Early March. The air was thick with the promise of spring.
The cherry blossoms hadn't opened yet, but it wouldn't be long now.
It had snowed a few days prior, and Shinji was sure it would be the last snowfall until next winter.
Now, under the dusk sky on a deserted, snow-slicked riverbank, a lean, blue-haired boy—still somewhat scrawny for his age—was stripped to the waist, doing one-armed push-ups on the damp ground beside the rushing current.
Sweat had long since soaked the earth beneath him, but Shinji gritted his teeth and pushed on.
"...Two hundred ninety-nine... Three hundred..."
Finally hitting three hundred, he collapsed, arms giving out as he face-planted into the dirt, gasping for air.
[Grandson, twenty-second rest period commencing. 19... 18... 17...]
Hearing the now-familiar Siri voice in his head—a constant companion for three years—Shinji found he wasn't as angry as he used to be. He'd gotten used to it.
As for why it had switched back to Siri? The other voice options were just too expressive.
Having someone with full emotional range call you "grandson" in your ear every day? It was enough to drive anyone insane.
But Siri...She had no feelings.
Shoving himself up, Shinji didn't hesitate. He shucked off his pants, revealing anime girl-print swim trunks underneath, and dove headfirst into the icy, rapid-filled river.
The freezing water shocked him into sharp focus. Without a moment's hesitation, he started fighting his way upstream.
He was completely exhausted, but what choice did he have? A wage slave's work was never done.
[Grandson, you only have one hundred ninety-eight meters left in today's two-hundred-meter swim. Keep going, persevere. This King believes you will one day become a ruler worthy of your Grandfather.]
...Yep. Still wanted to throttle the damn system. But he couldn't reach it, and he couldn't block it either.
That brief moment of distraction broke his rhythm, and the powerful current instantly swept him several meters downstream.
But Shinji didn't give up. He just clenched his jaw and kept fighting. He'd been at this—training his body under the system's relentless daily tasks—since the day after he got the damn thing. Three years now.
As the system loved to remind him, to become a ruler, one must first forge a body of iron.
Of course, the system never referred to itself as a "system." It insisted it was King Athern, his forebear from a life long past, who had pursued him into this world to "restore the lost royal bloodline."
Shinji didn't believe a word of it. He still wanted to uninstall the damn thing.
He fought on, stroke after stroke, repeatedly pushed back by the river's icy, relentless current. But he never gave up. The progress bar for the main story quest was still abysmally low. If he slacked off on the daily tasks...
Finally, just as the last vestiges of twilight vanished and darkness began to fall, Shinji completed his daily mission: two sets of three hundred one-armed push-ups and a two-hundred-meter freestyle swim against the current.
Completely spent, he clawed his way onto the bank, hauling himself up. At the exact spot he emerged, he picked up a nearby stone and scratched a mark into the dirt.
A closer look would reveal the riverbank was covered in such marks, tracing his progress: five meters, ten, twenty... all the way to the current two hundred.
"Haaah—" Lying flat on his back, Shinji was still gasping for air. It took a full two minutes for his breathing to even out slightly.
Pushing himself up, he was about to pull up the system interface to check his daily reward when his peripheral vision caught a figure standing on the levee above.
It was a small, purple-haired girl with a ribbon in her hair, a backpack on her shoulders, staring down at him with vacant, hollow eyes.
Matou Sakura. Formerly Tōsaka Sakura. It had been four full years since she was adopted into the Matou family.
Her hair and eye color had both shifted, becoming a deeper purple, thanks to "training" Shinji didn't even want to imagine.
That dark, putrid, disgusting, soul-chillingly cold basement... if he could, Shinji would never set foot in it for the rest of his life.
Slowly, he got to his feet and began the long, two-hundred-meter walk back to where his backpack lay on the shore.
Pulling a clean towel from his bag, he roughly dried himself off, dressed, shouldered his pack, and trudged up the slope of the levee.
"Brother..."
As he passed Sakura, her soft voice reached him. Shinji didn't react, his face a mask of complete indifference. It was only after he had walked several meters past her that he responded with a cold, detached:
"Yeah."
Hearing this, Sakura silently lowered her head and followed behind him.
To be honest, over the past few years, Shinji's attitude toward Sakura had gradually shifted. It started from the initial mix of bullying and affection he'd shown before his memories returned, and slowly morphed into the current state of aloofness and cold detachment.
It was deliberate. He needed a cover for his daily training and the system's tasks. Adopting the persona of the bitter older brother driven by wounded pride after discovering the truth was the perfect excuse.
There was another reason, too: he absolutely could not afford to be too kind to Sakura, to let her become dependent on him. If that happened, the old worm would surely use him as a pawn to break and twist her even further—just a piece in the Fifth Holy Grail War, now only seven years away.
There wasn't a single doubt in Shinji's mind: if he let Sakura grow dependent on him in any way, the old worm wouldn't hesitate to use that. He would absolutely do it.
That old monster didn't understand concepts like family or affection.
So, until he had the power to protect himself, all he could do was keep his head down and play his part.
Fortunately, his acting was convincing enough. In the eyes of his so-called father and grandfather, his recent behavior was that of a boy who had discovered the painful truth—that Sakura, the outsider, was the true heir to the Matou legacy. That's why he'd grown colder and more distant toward her.
He'd even started looking for alternative paths to compete with her—like poring over the old man's travel journals from his journeys abroad, studying forgotten onmyō arts, pushing his body to its limits, and seeking out texts on ki control and shinra techniques—ancient practices said to harmonize body, mind, and spirit.
They probably thought he was just a stubborn fool, refusing to accept his fate. But they didn't pay him much mind. After all, he was just a failure with not a shred of magical talent.
Both the old worm and his cheap father had their attention completely focused on Sakura now, leaving him to his own devices.
This suited Shinji perfectly. He just needed time...
Pulling up the status and quest panels visible only to him, Shinji mentally confirmed the completion of his daily training task.
Instantly, a strange sensation flooded his body—a cool, tingling stream that somehow carried a profound warmth and deep satisfaction. The feeling was so intensely pleasant he almost moaned aloud, but he managed to stifle it.
[Grandson, it took you three years just to reach the First Gate of Reiryoku Control. You must apply yourself further.]
Reiryoku—spiritual energy, the life-force said to flow through all things. It wasn't something this world naturally provided, but the system synthesized it for him as a reward, allowing him to slowly refine his body into a vessel that could contain it.
It had taken three full years of grinding just to barely reach the first step—the First Gate—but it meant he was now, officially, a practitioner of the Athern Style, the path King Athern had designed for his descendants.
He had long since memorized the Reikan circulation pattern and the Seikon chart of spiritual channels the system provided. Ignoring the system's smug tone, Shinji carefully attempted his first full circulation.
He got it on the first try.
Feeling the slowly flowing reiryoku within his body, coalescing and stabilizing, a surge of joy rose in his chest, though his face remained an impassive mask.
As they passed through a brightly lit shopping street, Shinji suddenly remembered something. He stopped and glanced into an accessory shop by the roadside.
Today... was his poor little sister's birthday, wasn't it?