Morning light spilled through the stained-glass windows of the Grand Hall, splintering across long tables overflowing with roasted meats, honeyed fruit, and steaming porridges. The hall buzzed with the chaotic energy of the newly marked—first-years comparing bruises, upperclassmen boasting of summer campaigns, and instructors pretending to ignore the rising noise.
Ray slipped into the hall with his tray, flanked by Harel, Rian, and Calen.
“Ray! Over here! I saved you the strategic seat!” Rian waved him over with a piece of toast held like a baton.
Calen snorted as he sat down. “The ‘strategic seat’ is just the one closest to the second-helpings line.”
“Correct,” Rian said proudly. He looked at Ray, his expression turning uncharacteristically serious for a moment. “You did well yesterday. I didn’t expect a noble to actually have the guts to stay conscious through a ritual that intense.”
“Or survive it,” Calen added dryly. “Most people would have let their soul scatter the moment the shrine flared, but you just… held on.”
Ray beamed, feeling a genuine warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with his Ash Circuit. “Thank you for the overwhelming vote of confidence. I mostly remember the screaming, but I'll take the compliment.”
For the first time since waking up in this world, the "Gamer" felt like he actually belonged to a group.
Then, a shadow fell over the table—sharp, expensive, and draped in the smugness of a first-born son. Garret Melborne.
Ray froze mid-bite as Garret leaned on the table with the practiced grace of an older brother who lived to ruin a good mood. “Well, well,” he drawled. “If it isn’t the Unconscious Genius.”
“Good to see you too, Garret,” Ray muttered into his porridge.
Garret reached out and ruffled Ray’s hair with aggressive, brotherly force. “Don’t embarrass the family name today, alright? Try not to get flattened in the lunch line—that would be a tragic end to such a ‘blazing’ career.”
Ray slapped his hand away. “Stop touching the hair!”
Garret smirked, patted him a second time just to prove he could, and sauntered off toward the upperclassman section, greeted by a chorus of cheers. Ray growled at his bowl. “I hate him. I officially hate him.”
“Older siblings are a biological curse,” Calen noted sympathetically.
Before Ray could recover, another presence materialized. Rowen Vernhard. He looked perfect—uniform crisp, hair lacquered into place, and a smirk that was practically begging for a fist.
“Congratulations on your mediocre performance yesterday, Melborne,” Rowen said loudly, ensuring the surrounding tables could hear.
Ray didn't even look up. “Rowen. Do you ever mind your own business, or is being an annoyance a full-time elective?”
Rowen flashed a dazzling, insincere smile. “No need to be shy. Everyone saw your engraving. It was... adorable. Like watching a puppy wrestle a chair.”
Harel choked on his bread. Calen whispered, “Why a chair?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Rian muttered.
Rowen leaned in closer, his voice dripping with condescension. “Just don’t go thinking you’re special. Some of us are actual prodigies. You’re just a fluke with a high fever.”
Ray narrowed his eyes. “Oh, absolutely. You’re the top prodigy of finishing in the exact same rank as every other person who didn't win.”
Rowen’s smile twitched—a minor victory, but Ray savored the sight of that polished mask cracking. Before Rowen could fire back, a massive bronze bell tolled from the hall entrance.
“ALL FIRST-YEARS—ASSEMBLE IN THE TRAINING FIELD!”
The instructors herded the class into the open courtyard. Thousands of boots crunched on the gravel as students gathered beneath the towering banners of their divisions. A broad-shouldered Knight-Captain stepped onto the dais, his arms crossed like steel beams.
“FIRST-YEARS! LISTEN WELL!”
The courtyard went deathly silent.
“You have received your Origin Vein—your first soul-binding. Congratulations.”
A wave of excitement and whispered cheers rippled through the crowd. Ray felt a spark of pride—the "Ash Circuit" was finally his.
The Captain immediately killed the mood. “Do not get excited.”
Ray blinked. …Wait, what?
“The Origin Vein is not power,” the Captain barked. “It is a seed. And most seeds wither before they ever break the soil. Today, we see who among you is actually worth the ink on your skin.”
He gestured to a rack of blunted practice swords. “To your divisions! Training begins now!”
The Captain didn't mince words. “You are NOT ready to use powers. You are NOT ready to fight monsters. And you are DEFINITELY not ready to run off thinking you are heroes.”
Ray felt his stomach drop. Hard. A Mage Instructor stepped forward, her hands clasped behind her back. “For the next three years, your ONLY goal is exploring your Origin Vein and guiding a stable path toward the Foundation Vein. This will be a grueling and boring journey, but you will use this time to build your foundations—not just the vein.”
She paced before the rows of trembling cadets. “You will learn how to scavenge and hunt for your own food. You will build your own shelter. We will teach you how once—after that, the wild is your only teacher.”
Ray felt a surge of resentment. He hadn't been taught to camp or skin a rabbit at the Avery estate or back home. As he stood there, a dark thought took root: They just want me to suffer. It felt like the entire world had conspired to trade his comfortable, noble life for a damp tent and a handful of dry rations.
The students murmured anxiously. Ray, ever the optimist, raised a shaking hand. “Um—excuse me, ma’am? When do we learn fire spells? Or sword-flame techniques? Or… you know, the fun stuff?”
The instructor blinked once. Then she laughed—a full, unrestrained sound that echoed against the stone walls. “Hah! Every batch has one of you.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Ray turned a bright, humiliated red.
“Boy, you barely have an engraving,” the Knight-Captain added, his voice like gravel. “The mark on your back is dormant without a pathway. The door is now open, kid, but now you have to find the path on your own .”
“So… how long does it take to find the path?” Ray croaked.
“Years,” she said happily.
The Captain began pacing again, his boots clicking rhythmically like a ticking clock. “You will spend hours each day meditating on your engraving—feeling its warmth, its pulse, its resonance—and then guiding it through your bodies. It is slow. It is painful. It is tedious. And there is no shortcut, no cheat sheet, and no handbook.”
“And those who cannot connect the Veins?” a girl asked, her voice small.
“They are dismissed,” the Captain said, his voice turning to iron. “Expelled from the Academy. Permanently.”
A sharp, collective breath rippled through the first-years. The instructor explained the divisions: Scholars for theory, Engravers for symbols. But for Knights and Mages, the path was internal. Physical. Brutal.
“One more thing,” the instructor added, her smile turning predatory. “As of today, the Knight Division is hereby banned from the Grand Hall. You will survive on rations and limited resources. If you can’t find food, then you will starve. In the wild, pudding does not exist.”
A few cadets looked like they’d just been told they were being executed. Ray just exhaled slowly. Hard. Long. Lonely. This wasn’t a heroic montage. This was a reality check.
Ray slumped, his soul practically exiting his body. A horrible thought crawled into his mind. “No way… it couldn’t possibly be…”
His breath hitched. “Am I… in the time-skip arc already?”
Time-skip arcs were supposed to happen after the protagonist lost to a Demon King or watched a mentor die. Not during freshman orientation. But three years of meditation before a single fireball? It was undeniable.
“Isn’t this way too early…?” he whispered in despair.
Beside him, Calen looked miserable. “Meditation is the worst.”
Harel nodded solemnly. “My back is going to disintegrate.”
Ray shivered. This wasn't a training montage. This was suffering. From across the courtyard, Isolde looked amused and Garret smirked as if this were all obvious. Somewhere among the Engravers, Elaine Avery watched Ray silently—thoughtfully.
Ray sat cross-legged under a massive courtyard tree later that afternoon, sweat dripping down his chin and his back aching. He had meditated until his bones felt hollow. He had visualized fire until he saw sparks behind his eyelids. He had breathed so slowly he was pretty sure he had briefly legally died.
A full week. Seven days. Over fifty hours of meditation and twice that in physical torture.
Ray had done everything the instructors recommended—and everything they hadn’t. He’d done morning sprints until his lungs felt coated in battery acid. He’d done push-ups until his arms wobbled like overcooked noodles. He’d even survived Garret’s sadistic “Knight Warm-ups,” which Ray was reasonably certain were classified as a war crime in his old world.
Every night, Ray crawled into his sad excuse for a tent—a lopsided bundle of canvas that sagged like a dying relative. Every morning, he dragged himself out to do it all over again.
This was it. The moment all the suffering, sweating, and borderline hallucinating finally paid off. Ray wiped the grime from his brow, sat cross-legged beneath a tree, and opened his Status Window with trembling excitement.
Please, he prayed. Just enough progress to feel like a protagonist.
His vision lit up. And what he saw made his soul shrivel.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATUS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
NAME: Takahara Kenji (Ray Melborne)
AGE: 12
LEVEL: 3
EXP: 47 / 100
HP: 78 / 78
STM: 33 / 33
ATTRIBUTES:
? STR: 9 (+4)
? AGI: 8(+2)
? VIT: 11(+3)
? DEX: 5(+1)
? INT: 10(+2)
? WIS: 8
NEW TRAIT UNLOCKED:
ASH CIRCUIT — VEIN I: ORIGIN
A corrupted/altered Fire Vein.
Type: Unknown
Effect: ???
Stability: UNSTABLE
Resonance: EXTREME
Synchronization: 0.1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skills — [Analyze Lv.1]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
QUEST: Unknown Origin — Investigate
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ray froze. He stared. He slowly leaned closer, then slammed the screen with both hands.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN ZERO POINT TWO PERCENT?!”
A week of spiritual torture. And he had gained... 0.1%. He felt something inside him crack.
Calen, meditating nearby, cracked open a weary eye. “…Ray? You okay? You’re vibrating.”
Ray turned toward him like a haunted scarecrow. “No,” he whispered. “I am not okay. I’ve trained harder than any shōnen protagonist pre-timeskip, and all I got was—” he jabbed a trembling finger at the glowing numbers “—POINT. ONE. PERCENT.”
Harel, lying face-down in the grass, groaned into the dirt without lifting his head. He still had no idea what a “shōnen” was. He’d asked once; Ray said it was a genre; Harel remained profoundly confused.
“That’s normal… I think…” Harel mumbled.
“No, it is NOT normal!” Ray clutched his hair. “At this pace, I’ll reach the Foundation Vein when I’m one hundred!”
A soft breeze drifted across the courtyard. It felt like the world itself was laughing at him. Ray collapsed backward into the grass, staring at the sky. “Ash Circuit… you were supposed to be a blessing. Not a mathematically insulting curse.”
Calen jogged over, dropping onto the grass beside them with a heavy grunt. “Oi. You guys hear the news?”
Ray blinked. “Please tell me it’s about a hidden shortcut.”
“No,” Calen said flatly. “Better. It’s about that silver-haired guy. Lucien.”
Harel finally lifted his head. “What about him? Did he finally get engraved?”
“He’s gone.”
Ray froze mid-mental breakdown. “…Gone?”
“Yeah. Took a leave of absence. Already left the academy grounds this morning.”
Ray sat bolt upright, his eyes wide. “What do you mean leave of absence?! We literally just started! We’re basically still in the tutorial!”
Calen tilted his head, looking at Ray with genuine confusion. “Why do you keep calling it a ‘tutorial’? It’s the beginning of a three-year grueling course of pain.”
“It’s—it’s an expression!” Ray retorted in a small panic, waving his hands dismissively. “I mean, how can this guy just leave? He’s not special, right? He’s just another first-year!”
“Exactly!” Calen threw his hands up. “Who gets special treatment like that? Week one and he’s already breaking the rules.”
Ray felt a cold prickle crawl up his spine. Harel muttered, “Everyone else who even suggests skipping class gets yelled at… but he just walks out?”
Calen shook his head, baffled. “I heard the instructors didn’t even argue. Just nodded and stamped the form. Like they were afraid of him.”
Ray swallowed hard. The tremor he’d felt in his chest during the ceremony returned—sharper this time.
“…Why?” Ray asked quietly. “Why would they let him go?”
No one answered. They were all thinking the same thing: Someone without an engraving... someone who fought like a ghost... someone who broke the [Analyze] skill just by existing... Who was he? What was he?
Ray hugged his knees tighter, the 0.2% on his screen suddenly feeling like a very minor problem.
