'It always ends exactly the same way,' Jiro thought, sitting cross-legged on his bloodstained bed and channeling his focus inward.
Ever since he was a kid, trying to form a mana core had always brought him nothing but severe pain. It didn't matter who tried to help him, what advanced healing techniques they used, or how expensive the medicine was.
The pain was always far too much, putting him right on the verge of killing him and violently ripping his physical body apart from the inside.
He knew perfectly well that doing this alone was basically signing his own death warrant. Usually, this was the exact point where the academy instructors would step in and forcefully stop him before his physical limits gave out.
'But nobody is here to stop me tonight,' he thought, aggressively forcing the ambient mana directly into his chest without a single care for the pain.
It hit him almost instantly.
"Argh—!" he violently gasped, feeling his inner channels tearing open.
His body immediately started breaking down as he forced the mana deeper. The pressure was unimaginable, and thick veins visibly began bursting under his skin, dyeing his clothes red with fresh blood.
His vision went completely blurry, and every single instinct in his brain was screaming at him that he was actively dying.
He could feel his life slipping away under the sheer force of the rejected mana, but he just continued pushing.
'I refuse to die like this... I'm not going to be a failure anymore,' he thought, letting pure hate and sheer fury push his broken body past the brink of death.
He didn't care if his body literally ripped itself in half. He continued pulling even more mana into his chest, forcing it into the exact center of his broken channels while waiting for the final, fatal burst.
But suddenly, the tearing pain stopped.
'Huh?' He thought, his blurry eyes widening as he finally started feeling something solidifying in his chest.
Instead of violently exploding outward, the mana compressed perfectly. He felt the distinct, undeniable weight of a newly formed mana core humming right in the center of his chest.
But a split second later, he felt another compression.
'Wait... two?' He thought, feeling completely shocked as a second core perfectly solidified right next to the first one.
Before he could even process what was happening, a third sudden compression hit him.
'Three...?' he thought, his mind struggling to understand how this was even possible.
And then, just as suddenly, a fourth core fully locked into place.
'Four cores?' He thought, feeling the immense, crushing power of four separate mana engines humming perfectly inside his completely healed body.
Before he could even fully wrap his head around it, a sharp chime suddenly rang directly inside his brain.
Ding!
A semi-transparent blue screen materialized out of thin air, floating right in front of his face.
'What the fuck is this thing?' he thought, quickly flinching back and throwing his hands up defensively.
The screen didn't disappear, instead, glowing lines of text began typing themselves out right across the floating panel.
[Four Simultaneous Cores Detected.]
[Host Survival Confirmed. System Initialization Complete.]
'System?' he thought, his heart pounding hard suddenly. He had read about legendary artifacts and bloodline awakenings at the academy, but a glowing blue box appearing out of thin air was completely unheard of.
The screen flashed again, bringing up a new block of text.
[User: Jiro]
[Status: Awakened]
[Unique Trait Analyzing...]
The panel aggressively glitched for a split second, the soft blue light turning into a harsh red before perfectly returning to normal.
[Trait Successfully Unlocked: Absolute Mimicry (Rank: Unknown)]
'Absolute Mimicry?' he thought, his brows pulling together tightly. 'That's my skill? How does that even work, and why is the rank totally unknown?'
As if reacting directly to his question, the floating screen suddenly shifted. The previous text vanished, replaced by a detailed breakdown.
[Absolute Mimicry: The ability to permanently replicate and store the traits, skills, and affinities of others.]
[Replication Efficiency is strictly determined by the method of acquisition. The recognized paths are as follows:]
'Okay... so I can copy powers but what does it mean by paths?' he thought, leaning slightly forward to read the smaller text appearing below.
[1. Observation (E-Rank Efficiency). By witnessing an active skill, the User replicates a heavily flawed, basic copy. Mastery requires significant manual training.]
'Makes sense,' he thought, nodding slowly. 'Just looking at something shouldn't give me the perfect version.'
[2. Combat Execution (C-Rank Efficiency). By enduring a direct strike from the target skill, the User's body memorizes the opponent's mana signature. Yields a 70% effective copy instantly.]
'So taking a hit gives me most of the skill right away,' he thought, feeling a little anxious since taking direct hits from top awakened students sounded incredibly risky.
[3. Subjugation (A-Rank Efficiency). Completely breaking an opponent's spirit and will in physical combat allows the User to forcefully rip the skill from their core. Yields a 100% effective copy instantly.]
He completely paused at that one. All the anger he had felt earlier in the courtyard suddenly flared backward into his chest.
'Subjugation,' he thought, a totally cold smile starting to form on his lips. 'Meaning if I just absolutely crush them, I take everything they have perfectly.'
He continued reading down to the final entry, his eyes scanning the last glowing line.
[4. Deep Resonance / Intimacy (S-Rank Origin Efficiency). Deep physical and emotional convergence with a target entirely merges both mana signatures. Yields a 120% Origin-Depth copy, unlocking evolutions and hidden branches of the target's power that they have not yet achieved themselves.]
'...'
He just sat there on the bed, staring at that final block of text for a very long time.
'Physical and emotional convergence?' he thought, reading the line three more times just to make sure he wasn't hallucinating from the sheer blood loss. 'Intimacy? Does that mean... wait.'
His perfectly cold, calculating revenge mindset suddenly shattered, leaving him totally rattled.
'Wait, no way. Is this thing actually telling me I get a 120% boost if I sleep with them?' he thought, his battered face suddenly turning a bright shade of red. 'What kind of ridiculous, degenerate system is this?!'
He violently waved his hand straight through the holographic projection, trying to clear the screen away before someone somehow walked in and saw it.
'I am not doing that!' he thought, feeling completely flustered as he sat alone in his quiet room. 'I will just stick to beating people up! Subjugation is perfectly fine!'
Before he could even catch his breath from his embarrassment, the floating blue screen violently flashed red again.
[No Active Skills or Affinities Detected.]
[Executing Initial Mind Scan to synthesize an Absolute Mimicry Starter Skill...]
'A starter skill?' he thought, blinking as the red light illuminated his dark room.
[Scan Complete. Synthesis Successful.]
[Skill Created: Domination (Passive/Active)]
[Effect 1: Allows the User to project their raw aura and bloodlust to physically subjugate targets.]
[Effect 2: Allows the User to dominate their own internal limits during training, compounding growth efficiency by 300%.]
'Three hundred percent?' he thought, his eyes widening. That alone was completely insane, meaning that with that kind of growth speed, he could close the gap between himself and the top students in a matter of months instead of years.
But before he could even celebrate, another glowing line of text scrolled down the panel.
[Warning: Host's current physical vessel is fundamentally incompatible with the Domination skill.]
[Initiating Forced Body Readjustment.]
'Readjustment?' he thought, feeling a sudden spike of panic. 'Wait, don't tell me—'
"Argh!" he screamed out loud, violently collapsing sideways onto his bed as an unimaginable wave of absolute pain suddenly exploded through every cell in his body.
This was completely different from the tearing of his internal channels. He could literally hear his own bones audibly snapping and grinding together as they rapidly broke and restructured themselves.
His muscles tore apart and instantly knitted back together, forcibly reshaping his frail, sickly frame into something completely different.
'Make it stop!' he thought, feeling totally helpless as he actively writhed in his own blood on the mattress.
He dug his fingernails straight into the ruined bedsheets, feeling pure agony as the system relentlessly reconstructed his entire physical vessel to properly handle his new power.