Death, it turned out, was not as silent as I had imagined. There were no gates of light or vast meadows. There was only a fading pain, followed by the cry of a baby breaking the silence.
When I opened my eyes for the first time in this world, I didn't see the ceiling of my cramped apartment in Tokyo. I saw an old, dusty wooden roof and the face of a woman who looked exhausted yet smiled softly at me.
I had been reincarnated.
Not as a hero, not as a prince, but as Alex, the third son of the House of Baron Grey. A poor noble family managing a rocky territory on the outskirts of the Solstice Kingdom.
'Crap, I know this place,' I thought as my adult consciousness began to merge with my infant brain.
This world was Eternal Flowers of Solstice, an otome game whose routes I had just finished before dying from overwork. In that game, the name "Alex" didn't even have a face illustration. He was merely a "Mob" character, an extra destined to die during the first monster attack at the Magic Academy, just to demonstrate how cruel the main antagonist was.
"I refuse to die a second time just as a death statistic," I muttered (though at the time, it only came out as baby gibberish).
Seven Years Later
Since I could walk, I never played with the peasant children in my territory. While other kids were busy chasing dragonflies, I spent my time in the woods behind the Baron's dilapidated mansion.
This world had a very mechanical magic system, exactly like the one I studied in the game. However, the nobles here were too arrogant. They relied solely on natural talent and inefficient, poetic incantations.
As a former hardcore gamer, I knew a more effective way: Glitched Training.
"One... two... one hundred..."
I was doing push-ups on the muddy ground. On my back, I had strapped a large boulder modified with a low-level weight spell. Sweat poured down, soaking my coarse linen shirt.
This child's body had to be forged beyond human limits if I wanted to survive. In this world, mana (magic energy) is stored within neural circuits. The best way to expand those circuits is to break them and force them to regenerate.
Every day, I drained my mana until it was completely empty, feeling intense nausea and a massive headache—the symptoms of Mana Exhaustion. When I was on the verge of fainting, I forced myself to meditate, violently pulling mana from nature into my "thirsty" circuits.
KRRRRACK!
I could feel the nerves inside my body vibrating violently. It felt like molten iron flowing through my veins.
"More... not enough yet."
I stood up, pulling a wooden sword I had weighted with iron. I swung it thousands of times every day until my palms were bloody and calloused. I didn't study the beautiful sword techniques of the royal knights. I studied the most efficient killing technique: one strike, one life.
Beyond the physical, I practiced Mana Compression. Other nobles took pride in having a vast "pool" of mana. But me? I preferred to turn that pool into a "bullet." I compressed my mana until it reached an absurd density. On the surface, any mana sensor would only see me as a lower-class student with thin mana. However, if I pulled the trigger, that mana would explode with enough destructive power to crumble a fortress.
"Alex! What are you doing in the woods again?!" my father's voice, Baron Grey, echoed from a distance.
I immediately deactivated the weight spell and hid the wooden sword behind a bush. I put on a blank face, the face of a harmless Mob.
"Just playing, Dad!" I shouted as I ran home.
The Year of Academy Entrance
Time passed quickly. Thanks to the "hellish" training I conducted in secret for ten years, I now had a lean but dense physique and mana circuits far beyond human standards—though I hid them with high-level stealth magic.
Today was the day of my departure to the Royal Magic Academy. The place where the main plot begins. The place where Prince Julian would meet Clarisse, and where the antagonist, Lady Elara von Heist, would begin her terror.
"Alex, remember what I told you," Baron Grey held my shoulder emotionally. "You don't need to stand out. Just graduate, find a job in city administration, and help our family a little."
"Of course, Father. That is indeed my plan," I replied sincerely.
I wasn't lying. My plan was to be the most boring background character at the academy. I would sit in the corner of the class, get average grades, and avoid all the main characters like the plague.
I boarded an old horse carriage toward the capital. In my mind, I had already mapped out a strategy to survive three years at the academy.
However, there was one thing I didn't predict.
At the academy gates, a magnificent carriage bearing the silver lion crest of the Heist family passed beside mine. The window was slightly open, revealing a glimpse of a girl with beautiful black hair, but eyes that looked empty and cold.
Elara von Heist.
For a split second, our eyes met. I immediately looked away, trying to act like an extra intimidated by the aura of high nobility.
'Never get involved with her,' I warned myself. 'That woman is a time bomb that will destroy anyone near her.'
I didn't know that my actions of "trying not to stand out" in the coming days would instead become a beacon, attracting the most dangerous predator in this world to hunt me down.
The Royal Magic Academy awaited. And the script I had memorized... was about to be torn into shapeless pieces.