The straw mattress was an itchy, unforgiving slab. Sleep had been a fleeting visitor, chased away by the cold reality of my situation and the endless calculations running through my mind. I was awoken not by an alarm clock, but by the heavy thud of a guard's spear butt against my wooden door.
"Scullery duty, Defect. Head Chef Borin is waiting. Don't be late." The guard's voice was flat, bored, as if he were addressing a piece of furniture.
I pushed myself up, my back aching. The room was just as bleak in the grey pre-dawn light. My school uniform, the last piece of my old world, was already starting to feel alien. After a moment's hesitation, I folded the blazer carefully and placed it in my notebook, deciding to wear just the white shirt and trousers. The jacket was too conspicuous. My goal was to observe, and that meant blending in.
The castle's servant passages were a labyrinth of cold stone and flickering torches, a stark contrast to the grand, carpeted halls my classmates were likely enjoying. The air was thick with the smell of baking bread and roasting meat. Following the directions barked by the guard, I found myself in a cavernous kitchen, a chaotic symphony of clanging pots, shouting cooks, and hissing steam.
At the center of it all, like a boulder in a raging river, stood a man of immense girth with a wild, grey-streaked beard and arms as thick as my legs. This had to be Head Chef Borin. He wielded a ladle the size of a small shovel, using it to point at a mountain of mud-caked vegetables in a corner.
"You're the useless one, eh?" he grunted, not even bothering to look at me directly. His eyes were fixed on a bubbling cauldron. "Right. Your job is simple. You see that pile? Those are 'grotatoes.' You will wash them. Then you will peel them. Then you will bring them to Cook Misha over there. If you are slow, you don't eat. If you drop one, you eat it off the floor. Understood?"
"Understood," I replied, my voice even. There was no point in arguing.
He grunted again, a sound of dismissal, and turned back to his work. I was handed a small, dull knife and pointed towards a washing basin. The work was mind-numbing, repetitive, and utterly exhausting. The grotatoes were tough, their skin thick and fibrous. The knife was poorly made, its edge uneven. My hands, accustomed to pens and keyboards, were quickly rubbed raw.
From the kitchen, I had a clear line of gossip. The cooks and servants spoke freely, assuming I was too insignificant to matter.
"...the Hero-sama lifted a training dummy made of solid iron! With one hand!" "I heard the Saintess-sama healed Sir Kaelen's arm after he broke it in a spar. Healed it completely in seconds!" "They're having a grand welcoming feast tonight in the Great Hall. The King ordered the finest wyvern steaks and elven wine..."
I kept washing. I kept peeling. Each piece of gossip was a data point. Kenji's [Hero] class granted immense physical strength. Yuna's [Saintess] class allowed for high-speed cellular regeneration, far beyond what simple first aid could accomplish. They were being treated like royalty, while I was here, earning my meal one painfully peeled grotato at a time. The contrast was a sharpening stone for my resolve.
Hours passed. My pile of peeled vegetables grew slowly. As I worked, my mind was busy. I observed the kitchen's workflow. The inefficiency was staggering. They used massive open-fire pits, wasting enormous amounts of firewood as heat escaped into the high ceilings. The large cauldrons of water for boiling were left uncovered, meaning it took far longer to reach a boiling point, consuming even more fuel.
A young cook, barely older than me, was struggling to get a large pot of water to a rolling boil. He kept feeding more and more wood into the fire pit below it.
On a whim, I paused my peeling. "Excuse me," I said, my voice quiet.
The cook glanced over, annoyed. "What do you want, Commoner?"
"If you find a lid for that pot, the water will trap the steam and boil much faster. You'll save time and firewood." It was the most basic principle of thermodynamics.
He stared at me as if I'd grown a second head. "A lid? What are you talking about? We need to watch it so it doesn't boil over!"
"It will make a rattling sound before it boils over," I explained patiently. "Trapping the heat is more efficient."
Head Chef Borin, who had been observing from a distance, stomped over. "What's this nonsense? Are you trying to teach my cooks their business, boy?"
"No, Head Chef," I said, meeting his gaze. "I am merely making an observation. It requires less energy to heat water in a closed system. It is a simple principle."
Borin stared at me, his brow furrowed. He seemed to be weighing my impudence against the logic of my words. With a grunt, he bellowed, "You! Find the lid for the stockpot! We'll try the Defect's principle."
The cook scrambled to obey. A heavy iron lid was placed over the cauldron. We waited. The kitchen staff watched with a mixture of curiosity and scorn. Sure enough, in less than half the usual time, the lid began to rattle and steam hissed from its edges.
Borin lifted the lid, and a massive cloud of steam billowed out, revealing the furiously boiling water within. He stared into the pot, then at the greatly reduced amount of wood in the fire pit, and then, for the first time, he looked directly at me with a glimmer of something other than contempt.
"Hmph. A lucky guess," he grumbled, but his tone lacked its earlier bite. "Get back to your potatoes. You're still slow."
I returned to my work, a small victory won. I hadn't used magic or strength. I had used my knowledge. It was a proof of concept.
**********
That evening, I was given a bowl of thin, watery stew and a hunk of coarse bread. I ate it in a secluded corner of the servant's courtyard, the sounds of the distant feast in the Great Hall—music, laughter, and cheering—drifting over the castle walls. They were celebrating my classmates. My captors.
I was journaling my observations by the light of a fading moon when a soft footstep approached. I instinctively hid the notebook.
"Kaito-kun?"
I looked up. It was Emi Sato. She was wearing a simple but elegant dress provided by the castle, and she looked terribly out of place in the grime of the servants' courtyard. In her hands, she held a cloth napkin, bundled around something that smelled divine.
"Sato-san," I said, my voice flat. "You shouldn't be here. If one of the nobles or knights sees you consorting with a 'Defect', it won't be good for your reputation."
"Don't say that," she whispered, sitting down on the stone bench opposite me. Her eyes were filled with genuine concern. "You're not a defect. You're Tanaka Kaito from my class." She placed the bundle on the bench between us. "I... I brought you this. It's roasted wyvern. It's really good. I thought you might be hungry."
My stomach growled in betrayal. I looked from her earnest face to the food. Wyvern steak. While I was eating scraps, they were feasting on mythical creatures. But her kindness was a warmth that touched a part of me I thought had already gone cold.
"Thank you," I said, my voice softer. I accepted the offering. The meat was tender and rich, unlike anything I had ever tasted.
We sat in silence for a moment before she spoke again. "It's all so... overwhelming. The training, the magic... Kenji-kun is already learning a sword skill called [Hero's Strike]. Suzuki-san can cast a [Holy Light] spell that purifies undead."
This was the information I needed. "Tell me about it," I urged. "When you use your healing magic, what does it feel like? Your 'System', what does it show you?"
"Oh, well..." She seemed grateful to talk about it. "My class is [Healer]. I have a status screen that only I can see. It shows my HP, which is Health Points, and MP, which is Mana Points. When I cast [Heal], I have to focus on my target and say the word. I feel a warmth flow from my chest, down my arm, and out of my hands. And my MP number goes down by 10."
"Always 10 points?" I asked, my mind racing. "For any injury?"
"No, that's for small cuts. When I healed Sir Kaelen's broken arm, it took almost all of my MP. The System said it was a cost of 150 MP. My total is only 180 right now."
Perfect. The cost was variable and proportional to the task. It was a system of energy expenditure.
"And when you level up?"
"We fought some training golems today. After I defeated one—well, I helped defeat one—a sound chimed in my head, and the System said I had leveled up. I felt a surge of energy, and my HP and MP totals increased. All my stats went up a little."
She was a fountain of priceless data. She explained skill trees, status effects, and party bonuses. She didn't understand the mechanics behind it, only the effects. To her, it was magic. To me, it was a system of rules waiting to be reverse-engineered.
"Sato-san," I said, finishing the last of the meat. "Thank you. This... helped more than you know."
She gave me a small, sad smile. "Please, call me Emi. And... be careful, Kaito-kun. Some of the others... especially Kenji-kun's group... they're saying you're a disgrace. That you're dragging down the reputation of our class."
"Reputation is the last of my worries," I said, standing up. "You should get back before you're missed."
She nodded, hesitated for a second, and then scurried away, a fleeting beacon of warmth in my cold new world.
I returned to my room, the guard at the corridor entrance giving me a suspicious glare. I barred the door, sat on my straw bed, and pulled out my notebook. The taste of wyvern was still on my tongue, and Emi's data was fresh in my mind. I began to write.
Entry 2: Initial Analysis of the 'System'.
Source: Emi Sato, Class: [Healer].
1. Mana (MP): A quantifiable biological energy source. Expended to produce external magical phenomena ('Skills'). Cost is proportional to the complexity and power of the skill. Appears to regenerate over time, suggesting a biological production process similar to ATP in human cells. Must investigate the metabolic requirements for mana regeneration.
2. Leveling Up: A sudden, system-induced enhancement of biological capabilities ('Stats') triggered by gaining 'Experience Points' (XP). XP seems to be a value assigned for overcoming challenges. The mechanism for this rapid biological improvement is unknown. Possible theories include forced cellular adaptation or a release of stored biological potential.
3. Skills: Pre-packaged applications of mana. Activated by mental/verbal command. This suggests the 'System' acts as a cognitive interface, a mental shortcut that bypasses the need to consciously understand and manipulate the underlying magical principles. A person with a 'System' is like a person using a calculator—they don't need to know the math to get the answer.
Conclusion: The 'System' is a biological augmentation and user interface. My classmates are not performing magic; a system is performing it through them. They are users, not developers.
I am not a user. Therefore, I must become a developer.
I closed the notebook. The road ahead was long and impossibly difficult. But for the first time, I had a map. It was faint, riddled with holes, and written in a language no one else could read. But it was a start.