Zeke woke up screaming.
"Seven days?!" His shout echoed through Ashbourne, startling chickens into a frenzy and sending a few neighbors stumbling out of their huts in alarm. Sheep bolted in the pasture, a shepherd waving his arms as though fending off a wolf. A baker leaned out his window with flour still dusting his beard.
"If he keeps screaming like that," the man muttered, "I'll start charging him extra for bread."
Old Marta leaned on her broom, squinting across the lane. "The boy's finally gone mad."
But Zeke wasn't listening. The moment his feet touched the ground, he threw himself into chores like a madman. He grabbed buckets, tried sprinting across the square with them sloshing at his sides, muttering "sect trials, sect trials" under his breath. He slipped halfway, doused the road in water, and landed flat on his back.
"…He's definitely gone mad," one neighbor whispered.
Zeke groaned, coughing up dust. "Immortality isn't built for mortals…" Then he rolled over, popped back onto his feet, and staggered toward the woodpile.
He set to chopping with wild determination. The first swing nearly bounced off the log, the second nearly missed, but by the third he was swinging like a man carving his own grave. Sweat poured off him in rivers, his face red and determined.
The System's voice arrived as steady as always.
[Quest completed. Reward: five points. Total points: fifty. Advancement unlocked. You have reached the Late Stage of the Body Tempering Realm.]
Zeke froze. The world tilted. Suddenly his body quaked, bones creaking, muscles tightening, veins bulging with new vigor. A violent surge of energy spread from his chest out to every fingertip, a hundred tiny explosions racing through him at once. His breath came ragged, his knees buckled—then he let out a laugh.
It wasn't a sane laugh. It was a maniac's laugh.
"Hah! Yes! Do you see this?!" he shouted at the sky. "Late Stage! I'm a genius! A prodigy! A—"
He collapsed face-first in the dirt.
The villagers rushed over, panicked. "He's dying!" someone shouted.
But before they could touch him, Zeke shot up to his feet and flexed both arms so hard his shirt nearly tore at the seams. "Look at this power!" He spun dramatically in a circle and nearly toppled over again.
A carpenter clapped him on the back. "About time you learned the meaning of sweat, boy."
Old Marta rolled her eyes. "Possessed. Not by spirits, mind you. Just by stupidity."
Zeke grinned wildly, teeth shining, hair sticking up at angles. He puffed his chest. "The heavens can't stop me!"
The heavens, however, had other ideas.
[Next advancement requirement: one hundred points. Peak Stage Body Tempering.]
Zeke's face froze. His grin cracked like cheap pottery. "…One hundred?" His voice broke. "One hundred?! I thought fifty was bad enough!"
The villagers watched him scream at the air again. Marta muttered to her neighbor, "Now he's arguing with ghosts."
Zeke staggered back to the woodpile, still fuming. "Fine. One hundred. Just double the slavery. Do you hear me, System? I'll do it, but you'd better give me wings afterward!"
The System said nothing.
So Zeke ground himself through the rest of the day's tasks. He carried buckets until his shoulders burned, ran until his lungs ached, helped old folks fix roofs, fetched water for mothers, chopped more logs until the blisters on his hands burst. He sat cross-legged at the end, sweat dripping, chest heaving, forcing his mind to still long enough to complete the final meditation.
By sundown, the voice returned.
[Daily quests completed. Reward: twenty-five points. Bonus awarded: five points. Total points: eighty-two.]
Zeke flopped backward in the grass, staring up at the sky. His chest heaved, body trembling, but there was a new strength running through his limbs.
"Slave labor immortality…" he wheezed. "That's all this is…"
He forced himself into another round of training that same evening—more logs, more buckets, another desperate jog through the fields. Children ran beside him, carrying toy buckets and chanting, "Fly, Zeke, fly!" He tried to wave them off. "Go home! This isn't play—it's suffering!" But he tripped mid-sprint, rolled across the dirt, and popped back up shouting, "Combat training!" The kids cheered as if he'd done it on purpose.
Villagers leaned on fences, shaking their heads. "The boy's working harder than Harrod's hammer these days."
Meanwhile, elders gathered near the square, listening as a merchant spoke in low tones.
"Another village found livestock drained dry by a qi beast. Too close, far too close."
The elders muttered uneasily. One spat into the dirt. "When beasts move this way, men with swords and robes follow soon after."
"And recruiters," another added grimly.
The merchant nodded. "I've seen them myself on the northern road. They're not strolling this year—they're hunting. Fast and desperate. Something's stirring."
Marta snorted. "Recruiters, beasts, heavens… it's all trouble waiting to happen."
Zeke overheard just enough between his panting breaths. His grin returned, wild and unshakable. "Recruiters… robes… flying… I'll get there. I'll get there even if it kills me!"
By the time the moon was high, his arms shook and his legs quivered, but he was smiling through the pain.
The System's voice struck once more before he finally collapsed.
[Time remaining: five days.]
Zeke smirked, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and chuckled. "Eighteen points in five days? Hah. I've got this in the bag." He spread his arms wide at the heavens as if claiming victory already.
Villagers whispered from doorways, watching him grin up at nothing.
"He's lost it."
"At this rate he'll wear a trench in the fields before he learns to fly."
Marta swept her stoop, muttering, "If immortality means this much noise, I'd rather stay mortal."
But Zeke didn't hear her. He lay back in the grass, cocky as ever, thinking he was nearly finished. He had no idea that the heavens were only letting him taste relief for one night—because the real wall had yet to appear