In the heavy darkness of the sprawling bedroom, a single source of light dared to intrude.
The midnight wind swept past the grand estate, rattling the intricate windowpanes just enough to let a sliver of moonlight spill across the floorboards. It crept up the leg of the gilded crib, finally washing over the tiny face resting inside.
Neo's eyes snapped open.
They were a striking deep blue, catching the moonlight and glowing in the dim room. For a long moment, he just stared up at the painted ceiling. The intricate frescoes of angels and dragons were obscured by the shadows, leaving him alone with his racing thoughts.
He knew one thing for certain: just laying around in this outrageously soft crib, drinking milk, and thinking big thoughts wasn't going to save his neck. If he truly wanted to protect this fragile peacefulness—if he wanted to dodge the death flags of the 'Shattered Crown' storyline—he had to start grinding right now. Day one. Well, technically day two, but who was counting?
His mind naturally drifted toward the one thing that made this terrifying world absolutely incredible.
Mana.
The life force of the universe. The invisible, breathing energy that flowed through the earth, the sky, and every living creature. In the lore of the anime, every single person contained mana. Even the lowly peasants who were incapable of casting a simple spark spell had a baseline trace of it in their blood.
Just thinking about it made Neo's tiny heart hammer against his ribs.
'Magic. Real, rule-bending magic.'
He wasn't ashamed to admit that a massive excitement was bubbling in his chest. Back on Earth, it was a fantasy dream. He had spent countless hours glued to his screen, watching animated protagonists casually level mountain ranges or part clouds with a lazy flick of their fingers. Now, he was sitting right in the middle of a world where that was mathematically possible.
'Alright,' Neo thought, a toothless grin spreading across his face. 'Let's see what this body can do. I'm the son of the strongest Duke. I should be bursting with raw power.'
He squeezed his eyes shut. He scrunched up his chubby face, gritting his gums together. He focused every ounce of his willpower, trying to visualize a surging current of energy rushing through his veins and pooling into the palm of his right hand. He imagined a fireball. No, a sphere of crackling blue lightning. He pushed with all the mental might his infant brain could sustain.
He threw his little hand up toward the ceiling.
A soft nighttime breeze from the cracked window brushed over his skin.
Nothing happened. Not a spark. Not a glowing aura. Not even a weird smell.
Neo blinked. He slowly lowered his arm, his fingers awkwardly uncurling. The silence in the room suddenly felt very loud, mocking him.
'Right,' Neo sighed internally, a heavy wave of embarrassment washing over him. 'I'm an idiot.'
The exhilaration vanished. He realized how stupid he was being, thinking he could shoot lasers out of his hands straight out of the womb. He had binged the anime, hadn't he? He knew the lore.
In this world, raw mana in the blood was useless on its own. To actually weave spells and manipulate the elements, a person needed an engine. A Mana Core.
Without a Mana Core, you were essentially a car with a full tank of gas but no spark plugs. You were a Non-Awakener. Sure, there were myths of legendary figures who could borrow Nature's Mana without a core due to some freak constitution, but even those anomalies eventually formed a core just to store that chaotic energy for emergencies.
Fundamentally, without that crystallized center of power, magic was strictly off-limits.
And here was the kicker, the thought that made Neo want to groan in frustration: Mana Cores didn't just exist at birth. They had to form. They condensed naturally as a child grew and their body acclimated to the world's energy. For almost everyone in the Velkrath Empire, the awakening period happened at an average age of eight years old. Some prodigies awakened early, some late bloomers a year or two after, but eight was the universal standard.
'Eight years,' Neo thought, a bitter disappointment settling in his gut. 'I have to wait eight whole years just to strike a match?'
Impatience surged inside him, hot and prickly. Eight years of sitting around, helpless, waiting for the plot to creep closer. He hated the idea. He needed an edge. He needed a cheat code.
That's when a wild, desperate memory flashed through his mind.
It wasn't from 'Shattered Crown'. It was from a totally different, obscure martial arts anime he'd watched years ago. It featured a highly specific breathing technique designed to draw ambient energy into the body and forcefully condense a core early. It was a plot device to show off the protagonist's insane intellect.
'Would that even work here?' Neo wondered. The rules of different fictional universes rarely overlapped. But... mana was mana, right? Energy was energy.
He had to at least try. Failing was better than lying here doing nothing.
Neo closed his eyes again, but this time, he didn't try to force a fireball. He relaxed his tiny limbs. He let the mattress support his weight. He focused solely on the rhythm of his breathing.
Inhale... Exhale...
He sought to enter his Inner Sanctum.
The Inner Sanctum wasn't a physical place. It was a state of absolute mindfulness—a mental void where a person's consciousness and physical senses severed, allowing them to look purely inward. For most adults in his previous life, achieving this took hours of guided meditation, and some could never do it at all.
If Neo had tried this in his past life, he would have quit after thirty seconds. Back then, his mind was a chaotic mess of work stress, unpaid bills, and intrusive thoughts about whether he had locked the front door.
But right now? It was almost frighteningly easy.
Because of his newborn state, his brain hadn't accumulated any of that worldly stress. His neural pathways were fresh and clean. If he wanted to, he could literally fall asleep in sixty seconds flat. That was the superpower of a baby.
Within three minutes of rhythmic breathing, the sounds of the wind and the crickets completely faded away. The physical sensation of the velvet blanket vanished.
He was there.
He found himself floating in an endless, pitch-black void. It was completely silent. It was his Inner Sanctum.
'Okay,' Neo thought, his consciousness a formless presence in the dark. 'Step one complete. Now, focus on the Dantian.'
He directed his awareness downward, toward the center of his spiritual body located just below his physical belly button. He focused all his attention there, holding his mental breath, and waited.
One minute passed. Then two.
Just when he thought it was a total bust, he felt it.
It was the faintest sensation imaginable, like the brushing of a single strand of silk against the skin. Suddenly, in the vast darkness of his mindscape, a minuscule speck of pure white light flickered into existence. It hovered a short distance away from his Dantian, glowing with a soft, ethereal hum.
Neo's mental jaw dropped. 'It... it actually exists. Mana.'
As he watched, another speck popped into the darkness. Then another. Like tiny fireflies waking up in the dead of night, a dozen microscopic specks of white light revealed themselves, floating lazily around him.
The excitement returned, ten times stronger than before.
'Come here,' Neo commanded internally.
He stretched his invisible consciousness outward, wrapping it around the nearest speck of light like a pair of mental tweezers, and pulled. He willed it to dive into his Dantian with all the strength he had.
The speck didn't budge. It just sat there, humming happily, completely ignoring him.
'Oh, come on,' Neo grumbled.
He tried again. He visualized hands grabbing the light, chains wrapping around it, a vacuum sucking it in. He pulled and pulled, gritting his mental teeth until a sharp, throbbing ache began to form in the center of his real-world forehead.
Nothing. The mana was entirely indifferent to his demands.
He tried targeting a different speck. Failed. He tried grabbing three at once. Failed.
After what felt like twenty minutes of grueling mental tug-of-war, Neo hit his limit. His fragile mental energy was completely shot. He felt spiritually winded, exhausted to his very core.
Frustration boiled over. He was right there! The mana was floating inches away from his center. It was like staring at a glass of water while dying of thirst, but his hands were tied behind his back. The mana refused to come to him, stubborn as a petulant child.
'Calm down,' Neo told himself, forcing his turbulent emotions to settle. Anger wouldn't solve this.
'Think. Why isn't it working? The breathing technique worked to see them. Why can't I pull them?'
He hovered in the dark void, watching the fireflies of mana drift aimlessly.
And then, a bizarre thought struck him. A memory from an old high school physics class.
Fluid dynamics. Pressure differentials.
He was treating the mana like a solid object. He was trying to grab it and drag it by force. But mana was a fluid energy of nature. What happens when you try to grab water with a tightly clenched fist? It just slips right through your fingers.
'Nature abhors a vacuum', Neo recalled.
When there is a zone of high pressure and a zone of low pressure, fluid doesn't need to be pulled. It naturally, inevitably rushes in to fill the empty space to achieve equilibrium.
He had been condensing his consciousness, making his mental presence dense and aggressive to pull the specks. He was creating a high-pressure zone, which was actively repelling the mana!
'Let's try the opposite,' Neo decided, a thrill of anticipation shivering through him.
He closed his eyes within his Inner Sanctum. He stopped reaching. He stopped pulling. He let go of all desire, all force, all aggression.
Instead of condensing his mind, he let it relax. He allowed his consciousness to stretch out, thinning it, expanding it wider and wider, gently encompassing the space where the specks of light floated. He made his inner self hollow. He created a mental void—a perfect, absolute vacuum of low pressure.
For a second, the void was dead still.
And then... the physics of magic answered.
The specks of light fluttered violently. Suddenly, without any resistance, they shot forward. They didn't just drift; they were enthusiastically sucked toward his center, rushing in to fill the empty void he had created. They flocked to his Dantian like lost children finally spotting their mother in a crowd.
One by one, the tiny white lights sank into the center of his being.
The moment the first speck absorbed into him, Neo gasped aloud in the physical world. A rush of pure warmth exploded in his belly. It wasn't hot; it was the most comforting, radiant heat he had ever experienced, spreading directly into his veins.
As more specks rushed in, the warmth compounded. His tiny body hummed with a foreign, incredible vitality.
It worked. He had just absorbed ambient mana. He had taken his very first step to bypassing the eight-year rule.
But the victory was short-lived.
The sheer toll of the mental exertion, combined with the sudden influx of raw, foreign energy into a newborn's fragile body, acted like a sledgehammer to his brain.
His consciousness instantly began to blur. The dark void of his Inner Sanctum dissolved into a hazy, spinning gray.
'Ah... maybe... a bit too much for day one...' Neo thought sluggishly.
The warm sensation in his Dantian spread up to his chest, wrapping around his mind like a heavy, soft blanket. He couldn't fight it if he tried. The last thing he felt was a profound sense of achievement before a deep, dreamless sleep violently took him away.