Emotion Hunter: System Awakening.

[Riven's POV]

Dawn crept through the twisted windows of their shelter like a reluctant visitor, casting organic shadows across walls that had spent the night reshaping themselves.

Riven woke to the sound of Elena's steady breathing.... no longer the ragged gasps of fever, but the deep rhythm of genuine rest.

Relief flooded through him as he checked her temperature with the back of his hand. Cool skin, normal color returning to her cheeks.

The medical kit seem to had done its work.

------

**[System Interface: Morning Status Update]**

**[Host Condition: Stable]**

**[Environmental Warning: Dimensional instability increasing]**

------

The numbers confirmed what his eyes were telling him.

The walls around them pulsed with veiny textures that hadn't been there last night, and the ceiling had developed a ribcage-like structure that expanded and contracted rhythmically.

"Elena," he whispered, shaking her shoulder gently.

She came awake instantly, alert for any danger in sight.

Her brown eyes swept the transformed room, and she grimaced.

"How long until this place phases out completely?" Riven asked.

Elena studied the organic patterns creeping across the surfaces. "Maybe two hours. Three if we're lucky. The Veil damage is accelerating."

She struggled to sit up, and Riven helped her. The weakness was still there, but the delirium of fever had passed.

"We need to move," she continued, voice hoarse but determined. "And we need supplies."

------

**[Current Survival Points: 260]**

**[System Shop is Available]**

**[Priority Recommendations:]**

**[- Water Purification System: 45 SP]**

**[- Emergency Food Rations (3 days): 35 SP]**

**[- Basic Tool Kit: 25 SP]**

**[- Survival Compass: 20 SP]**

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"Where do you think we can find the settlements?" Riven asked while navigating the shop interface.

Elena pulled herself to the window, studying the landscape beyond. "Northeast through what used to be the industrial district I guess... I heard there is one over there... . But we'll hit the Bone Gardens first."

"Bone Gardens?"

"There's an area where a massive Veil rupture crystallized about three hundred people." Elena's matter-of-fact tone couldn't quite hide the revulsion. "The dimensional energy preserved their remains in crystal formations. Creates a maze that's hard to navigate, but it's the most direct route to our location."

Riven purchased the water purification system, rations, and tool kit, leaving them with 155 points. Not much, but enough for emergencies.

The items materialized in thin air....

"There's something else about the Bone Gardens," Elena continued as they gathered their meager possessions. "The crystallized remains still hold sentiments... . If your emotion looting is as sensitive as I think it is..."

"It could overload me," Riven finished. "Like what happened during the memory extraction."

"Potentially. But if you can learn to filter the input, to not absorb everything..." Elena met his eyes. "It could make you stronger. More selective about what emotions you loot."

They made their way carefully down the building's increasingly unstable stairwell.

Each floor was more distorted than the last, until they emerged into a lobby that looked like the inside of some vast organism.

Outside, the Scar Zone stretched before them in all its hostile glory.

The morning light revealed the true scope of the dimensional damage.

Buildings twisted into impossible spirals, streets that curved up walls like they were defying gravity, and patches of ground that rippled like water despite being solid concrete.

"Stay close," Elena said as they began walking. "And don't trust your eyes completely. Some of the visual distortions are just hallucinations, but others are real spatial warping."

They picked their way through the ruined streets, Elena's knowledge of safe paths proving invaluable.... Which seems feels suspicious in a way

She guided them around areas where reality was too unstable to traverse, pointing out landmarks that helped maintain their bearings in a landscape that seemed to shift when they weren't looking directly at it.

An hour into their journey, they reached the edge of the Bone Gardens.

Riven had expected something like a cemetery, but the reality was far more disturbing.

Crystal formations jutted from the ground like trees, each one containing the perfectly preserved remains of humans caught in the Veil rupture.

Men, women, children..... all frozen in their final moments, their faces locked in expressions of terror or pain.

The crystals hummed with residual dimensional energy, creating an almost musical tone that seemed to resonate in his bones.

------

**[Warning: High concentration emotional residue detected]**

**[Recommendation: Limit exposure time]**

**[Alternative route calculation... No viable alternatives found]**

------

"I can feel them," Riven whispered, his emotion looting system responding to the preserved trauma.

Waves of fear and desperation washed over him, threatening to drag him into the final moments of three hundred strangers.

Elena grabbed his arm. "Focus on my voice. Don't let the echoes pull you in. They're not real emotions anymore.... just imprints."

But the distinction was academic when terror was flooding his system anyway.

His vision blurred as the emotion looting activated involuntarily, trying to process trauma from dozens of sources simultaneously.

------

**[System Overload Warning]**

**[Emotional input exceeding safe parameters]**

**[Initiating emergency dampening protocols]**

------

"Breathe," Elena commanded, her voice cutting through the psychic noise. "You control what you absorb. The system responds to your will, not the other way around."

Riven forced himself to focus on her words, using them as an anchor against the tide of preserved emotion.

Gradually, he managed to impose some selectivity on his abilities, filtering out the overwhelming background trauma.

It was exhausting, like trying to drink from a fire hose while controlling the pressure, but it worked. His vision cleared, and the crushing weight of ancient fear lifted.

"Better?" Elena asked.

"Yeah. But this place is a nightmare."

They navigated the crystal maze carefully, Elena leading them along paths between the larger formations.

Some crystals contained single victims, while others held entire family groups... frozen tableaus of people trying to protect each other in their final moments.

Halfway through the Gardens, they encountered their first threat.

The Scavenger Pack emerged from behind a cluster of crystals like wolves materializing from shadows.

There were five of them.... humans who had survived in the Scar Zone long enough to be changed by it.

They retained human shapes, but their movements were wrong.

Too coordinated, like a hive mind wearing individual bodies.

Their eyes held intelligence, but it was cold and predatory.

The leader..... a woman who might have been attractive once.... studied them with the calculating gaze of a hunter evaluating prey.

"Fresh meat," she said, her voice carrying an odd harmonic quality. "Haven't seen your kind in the Gardens before."

Elena stepped slightly behind Riven, not from fear but to give him room to fight. Her fire system was still non-functional, making her a liability in direct combat.

"We're just passing through," Riven said, trying to project confidence he didn't feel.

The Scavenger leader smiled, revealing teeth that had been sharpened like that of a shark "Everyone passes through eventually. Question is whether you do it walking or digesting."

The pack spread out with practiced efficiency, cutting off potential escape routes.

These weren't mindless predators.... they were thinking..... Like hunters who had developed tactics over time.

Riven reached for his emotion looting, but the residual trauma from the Bone Gardens made it difficult to focus.

Too much background noise from the crystallized remains.

The first Scavenger attacked without warning, moving with inhuman speed.

Riven barely got his arm up in time to block its claws, the impact sending shockwaves up to his shoulder.

Without his usual emotional enhancement, he was fighting at baseline human capability against opponents who had been modified by dimensional exposure.

The second Scavenger flanked him while he was occupied with the first.

Elena's warning gave him just enough time to duck under its swipe, but the third was already moving to capitalize on his defensive position.

This isn't working, he realized. I'm fighting their kind of fight instead of mine.

Instead of trying to overpower them directly, Riven focused on the Bone Gardens' emotional residue.

Rather than fighting it, he used it.... channeling the preserved fear and desperation into his emotion looting system.

------

**[Emotional residue successfully integrated]**

**[Enhancement: Survival instinct amplification]**

**[Warning: Temporary effect - maximum duration 3 minutes]**

------

The change was immediate.

His reflexes sharpened, his awareness expanded, and his movements became fluid with desperate efficiency.

Not the overwhelming power of rage or the precision of determination, but the cunning resourcefulness of someone fighting for their life.

The Scavengers noticed the change immediately.

Their coordinated attack pattern faltered as Riven began moving unpredictably, using the crystal formations as obstacles and weapons.

He grabbed a shard of broken crystal and drove it into the nearest Scavenger's shoulder, then rolled away as the others converged on his position.

The leader hissed with frustration. "Interesting. You learn quickly."

But the pack was adapting too, adjusting their tactics to account for his enhanced reflexes.

The fight stretched on, a deadly dance between predators who understood each other's capabilities.

Elena called out warnings and tactical observations, her voice helping him track threats from his blind spots.

Not the enhancement connection he'd shared with Marcus, but effective battlefield communication nonetheless.

The fight ended when Riven managed to isolate one Scavenger from the pack, using the crystal maze to force a one-on-one confrontation.

Without their coordination advantage, the individual creature was no match for his system-enhanced reflexes.

The pack leader watched her subordinate fall, then looked at Riven with something approaching respect.

"You fight like prey that's learned to bite back," she said. "Interesting. We'll remember you."

The surviving Scavengers melted back into the crystal formations, leaving them alone among the preserved dead.

------

*

**[Experience gained: 25 points]**

**[Survival Points gained: 20]**

------

"You did good," Elena said as they resumed their journey through the Gardens. "Learning to use the environment instead of fighting against it."

"Felt like I was barely holding on."

"That's survival. Nobody feels confident when they're really fighting for their life."

They emerged from the Bone Gardens as the sun reached its zenith, the crystal formations giving way to more conventional ruins.

The weight felt in garden was lifted from Riven's shoulders, leaving him drained but oddly satisfied.

"How much farther?" he asked.

Elena pointed northeast, toward a cluster of smoke columns rising in the distance. "Those are cooking fires.... I hope, probably six or seven miles."

As they walked, Riven noticed other signs of human presence. Worn paths through the rubble, cleared areas around stable buildings, even some crude road markers carved into walls.

"Someone's been maintaining routes through here," he observed.

"The survivor communities work together more than you might expect," Elena replied. "Shared resources, coordinated patrols, early warning systems for major threats."

The sun was beginning its descent toward the horizon when Elena suddenly grabbed his arm.

"Stop," she whispered.

Riven froze, scanning their surroundings for threats. Nothing obvious, but his enhanced senses picked up movement in his peripheral vision.

"We're being watched," Elena continued quietly....

"Scouts maybe," Riven realized. "From the settlements."

A figure emerged from cover about fifty meters ahead.... a young man carrying what looked like a modified hunting rifle. He approached with careful confidence, weapon ready but not directly threatening.

"You two look lost," he called out.

Elena stepped forward slightly. "We're heading for the central settlements. Looking for sanctuary."

The scout studied them, taking in Elena's obvious exhaustion and the improvised nature of their equipment. His gaze lingered on Riven's Guild-issued medical supplies.

"Guild refugees?" he asked.

"Among other things," Elena replied carefully.

The scout made a decision. "You're in luck. My patrol's heading back anyway. But you'll need to be evaluated before you're allowed into the main settlement."

"Evaluated how?"

The scout's smile held no warmth. "By the people in charge. And trust me..... they don't take chances with strangers."

As additional scouts emerged from concealment, Riven felt the weight of new possibilities settling around them.

They'd survived the night, crossed the Bone Gardens, and found organized civilization. But somehow, he suspected their real challenges were just beginning.

The scout leader gestured for them to follow, and they began the final approach toward whatever waited in the central Scar Zone.