I didn’t return to town.

  I couldn’t.

  Not with this bag.

  Something about it—it whispered possibilities. Not with words, but with feeling. A constant pull, like my hands were never meant to be empty again.

  So I wandered.

  The outer fields were crawling with low-level beasts: bark-wolves, horned hares, even the occasional sludge-spitter. Nothing dangerous—not to a fighter. But I wasn’t here to fight. I was here to gather.

  And the bag welcomed everything.

  Claws. Teeth. Slime cores. Fur. Bones.

  Herbs, rare ones, tucked beneath glowing roots.

  Broken monster crystals, bent arrows, lost rings still humming faintly.

  All of it vanished into the pouch. No weight. No mess. Just… mine.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Every item I stuffed inside gave me a rush.

  A warmth.

  Like the bag approved.

  And I was changing, too.

  My eyes saw shinier things in the dirt. My hands moved faster. I could almost smell nearby loot before I saw it.

  Was that even normal?

  "Spirit Sync: +4"

  The number changed again. I didn’t know what it meant, but it felt important.

  I was gathering like a man possessed.

  Because I was.

  Possessed by the thrill of finding. Of keeping. Of owning.

  But a tiny part of me—way in the back of my mind—kept asking:

  What happens when the bag gets full?

  And more importantly…

  What happens when it starts wanting things I didn’t choose to give?

  The boy was unstoppable now.

  Item after item vanished into the pouch—glowing herbs, monster shards, relics from a forgotten age. The number on the bag kept rising.

  Spirit Sync: +7

  He didn’t stop to question anymore. He just gathered.

  And gathered.

  And—

  “Dude, are you seriously crying over that bag again?”

  My head snapped up.

  Fluorescent lights. A half-empty cup of soda. My desk, cluttered with snack wrappers and highlighters. The glowing screen of my tablet still displayed the novel I was reading.

  《The Relic Gatherer》 – Chapter 6 Complete.

  I blinked, dazed. My friend raised an eyebrow from the other side of the room.

  “No, I’m not crying,” I muttered. “It’s just… really good, okay?”

  He rolled his eyes and went back to his game.

  I leaned back in my chair, heart still racing. The story felt so vivid this time, like I was there—like I was him.

  The way he felt the items, the obsession, the strange connection with the bag…

  I looked at the tablet again. Something flickered on the screen.

  A pop-up?

  No. A line of text—glitchy, like it wasn’t part of the novel:

  “Gathering Spirit Detected. Initializing…”

  And then my screen went black.

  My room went cold.

  And something soft and old-smelling brushed against my foot.

  I looked down.

  There it was.

  A leather pouch. Half-open. Slightly glowing.

  Just like in the novel.