper came again, closer, mournful.

"I'm sorry."

Sorry for what?

For taking pieces of me or for letting me feel nothing?

The question lingered, unanswered. Eathan blinked, suddenly confused. Had he been the one to ask the question? Or was he the one who actually muttered the apologies?

"I'm sorry."

Another gong spread outward, slower now, as his rising fatigue dulled the flame.

Willow's shout echoed from somewhere outside the glass. Finn's laughter cracked with worried relief. Chewie continued to bark orders, her voice a metronome.

Eathan watched them as if through aquarium glass, a faint smile touching his lips. He noted the countdown inside his HUD—167 seconds of ignition remaining—and wondered, with the same mildness, how much would be left of him when the clock hit zero.