After training with Asta, I was completely drenched in sweat. My limbs felt heavy, my breath uneven—like a fish dragged out of water.
"THEO, LET'S GO! WE STILL HAVE TWENTY LAPS AROUND THE VILLAGE!!"
I looked at him and rolled my eyes.
Seriously, how much stamina does this idiot have? After training for five straight hours, he still wanted to run twenty laps around the village. Where does all that energy even come from? Is his nonexistent mana somehow being converted directly into stamina?
No. This guy is just abnormal.
People from my previous world wouldn't survive this kind of routine without collapsing.
Well… except maybe that one guy. The crazy one. David Goggins.
Yeah. Maybe even he'd have trouble keeping up with Asta.
Ignoring the shouting behind me, I stood up and walked toward the church, mentally muting the loud silver-haired menace.
As I walked, my thoughts drifted to the past fourteen years of my life.
After my soul crash-landed into the body of a nearly frozen child, I was taken in by the church. According to the villagers, I should have died that day. The fact that I survived was considered divine intervention.
Since my first name—Theodore—was stitched into my clothes, the village decided I needed a surname.
Hage Village wasn't exactly known for education or subtle symbolism. They thought: Blessed by God → Church → Cross.
And just like that, Theodore Cross was born.
A name that would one day terrorize the world.
To the point that people would either forget it—or refuse to speak it.
But that was a problem for the future.
Right now, I was just Theo. A tired kid wondering about his magic.
Unlike most people, I couldn't identify my magic attribute. My mana pool was small, pitiful even. If I wanted to keep up with freaks like Asta and Yuno, my magic had to be something special—time, fate, darkness… something rare enough to bridge the gap.
The problem was… my magic didn't feel like anything.
It had no attribute. No color. No sensation.
It was indistinguishable from natural mana itself.
If it were a basic element like wind or fire, it would have manifested already. That much was certain. I even entertained the idea that it might be something like Key Magic, but my instincts told me not to get my hopes up.
Maybe I didn't have an attribute at all.
After all, I didn't truly belong to this world.
In Black Clover, magic was inherited. Bloodlines mattered. Nobles were born overflowing with mana, while commoners struggled just to keep up. That was why revolutions never succeeded.
It wasn't that people enjoyed being stepped on.
It was that the power gap was absurd.
A commoner fighting a noble was like a lion challenging a dinosaur. No matter how clever the lion was, once the dinosaur took it seriously, the outcome was inevitable.
That was the reality of this kingdom.
To cross that gap, I only had three options:
Possess an uncounterable rare magic
Use forbidden methods to increase my mana
Form a contract with a spirit… or a devil
And yet, I still didn't even know what my magic was.
Maybe transmigration confused the world itself.
Maybe it hesitated.
Or maybe the answer would only reveal itself when I received my grimoire.
Lost in thought, I arrived at the church and heard familiar voices—Father, Sister Lily, and Yuno—from the backyard.
I peeked over and saw everyone staring in amazement as Yuno delicately used wind magic to dry clothes.
Of course he was.
I decided not to disturb them. Exhaustion finally caught up to me. I returned to the boys' room, changed my clothes, and collapsed onto the bed.
As my eyes closed, a faint smile appeared on my face.
One thing was certain—
The sleep you get after truly working hard… is incomparable.
And just like that, I drifted off.