Chaos.
Claustrophobia.
Those were the only two words my brain could actively process.
I had spent the last ten years in the quiet, disciplined isolation of my grandfather's courtyard. I knew leaving that comfort behind to step into the real world was going to be difficult, but I hadn't prepared myself for this.
We were still technically in Tokyo. I knew that. But this hidden port didn't feel like the city I grew up in; it was entirely swallowed by a massive, unnatural wall of mist that separated us from the normal world. The air here was suffocatingly heavy. It smelled like harsh engine gasoline, bitter ocean salt, and the distinct, crackling ozone scent of a hundred anxious teenagers.
We were all lined up in a straight line getting ready to walk up the gangplank.
Looming in the water just ahead of us was the transport ship. It was so impossibly massive that it didn't even look like a vessel—it was a colossal, floating city of steel.
The sheer, rhythmic vibration of its engines rattled against my ribs. That mechanical roar, mixed with the overlapping, arrogant chatter of my soon-to-be peers, washed over me all at once. There were so many of them. They were so loud, and so irritatingly confident.
I looked down at my hands. I was gripping my wooden training sword so tightly that my knuckles had turned bone-white.
Clang.
Heavy boots struck the steel gangplank. The line finally surged forward.
"Have your ID cards ready at the boarding ramp!" an instructor's voice boomed through a megaphone, cutting through the thick, salty mist.
I watched the recruits ahead of me board the ship. None of them could just walk up normally; they had to show off. Small bursts of arrogant crimson fire flickered in the fog. Stray gusts of unnatural wind tossed people's luggage. They were flaunting their Boru, making sure everyone knew exactly how powerful they were.
Then, it was my turn.
I stepped up to the massive boarding doors. The instructor waiting there didn't look like a teacher; he looked like a weapon. He had long brown hair and an immaculate Academy uniform, but it was his presence that hit me first. His aura was heavy, dense, and practically suffocating. There was no doubt in my mind—this man had faced real Malice.
"ID, kid," he grunted, his face completely stoic.
"Oh... s-sorry," I stammered.
The sheer weight of his presence rattled my focus. I reached into my pocket, but my palms were slick with nervous sweat. The plastic card slipped right through my fingers and clattered onto the steel gangplank.
I froze. The heat of absolute embarrassment rushed to my face. My hand immediately dropped to the hilt of my wooden training sword, gripping it like a child clinging to their mother.
Before I could even crouch down to pick it up, a hard, deliberate shoulder slammed into mine.
"Get a move on, moron," a voice sneered.
I stumbled half a step, catching my balance instantly, and looked up. The boy standing next to me had messy black hair, but it was his face that caught me off guard. A harsh, jagged scar cut down his left side, hidden partially beneath a black eyepatch. His one visible right eye was a pale, glimmering white.
His gaze dropped to the wooden hilt in my hand. He scoffed. "A wooden toy? Are you lost, dead weight?"
Overlapping, mocking laughter erupted from the recruits waiting behind us.
In a split second, my embarrassment vanished, replaced entirely by my grandfather's discipline. I stood up perfectly straight, towering just a fraction over him.
"Apologize," I said. My voice wasn't shaking anymore. I narrowed my eyes. "Now."
The boy didn't flinch. Instead, a hollow, mocking smile spread across his face. He stared straight through me, his white eye practically piercing my soul.
"You wouldn't do anything even if I didn't," he whispered.
He didn't wait for my response. He simply stepped over my fallen ID, flashed his own card to the stoic instructor, and walked through the massive steel doors.
"See you inside, dead weight."
I let out a slow, controlled breath, forcing myself to relax my grip on my sword. I reached down, snatched my ID off the metal floor, and finally stepped across the threshold.
As I crossed the threshold into the ship's interior, the suffocating anxiety suddenly broke.
A familiar, lingering warmth bloomed in the center of my chest. It was the same gentle tug I had felt during my hardest training sessions back home in the courtyard.
It was a silent reassurance wrapping around my spirit, a promise that no matter how far across the ocean this steel city took me, my family's legacy was walking right beside me.
Thirty minutes later, hundreds of us were crammed onto the massive open-air deck.
A towering steel podium loomed over the crowd. Standing at the center, flanked by ten stoic Academy instructors, was Kyo Harasayuki. His polite, smiling facade was back, but the overwhelming authority in his posture commanded absolute silence from the recruits.
The roll call began. Names echoed over the loudspeaker, followed by nervous, crackling shouts of "Here!" from the crowd.
Then, the loudspeaker hummed.
"Ryomen Shujinko."
Kyo didn't look at his clipboard. He looked directly into the sea of students, his eyes locking dead onto mine, and smiled.
I raised my hand, keeping my chin high and my gaze steady. "Here."
The deck didn't stay silent this time. A collective, sharp intake of breath rippled through the recruits. The whispers started instantly, overlapping like static.
"Did he say Ryomen?""His father is dead.. right?""A Tier-1 swordsman... his dad was practically a Lesser-Boru Imperative..."
I kept my face perfectly still, but my heart hammered against my ribs. To me, Tujin was just a father. A caring, powerful ghost whose wooden sword I swung every single morning. But listening to the whispers, I realized the terrifying truth: to the rest of the world, I was standing in the shadow of everyone's hero.
A sharp nudge dug into my ribs.
I glanced to my right. It was the boy from the gangplank—the one with the jagged scar and the pale, glimmering eye. He wasn't glaring anymore. He was grinning with a sharp, predatory amusement.
"So, the dead weight is royalty," he whispered, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Carrying a pretty heavy name for a guy who fights with a wooden toy."
I tightened my grip on the hilt. "I wouldn't necessarily call him famous."
"Yeah, right," he scoffed. "The guy almost mastered one of the strongest Boru. He was an absolute monster."
Before I could fire back a response, Kyo's voice echoed over the loudspeaker again, cutting through the murmurs. He spoke louder this time.
"Next," Kyo announced, his polite smile widening into something undeniably proud. "My son. Harasayuki Tsume!"
Tsume didn't even look up at the podium. He kept his one good eye locked onto mine, his mocking grin stretching even wider.
He lazily raised his hand. "Right here, Dad."
The comforting warmth in my chest instantly vanished, replaced by an ice-cold knot of dread. The arrogant kid from the gangplank wasn't just some random bully.
He was the Overseer's son.