"Sir," the girl said, lowering her voice. "What you are doing... is far beyond human limits. You exceed the capacity of a normal F or E rank adventurer. If you continue like this, you will disrupt the balance of our system."
Akira narrowed his eyes. 'What, are you going to kick me out of the guild just because I'm leveling up too fast?'
The girl clasped her hands on the desk and looked directly into Akira's eyes. "I have a proposal for you. If you agree to meet with our Guild Master... we could subject you to a special exam and directly promote your rank to a level that matches your true strength, perhaps even B or A rank. You wouldn't need to waste time with these kinds of errands."
Akira's heartbeat accelerated. To become an A-Rank adventurer! This meant being able to sit at the same table directly with the nobles, and even the Royal Inquisition, to infiltrate their information network. It was an unmissable opportunity for his revenge!
However, his eight-year-old child body within trembled with dread. 'The Guild Master... This is no ordinary person. He must be a true monster. Will he notice this "Adult Man" illusion of mine? Can he see the eight-year-old orphan behind my mana?'
The risk was colossal. But Akira had sworn an oath upon the ashes of his village that bloody night. He would not step back. He slowly, resolutely nodded his head. "I accept. Take me to him."
The girl let out a relieved sigh and stepped out from behind the counter. "Please follow me. Our Guild Master is currently in his room."
Leaving the noisy and brightly lit ground floor of the guild, they headed toward the dark, creaking wooden stairs. As they ascended, the atmosphere in the air began to grow heavy. With every step, Akira could feel that crushing, dense mana pressure bearing down on him. This screamed that the person upstairs was not merely an administrator, but quite literally a god of war.
Finally, they arrived in front of the massive, black oak double doors at the end of the corridor, carved with chain and sword motifs. Even the aura leaking from beneath the door caused Akira's illusion to flicker. Focusing his mana to the maximum level, he kept his mask stable.
The receptionist girl respectfully knocked twice on the door. From inside echoed a voice deep and thick enough to shake the very mountains and stones, resembling the growl of a lion.
"ENTER."
With trembling hands, the girl pushed down the handles of the massive door, and it slowly swung open to both sides with a creepy creak. The dim light and that suffocating aura from within spilled out.
Akira swallowed hard. As he took his first step toward one of the greatest tests standing in the way of his revenge, his heart pounded like crazy behind that dull mask on his face.
As the heavy, black oak doors closed behind them, Akira felt as if he had literally walked into a dragon's lair. The room was dim; the walls were adorned with colossal monster skulls, shattered fragments of legendary weapons, and countless spoils of war. However, the truly suffocating thing in the room wasn't these items, but the crushing, predatory aura radiating from the man sitting behind the massive mahogany desk.
The Guild Master.
This man was practically a fortress made of flesh and bone, his face split diagonally by a massive sword scar, silver in his hair, yet possessing shoulders as wide as two grown men. The receptionist girl approached the desk with trembling steps and recounted Akira's unbelievable performance, whispering about the mountain of F and E rank quests he had finished in a single day, presenting it almost like a formal report.
The Guild Master's single good eye locked onto Akira's twenty-three-year-old "Adult Man" silhouette created by the illusion, like the eye of a panther glowing in the dark. In his gaze, there was no pure curiosity, but a dangerous suspicion.
The man beckoned the receptionist girl closer with his rough, calloused hand. When the girl leaned in, the man's whisper could not escape Akira's sharpened senses: "Investigate this man's past immediately—where he came from, and who he has contacted in the Capital. Leave now."
The girl bowed respectfully and left the room with hurried steps. When the door closed, only a fake adult burning with the fire of revenge and a Guild Master who was a battle-hardened veteran of years remained in the room. The silence was so heavy that one could almost hear the sound of the dust motes suspended in the air.
"So you finished this many quests all by yourself in such a short time, huh..." the Guild Master said. His voice resembled rumbling thunder from the deep. As the man slowly stood up, the mana pressure in the room doubled. "Shall I tell you a little secret, stranger?"
"Long before I sat behind this desk signing paperwork... I was an active SS-Rank adventurer out in the field."
The eight-year-old heart beating beneath Akira's illusion began to pound violently, as if trying to shatter his ribs. 'SS-Rank?!' he thought to himself. 'I suppose it's a normal level to be the Capital's Guild Master... But there is a walking natural disaster standing right in front of me!' From the outside, however, Akira's mask hadn't slipped an inch; he merely scrutinized the man with ice-cold eyes.
The Guild Master seemed even more infuriated by Akira's silent and unresponsive demeanor. He slammed his massive fist onto the desk so hard that the inkwells resting on it leapt into the air.
"Don't give me that arrogant, smug look!" the SS-Rank monster roared. "Tomorrow at noon, you and I will have a duel in the training grounds in the Guild's backyard! If you don't show up or if you lose, I'll kick you out of this guild, do you understand me, you conceited prick?! Now get the hell out of my office!"
Akira hadn't been able to utter a single word. He hadn't even had the chance to open his mouth! The gargantuan pressure radiating from the man had forced the words back down his throat. Swishing his cloak, he turned around and left the room. That cold expression still rested on his face, but his mind had literally caught fire. 'A duel with an SS-Rank?! My body is still only eight years old! A single punch from that man would turn me into a bloodstain!'
As he descended the stairs to the guild's ground floor, his mind was calculating how he would survive this lethal trial. However, just as he was about to turn the corner, the whispered conversation of two receptionists in a dim alcove of the corridor caught his ear. Halting his steps, he hid among the shadows and began to listen.
"...Did he really challenge that man to a duel?" one of the girls asked in a worried tone.
"Yes! The Master has been furious about this situation lately," the other replied. "You know how for the past few months, the spoiled nobles in the Capital have been using their own servants and private knights to complete multiple guild quests simultaneously. Then they collect the rewards themselves, rapidly ranking up and bypassing the honest adventurers who have dedicated years to this work. The Master thinks this mysterious man who arrived today is one of them. He assumed he was some arrogant noble cheating by having an army of servants work behind his back. To make an example of him, he's going to crush and punish him in front of the entire guild!"
Akira's eyes widened slightly in shock.
'Now the pieces fall into place...' he thought to himself. A dark, bitter smile appeared on his face. 'He mistook my "Three Clones" tactic for the tactic of cheating nobles hiring mercenaries! He thinks I'm one of those rotten aristocrats!'
Though his anger flared for a moment, logic prevailed. If he wanted his revenge, he had to use this system. To reach those Inquisitors and the corrupted Capital, he had no choice but to get past that SS-Rank monster. He would not back down.
Leaving the guild silently, he returned to that desolate, ostracized inn in the dead of night.
When he opened the door to the inn, he saw the young red-haired girl from his village sitting by the feeble fire of the hearth. As she saw Akira, a tired but genuine smile appeared on her face.
"Welcome back," the girl said, offering him a hot cup of tea. "I hope your day... went better than these cold streets of the Capital."
Akira took the tea and sat on the wooden chair opposite the hearth. As he looked at the girl, the memory of his old village, the burning homes, and those innocent people flashed before his eyes. "The streets may be cold," Akira said, his voice stripped of its dark timbre, adopting a slightly softer tone. "But what is truly cold are the hearts of the people. It is admirable that you endure around here."
The girl smiled bitterly. They talked a little about the old village, a little about the beautiful memories of the past that were beginning to fade, and a little about the hardships of the Capital. Akira carefully chose his words to avoid revealing his true eight-year-old identity; as he listened to the village memories the girl recounted, he sharpened the vow of revenge within him even further. He would hold everyone who stole this girl's smile accountable, starting with that SS-Rank monster tomorrow.
After the conversation, Akira retreated to his room. He dispelled his illusion and lay down on the bed with his exhausted, frail eight-year-old body. Tomorrow at noon... the greatest physical trial of his life would begin. Yes, his mana was level 130, but the man facing him possessed years of experience and reflexes. Preparing to walk that thin line between life and death, he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
When the first light of morning struck the Capital's walls, Akira opened his eyes.
Today was no ordinary day. Today was the day an eight-year-old demon would clash with one of the Capital's legends, the SS-Rank Guild Master. He got out of bed, channeling his Level 130 mana into his body to flawlessly don the illusion of that mysterious, sharp-gazed twenty-three-year-old adult once again. He threw his silver-grey wolf pelt cloak over his shoulders.
He was ready.
As the Capital's scorching midday sun illuminated the training grounds in the Adventurer's Guild's massive backyard, the oxygen in the air felt as though it had been depleted by the breaths of thousands of people.
When Akira stepped onto the arena's sandy floor in his silver-grey wolf pelt illusion body, his steps were brought to a sudden halt.
The colossal grandstands surrounding him were overflowing—not just with adventurers, but with the Capital's common folk, merchants, and even nobles smirking nastily from their private boxes. The hum of the crowd resembled the growl of a bloodthirsty, savage beast.
The calculating adult mind within Akira grasped the gravity of the situation in all its naked reality at that moment. This was not a test of skill or an honorable duel. The Guild Master, fed up with the Capital's cheating nobles, had chosen him as a sacrifice to appease the public and the other adventurers. This was, quite literally, a spectacular public execution!
"Keep walking, 'hero'," grunted the two A-Rank adventurers clad in heavy armor coming from behind him. By pushing Akira roughly by the shoulders, they forcefully dragged him toward the dead center of the arena. His eight-year-old body beneath the illusion had to draw support from his Level 130 mana just to avoid being crushed by the brute strength of these massive men.
Right in the middle of the arena stood that gargantuan, scar-faced SS-Rank monster, the Guild Master. In his hand was a colossal, human-sized sword forged from pure mithril—the king of legendary metals—reflecting the sunlight in a blinding glare. The aura radiating from the man was so dense that even the dust motes in the air trembled around him.
"What's this?" the Guild Master bellowed, his voice echoing across the arena and riling up the crowd. A mocking, predatory smile stretched the scar across his face. "Does the fake genius, who ranked up using the strength of the servants behind him, not even have a sword to hold? Or do you have your maids carry your sword for you?!"
The laughter and booing rising from the stands resembled a roar of thunder. In the face of this humiliation, Akira did not break his dull, cold mask even an ounce. He simply narrowed his eyes.
If they wanted a sword...
He instinctively extended his right hand to the side. He summoned his gargantuan mana, which froze the air and plunged the surrounding temperature below zero in seconds. The moisture in the air began to crystallize, and a blade of ice—sharper than a razor and radiating a bluish light—began to form in the palm of his hand.
But at that exact second... Akira's breath caught in his throat.
Down his back cascaded a divine, incredibly warm wave that made his soul tremble, in complete contrast to that ice-cold magic. He recognized this feeling! That unreachable entity, which the crowd, the A-Rank adventurers, and even that massive Guild Master could neither see nor feel... The Goddess, from beyond time and space, had appeared behind him once again. Her invisible hands, woven of light, gently closed over Akira's right hand.
That divine touch injected a blessing that tore through the very fabric of the universe into the ordinary ice sword Akira had formed. The bluish ice suddenly flared with a golden-yellow and pure white light, transforming into an unbreakable divine crystal at absolute zero, within which galaxies seemed to swirl.
Even Akira was bewildered by this inconceivable, godly weapon he held in his hand. However, that warmth of the Goddess evaporated and vanished as silently as it had come.
The laughter in the stands was cut like a knife the moment they saw that golden-glowing ice sword. The Guild Master's single good eye narrowed with a sense of danger.
"A nice magic trick," the SS-Rank adventurer roared. "But in a real battle, tricks are useless!"
The man tensed his massive leg muscles and lunged forward, practically exploding the sand of the arena. His speed was completely contradictory to his gargantuan frame; he was like a bullet! With a shrill whistle that tore through the air, he swung his mithril sword at a lethal angle meant to cleave Akira in two from his shoulder to his waist.
As death reflected in the eight-year-old child's pupils, Akira simply relied on his instincts and that Goddess-blessed sword, raising his weapon upward.
CLAAAANG!
The shockwave created by the collision blew the sand from the arena floor toward the stands like a giant wave. Everyone expected the arrogant young man's ice sword to shatter into pieces and his blood to spill onto the sand.
However, when the dust cloud cleared, a lethal, freezing silence descended upon the arena.
Akira hadn't budged a single millimeter. With his pale expression, he held the golden-gleaming ice sword perfectly straight.
As for the Guild Master's colossal, legendary mithril sword, said to be unbreakable... At the exact point where it struck Akira's ice sword, it had been cleaved in two, smoothly and silently, as if a hot knife were slicing through butter!
The severed, heavy metal tip of the sword fell onto the sand with a dull thud.
The thousands of people in the stands forgot how to breathe. The knees of the A-Rank adventurers in the back gave out. Even Akira was screaming internally, 'No way... Goddess, what did you do?!' but from the outside, he simply looked as cold and cool as an iceberg.
The Guild Master looked at the severed sword hilt remaining in his hand, and then into Akira's bottomless, dark eyes. The veteran SS-Rank warrior felt the gargantuan, abyssal, and divine terror lying behind the man before him in all of his cells at that exact second. This man was no spoiled noble. This man was a calamity disguised as a human!
The man suddenly snapped out of it, threw his sword hilt to the ground, and roared at the stands like a lion:
"WHAT HAPPENED HERE STAYS A SECRET! THE SHOW IS OVER! ALL OF YOU, GET THE HELL OUT, NOW!"
In the face of the Master's bloodcurdling wrath, the panicked crowd began to empty the arena, trampling over each other. Seeing this as an opportunity, Akira dispersed his ice sword into the air and tried to slip away into the shadows with slow, silent steps. However, before he could even take three steps, a massive, vise-like hand landed on his shoulder and nailed him to the spot.
"You," the Guild Master said through gritted teeth. "You are coming to my office with me. Right now."
Seconds later, they found themselves in that suffocating office filled with monster skulls. The door locked with a heavy sound. Slumping into his massive desk, the man rubbed his face with his hand and let out a deep sigh. The boorish Master who had been putting on a show for the public just moments ago was gone; in his place was a weary, strategically thinking, true SS-Rank warrior.
"My name is Vargus," the man said, piercingly scrutinizing Akira with his single remaining eye. "I will be honest with you, stranger. That mithril sword could scratch the scale of a dragon. But you sliced it away like a child's toy. If I wanted to, I could make you an S-Rank adventurer right here, right now in this room. I could wipe away all those bureaucratic obstacles and herb-gathering quests in front of you."
Akira's eyes widened slightly. S-Rank! Straight to the top, to that golden seat where he could access the secrets of the Inquisition and the Crown!
Vargus leaned forward, his gaze turning serious. "BUT... You must tell me the source of this power of yours. You are no mortal. I caught the scent of that divine aura behind that ice sword. Who are you? Whom do you serve?"
The cunning adult mind within Akira instantly sounded the alarm. He couldn't tell the truth—that his body was sealed as an eight-year-old, his village was burned, and he was out for revenge. It was high time to play the most flawless, mysterious, and undeniable lie he had memorized from the anime of his old world.
He slowly closed his eyes. Wrapping himself in his cloak, he spoke in a heavy, mystical tone. "The source of my power... stems from an ancient seal carved into my soul, Vargus. In the distant lands of my birth, there is an oath sworn to the Gods. If I reveal the secret of my power to a mortal, my soul will shatter into a million pieces that very second, and my blood will turn to ash. Even if you were to grant me the S-Rank, I could only leave you a corpse in return. Therefore, I am bound to keep this secret to my grave."
Vargus's single good eye twitched. The man was trying to discern whether he was lying, but Akira's masterful illusion and that genuine divine contact behind it made this lie unshakeable. Vargus grunted in anger, lightly slamming his massive fist onto the desk.
"Damn those mysterious eastern cults..." Vargus muttered. No matter how infuriated he was, kicking this power out of the guild and letting it run wild would be a far greater danger to the Capital. He pulled that magical seal from his drawer, snatched Akira's adventurer card onto the desk, and stamped it. The card's color shifted from E-Rank iron to an eye-catching, brilliantly gleaming silver.
"I cannot give you an S-Rank," Vargus said, tossing the card back to him. "But this power is undeniable. I am making you directly an A-Rank. Now get out of my sight, along with your secret. And don't cause trouble for my guild!"
Akira took the card and walked out of Vargus's office with a swish of his cloak. A-Rank! He had taken another colossal step toward his goal.
When he descended the stairs into the main hall, the atmosphere had completely changed. Whispers of that lethal incident in the arena had already spread throughout the guild. As Akira walked, the boisterous adventurers at the tables suddenly fell silent, the crowd parting before him with respect and fear like the parting of the sea. He could feel the weight of those bewildered and sharp gazes cast at his back resting on his shoulders. He was no longer an ostracized rookie; he was an A-Rank monster who had broken the Guild Master's sword.
When he left Vargus's room and descended the stairs to the main hall, the atmosphere had completely changed. Whispers of that lethal incident in the arena had already spread throughout the guild. As Akira walked, the boisterous adventurers at the tables suddenly fell silent; the crowd parted perfectly down the middle, making way for him with respect and fear. He could feel the weight of those bewildered and sharp gazes cast at his back resting on his shoulders. He was no longer an ostracized rookie; he was an A-Rank monster who had broken the Guild Master's legendary mithril sword.
With cold and resolute steps, he headed toward the massive Quest Board, this time directly to the section with 'High-Level' quests.
However, just as he was about to reach for the board, a familiar, booming voice rose from the silent crowd behind him.
"Hey, wait a minute... You look familiar, buddy. That cloak..."
Akira's raised hand paused for a fraction of a second. His eight-year-old heart behind the illusion beat rapidly. This voice belonged to the imposing, bear-like adventurer who had saved him from the goblins at the edge of the forest and then escorted him to the city! The blue-robed woman and the archer were right behind him. If he made eye contact with them, they might deduce from his tone of voice or a slight micro-expression that this man was actually the 'frail, crying child' from yesterday.
'Do not draw attention,' he commanded himself. 'Ignore him like an ordinary person.'
Akira turned back to the board with flawless indifference, as if he hadn't heard the man's words at all. Without even looking back, he grabbed the parchment bearing the darkest red seal from the top corner where the A-Rank quests hung, tearing it down in a single, random motion. Then, swishing his cloak with a dramatic gust of wind, he walked silently past that imposing adventurer as if he were a ghost.
The man was left staring after him. "What a rude bastard..." he grumbled.
However, seconds later, the true bewilderment in the guild stemmed not from Akira's strange behavior, but from the massive void he had left on the Quest Board. When the bespectacled receptionist girl noticed the parchment in Akira's hand, she covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming. The entire guild practically turned to ice the moment they saw the absence of that red seal. Whispers instantly morphed into a terror-filled buzz.
"Did he... Did he take that quest?! He must be insane!" "That's the Mount Mythar quest! No one has dared to even touch that parchment for years!" "He's walking to his death... That man just signed his own death warrant!"
As Akira walked out the heavy oak doors of the guild and merged into the cool air of the Capital, he unrolled the thick, fraying parchment he held in his hand. Now he understood why people were so terrified.
[A-Rank Emergency Subjugation Quest: The Glacial Calamity of Mythar] Target: The slaying of the Ancient Ice Dragon nesting at the peak of Mount Mythar. Details: The unparalleled mithril mines at the foot of the mountain have been unworkable for years due to this monster. The dragon's breath possesses the power to freeze an entire army in seconds. Reward: 1000 Gold Coins (1 Platinum Coin).
Akira's eyes locked onto that reward amount. 1 Platinum Coin. This was a massive fortune—one that could not only feed him but allow him to buy a colossal mansion, a headquarters in the most luxurious district of the Capital, and even catch the attention of the aristocrats.
But there was a major problem. Mount Mythar was, according to the map, so far north of the Capital that traveling there on foot or by an ordinary horse-drawn carriage would take months.
'I have level 130 mana, I can burn worlds to the ground, yet I still have to hoof it to get from point A to point B,' Akira muttered, pursing his lips. 'If this were a game, I definitely would have unlocked a Teleportation spell. But my knowledge of magic is limited solely to that one book. I possess raw power, but I lack the technical and theoretical knowledge to process it.'
At that moment, the massive tower of the Capital, the Royal Grand Library, caught his eye. That endless ocean of knowledge where all the world's magic formulas, ancient scrolls, and geographical records were stored...
A bolt of lightning flashed in his mind. His internal strategist, his genius otaku mind, had found the perfect cheat. Why waste time?
"If my brain can only handle three physical clones at the same time..." he whispered with a demonic smirk. "I'll leave one of my clones here."
His plan was flawless. He would embark on that grueling journey to Mount Mythar with his main body and hunt that dragon personally. However, he would leave a physical clone he created in the Capital, in that library. His clone would read and download into his mind all the spellbooks, teleportation theories, and elemental combinations in that massive library, 24/7, without sleeping or eating. While he walked those mountains, he would slowly assimilate that unparalleled magical knowledge like a "download manager" running in the background of his brain.
Akira quickly returned to that dingy inn. The sorrowful but sweet girl of the inn smiled when she saw him. Akira left a few more silver coins on the table.
"I will be out of the city on a long quest for a while," he said in his usual cold, charismatic adult tone. "But I am keeping my room. Do not let anyone inside."
As the girl bowed respectfully, Akira went up to his room. He focused his mind and expelled his mana, creating a hologram that possessed the ability of physical touch, an exact replica of his adult illusion. He gave the hologram a silent command:
"Go to the library. Read endlessly. Transfer the knowledge to me."
Without saying a word, the clone nodded and glided out the window, blending into the darkness of the night.
The preparations were complete. With his supply bag strapped to his back and his silver-grey wolf pelt cloak, Akira silently departed through the North Gate of the Capital. Before him lay a months-long journey woven of ice and death. With every step, the pages of the first book his left-behind clone was reading in the library had already begun to echo in his mind.
However, as he approached Mount Mythar, the weather turning into a freezing hell and the hum of that massive, winged shadow gliding in the sky would remind him very bitterly that this quest was no ordinary monster hunt...
As the Capital's massive North Gate closed behind him with a heavy creak, Akira's perception of time completely altered. His first step into those wild, endless lands stretching before him was the beginning of not just a physical journey, but a mental evolution.
This eighteen-day hellish march turned into a dark survival ritual where the limits of mind and body were ruthlessly shattered and rebuilt, rather than the cheerful "training montages" seen in isekai anime.
Days 1-5: The Mental Crucible
The first days of the journey passed with a mental agony severe enough to melt his brain, rather than physical exhaustion.
In the Capital, wandering among the dim, massive shelves of the Royal Grand Library, his clone's eyes downloaded every single word it read directly into Akira's main brain. As Akira walked across the windy plains, he simultaneously heard the rustling of ancient parchments, the smell of ink, and the theories of ancient magical languages in the background of his mind. It was like living two different lives at the same time.
On the evening of the third day, a herd of Iron-Backed Wild Boars, known for their armored hides, appeared before him. In the past, Akira would have used his massive Level 130 mana to cast a giant fireball, reducing the forest and the boars to ash in a single strike. However, thanks to the book 'Mana Efficiency and Thermodynamic Compression' his clone read in the library, he learned not to waste his power.
Akira merely snapped his fingers. Instead of flashy explosions, he used a micro fire spell that brought the temperature of the blood right inside the boars' brains to a boiling point for a single second. Three massive boars collapsed where they stood, blood erupting from their snouts, without a single burn mark on them. Power was no longer just a savage sledgehammer; it was a flawless scalpel.
Days 6-12: The Freezing Wastelands
From the sixth day onward, the landscape completely changed. The green plains gave way to the Freezing Wastelands, where the sky was covered by a gray blanket and the wind slashed the face like broken glass.
His frail, eight-year-old main body was too weak to withstand this freezing cold. His fingertips and lips had begun to turn purple. At that moment, his clone scanned the tomes on 'Rune Crafting and Environmental Isolation' on the third floor of the library. Akira reached his right hand over to his left arm as he walked and, using his own blood and mana, carved invisible runes onto his silver-grey wolf pelt garments. These runes transformed into a perfect air-conditioning system that absorbed the freezing cold outside and kept the air inside at body temperature.
On the tenth night, when he took shelter in a cave, he was surrounded by five-meter-tall Glacial Trolls. The trolls' ice clubs grazed Akira's illusion and cracked the rib of his true body. Writhing in pain, Akira now wielded his dark healing technique with mastery. He grabbed the throat of a troll he had knocked down; while repairing the crack in his own rib, he redirected the devastating physical toll created by the healing into the troll's body. As the troll's bones shattered internally and turned to dust on their own, Akira stood back up, perfectly intact. These battles were teaching him that being Level 130 did not mean invincibility, but rather the absolute necessity of constant adaptation.
Days 13-17: The Forbidden Knowledge
Toward the end of the journey, when the massive silhouette of the mountain appeared on the horizon, his clone in the library made a major breakthrough. The clone had managed to infiltrate the 'Forbidden Section' of the library, which was closed to everyone except high nobles and SS-Rank mages.
There, he found the theory of the skill Akira had been seeking for months: Short-Distance Teleportation.
On the fifteenth day, right in the middle of a blizzard, Akira put this theory into practice. He closed his eyes, visualizing folding the fabric of space between his current position and a point 1 meter ahead like a piece of paper. When he opened his eyes, he had practically "erased" himself from within the wind and "manifested" again 1 meter ahead. Doing this made his stomach churn and his brain rattle, but he had succeeded!
With this skill, he effortlessly defeated hundreds of Mountain Wolves and Ice Golem packs that crossed his path, instantaneously teleporting among them and slitting their throats in seconds. He was now an untouchable, bloody phantom gliding within the wind.
Day 18: The Shadow of Mythar
And finally... on the gloomy afternoon of the eighteenth day, the storm suddenly died down.
When Akira crested one final hill with his heavy boots sinking into the snow, the colossal Mount Mythar stood before him, tearing through the sky and reaching above the clouds. The foothills of the mountain were filled with veins of mithril glowing a pure blue, but everywhere was trapped in an ice hell that hadn't melted for hundreds of years. The mana in the air was so dense that he felt like his lungs were freezing when he breathed.
Right at that moment, the flow of information transmitted by the clone in the library suddenly ceased. His clone's energy was exhausted; the illusion silently faded away among the books, miles away in the Capital. That entire massive library of knowledge was now completely within Akira's own brain.
He narrowed his eyes and looked up toward the peak of the mountain.
At that moment, that deafening, ancient roar resonated, emanating from the mountain's peak, dispersing the clouds, and triggering avalanches miles away.
ROOOAAARRR!
The Ice Dragon had made its presence known. Its roar alone caused the illusion over Akira to flicker slightly.
Accompanied by the howling of the freezing wind, Akira carefully scanned his surroundings. In the vast, endless whiteness, there was nothing but the howling storm and the steep glaciers around him. Once he was completely certain he was alone and that no one was watching him, he dropped his shoulders and took a deep breath. Slowly untangling that complex mana knot in his mind, he deactivated the fake, twenty-three-year-old adult illusion he had been wearing for weeks.
As beams of silver-grey light trickled from his body and evaporated, the reality beneath was revealed in all its nakedness: a small child, eight years old, frail, pale, and clearly evident just how fragile he actually was in the face of this brutal world's savagery. With the disappearance of the illusion, the legendary, bone-chilling cold of Mount Mythar rushed directly onto his skin. Even the runes he had drawn with his blood to maintain his body heat were struggling at this altitude.
Yet, there was no turning back. Gritting his teeth, he began to climb the mountain's terrifying, steep slope with those spindly legs. Breathing in the thin air was like drawing shards of glass into his lungs; his hands were bleeding from clinging to the rocks, and the wind seemed to struggle against him, determined to hurl him into the abyss. After hours of this superhuman and agonizing climb, he crossed the cloud boundary and reached the mountain's wide, crater-like peak.
And then, he saw it.
Right at the center of the peak, sleeping upon the blue lights seeping from between the mithril veins, was that ancient horror... the Ice Dragon.
The creature's size was colossal, enough to overshadow even the largest skyscrapers in Akira's old world. The dragon's scales seemed composed of thick glaciers that had not melted for centuries; with every breath, small blizzards erupted in the air, and the cold vapor trickling from its snout instantly froze and cracked the rocks on the peak. This was no ordinary monster; it was, in every sense of the word, nature's breathing, legendary calamity.
Akira's heart began to hammer against his ribcage. However, he was a prisoner of the arrogance within him, the false self-confidence born of his Level 130 mana and having destroyed everything he had encountered until that day. "I will kill you, and then I will crush that Inquisition," he whispered with his cracked lips.
He focused his mind, absorbed the moisture in the air, and shaped that legendary gold-ice sword that glowed with the Goddess's divine blessing, the one that had cut Guild Master Vargus's mithril sword like butter in the Capital arena. The holy, golden-yellow light emitted by the sword momentarily pierced the darkness of the storm. Pushing past the limits of his frail, eight-year-old body, Akira used the Short-Distance Teleportation spell he had learned from the library. He vanished like a silhouette in the air and, in a tenth of a second, appeared right above the dragon's colossal, ice-covered neck.
With all his might, gathering all the hatred and mana within him at the tip of the blade, he thrust that divine weapon into the dragon's scales!
SHIINNG...
CRACK!
The expected sound of tearing flesh and spurting blood did not come.
The sound that did come was simple, pathetic, and weak, like a slender tea glass falling from a child's hand onto a concrete floor and shattering into dust. Akira's hands went numb. His eyes widened as if about to pop out of their sockets.
That legendary, Goddess-blessed ice sword, said to be unbreakable, had shattered in the fraction of a second it contacted the dragon's scale, scattered into the air as millions of shiny dust motes. The sword had not left the slightest scratch, not the slightest mark on the dragon's hide! The weapon that had split that legendary mithril sword in two was no different than a piece of cheap glass before this ancient being.
In that millisecond he remained suspended in the air, Akira felt his entire world collapse around him. He tried to leap backward quickly and make a soft landing on the snow, but his legs were trembling. He staggered back. His breathing was out of control, his heartbeat reaching a deafening rhythm.
'It can't be... This is impossible! The Goddess had blessed that sword! My mana is Level 130!' the adult mind within him was screaming. Yet, the absolute, insurmountable power chasm before him slammed into his face with all its reality. His strongest, deadliest trump card was nothing to this creature. The pure despair settling in his eyes held his soul captive like a nightmare.
At that moment, that mountain-like mass at the center of the crater stirred slowly.
With that heavy, centuries-old exhaustion from having been woken from its slumber, the dragon slowly turned its colossal neck toward Akira. When its eyes opened, Akira felt as if he were being pulled into a bottomless, frozen ocean. In the dragon's massive pupils, there was neither anger nor bloodlust; there was only that meaningless, bored expression of a human looking at an ant walking on the ground.
The creature's jaw parted slightly. Rising from its ribcage, that incredible, deep voice, which trembled not only the peak but even the clouds in the sky, slammed directly into Akira's mind.
"You..." the dragon said, its words heavy and crushing like separate avalanches. "You, little human hatchling... What business do you have here, on my peak?"
However, Akira was in no condition to comprehend these words. The trauma of the event, this absolute confrontation with death, and this disgusting game the system was playing on him had paralyzed his brain. The dragon's magnificent, ancient language reached his ears only as a humming, blurred, terrifying frequency of noise. All he could do was crawl backward on the snow with trembling hands, trying to escape the crushing pressure of those bottomless eyes.
The dragon looked at the child's pathetic state for a brief moment. To it, this tiny creature was a speck of dust not worth fighting, expending magic on, or even standing up for. As it slowly closed its eyes, it casually swept its massive, ice-formed tail to the side, as if swatting away an ordinary fly.
Akira saw that colossal mass of ice coming toward him, but his body was too frozen to react.
BAM!
Not even the tip of the dragon's tail, but merely the tremendous wind and the light graze it created echoed through the air with the sickening snap of ribs the moment it struck Akira's frail eight-year-old body. He felt his internal organs shift violently. As warm blood erupted from his mouth, his body was hurled like a ragdoll off the mountain's peak, down into that foggy abyss kilometers deep.
He had gone into a free fall with tremendous momentum. As he plummeted rapidly through the clouds, the wind sliced his face like a razor. His world was spinning wildly, and the mountain's steep, jagged rocks were rushing toward him like death traps.
Right at that moment, the agony of the crushing blow he had taken and the blood erupting from his chest shocked his paralyzed brain, pulling him out of his numbness. His arrogance was replaced by that pure, primal instinct for survival. 'I can't die... I can't just perish here like a fly!'
Realizing he was hurtling toward the ground and seeing the jagged ice and rock outcroppings below him, he combined his own practical experience with the theories his clone had learned in the library. He had seconds, maybe only milliseconds left.
He focused all his remaining mana into his right hand. '[Transmutation] magic... Molecular destabilization and density manipulation!'
Falling on his back, he reached his hand downward toward the first massive rock outcropping he was rapidly approaching.
"PLEASE!" he roared in his mind.
The moment the wave of magic struck the rock, that hard, granite surface altered its molecular structure in a tenth of a second, transforming into a massive, spongy mound of mud and snow.
Akira violently crashed into that surface. Even though it had been softened, the horrific kinetic energy of the fall instantly dislocated his left arm. He bounced into the air and continued to tumble down the mountainside, smashing into rocks and ice.
He wasn't stopping. The abyss was so deep that every single second presented a new threat of death. As he somersaulted through the air, he continued to use his [Transmutation] magic mere milliseconds before colliding with every jagged protrusion and deadly glacier he locked his eyes on. He was turning ice into snow, stone into mud, and hard earth into a thick bed of moss.
However, for an eight-year-old brain, this required an unbelievable, limit-breaking focus and an enormous consumption of mana. With every use, it felt as if red-hot needles were being driven into his brain; blood leaked from his nose and ears. Throughout this inconceivable fall from the peak of the mountain to its foothills, his body repeatedly smashed into, dragged across, and bounced off the softened surfaces he had transformed.
Finally, when he crashed like a meteor into the thick, white blanket of snow at the foot of the mountain, a massive cloud of snow was thrown into the air.
The fall had stopped.
The only sound around was the howling of the wind. Within that deep crater opened in the snow lay Akira's mangled body. His left arm was completely bent out of shape, most of his ribs were broken, and blood filled his lungs with every breath. His right leg was numb. He had managed to take as little damage as possible while falling from the mountain's peak, but this "little damage" was enough to kill a normal human ten times over.
His eyes were half-open. His blood-covered face was buried in the snow. He was in too much physical agony to even rejoice at surviving. He gripped the snow with his single remaining, trembling good hand. He tried to drag his body inch by inch, writhing in pain like a worm.
"I won't... die..." he wheezed, as red drops spilled from his mouth onto the snow.
But his brain could endure no more. The absolute darkness brought on by mana exhaustion slowly swallowed the pain and his consciousness. His fingers went slack in the snow, his head lolled to the side, and Akira sank into a deep, deathlike swoon upon the snow that had turned into a pool of blood. He was now entirely at the ruthless mercy of the mountain.
As the freezing cold of the snow gradually morphed into a numbing, lethal warmth, Akira's consciousness clung to the edge of darkness by a razor-thin thread. His vision had narrowed; his world consisted solely of the red snow he lay face-down in, melted by his own blood. However, just as his eyelids were about to close into an eternal slumber, he noticed slender, tall silhouettes gliding through the fog and the storm. They had no footsteps; they were as silent as if born from the winter wind itself.