From the day cold resolve replaced the fury in his soul, Seito's life split into two parallel realities. In one, he was Seito Kagami—the obedient, somewhat thoughtful son of a village carpenter, who helped his mother around the house, listened with interest to the elders' stories, and sometimes played tag with the other children at sunset. This life was simple, warm, and smelled of bread and wood shavings.
But there was another reality. A secret one. The one that unfolded in the predawn twilight, in the remote corners of the forest behind the village, in the empty barn while everyone slept. In this reality, he was Light—a ghost from another world, a mechanic with an obsession, a man with a void instead of a name, who was ready to do anything to fill it.
His child's body became his main tool and his greatest obstacle at the same time. It was weak, disobedient, quick to tire, and demanded food and sleep. But Seito learned to work with what he had, with the methodicalness of an engineer using scrap materials to repair a complex mechanism.
His days began before dawn. While the household slept, he would slip out of bed with cat-like silence, put on his simple canvas clothes, and slip out the door. The cold morning air burned his lungs, but he welcomed that sting—it woke him up, reminded him he was alive and that work awaited him.
First—running. A small loop around the sleeping village. His legs were short, his stride was narrow. He didn't run so much as shuffle quickly. But he did it every day. The System recorded his efforts without much enthusiasm:
[Run completed. Distance: 0.7 km. EXP +1. Stamina +0.01.]
The numbers were laughable. Almost insulting. But Seito gritted his teeth and kept running. He remembered a principle from his past life: constant dripping wears away a stone. He was going to wear down this stone of his weakness until nothing but dust remained.
After the run—strength exercises. Push-ups. At first, he couldn't do a single proper one, pressing not with his palms but with his small fists into the cold ground. He fell face-first into the dust, his arms trembling from the strain. But he got up and tried again.
[Push-up attempt… Failure. Strength +0.001.]
[Push-up attempt… Partial success. EXP +0.5. Strength +0.005.]
He hated these pitiful gains. They felt like a mockery. But after a week, he managed one full, albeit crooked, push-up. After a month—five. The System, as if finally acknowledging his perseverance, gave a little more:
[Set of 5 push-ups completed. Strength +0.1. Skill «Physical Conditioning» level 1.]
It was his first real victory. Tiny, but his own.
Then there was work with the "Stone Flower." He would sit in a meditation pose, clasping the warm stone in his hands, and try not just to feel the magic around him but to focus it. He imagined energy flowing into him through the stone, spreading through his body, filling his muscles with strength and his mind with clarity. It went poorly. The sensations were vague, blurry. Most often, he simply fell asleep from exhaustion and woke up with a stiff back.
But sometimes, in rare moments of extreme concentration, he succeeded. He felt a tiny, thin stream of warmth from the stone pouring into his body, relieving fatigue and granting a surge of vigor.
[Successful meditation focused on an artifact. Willpower +0.05. Hidden parameter «Magic Perception» +0.1.]
It was "Magic Perception" that became his most valuable acquisition. He began to notice not just auras, but shades and flows. He saw how the earth's magic streamed through tree roots, how the air's magic played in the foliage, how the water's magic splashed in the stream. He still couldn't interact with it, but he was learning to see it. It was like how he had learned to understand the language of an engine's vibrations in his past life—at first it was just noise, but then he began to distinguish every detail, every hint of a malfunction.
He returned home at dawn, exhausted but satisfied. He managed to climb back into bed and pretend to be fast asleep when his mother came to wake him.
"Seito, get up, the sun is already high!" Ayame's warm voice woke him.
He opened his eyes and stretched, pretending to be a sleepy little boy, all while catching her worried glance.
"Covered in dust again," she sighed, brushing bits of grass from his shirt. "Do you run in your sleep?"
He just smiled back sheepishly.
The hardest part was hiding his growing abilities. One day, out of habit, he easily jumped onto a high fence to retrieve a ball that had rolled away. He did it effortlessly, without thinking, just as he did every morning during training. Only upon seeing the shocked face of his childhood friend, who could barely jump to the bottom rail, did he realize his mistake.
"Wow, Seito! How can you jump so high?" the boy exclaimed in admiration.
Seito jumped down, shrugging.
"I don't know… it just happened."
From then on, he became more careful. He deliberately pretended to struggle with carrying small things, to trip on flat ground, to get tired after a short play session. It was its own special, exhausting training—a training in acting and stealth.
But despite all the difficulties, he saw progress. Slow, but relentless. He could now run around the village twice without stopping. He could do ten push-ups. He could sit in meditation for almost half an hour, feeling the streams of magic become clearer and more distinct to him.
One day, the System gave him a quest that made him smile.
[Special Quest: «Willpower»]
[Goal: Hold your breath underwater for 60 seconds.]
[Reward: +0.5 to Stamina, increased resistance to suffocation.]
He went to the stream. The water was icy. He took a deep breath and plunged his head under. His child's body rebelled immediately—his ears ached, he wanted to breathe, to scream. But he clenched his fists and kept counting. His lungs burned. Ten seconds. Twenty. Forty… Spots swam before his eyes. He felt his body giving up.
And then he remembered. He remembered the darkness, the cold earth, the smell of blood and dust. He remembered his body being broken underfoot, how the last thing he had—his life—was taken from him. That memory was stronger than instinct. It made him clench his teeth and hold on. Fifty… fifty-five…
He surfaced at the sixtieth second, gasping and coughing. Tears streamed from his eyes from the pain and strain. But the System responded with a triumphant chime.
[Quest completed! Reward received.]
And he felt it. His lungs expanded; it felt like there was more air in them. He was no longer gasping. He stood waist-deep in the icy water and laughed. A quiet, happy, victorious laugh. He had done it. He had overcome not just the water, but the memory of his weakness.
That evening, lying in bed, he called up the System interface. He didn't look at the empty name field. Instead, he scrolled through the history of his achievements over the past months. Dozens, hundreds of entries. "EXP +1", "Strength +0.01", "Stamina +0.05", "Skill «Running» level 2", "Skill «Concentration» level 3"…
Individually, they were crumbs. Pitiful specks. But together… Together they formed a picture of steady growth. He had gone from a child who couldn't do a single push-up to someone who could run several kilometers and hold his breath for a minute. It was colossal progress. And it was achieved not by magic, not by a gift of fate, but by his own perseverance. With every drop of sweat, every muscle trembling from strain, every early rise.
He finally understood a simple and great truth: even the smallest steps, if taken consistently and without straying from the path, lead to great results. You cannot become strong in a single day. But you can become strong by becoming a micron stronger every day.
He closed his eyes, feeling a pleasant fatigue throughout his body. Tomorrow he would rise again before dawn. He would run again. He would do push-ups and meditate again. Because now he knew—it worked. His perseverance was the lever that would one day overturn the world. And he would not stop until he reached his ultimate goal—his name, hidden behind the seal of emptiness.
For now, he fell asleep with a firm certainty: every step, every push-up, every breath was not just training. It was a hammer blow against the shackles binding his true self.