The morning was cold, the sky a pale, pre-dawn grey. Lencar was in the fallow field behind his house, far enough away not to be heard. He took a deep breath, the air scraping his lungs. He was in "Mage Mode," and the sheer, passive weight of Yuno's mana was already giving him a headache. It felt like walking around with a second, invisible body strapped to his back.
"Alright, Phase A: Mana-Forging 2.0," he muttered, his voice a small puff of steam in the cold.
He dropped into a standard push-up stance. His hands, calloused and strong, sank slightly into the damp, cold earth. For a moment, he just held the position, acclimating.
Then, he executed the plan. He willed the massive, oceanic pool of copied wind magic to resist him. He didn't cast a spell; he just used the raw mana as an invisible, crushing weight, pressing down on every single muscle fiber.
He began to push up.
It was, without exaggeration, the single most difficult physical act of his entire fifteen-year life.
His body, forged by his own meager mana, was now fighting an ocean. It wasn't like moving through wet cement; it was like trying to push-up the planet. His arms, which could normally rep out a hundred push-ups, shook violently. A strangled, high-pitched "nghhh!" tore from his throat. Veins stood out on his forehead, his vision greying at the edges.
He pushed. He fought against the power of a four-leaf prodigy.
After what felt like an eternity—a full sixty seconds of near-aneurysmal effort—his arms locked. One rep.
He immediately collapsed, his chest slamming into the dirt, his face pressed into the cold soil. He lay there, gasping, his entire body feeling like it had been struck by lightning.
"Good," he wheezed, a delirious, painful smile twisting his lips. "This... this is the new baseline."
He couldn't do another. He knew, analytically, that he had torn muscle on a microscopic level. So, he moved to the next phase. "Phase B: The Drain."
He staggered to his feet and ran. He ran for two miles, deep into the woods, to a sheer, rocky cliff face he knew was far from any prying eyes. His Mana-Forged 2.0 had barely made a dent in the mana pool. He had to open the tap.
He opened his grimoire, its three-leaf disguise shimmering. "Okay, you inflexible beast. [Towering Tornado]!"
He aimed at the cliff. The spell roared from the page, a clumsy, artless column of wind that blasted from his hands. The sheer, uncontrolled recoil of Yuno's power was a physical blow. It was not a gentle, controlled spell; it was a backfire.
Lencar was thrown bodily backward, slamming his shoulder into a thick oak tree. He heard a distinct, sickening crack.
He screamed. His left clavicle was broken.
He lay on the forest floor, clutching his shoulder, his vision swimming with white-hot pain. But then, something new happened. The massive mana pool, sensing the injury, began to work. Yuno's recovery rate was a monster. The mana flooded his shoulder, hot and tingling. In less than two minutes, the bone was knit. The pain faded to a dull, throbbing ache.
He stood up, his arm rotating. He was healed.
A cold, analytical light entered his eyes. "That's useful."
He turned back to the cliff. "[Towering Tornado]!"
He was thrown back. He got up.
"[Towering Tornado]!"
He was thrown back. He learned to brace himself, his Mana-Forged legs digging into the earth like roots.
He switched to the chains. "[Magic-Sealing Chain]! [Chain-Dance Slasher]!"
The inflexible spells shot out like crude, iron spears, thudding into the cliff face, artless and clumsy. He wasn't practicing skill—he had no skill to practice. He was just opening the tap, letting the ocean drain.
It took eight straight hours.
Eight hours of non-stop, high-output, painful, and repetitive spellcasting. The sun was setting when he finally cast one last [Gentle Breeze] and... nothing. The tap was dry. The heavy, oppressive cloak of mana was gone.
He was empty.
He was also starving, dehydrated, and so exhausted he could barely see. But the plan wasn't finished.
"Phase C," he panted. "The Void."
He focused his will. Click.
He toggled to Anti-Magic.
The sudden silence was a shock. The world, which had been a roaring sea of magical pressure, went quiet. He felt light. He felt agile. He felt his own body, and only his own body. His grimoire was a dead weight in his hand, its magic gone.
He began his body-weight routine. Sprints. Pull-ups on a thick branch. Squats. With no mana to aid or resist him, it was just pure, unadulterated physical effort. This was Asta's world. And for the first time, Lencar truly, deeply respected the hellish, non-stop effort it must have taken to build a body in this state.
By the time he got home, he was a walking corpse. He ate three bowls of his mother's stew in a half-conscious daze, his parents chalking up his exhaustion to "a big day" and "new magic." He collapsed into his bed, the straw mattress feeling like a cloud. He was asleep before his head even settled.
He forced himself awake two hours later. The farmhouse was dark, his parents asleep. The moon was high.
And his mana? It was already half-full again. Yuno's recovery was insane.
"Phase D," he groaned, sitting up. "Dual-Casting."
He sat cross-legged on his floor, grimoire open in the moonlight.
Left hand. Right hand. Separate data streams. You can do this, Kenji.
He held his left hand out. "[Magic-Sealing Chain]."
He held his right hand out. "[Tiny Fireball]."
The chain shot out and wrapped around his wooden bedpost. Perfect.
At the exact same instant, the [Tiny Fireball]... exploded in his right palm.
"YEEEOOW!"
He yelped, smothering the flame on his wool blanket, the smell of burnt hair and cloth filling the tiny room. His hand was scorched. "Damn it!" His focus had slipped. He couldn't treat them as two separate acts. His mind, instinctively, had tried to merge them, applying the "launch" command from the chain to the "sustain" command of the fireball.
He sat there, clutching his burned hand in the dark.
This was Day One. He was broken, exhausted, and in pain. He had 179 days just like it to go.
He looked at his grimoire, its blank cover seeming to mock him. A cold, determined, and slightly unhinged smile spread across his face.
"Good," he whispered to the dark. "Tomorrow, I'll aim for two push-ups."