Chapter 3: The First Exploit

The second time Cassian Vale died in Eidolon, it was because he tried to be clever.

The slime had left him in the mud with a throat full of burning fruit-rot and humiliation, and when the world peeled apart into white static and snapped him back beneath the crooked birch tree at the edge of the tutorial field, he had laughed so hard he nearly choked on his own respawn.

Not because it was funny.

Because the translucent blue prompt hovering in front of his eyes was the most beautiful broken thing he had ever seen.

RESPAWN COMPLETE.
Cause of Death: Corrosive Digestion — Lesser Green Slime

GLITCH SKILL TRIGGERED: STEAL RESPAWN
Stolen Asset Acquired:
Acid Spit I

Warning: Unauthorized Asset Detected.
Reporting deferred…
Reporting deferred…
Reporting deferred…

Cassian wiped slime residue off his chin with a trembling hand.

“Deferred,” he whispered. “Oh, I like that word.”

The tutorial meadow spread before him in all its artificial charm: rolling grass too green to be real, waist-high flowers that swayed without wind, a sky soaked in arterial red. The System had done its best to make the murder field look welcoming. It had scattered rabbits near the spawn line. It had painted butterflies over the reeds. It had placed glittering motes above the path to the first raid encounter like breadcrumbs for idiots.

In the distance, beyond a stand of silver-leafed trees, the other summoned players were shouting and laughing around the base of the tutorial hill. Steel flashed. Fire popped. Someone cheered as a wolf yelped and dissolved into polygonal ash.

They had levels. Classes. Weapons. Party invites. Probably little glowing tutorials whispering You are special into their ears.

Cassian had a shirt soaked in acid holes, bare hands, zero levels, and a stolen monster skill currently sitting in his status screen like a stolen credit card.

It was the most promising start he had ever had.

He opened his interface by thought. It stuttered into existence with a sound like glass scraping bone.

CASSIAN VALE
Level: 0
Class: CLASSLESS
Designation: WORTHLESS

HP: 10/10
MP: 0/0
STR: 1
DEX: 1
VIT: 1
INT: 2
WIL: 3
LCK: ERROR

Skills:
Steal Respawn [Glitched]
Acid Spit I [Monster Asset — Unauthorized]

“No mana cost,” he muttered, dragging his gaze over the skill line. “Because slimes don’t have mana. They’re just ambulatory stomach problems.”

He selected the skill.

Acid Spit I
Expel a weak corrosive globule. Deals minor acid damage over time. Effective against organic tissue, leather, and dignity.
Cooldown: 8 seconds.
Cost: None.

“Effective against dignity. Great. We have synergy.”

Cassian crouched in the grass, scanning the meadow.

He knew games. More specifically, he knew how games lied.

Every tutorial pretended to be a straight line, but straight lines were for people who accepted terms of service. The real game lived in corners. Behind collision seams. In enemy behavior trees. In the one edge case no designer thought anyone would be desperate enough to abuse for six consecutive hours while eating cold noodles over a keyboard.

He had once spent three months failing to break the world record for Kingdoms of Ash: Any% because he couldn’t nail a frame-perfect ledge clip through a cathedral wall. His viewers had called him washed. His rent had called him late. His delivery app had called him “inactive due to death,” though technically that part hadn’t been their fault.

But this?

This was a system. Systems had rules.

And if his only advantage was that dying printed rewards, then the obvious play was to die better.

The lesser green slime still jiggled near the muddy hollow where it had murdered him, burbling happily among the reeds. Cassian gave it a respectful nod.

“You were my first,” he said. “That means something. Not enough for me to avoid exploiting your entire species, but something.”

He did not go back to the slime.

Duplicate assets might be worthless. Or worse, the System might notice repeated theft from the same source. In roguelikes, scaling came from diversification. Resistances, mobility, detection, burst damage. He needed a kit. Something ugly. Something no sane player would ever farm because farming required letting baby monsters kill you on purpose.

His stomach tightened.

That sounded funny until memory arrived with teeth: acid flooding his mouth, his tongue dissolving, lungs convulsing around liquid fire. Eidolon did not soften pain for tutorial users. Death had not faded. It had stayed, detailed and intimate, like the System had recorded every nerve ending for quality assurance.

Cassian pressed his palms into his knees and breathed.

“It’s a speedrun,” he told himself. “Bad run. Reset. Go again.”

He moved low through the grass, keeping the hill to his right and the other players’ voices downwind. A few names bobbed over distant heads in clean white text: BRAYDEN, LYRA, MARCUS, SORIN. Their HP bars gleamed full. Their tutorial weapons caught the red light. Brayden, the broad-shouldered golden boy with the Hero class and the smile of a man born with premium currency, stood at the center of them, pointing toward the forest path like he had personally invented walking forward.

“Stay in formation!” Brayden called. “Boss arena’s after the next wave. Anyone below Level 2, hang back and tag for experience.”

Cassian ducked behind a mossy stone as two players jogged past.

“Did you see Worthless back there?” one said, snickering. A girl with a novice spear and fox-red braids.

Her friend barked a laugh. “Probably still arguing with his menu.”

“Do you think the System gives refunds?”

“For him? It should charge us extra.”

Cassian waited until their footsteps faded.

“Cool,” he whispered. “Emotionally healthy environment. Love that.”

He crawled into the reeds.

The first new target found him before he found it.

A thornhare burst from a patch of blue clover like a thrown knife. It looked almost cute for half a second: snow-white fur, long ears, glassy black eyes. Then its mouth opened sideways, revealing a rotating ring of needle teeth, and the horn on its forehead punched through Cassian’s left hand into the mud.

Pain flashed white-hot.

“Oh, come on—rabbits don’t get spears!”

The thornhare shrieked. Cassian reacted on instinct. Something sour gathered at the back of his throat, then surged upward. He spat.

A wobbling green glob of acid slapped across the thornhare’s face.

It sizzled.

The creature released his hand and thrashed backward, fur smoking, ears whipping. Its HP bar appeared above it.

Lesser Thornhare
Level 1
HP: 6/9

“Ha!” Cassian scrambled away, clutching his punctured hand. “Status effect, baby.”

The thornhare did not appreciate being introduced to baby’s first damage-over-time. It launched again, faster than his eyes could track. The horn caught him under the chin. There was a wet crack, a burst of copper taste, and the sky spun into red ribbons.

He tried to say something witty. Mostly he gargled.

The thornhare landed on his chest and went for the throat.

Death took longer than he wanted.

Respawn slammed him back under the birch tree. He hit the dirt on hands and knees, gasping, one hand flying to his throat though it was whole again.

RESPAWN COMPLETE.
Cause of Death: Piercing Trauma — Lesser Thornhare

STEAL RESPAWN TRIGGERED
Stolen Asset Acquired:
Burst Hop I

Warning: Unauthorized Asset Detected.
Asset conflict check… passed.
Reporting deferred…

Cassian coughed until his ribs stopped remembering being opened.

“Mobility,” he rasped. “Good rabbit. Horrible rabbit. Perfect rabbit.”

He selected the new skill.

Burst Hop I
Explosively contract lower-body muscles to leap a short distance in any direction.
Cooldown: 12 seconds.
Cost: Stamina.

There was no stamina stat on his screen, which felt like the System shrugging and saying find out.

Cassian stood, legs shaking, and tested the skill with a careful thought.

His calves seized like someone had replaced the muscles with coiled wire.

He launched six feet sideways and crashed face-first into a bush.

Leaves filled his mouth.

From the hill, someone shouted, “Did that shrub just attack itself?”

Cassian lay very still.

A moment later, laughter rolled across the meadow.

He spat out a twig. “Stealth. Need stealth.”

He spent the next hour turning the tutorial field into a butcher’s ledger of himself.

He died to a needlewasp near a hollow log, its stinger pumping venom beneath his eye while his fingers clawed uselessly at bark. He respawned with Venom Tolerance I, which did not make poison pleasant but did stop his vision from instantly turning into soup when another wasp tagged him during testing.

He died to a mudcrab that clamped onto his ankle and dragged him into a knee-deep pond with the grim patience of a debt collector. His lungs filled with black water. He respawned with Hold Breath I and a renewed hatred for seafood.

He died to a razorvine he had mistaken for scenery. The plant looped around his waist, tightened, and fed hair-thin roots into his skin while his HP dripped away one point at a time. He respawned with Pain Dulling I, which sounded comforting until he realized pain was also information, and losing the sharp edges made his body feel frighteningly distant.

He died to a glass-wing moth.

That one was embarrassing because he had laughed at it first.

The moth fluttered down from a sunlit branch, wings shimmering like transparent coins. Cassian, armed with acid spit, rabbit legs, partial venom tolerance, and the confidence of a man forgetting the universe hated him, said, “What are you going to do, sparkle at me?”

It sparkled at him.

Light fractured through its wings, stabbed into his pupils, and filled his skull with screaming white geometry. He stumbled blind through the grass until something else ate him. He never found out what.

Respawn gave him Flash Blink I, a reflexive eyelid snap that reduced sudden glare. Useful. Also insulting.

By then, Cassian had developed a system.

He marked safe routes by snapping flower stems and smearing mud on stones. He used the birch tree as origin point, mentally mapping monster territories in a grid. Slimes clustered in wet hollows. Thornhares nested in clover patches. Needlewasps patrolled hollow logs in triangular loops. Mudcrabs only attacked if both feet entered water, which meant one foot was safe and two feet was an invitation to aquatic mugging.

He farmed like a man possessed, but never in sight of the others.

Whenever players drifted near, Cassian dropped flat in grass or behind rocks, letting their bright armor and louder voices pass. He watched them grind with almost painful inefficiency: six people chasing one wounded hare, arguing over last hits, burning mana on overkill. Their levels ticked upward in neat golden flashes. Level 2. Level 3. Skills announced with celebratory chimes. They were climbing the ladder the System had given them.

Cassian was digging under the building.

Once, he crouched behind a fallen log while Lyra—the quiet girl with silver hair, a healer’s staff, and eyes that missed less than her silence suggested—paused nearby. Her nameplate hovered pale blue. Unlike the others, she didn’t laugh easily. She knelt beside a crushed patch of grass where Cassian had died to the razorvine and touched the soil.

“Someone was here,” she murmured.

A boy with a flaming sword glanced back. “Monster trail?”

Lyra frowned. “No. Blood.”

Cassian held his breath.

The boy shrugged. “Everything bleeds here.”

“Not like this.” She looked around slowly, and for one horrible second Cassian thought her gaze landed on his hiding place. “This is player blood.”

“Then somebody got careless.”

Lyra’s fingers lingered over the red-dark mud. “Maybe.”

Cassian did not move until they left.

After that, he got cleaner.

Not safer. Cleaner.

He lured monsters deeper into reeds before letting them kill him. He washed blood off stones with pond water. He made sure his respawn point wasn’t being watched before standing. He learned to bite down on screams because screams traveled farther than pride.

His interface became a junk drawer of stolen biology.

Skills:
Steal Respawn [Glitched]
Acid Spit I
Burst Hop I
Venom Tolerance I
Hold Breath I
Pain Dulling I
Flash Blink I
Grassblend I
Bone Flex I
Scent Mask I

Grassblend I came from a camouflaged lizard that tore out his throat while he was busy congratulating himself on spotting it. Bone Flex I came from a burrowing mole-rat that compressed its ribcage through tunnels and then compressed Cassian’s organs with its claws. Scent Mask I came from a skunk-imp.

He refused to think about the skunk-imp.

Some deaths were useful. Some were educational. Some were just the System proving it had a sense of humor and no moral oversight.

Between deaths, he tested combinations.

Acid Spit could soften thornhare horns if applied twice. Burst Hop could cancel a stumble if triggered at the right moment, though triggering it wrong made him cartwheel into trees. Grassblend worked best when still, lowering nearby monsters’ aggression range and turning his skin faintly green in a way that made him look seasick. Pain Dulling let him function through injuries that should have dropped him screaming, but if he overused it, he failed to notice bleeding until his HP bar flashed red.

He didn’t gain levels.

Not one.

Every monster killed by acid or accident dissolved into motes without granting him experience. The System was firm on that point. Level 0 remained Level 0. Classless remained Classless. Worthless remained printed beneath his name like a brand.

But when Cassian looked at the field now, it no longer felt like a death sentence.

It felt like a menu.

A horn sounded from the hill.

Deep. Metallic. Artificially dramatic.

The meadow shivered as a golden beam split the sky above the tutorial path.

TUTORIAL RAID EVENT INITIATED
Objective: Defeat the Gatewarden
Participants within raid boundary: 41/42
Recommended Level: 3
Rewards: Class Advancement Token, Safe Zone Access, Starter Currency

Unregistered Participant Detected…
Correction Attempt Failed.

Cassian’s skin prickled.

Forty-one out of forty-two.

He was the missing one. Or the System thought he was. Or it knew exactly where he was and hated admitting it.

On the hill, the players assembled at the mouth of a stone arch that had not existed an hour earlier. Its pillars were carved with smiling masks. Beyond it, fog churned with soft blue light. Brayden stood in front, sword resting on one shoulder, Hero aura gleaming like expensive shampoo.

“Listen up!” he called. “This is it. Tutorial boss. Tanks front, casters behind. Healers prioritize anyone with a mark over their head. If you’re scared, stay outside the boundary and don’t leech.”

A few players laughed.

“What about Worthless?” someone shouted.

Brayden grinned. “If he’s alive, he can cheer from the grass.”

More laughter.

Cassian watched from the edge of the reeds, mud smeared across his cheeks, shirt in tatters, eyes dry and bright.

There it was.

The gate.

Safe zone access.

Currency.

Class advancement token.

The intended route demanded he join them, get carried if they allowed it, and accept being a joke with legs. But the intended route also assumed he could receive rewards properly, gain levels properly, exist properly.

His status screen said otherwise.

If the System had already marked him as an error, then raid participation might glitch too. Maybe he could tag the boss and get credit. Maybe he could steal something if the boss killed him. Maybe tutorial bosses counted as monsters.

Maybe this was a catastrophically stupid idea.

Cassian smiled.

“Finally,” he whispered. “A build test.”

He waited until the raid crossed the boundary.

The arch swallowed them in blue fog. Their nameplates blurred, then snapped into the arena beyond. Cassian saw flashes through the haze: a circular stone platform, broken columns, chains hanging from nothing, and at the center, a knight twice the height of a man kneeling with a rusted halberd across its lap.

The Gatewarden.

Its armor was black iron veined with dull gold. A crown of bent nails circled its helm. Its faceplate bore no eye slits, only a vertical seam leaking cold light. Around its neck hung dozens of little wooden tags carved with names.