The bunkhouse was a testament to the Guild's bare-minimum charity. It was a long, low building of damp stone, housing two dozen narrow cots, each with a thin, lumpy mattress and a single scratchy blanket that smelled of lye and despair. Leo's was at the very end, tucked into a corner where the chill from the walls seeped into his bones. It was his first night in what passed for his new home, and the space felt both claustrophobicically small and terrifyingly vast in its emptiness.
The other occupants were a silent, exhausted collection of low-level laborers—gardeners, dung-shovelers, washer-folk. A few bore the faint yellow brand. Most did not. None spoke to him. His arrival, the story of the "showy Defective," had clearly preceded him. He was a curiosity, a potential source of bad luck, to be ignored.
But Leo didn't care about their silence. His mind was a roaring chamber, echoing with a single, pounding thought: [Power Strike]
Lying on his back in the near-darkness, the only light the faint, shameful glow from his own palm where he'd rested it on his chest, he stared at the water-stained ceiling beams. He focused inward, pulling up his status screen. The blue text hung in his mind's eye.
COPY SLOT: [POWER STRIKE] (0/100 MP)
He concentrated on the words. He tried to feel the skill, to summon the sensation Janus must have had when he crushed the rat. He pictured the earthy brown flash, the casual power. He clenched his fist under the blanket, imagining mana—whatever that was—flowing down his arm, coalescing into that potent energy.
Nothing.
Not a tingle. Not a flicker. Not even a vague sense of something being there. It was like staring at a word in a foreign language and trying to understand it by sheer will. The skill was locked in his System, a trophy behind glass he couldn't touch.
Frustration, hot and sharp, replaced the cold calculation from the pens. Was it broken? Was the copy flawed? Did his "Defective" nature mean he could see skills but never use them? The thought was a plunge into an even deeper well of despair.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. He held his right hand out in front of him, fingers curled as if gripping a weapon. He visualized the mop handle. He remembered the CRUNCH. He whispered, barely a breath, "Power Strike."
His hand remained just a hand. Pale, long-fingered, utterly ordinary.
For an hour, he tried variations. Different mental commands. Focusing on his stomach, his chest, his brow where he imagined his will might reside. He tried a forceful thought, a gentle coaxing, a desperate plea. The System screen remained unchanged, the MP at a steadfast, mocking zero.
Finally, he fell back onto the thin mattress, exhausted not from physical labor but from mental strain. The spark of hope from the afternoon was guttering, threatened by the suffocating reality of his ignorance. He had the key, but no idea how to turn it in the lock.
The next day in the Rock Rat pen was a slow torture of experimentation. The despair of the night had hardened into a stubborn, grinding determination. If he couldn't summon the skill in stillness, maybe he needed motion. Maybe it was in the doing.
As he pushed the heavy, filthy water with his mop, he didn't just push. He focused. With each shove, he tried to inject intent into the movement. He pictured the brown energy flaring from the mop head, blasting the slurry towards the grate. He gritted his teeth, straining not just with his muscles but with his mind.
Nothing happened except he got tired faster. The water slopped and resisted, same as before.
During a break, while scraping caked dung from the stone wall with a metal squeegee, he had another idea. Perhaps it needed impact. A sharp, focused release.
He waited until Janus's broad back was turned, heading to check on the Glitterhens. Leo hefted the mop. He eyed a clean patch of stone floor, free of muck. He took a breath, envisioned the brown flash inside the mop head, at the point of contact, and swung the mop down like a hammer.
He put too much of his frustrated strength into it. The worn mop handle, stressed by years of abuse, gave a sickening CRACK. The blow landed, but it was just a clumsy, loud slap of wet rope on stone. No flash. No power. Just the sound of wood fracturing.
A shadow fell over him.
"What in the seven hells do you think you're doing, Defective?"
Leo froze, the cracked mop handle feeling suddenly like evidence of a crime. Janus loomed, his face a thundercloud. He snatched the mop from Leo's hands, examining the new, hairline split running down the length of the cheap pine.
"Swinging at ghosts? Practicing for a battle against a puddle?" Janus's voice was low and dangerous. "This. Is. Guild. Property." He punctuated each word by tapping the broken handle against Leo's chest. "Its cost comes from your allowance. Which, as of this moment, is zero for the next month. You will work for free. You will also mend this. And if I see you treating your tools—pathetic as they are—with anything less than miserly care again, you'll be cleaning the latrines with your tongue. Understood?"
Leo could only nod, his face burning. The humiliation was a public stripping. The other workers in nearby pens didn't even bother to hide their smirks.
Lunch was a lump of coarse barley bread and a cup of thin, lukewarm broth, consumed on an upturned crate in a corner of the yard, away from everyone. The taste was of nothing, which was a blessing. As he chewed, his eyes were drawn to the distant training yard, separated from the menagerie by a high wooden fence but visible through the gaps.
There, the real Adventurers—or at least the Iron-rank aspirants and guards—trained. Their movements were sharp, purposeful. The clang of practice swords on wooden dummies carried across the distance.
And there, he saw it again. Over and over. A guard wearing a padded gambeson practiced strikes on a heavy post. With each controlled, powerful swing, a clear, solid shell of brown light would flash into existence around the practice sword's blade a moment before impact, disappearing just after. Thwack-CRUNCH. Thwack-CRUNCH. It wasn't a sputter or a flicker. It was a brief, perfect solidification of power.
[POWER STRIKE] OBSERVED.
SKILL ALREADY COPIED.
The notification was useless, but the sight was an education. Leo's eyes devoured the details. The guard's stance: rooted, balanced. The swing: not a wild haymaker, but a tight, efficient arc from the shoulder. The breath: exhaled sharply on the strike. The intent was so clear it was almost visible—not anger, but focused application.
Unthinkingly, Leo's hand tightened around his bread. His other hand found the cracked mop handle leaning against the crate. He didn't swing it. He just mimicked the motion, a tiny, careful pull and push from his shoulder, his eyes locked on the distant guard.
It's in the timing, he thought. The light appears just before the hit. It's not something you summon and hold. It's something you release at the point of contact.
It was the first piece of practical understanding he'd gleaned. It felt more valuable than the bread in his hand.
Back in the pen that afternoon, his mind churned with the new observation. He was so absorbed in mentally rehearsing the tight, efficient swing that he didn't notice the large, particularly bold Rock Rat that had wandered away from its wallowing companions and was now investigating his oversized boot.
He shifted his weight, and his foot brushed against something solid and furry.
He yelped, jumping back. The rat, startled, squeaked and bared its yellow teeth, not attacking but standing its ground in the open space between Leo and the herd.
Panic, pure and instinctive, flooded Leo's system. The rat was right there. The memory of Janus's boot, the guard's sword, the theory of timing—it all condensed into a single, frantic impulse.
He didn't think. He gripped the broken mop handle like a spear, took a clumsy, off-balance step forward, and swung sideways at the rodent, putting all his fear and sudden hope into the blow. As he swung, he didn't whisper. He shouted, giving voice to all his pent-up frustration and desire.
"POWER STRIKE!"
The mop head, heavy with filthy water, connected with the rat's flank with a wet THWAP.
The rat let out a pained, indignant squeak, tumbled over twice in the muck, and then scrambled to its feet. It shook itself, gave Leo a look that seemed more offended than hurt, and waddled hurriedly back to its companions, utterly alive.
No brown flash. No crunch. Just a wet slap.
A new, terribly specific notification appeared, burning with cold finality.
INVALID USE.
SKILL ACTIVATION FAILED: PRIMARY ACTION (KILLING BLOW) NOT ACHIEVED.
MP GAINED: 0
TOTAL MP: 0/100
Leo stood there, panting, the mop hanging limply in his hands. The adrenaline drained away, leaving him cold and utterly hollow. He'd done everything. He'd mimicked the motion. He'd focused his intent. He'd even said the name. And all he'd managed was to annoy a Level 0 pest.
He was a fool. A Defective fool playing at being a warrior.
He didn't notice he was being watched. From her perch on a low fence by the Glitterhen pen, finishing her own meager lunch, Elara had seen the entire, pathetic episode: the startled jump, the wild swing, the shouted phrase that echoed briefly in the yard before being swallowed by the general din, the rat's offended retreat.
She didn't laugh. The other stable hands who'd seen it were chuckling, elbowing each other. "Defective trying to fight a rat!" one snorted.
Elara's grey eyes just watched Leo as he stood, defeated, in the center of the muck. She saw the way his shoulders slumped, not with the normal fatigue of labor, but with the specific weight of a hope brutally dashed. She recognized that weight. It was a familiar companion.
She finished her bread, dusted her hands on her coveralls, and went back to work. But later, as the afternoon light began to fade and the workers lined up for their final scrap of food before being released, she found herself next to him in the shuffling queue.
The cook, a woman with arms like tree trunks and a permanent scowl, doled out the evening ration: one small, hard roll per person. She slapped them into outstretched hands without looking.
Elara got hers. Leo, staring at the ground, received his.
As they turned away from the cookhouse, walking back towards the bunkhouse and the menagerie, Elara did something quick and subtle. Without breaking stride or looking at him, she brushed past Leo's side. In that moment of contact, her hand, holding her own bread roll, nudged against his.
He felt the press of the second roll into his palm.
By the time he registered it, she was already three steps ahead, her back to him, her braid swinging gently as she walked, as if nothing had happened. She didn't look back.
Leo looked down at his hand. Two rolls. One grey and hard, still warm from her grip. The message was wordless, but clearer than any speech: I saw. It's hard. Here.
It wasn't pity. It was solidarity. A tiny, silent sharing of meager resources in a world designed to starve them. It was the first kindness he'd been shown since the brand.
He ate both rolls slowly, savoring the extra mouthfuls of sustenance. The taste was still nothing, but it felt different. It felt like fuel.
As he lay in his cot that night, the day's final humiliation and the strange gift played over in his mind. The System's message was brutal, but it was also data. Primary action (killing blow) not achieved.
The realization clicked into place, cold and hard, extinguishing the last embers of his earlier, naive theories. It wasn't about shouting the name. It wasn't just about mimicking the motion. It wasn't even about wanting it badly enough.
Janus hadn't just used Power Strike. He had used it to kill.
The guard in the training yard was striking to destroy the dummy.
The skill, his System demanded, was a tool for ending things. You didn't practice it in the air. You didn't test it on stones. You proved your mastery of it by taking life with it. That was the transaction. That was the grim, fundamental rule.
It has to be a killing blow, Leo thought into the darkness, his jaw tight. I have to actually kill something with it.
The path forward was no longer a mystery. It was a dark, narrow tunnel, paved with the corpses of worthless creatures. And he had no choice but to walk it.