Chapter 31: The Radial Flow and the King’s Beast’s core

Day one of the three-day deadline began not with a hammer, but with breath.

"Don’t think, city-boy," Torvin grunted, pacing around Gio in the sweltering heat of the forge. "You’re trying to force the energy like you’re pushing a river through a pipe. Marrow-Infusion isn’t a machine. It’s a pulse. It’s a heartbeat. Feel the rhythm of the bone, and match it."

Gio wiped a mixture of sweat and soot from his forehead. He was sitting cross-legged before a cold furnace, a scrap piece of beast-bone resting in his lap.

Feel the rhythm?

Gio closed his eyes and reached inward, tapping into his Bioenergy. Instantly, his System’s UI overlay flared to life in his mind’s eye, displaying his energy flow as a series of rigid, digital, linear pathways. The System was designed for efficiency, for direct commands and tactical execution. It didn’t do ’rhythm’. It did ’execute’.

He tried to push the energy into the bone linearly, just as he had watched Torvin do. The bone grew hot. Uncomfortably hot. Then, with a sharp CRACK, it splintered down the middle, leaking wasted bioenergy as heat.

"Again," Torvin said, his voice devoid of pity. "You’re wasting it. Forty percent, just like I told you. You’re bleeding power into the air."

Gio gritted his teeth. He couldn’t abandon the System... it was how his brain processed his mutation, but he could change how he used it.

’System,’ Gio thought. ’Can you... Overlay a radial distribution map over the bone’s matrix. Map the bioenergy flow in concentric circles, not a straight line?.’

[Processing...]

[Radial Flow Overlay Generated.]

[Warning: Requires intense mental partitioning. Bioenergy Control must be precise.]

A new schematic appeared in his vision, a complex, glowing puzzle of concentric rings mapped over the bone’s internal structure. It looked impossibly difficult. It was like trying to thread a needle while riding a horse.

Gio took a deep breath, matching the slow, deliberate rhythm Torvin had been demonstrating. He drew the bioenergy from his core, but instead of shoving it straight into the bone, he guided it along the System’s radial overlay. He pushed it outward in a spiral, letting the energy wrap around the bone’s microscopic fibers rather than piercing them.

It was agonizing. His mind felt like it was splitting into two halves—one relying on raw, wasteland instinct, the other relying on cold, digital calculation.

But slowly, the bone began to hum.

It didn’t grow hot. It vibrated. A soft, ivory glow emanated from the scrap, and the bioenergy didn’t dissipate. It stayed locked inside the matrix, dense and stable.

Torvin stopped pacing. He stared at the glowing scrap, his scarred face unreadable. "Huh, you stopped bleeding the heat."

Before Gio could answer, a loud crash echoed from the training grounds across the settlement, followed by a chorus of cheers and curses.

Gio opened his eyes, breaking the radial flow. The bone’s glow faded. He exhaled a long, shaky breath, his head throbbing from the mental strain.

"Go watch your friends," Torvin said, waving a hand. "They’re about to get broken if they don’t focus. We’ll resume the blade work after midday."

---

The BloodRider training grounds were a circle of packed dirt surrounded by cheering warriors. In the center, the rest of Gio’s squad was getting humbled.

Lloyd was on his knees, gasping for air. His blue barrier was up, but three BloodRider warriors were taking turns slamming bone-maces against it. The kinetic feedback was immense. Every strike sent shockwaves through the noble’s arms, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"Your shield is hard, city-prince!" one of the warriors laughed, swinging the mace again. "But it doesn’t bend! If it doesn’t bend, it shatters! Angle it! Deflect!"

Lloyd gritted his teeth, adjusting the barrier’s geometry just in time to let the mace glance off the curved surface. The warrior nodded in approval.

A few yards away, Melody was having an even worse time.

She was strapped to the back of a young, unbroken six-legged war-foal. The beast was the size of a draft horse, its six muscular legs churning the dirt as it bucked violently. Melody’s claws were dug into the beast’s thick hide, her tail wrapped tightly around the saddle horn.

"Stop fighting it!" Kira shouted from the edge of the ring. "You’re tense! The beast feels your tension! You don’t need the Marrow-Infusion to ride, cat-girl. You need to breathe with it!"

"I’m breathing!" Melody yelled back, just as the foal reared up on its hind legs and slammed back down. Melody was thrown sideways, barely catching herself by wrapping her legs around the beast’s neck.

Kojiro was sitting on a nearby boulder, lazily tossing a small pebble into the air and catching it. "Told you guys the wastelanders don’t play around. You sure you don’t want me to step in?"

"Shut up, Kojiro," Melody and Lloyd said in unison.

Gio watched them, a small smile touching his lips. They were getting battered, but they were learning. The BloodRiders were brutal, but they were teaching the squad how to fight not just with their mutations, but with the environment.

He turned back to the forge. He had a blade to perfect.

---

By the time the sun began to dip below the canyon walls, Gio was back at the anvil.

The scrap bone had been a success. Now, he was working on a real weapon—a curved, two-foot-long blade carved from the femur of an apex predator. It was a beautiful, brutal piece of craftsmanship, and it required a massive, sustained infusion of bioenergy to align its molecular structure.

Gio placed his hand on the flat of the blade. He activated the radial overlay. The bioenergy flowed outward in a perfect, spiraling pulse. The blade began to hum, glowing with a steady, brilliant white light.

Clang.

The furnace bellows suddenly groaned. The roaring coals dimmed, the temperature in the forge dropping sharply.

Gio’s System flared.

[Warning: temperature dropping. Matrix alignment destabilizing.]

Gio frowned, his focus wavering. The glow on the blade flickered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a BloodRider warrior step near the furnace. The man, Vane, had a jagged scar running down his cheek and a look of pure, unadulterated hatred in his eyes. He had been glaring at Gio since he arrived.

Vane "accidentally" bumped the furnace grate. A shower of sparks flew out, and the heat died even further. As he stepped back, Gio’s System caught the movement.

[Alert: impurity detected. Bone structure compromised.]

Gio’s eyes darted to the anvil. Vane had kicked a cracked, impure piece of bone into the alignment matrix. It was a subtle sabotage, something a normal smith wouldn’t notice until the blade shattered and exploded in their face.

Vane crossed his arms, a cruel smirk on his lips. "Oops. Clumsy of me. Guess the city-boy’s work is ruined."

Torvin turned, his eyes narrowing at Vane, but before he could intervene, Gio spoke.

"No, it’s not."

Gio didn’t pull his hand from the blade. Instead, he leaned harder into the System’s UI. He used his newly refined radial control to push the bioenergy not just into the main bone, but into the impure fragment.

He didn’t try to align it. He ejected it.

Using the spiraling flow of energy, Gio created a centrifugal force within the matrix. The impure, cracked bone fragment was violently expelled from the alignment, clattering onto the stone floor.

Simultaneously, Gio adjusted the radial flow to compensate for the sudden drop in furnace heat, using his own bioenergy to supercharge the blade’s internal friction.

The blade didn’t just glow, it Vibrated with a glorious frequency.

A high, pure note rang through the forge. The bone-blade turned a blinding, translucent white, the molecular structure locking into a state of perfect, temporary density.

Torvin walked over slowly. He picked up a slab of old-world steel plate and placed it on the anvil.

Gio picked up the blade. It felt weightless. He swung it in a clean, horizontal arc.

The steel plate didn’t just cut. It parted silently, the edges glowing red from the friction, before falling away in two perfect halves.

The forge was dead silent.

Vane’s smirk was gone, replaced by a look of pale shock.

Torvin stared at the severed steel, then at the blade in Gio’s hand. The master smith let out a long, slow breath. "You purged the impurity. And you stabilized the heat with your own core. That... is not a mere city trick."

"It’s an optimization," Gio said, dismissing the infusion. The blade’s glow faded, returning to its natural ivory color.

Torvin looked at Vane. "Get out of my forge. If you ever touch my anvil again, I’ll feed you to the raptors."

Vane swallowed hard, nodded once, and fled.

Torvin turned back to Gio, a genuine smile cracking his scarred face. "You kept your word, city-boy. Your method is accepted. Your squad eats at our fires tonight. And tomorrow, we ride for the outpost."

Torvin reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a small, velvet-wrapped bundle. He handed it to Gio.

"A reward. For proving your worth. It’s a high-grade core. Harvested from an apex predator. Should help you refine your own control."

Gio took the bundle. As his fingers brushed the velvet, a jolt of cold energy shot up his arm. He unwrapped it.

Inside was a core the size of his fist. It wasn’t the dull grey of the E-Rank wolves. It was a deep, pulsing red, veined with black. It felt heavy, radiating a suffocating, oppressive aura that made the air in the forge feel thin.

Instantly, his System went crazy.

[Warning: C-Rank Core detected.]

[Analysis: Contains concentrated energy resonance.]

[Error: Bioenergy density exceeds host’s current capacity.]

[Unable to absorb currently. Too high for your rank.]

Gio stared at the pulsing red core, his heart hammering against his ribs. Concentrated energy resonance?

"Torvin," Gio said, his voice tight. "Where did you get this?"

The master smith’s smile faded. He looked at the core with a mixture of respect and deep, lingering fear.

"Thirty years ago," Torvin said quietly. "A beast attacked the settlement. It was massive. Armored. It moved with an intelligence that our ancestors had never seen. We lost half the clan taking it down."

Torvin met Gio’s eyes. "That core came from its chest. But it’s not just the beast’s power, boy. The beast was a herald of the King himself."

Gio looked down at the crimson core. The Elder’s words from the previous day echoed in his mind. The King stirs. He has been sleeping for decades...

The king’s influence, his very essence, was literally embedded in the cores of his strongest monsters. He was the source of their power. Hence the concentrated energy resonance.

And if Gio ever tried to absorb a core like this, the King would feel it. It could probably corrupt him in a way he wasn’t sure of yet.

Gio carefully wrapped the core back in the velvet, his hands perfectly steady, but his mind racing.

The outpost raid was no longer just about clearing a path to the coast.

It was about understanding the enemy. And the enemy was far more connected to the wasteland than anyone in the Sector Cities had ever realized.