Cael woke before sunrise.
Not because he wanted to.
Because his body hurt too much to stay asleep.
The room was dim and cold, the kind of cold that sank into the corners of cheap inns and refused to leave. His blanket had slid halfway off during the night, and his ribs screamed when he tried to roll over and pull it back.
He stared at the ceiling for a moment, breathing slowly, letting the pain settle into something tolerable.
Then he sat up.
His shoulder protested immediately.
His arms felt heavy, as if someone had tied weights to his bones while he slept. His legs were worse—tight, stiff, trembling with the memory of yesterday's run.
Cael pressed his feet against the floor and stood anyway.
The moment he did, the world tilted.
He grabbed the edge of the table to keep from falling, blinking hard until the dizziness passed.
Already?
He swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper.
A weaker person would've called it a sign to rest.
Cael didn't have that luxury.
Six days.
He washed his face with cold water, flinching as it hit the bruises along his jaw. He checked his bandages—still clean, still holding. The cuts on his palms were healing slowly.
Slowly. Like everything about him.
He dressed, tucked the Seed of Irregular Growth close to his body, and stepped out into the street.
Asterwyn at dawn was quieter, but not peaceful.
The city never truly slept. It only lowered its voice. Bakers were already opening shops, smoke rising from chimneys. Guards switched shifts at the gates. Students walked with the stiff confidence of people who had never failed hard enough to fear failure.
Cael made his way to the training field again.
He didn't stop walking until his shoes hit dirt.
His body wanted to slow down. His mind didn't let it.
He ran.
Not far.
Not fast.
Just enough to wake up the muscles again.
It became clear within minutes that his legs were still destroyed from yesterday.
His stride shortened. His breathing turned uneven. Sweat broke out too early.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Cael pushed anyway.
One lap.
Then another.
His lungs burned. His heart felt like it was slamming itself against the inside of his ribs, desperate to escape.
He forced a third lap.
Halfway through, his foot caught on uneven ground.
He stumbled, caught himself, and kept going.
Then his body finally gave him what it had been threatening all morning.
It stopped listening.
His legs went numb.
His knee buckled.
And Cael hit the ground hard enough to bite down on air.
The impact knocked the breath out of him so sharply that for a moment he couldn't inhale at all. He lay there on his side, chest twitching, mouth open like a fish pulled from water.
The training field was empty this early. No instructors. No audience.
Just him and the dirt.
Cael stared at the ground and tried to move his fingers.
They responded—barely.
His whole body felt wrong. Like it wasn't injured in one place, but failing everywhere at once.
A quiet part of his mind whispered:
This is the limit.
Cael hated that voice.
Because it sounded reasonable.
Because it sounded safe.
Because it sounded like the world trying to convince him not to try.
He clenched his jaw and forced himself onto his back, breathing shallowly until the dizziness stopped.
Then he remembered something.
Not a stat chart.
Not a boss pattern.
A piece of forgotten text from a hidden tutorial page most players never read because it didn't matter in a game where you could grind mindlessly.
But here…
It mattered.
Mana circulation.
In the game, weak characters had a trick—an ugly survival trick.
A way to push the body past its natural wall by forcing mana to stabilize the organs rather than flow outward into spells.
It didn't make you strong.
It made you functional.
Cael sat up slowly, ignoring the sharp pain in his ribs.
He closed his eyes.
His mana was tiny. Miserable. A thin thread of cold energy barely existing inside him.
But he could feel it.
A weak spark in the center of his chest.
He placed one hand against his sternum and inhaled through his nose, slow and steady.
Then, carefully, he guided the mana downward.
Not to his limbs.
Not to his hands.
To his core.
To his breathing muscles.
To his heartbeat.
To the places that were about to fail first.
It was like trying to pour water through a cracked cup.
The mana resisted. It slipped. It scattered.
Cael's forehead creased.
He tried again.
More slowly.
More patiently.
He didn't force it like a spell.
He coaxed it like a sick animal.
After a minute, his chest stopped feeling so tight.
After two, his heartbeat steadied.
After three, the trembling in his limbs softened into something manageable.
Cael opened his eyes, surprised by how different the world looked.
Not brighter.
Just… clearer.
Like he'd been drowning and finally found air.
A small blue window flickered into existence without him calling it, as if the System had been watching.
[Technique Registered: "Mana Circulation — Inner Loop"]
[Condition: Weak Constitution — Temporary Stabilization Achieved]
[Reward: +1 Control]
Control.
Not Strength.
Not Endurance.
But control.
Cael exhaled slowly.
It wasn't a flashy reward.
But it was real.
He pushed himself back to his feet.
His legs still hurt.
His body still screamed.
But now he could move.
Now he could train without collapsing after every attempt.
He ran again—shorter this time, controlled.
When his stamina dipped, he stopped, breathed, circulated mana, then continued.
Not relentless.
Not reckless.
Smart.
That was the difference between suicide and progress.
By midday, his body was shaking again, but it wasn't falling apart. His lungs were still burning, but they weren't failing.
This was good.
This was usable.
He was halfway through another set of drills when something made him pause.
Voices.
Not training shouts.
Not laughter.
Low voices, close to the edge of the field.
Cael wiped sweat from his brow and looked up, eyes narrowing.
Two men stood near the fence, pretending to talk casually while scanning the students who trained nearby.
They weren't guards.
Their clothes were too plain, too dusty for noble students, and their posture was wrong—loose, careless, like they didn't fear consequences.
Street men.
Cael recognized that kind of body language immediately.
Earth had taught him that.
The men's eyes swept over Cael briefly, then moved on.
One of them murmured something.
The other nodded and smirked.
Then they walked away, blending into the street crowd.
Cael stared after them.
They didn't do anything obvious.
But Cael felt it in his bones.
Predators didn't always attack immediately.
Sometimes they watched first.
Sometimes they marked targets.
Cael's fingers curled slightly.
Bandits? No… not that.
This was a city.
This felt like something else.
Underworld.
The game memory flickered.
A name surfaced, half-forgotten.
Coin King's scouts.
Low-level criminals in the early arc who hunted potential recruits… and potential victims.
Cael's jaw tightened.
If they were here, then the city wasn't just preparing for the academy.
The city was preparing to eat the weak arrivals before the academy even began.
Cael looked down at his hands.
Still weak.
Still bandaged.
Still not enough.
But different from yesterday.
He breathed in slowly and guided his mana again, feeling it stabilize his core like a second heartbeat.
Then he resumed training.
Not because he didn't feel fear—
But because fear wasn't an excuse anymore.
Not with six days left.
Not when the world was already watching him.
And this time, Cael understood something clearly:
The academy wasn't the only danger.
The road to it was full of people who wanted to break you before you even entered.
He kept running.
He kept pushing.
And the whole time, deep beneath the pain, something quiet inside him pulsed steadily.
The seed.
Growing.
Waiting.