Free Web NovelChapter 1: Lifespan Extraction System!
The sun over the Azure Lotus Sect didn’t care about Rhys’s broken dreams. It simply beat down on his neck, baking the scent of manure and rotting vegetation into his coarse linen uniform.
Rhys wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of a grime-coated hand. In his right hand, he held a pair of long, rusted iron tongs.
In his left, he held a heavy wooden bucket that smelled faintly of vinegar.
"Step one," Rhys muttered, leaning over a massive, decaying log in the outer courtyard’s greenhouse. "Locate the target."
A fleshy, purple centipede the size of his forearm wiggled out from under the bark. It had three rows of eyes and hissed with a sound like bubbling acid.
It was an Acid-Spitting Centipede, which was technically a low-grade magical insect, but realistically, it was just a giant pest.
Snap.
Rhys clamped the tongs right behind its bulbous head. The insect thrashed, spraying a drop of sizzling green fluid onto the dirt, before Rhys tossed it casually into his bucket.
"And that makes forty-two," Rhys sighed, stretching his aching lower back.
It had been three years since he died in a boring traffic accident on Earth and woke up in this body.
When he first realized he was in an alternate world filled with flying swords, mountain-leveling mages, and mystical beasts, he had been ecstatic. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
He spent his first week waiting for the inevitable. He waited for a ding in his head. He waited for an old grandpa in a ring. He waited for a hidden bloodline to burst from his veins.
Nothing happened.
Instead, he got a reality check. At his sixteenth birthday aptitude test, the sect elder had pressed a cold crystal ball against Rhys’s chest.
The ball didn’t glow gold. It didn’t shatter from overwhelming power. It turned a dull, muddy brown.
"Defective mana circuits," the elder had barked, barely looking up from his ledger. "The boy’s constitution is like a sieve. You pump mana into him, and it leaks right out. He can’t store it, can’t circuit it, and can’t use it. Next!"
Because his distant relatives in the outer sect didn’t want to waste food on a useless mouth, Rhys was promptly booted out of the living quarters and assigned to the backyards as an insect cleaner.
’Where is my golden finger?’ Rhys thought bitterly, poking his tongs into a cluster of mushrooms to look for more bugs. ’Every transmigration story promised a cheat. Am I a joke to the universe? I didn’t ask to be reborn just to become an exterminator.’
Yet, despite the absolute humiliation of his daily life, Rhys hadn’t completely abandoned hope. This world was too wondrous to ignore.
He had seen Grand Master Mages of the sect soar through the clouds on streams of azure lightning. He had seen the sky turn red from a single spell.
He wanted that. He wanted it so badly that it kept him awake at night, staring at the wooden ceiling of his room.
"Hey! Kid! Stop daydreaming before a beetle eats your face!"
Rhys blinked and turned around. Walking down the stone path was Old Chen, a veteran gardener with skin like wrinkled leather and a permanent limp.
"Old Chen," Rhys said, letting out a breath. "Finished with the northern greenhouse?"
"Aye. And you should hurry up, too," Old Chen said, pointing a gnarled finger toward the main gate of the outer courtyard.
"Today is the final day of the month. The logistics steward is handing out the monthly allowances. If you’re late, you’ll have to wait another thirty days to get paid."
Rhys’s heart gave a sudden, violent thump. The bitterness in his chest vanished, replaced by a surge of desperate excitement. "Right. Thanks, Old Chen!"
He sprinted toward the main gate, leaving his bucket of twitching insects by the tool shed.
The outer courtyard’s distribution plaza was packed with servants, cleaners, and low-level manual laborers. They were all queuing up in front of a long wooden desk where a fat steward in a silk robe was checking off names.
"Next! Wang Wei. Ten silver coins or one low-level mana stone?" the steward droned.
"Silver, sir! Definitely silver," a burly man ahead of Rhys said, eagerly grabbing the pouch of coins.
For ordinary people who couldn’t cultivate magic, silver was life. Ten silver coins could buy a month’s worth of good food, clean clothes, and decent wine. It was enough to live comfortably in the mortal town just outside the sect walls.
Soon, it was Rhys’s turn.
The fat steward looked up, his eyes drifting over Rhys’s stained uniform. "Ah, the insect cleaner. Rhys, right? Ten silver or a low-level mana stone?"
"A mana stone, please," Rhys said without hesitation.
The crowd around the desk went quiet. A few nearby servants shook their heads, whispering among themselves.
Old Chen, who had just caught up to line up for his own pay, stepped forward and grabbed Rhys’s shoulder.
"Rhys, my boy, don’t be stubborn again. Take the silver. You’ve been doing this for a year now. Ten silver could get you out of that miserable horse stall you’re sleeping in.
You could rent a real room, buy a proper mattress, and maybe even find a nice local girl from the village to settle down with. Why throw it away?"
The steward sighed, holding up a small, glowing blue crystal between his fingers. The crystal was translucent, humming with a faint, hypnotic energy.
"The old man is right, kid," the steward said, his tone more pitying than malicious. "I’ve seen your medical record. Your body cannot circuit mana. Even if you hold this stone until it turns to dust, the energy will just bypass your body.
You cannot draw a spell. It is mathematically impossible for you to become an Initiate Mage. Why waste your life on a fantasy?"
Rhys looked at the silver coins on the table, then looked at the glowing blue stone. The silver offered a comfortable, boring life as a servant. The stone offered a microscopic, near-impossible chance at magic.
"I’ll take the stone," Rhys said, his voice firm despite the tightness in his throat.
The steward groaned, tossing the blue crystal onto the desk. "Suit yourself. Don’t come crying to the management when you’re starving next week."
Rhys grabbed the mana stone. It felt warm against his palm, vibrating with an energy he couldn’t personally access. He ignored the pitying stares and the soft scoffs of the crowd as he turned and walked straight back to his quarters.
Calling it quarters was generous. It was a literal horse stall at the edge of the sect stables, converted into a bedroom by shoving a wooden cot into the corner. The air smelled of hay and manure, but it was private.
Rhys sat cross-legged on his thin blanket. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gray stone, which was a low-grade Space Stone and the only valuable thing his parents had left him before they passed away.
With a mental nudge, Rhys drew an item out of the space stone. It was a thick, leather-bound book.
In this world, every single person received a Spell Book upon reaching adulthood. It was a magical artifact linked to a person’s soul.
When a mage learned a spell structure, they could manifest the spell into this page, and then the system would update their ranks.
Right now, Rhys’s book was completely blank. He wasn’t even an Initiate Mage who could cast F-rank spells.
Beside the book, Rhys placed a crumpled, yellowish piece of parchment. Written on it was a complex geometric diagram made of intersecting red lines, which was the elemental structure for the F-rank spell, Fire Spark.
It was the absolute lowest tier of magic, a spell that standard initiates could cast with a flick of their fingers to light a candle.
Rhys closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing thoughts. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
"Alright. Attempt number twelve," he whispered to himself. "Let’s do this."
He placed the blue mana stone between his palms and squeezed. He didn’t have mana circuits to draw the energy out smoothly, so he had to do it the brutal way. He crushed the stone.
The crystal cracked under his grip, and a sudden, volatile wave of raw, unrefined mana burst outward.
Rhys desperately tried to catch the escaping energy, forcing it into his hands and attempting to guide it along the lines of the Fire Spark diagram in his mind.
Instantly, a sensation like boiling oil surged into his arms.
The mana entered his body, but without proper circuits to guide it, the energy became a wild, raging animal. It tore through his flesh, completely ignoring his commands, and leaked out of his pores like steam.
"Argh!"
Rhys gasped, his eyes flying open as a sharp, stabbing pain bloomed in his chest. The backlash was immediate.
The unguided mana slammed into his internal organs. He leaned forward and violently spat a mouthful of dark red blood onto the dirt floor of his stall.
The remnants of the mana stone faded into dull, useless gray powder, slipping through his trembling fingers.
Rhys slumped against the wooden wall of the stall, wiping the blood from his lips with his sleeve. His chest heaved, and his entire body ached.
"Failed again," he thought, staring blankly at the blood on the floor. A wave of profound exhaustion washed over him.
"The steward was right. It’s impossible. My body is just a broken bucket. No matter how much water I pour in, it all leaks out."
For a single, terrifying second, Rhys wanted to give up. He wanted to burn the parchment, sell his space stone, and just accept his fate as an insect cleaner.
"No," Rhys growled, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists. "Fuck that. I didn’t get reincarnated into a magical world just to sweep up giant centipedes for the rest of my life. If my circuits are broken, I’ll find a way to fix them. If one mana stone isn’t enough, I’ll buy two next time. I’ll try again next month."
He forced his aching body to stand up. He needed to wash his face and clear the blood before the stable boys noticed.
As he took a heavy step forward, his worn leather boot landed on something small and crunchy near the entrance of the stall.
Crunch.
Rhys looked down. He had accidentally stepped on a common red Fire Ant that had crawled in from the courtyard.
Suddenly, a strange, metallic noise echoed directly inside his brain. It was a sound he had waited three long years to hear.
[You have killed a FireAnt. Extracting Lifespan. Lifespan extracted: 31days.]
Rhys froze, his foot still planted on the crushed insect. His eyes widened into dinner plates, and the breath caught in his throat.
"Wait," Rhys whispered, his voice trembling so hard he could barely form the words. "What?"
Another sharp, cheerful chime rang through his skull, completely shattering the silence of the horse stall.
[Ding! Ahem. Forgot to introduce myself, host.]
[I am the Lifespan Extraction System. Extract the lifespans of everything and use them to cast any spells!]
