Yuno as he was now didn't have much of a memory of his life leading up to this moment.
He had woken up two weeks ago in this body with nothing. No name recognition, no familiar faces, no sense of a home he was supposed to return to. Just a room inside the fortress walls and a system blinking at the corner of his vision like it had always been there.
His past life was blank. This one had been built entirely within these walls.
Most people in his predicament would panic. Would spend every spare moment trying to piece something together, searching for a family, a face, a reason. Some anchor to grab onto before the emptiness swallowed them whole.
Yuno didn't have any of that.
What he did have was something harder to explain. An insistent, bone-deep need to kill cursed spirits. The moment he laid eyes on one during his first assessment his skin had crawled. Something inside him reacted before his mind could catch up, something older than the two weeks he'd been conscious in this world.
He found them revolting. Disgusting in a way that went beyond fear or training. Their existence just didn't sit right with him, like a wrong note held too long.
He didn't question it. He just used it.
"Instructor, will we be seeing the outside of the wall today? As promised."
His voice cut through the morning quiet while the others were still struggling to stand upright. Around him heads snapped up, exhaustion momentarily replaced by something brighter.
Right. The promise.
Yesterday, before he'd run them through the night, Daichi had dangled it in front of them like bait. Complete the overnight tasks and they'd see the outside of the wall. Real outside. Not the training yards or the observation platforms but actual open ground where cursed spirits moved freely.
For low grade sorcerers it was everything.
Not because they had a death wish. They weren't stupid. But strength didn't come from forms and footwork drills inside safe walls. It came from kills, from real contact, from standing in front of something that wanted you dead and coming out the other side. The outside was the only place that was possible.
So they craved it. Every single one of them.
"Oh, that…" Daichi's eyes shifted slightly. "Yes, you'll see it in due time…"
Fifteen pairs of eyes locked onto him instantly.
These kids.
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. A deal was a deal and they all knew it, him included.
"Fine. However you all need to be properly registered before stepping outside these walls, yes? We go to the barracks first, register with a clearing team, then we move."
The collective exhale of relief behind him was almost embarrassing.
He made a promise after all.
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"An Earth grade spirit doesn't leave marks like that. It was obviously a Mortal grade."
"Mortal grade my ass, that thing was huge, stop deceiving yourself."
"Would you two shut up for once? I need to fill this form without losing my mind."
In a tall moldy building near the center of Shingen Fortress, a handful of sorcerers were gathered around a table covered in paperwork, arguing the way people do when they're still coming down from something dangerous.
Shingen Fortress ran differently from what outsiders expected.
There was no central power structure here, no authority that owned every sorcerer inside the walls like tools in a shed. Grade 3 and above operated freely. They formed their own teams, set their own schedules, took jobs they wanted and turned down the ones they didn't. The fortress provided the walls, the barracks, the registration system. Everything else was up to the individual.
It bred a different kind of loyalty. Not the forced kind that came from owing someone something. The kind that came from choosing to stay, from being part of something strong enough to be worth protecting.
Sorcerers could go outside, hunt cursed spirits, bring back parts and refine them into tools or sell them directly to the fortress for good money. Some built reputations. Some built teams. Some just kept hunting alone until something finally caught them on a bad day.
But they stayed. Because out there beyond the walls, there was nowhere better to go.
"Everyone best behavior."
Daichi's voice carried down the corridor ahead of the group, fifteen teenagers trailing behind him, still tired but moving with a new energy now that the outside was actually on the table.
The sorcerers at the table noticed them as they passed.
The arguing stopped.
For a moment there was just the quiet sound of the group moving through, young faces, tired eyes, none of them fully understanding yet what they were walking toward.
The sorcerers watched them go and said nothing. A few turned their faces away. There was something sitting in the chest when you looked at them, something that didn't have a clean name. Not guilt exactly. Not pity either.
Just the knowledge that the machine needed new blood constantly, and that these kids were it, and that there was nothing anyone at that table could do about it.
Someone picked up their pen and went back to the form.
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