The fire crackled low in the corner, its light no stronger than a dying candle, but to Elias, it may as well have been the sun.
Liora lay under the blanket, still trembling, her breathing soft but steady. Her face was pale, cheeks sunken, lips barely darker than her skin. Her small hand clutched the edge of the blanket like a child holding onto a thread of life.
She had taken the water. That was something.
But it wasn't enough.
Elias sat beside her, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped around them as he stared at the steam curling from the clay bowl. The flame beneath it hissed now and then, threatening to die. He couldn't spare more wood. Couldn't waste more runoff.
He needed more of everything.
One bowl wouldn't keep her from slipping under. Fever took days to kill but hours to win.
He looked down at his own fingers. Dirt crusted under his nails. His knuckles were raw. His clothes clung to him like rags soaked in old grease. The heat from the fire touched only the front of him. His back was still cold.
The shack smelled like old smoke, piss, and mildew. His stomach ached not just with hunger, but that hollow ache that came from knowing he had nothing left to give.
He leaned forward and brushed Liora's hair from her forehead.
"You're burning up," he whispered. "But you're here. That's enough."
He stood slowly this time, letting his joints pop and stretch before moving.
The dizziness was still there, lurking under his skull like a knife behind cloth. But he ignored it. He stepped over the broken planks near the door, took a last look at the room and pushed the door aside once more.
The slum didn't greet him. It ignored him.
Mud squelched underfoot. Cold air bit his face. The light was stronger now, a weak morning grey leaking through the clouds above. Smoke drifted from crooked chimneys. Dogs barked in the distance.
He took a breath and moved forward, arms tucked against his sides, eyes scanning every corner.
Liora was breathing.
But barely.
And one bowl of boiled gutter water was just a delay.
If he didn't return with something real clean water, maybe something to eat, something ten the fire inside her would eat what was left.
He moved faster.
Elias kept to the narrow paths between leaning tenements, where the muck wasn't quite deep enough to steal your shoes. Smoke poured from metal chimneys that looked more like rusted pipes jammed through walls. The stink of sour beer, rot, piss, and old milk clung to everything.
Even this early, people were moving thin shapes with hunched backs and hollow faces. Most didn't look up. Those that did glanced at Elias with glassy disinterest before looking away again. He wasn't worth the effort.
No one smiled. No one called out.
The slums didn't greet. The slums didn't care.
Every few steps, he scanned the ground bits of fabric, chipped clay, half-eaten bones. Anything that could be fuel, or trade. He passed a small pile of coals scattered by a toppled brazier and scooped a few into his coat pocket with shaking hands.
Ahead, voices low, sharp, angry.
He slowed, ducked behind a warped crate, and peeked around the corner.
Three boys, older than him fifteen maybe, or just sick enough to look it. One held a dented knife. Another gripped something wrapped in cloth.
A fourth boy lay on the ground.
Still.
Elias blinked. His throat tightened.
The one on the ground couldn't have been more than nine. Smaller than Liora. There was a smear of red across his chest, soaking through a shirt that was more holes than cloth. One leg twitched.
The taller boy shouted something about "stealing from me again," then kicked the body once, hard.
The others laughed.
The thing in the cloth a hunk of stale bread, maybe a heel at most was passed between them, torn in half, then quarters.
They didn't even run when they were done. Just walked off, chewing, heads low.
The boy on the ground didn't move again.
No one screamed. No one cried.
Elias stayed frozen behind the crate, breathing through his nose, fists clenched.
A woman from a nearby doorway leaned out to see what the noise had been. She stared at the body. Her face didn't change. She pulled her shawl tighter and closed the door.
That was it.
The boy was dead before the bread even cooled.
Elias's stomach twisted not from shock. From recognition.
That could've been me yesterday. That could be Liora tomorrow.
He forced himself forward, passing the corpse without looking. It wasn't out of coldness. It was because if he stopped, he wouldn't be able to move again.
There was no time for mourning.
Only action.
The smell hit him before he turned the corner.
Grease. Old, congealed, rank.
He knew it instantly he'd worked one summer in a ramen shop that didn't believe in throwing anything away. Back then it meant clogged drains and mopping at 2 a.m.
Now it meant hope.
He ducked behind the crooked frame of an old tavern whose back door was held shut with bent iron wire. The place was boarded up too poor to sell ale, too proud to admit it. But the bins behind it were overflowing with bones, blackened wood, and a split wooden bucket half-full of animal fat.
The fat had gone white with cold. Chunks floated in it like fungus. A swarm of flies buzzed lazily above.
He didn't hesitate.
Elias wrapped his hand in a rag and scooped what he could into a broken pot nearby, scraping it loose from the sides. The smell nearly knocked him over sharp and sour, like wet meat left under a heater.
But he gritted his teeth and worked faster.
He found ash, too. Lots of it. Piled beneath the refuse like snow, laced with charcoal and burnt splinters.
Ash… and grease…
His brain clicked. A memory no, a lesson. Old survival books. Primitive chemistry. It came all at once.
> Fat + lye = soap. Lye from ash. Boil it down. Mix. Let it harden.
Soap. Cleanliness.
And in a place where everyone stank, where even the rich turned their noses at the slum-born?
That was value.
Not fancy. Not flashy.
But valuable.
He grabbed a cracked jug, shoveled in a handful of ash, then poured a trickle of leftover gutter water from his sleeve pouch into it.
Let it sit. Draw out the lye.
He glanced over his shoulder no one had seen him yet.
If he could just make one bar, something that lathered, even a little… maybe someone would trade for it.
Food. Wood. A blanket. Anything.
He tucked the jug under one arm and the pot of fat under the other.
Then he ran.
By the time Elias returned, his arms were shaking from the weight. Not that the jug or pot were heavy, but his muscles had nothing left to burn. He kicked the door open with his foot and stumbled inside.
The shack was darker now. Clouds had choked out most of the morning light.
Liora hadn't moved.
He didn't stop to check if he looked too long, he might not look away.
Instead, he went straight to the fire.
The embers were faint, barely holding on. He fed in a sliver of wood, coaxed the flame until it grew again, then set the pot on top with shaking care.
The fat melted slowly. It hissed, spat, bubbled. He stirred it with a piece of bone, watching the pale globules liquefy into a thick, foul-smelling oil. Next came the ash water filtered lye. He poured it in gently.
It fizzed.
Then settled.
The mixture turned cloudy, almost gray.
He didn't have molds. No tools. Just a flat slab of tile and a patch of woven mat.
He poured the mix out and let it cool.
The smell was still awful burnt meat and river silt but it hardened. Greasy to the touch, yes, but solid. And when he wet his fingers and rubbed them across the edge…
Foam.
Not much. Barely a trace.
But it was there.
Soap.
He stared at it like it was gold.
The fire cracked behind him. A weak cough reminded him that gold was worthless unless it bought something.
He wrapped the soap chunk in a rag and stepped outside.
Just as a voice called to him: "Oi! Boy!"
He turned, startled.
A heavy woman stood in the alley, arms crossed under her apron, eyebrows like twin swords. Her face was wrinkled like burned parchment, and her mouth was set in a permanent sneer. One of her boots was patched with rope.
Mrs. Dalta.
Everyone in the slum knew her. Soup lady. Widow. Temper like an axe. Kept a tin pot boiling all year round, usually with water and lies.
"You came back with a pot full o' piss?" she snapped. "You trying to cook the rats alive?"
Elias blinked, then slowly unwrapped the cloth.
She squinted.
Then took two steps forward.
"Is that… soap?"
He nodded.
She leaned in, sniffed. Recoiled.
"That's disgusting."
"It works," he said. He rubbed the edge between his fingers, raised a bit of foam.
She looked again. Rubbed her own fingers across it. Then sniffed them. Blinked.
"Well, damn me sideways," she muttered. "You made it yourself?"
He hesitated. "Yes."
A long pause.
Then she reached into her coat and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle.
"Trade. This for half a bowl. Still warm."
Elias's stomach growled like it had heard salvation.
He nodded.
Deal.
Elias returned to the shack with the soup bundle clutched in both hands like it might disappear. The warmth soaked into his fingers, and the scent real broth, salted roots, maybe even marrow cut through the rot like a blade of sunlight.
He knelt beside Liora and unwrapped it slowly.
"Liora," he said softly, brushing her shoulder. "I've got something for you."
Her eyes cracked open. Dull. Confused. But she looked at him.
He held a spoon to her lips, hand trembling.
She sipped.
Once.
Twice.
Her throat worked, and the soup was gone.
Not all of it just a few sips. But her eyelids fluttered, and she let out a breath that didn't sound like dying.
Elias nearly collapsed from relief.
And then it came.
A soft, crystalline chime inside his skull.
[Trade Event Registered]
[Primitive Commodity Created: "Soap – Ash & Tallow"]
[First Transaction Complete]
Reward: +1 Trade Skill
Reward: Blueprint Library Unlocked (Basic Tier)
New Feature: [Invention Blueprint Library] – now accessible.
Note: Early-stage commerce detected. Socioeconomic influence minimal. Growth potential: HIGH.
A glowing panel blinked into the edge of his vision not visible in the room, but embedded somewhere behind his eyes. He focused on it, and a soft page-like screen flipped open.
Crude sketches filled the space, each labeled:
Water Purifier – Gravity-Drip Ash-Filter
Clay Oven – Low-Fuel Design
Foot Pedal Grinder – Manual Gear Compression
Soap Variants (Herb-Infused / Fragrance-Blocking)
Rat Trap (Trigger Pin Design)
Elias's breath caught.
This wasn't just a boost.
This was a map.
A roadmap out of the gutter.
He could feel it this was the first real step. He had taken trash and turned it into survival. The System had noticed.
And it wanted more.
The second bar wasn't much to look at.
Rough edges, uneven color, flecks of bone and ash baked right in but it lathered. It worked. And in the slums, that made it worth more than a silver prayer.
Elias wrapped it in cloth and stepped into the alley again, the System's blueprint icons still flickering softly in his peripheral vision like ghosts he wasn't supposed to see.
The air was thicker now. The smell of hot metal and boiled turnips clung to the breeze. Voices rose from the main road traders, beggars, fishmongers yelling lies at passing ghosts.
He made his way to the widest lane he knew, near the pump well, where folks gathered to grumble and trade lice stories. His heart thudded like a drum the whole way.
No one knew him here.
Not as the boy with the soap. Not yet.
He approached an old woman stirring something green in a dented pot.
"Trade?" he asked, unwrapping the cloth just enough to show the edge of the soap bar.
She blinked.
Then leaned in, squinting.
"Is that…" she sniffed. "You didn't steal this, did you?"
"No. Made it."
"With what?"
"Fat. Ash. Water."
She scratched her chin with soot-black fingers, then motioned him forward.
But someone else had seen it too.
A man standing nearby missing three teeth, with eyes like cloudy marbles snorted.
"Fat and ash? That's witchcraft if it foams."
Elias stiffened. "It's not magic. It's "
"It ain't right," the man cut in. "Where'd a runt like you learn to boil fat proper? Huh? You put curses in it?"
A few people stopped. Watched. Not out of outrage out of habit. Any noise was entertainment.
The woman with the pot grunted. "Oh hush, Dorin. If the boy made it, he made it. You don't like it, go shit in your stew."
The crowd chuckled, but Dorin wasn't laughing.
He stepped closer. "Little bastard thinks he's clever. Bet he's been sneakin' into wizard trash heaps."
Elias's grip tightened on the soap.
He'd forgotten knowledge was dangerous here. Too much knowledge could get you stabbed just as fast as stealing bread.
He opened his mouth to speak
Then caught movement.
A figure, leaning against the wall across the lane. Older. Shirtless under a patched cloak. Eyes dark, unreadable, locked on Elias like a wolf watching a rabbit fumble through a fence.
The man wasn't moving.
But he was listening.
Elias looked away.
The woman took the soap with a grunt. "If it's cursed, I'll curse you back twice over," she muttered, tossing him a warm lump wrapped in cloth. "Now piss off, all of you. I'm cooking."
Elias backed away, clutching the food bundle, heart pounding harder now than it had all day.
Not from the trade.
From the moment of being noticed.
Not all attention was good attention.
Especially not in a place like this.