Chapter 1: The Weight of Zero
The ironwood tree did not bleed, but Kaelen did.
A sharp, metallic thwack echoed through the dense, fog-choked canopy of the Whispering Woods. The rusted iron blade in Kaelen's hands bit into the indestructible bark of the ancient tree, rebounding with a vicious shockwave that traveled up his forearms. His muscles screamed in protest. The flesh of his palms, already a map of busted blisters and thick, yellowish calluses, threatened to tear open once more.
"Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight," Kaelen rasped, his voice a dry, grating sound in the freezing pre-dawn air.
He didn't stop. He couldn't. He drew in a ragged breath, tasting the metallic tang of his own blood and the damp earth of the forest. He adjusted his grip. His stance was perfect, refined by millions of repetitions. He swung again.
Thwack!
"Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine."
Sweat dripped from his chin, freezing almost instantly as it hit the frost-covered ground. Kaelen was sixteen years old, yet his body bore the scars and lean, starved musculature of a veteran soldier who had lived through a decade of famines. His raven-black hair clung to his forehead, framing eyes that were a startling, abyss-like dark gray. They were eyes that held no childish innocence, only a cold, terrifying obsession.
Thwack!
"Ten thousand."
Kaelen let the heavy training sword drop, the tip embedding itself an inch into the frozen dirt. He fell to his knees, his chest heaving like a broken bellows. Steam rose from his overheated skin, a stark contrast to the biting cold of the world around him.
He closed his eyes and looked inward, searching for the familiar, devastating emptiness. In this world of Eldoria, life was dictated by one fundamental truth: Mana. It flowed through the earth, the sky, and the veins of every living creature. When a child turned twelve, their mana pathways would solidify, forming a core near their heart. This awakening would grant them a Rank.
Most commoners awakened at Rank 1: Aura Initiate (Early stage). With minimal training, they could lift boulders, run faster than horses, and live up to a century. The talented ones reached Rank 2: Aura Core, becoming esteemed mercenaries or low-ranking nobles.
Kaelen had awakened at age twelve. But there was no core. There were no pathways. When the local guild examiner placed the Awakening Stone on his chest, the crystal remained as dead and gray as a gravestone.
Rank 0. A Null. A mortal in a world of demigods.
In Eldoria, to be a Null was a curse worse than death. It meant you were fragile. It meant a mere shockwave from a Rank 2 fight in the streets could burst your organs. It meant you were destined for the coal mines, the beast-bait squads, or the gutter.
"Still empty," Kaelen whispered to the silent woods, opening his eyes. There was no despair in his voice. Despair was a luxury he had discarded years ago. If the heavens refused to give him a core, he would forge his physical body into something that could rival one. It was a foolish, impossible dream. Flesh had limits; mana did not. But it was either fight against the impossible, or lie down and die.
Slowly, Kaelen forced himself to stand. His legs trembled, the micro-tears in his muscle fibers burning with lactic acid. This was his slice of life—a daily routine of self-mutilation disguised as training, followed by sheer survival.
He hoisted the heavy iron sword onto his shoulder and began the long trek back to the grim settlement of Oakhaven.
Oakhaven was a frontier town, a filthy, sprawling scar of civilization on the edge of the perilous Abyssal Mountain Range. It was a haven for low-level adventurers, criminals hiding from the Empire, and merchants looking to exploit both.
The morning sun had barely breached the horizon, but the slum district where Kaelen lived was already alive with misery. The stench of cheap, fermented potato ale, unwashed bodies, and the coppery scent of butchered low-tier magical beasts hung heavy in the air.
"Watch your step, Null-trash!" a harsh voice barked.
Kaelen stepped aside without a word, his expression entirely blank. A burly man wearing crude leather armor shoved past him. The man's skin glowed with a faint, muddy yellow hue—the signature of an Early Rank 1 Aura Initiate. The man purposely bumped his shoulder into Kaelen's.
To the Aura Initiate, it was a casual shove. To Kaelen's Rank 0 body, the physical force was like being hit by a galloping horse. Kaelen's boots dug into the mud, his perfectly honed core muscles locking instantly to absorb the impact. He slid back two inches but remained standing.
The burly man paused, glancing back with a frown, clearly expecting the boy to be sprawling in the mud with broken ribs. Before he could turn back to pick a fight, his companion grabbed his arm. "Leave it, Garet. The Guild needs us at the northern gate. Don't waste time on a defect."
They hurried away. Kaelen quietly rubbed his shoulder. The bone wasn't broken, but a massive, ugly purple bruise was already forming beneath his tunic. He ignored the throbbing pain. Emotions like anger or pride were useless right now. Anger without power was just a quick way to get slaughtered.
He navigated the twisting, narrow alleyways until he reached a decrepit forge. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of a hammer meeting steel rang out.
Behind the anvil stood Old Man Vance. The blacksmith was a cripple, missing his left leg below the knee, and his face was horribly scarred by what looked like a chemical burn. He was notoriously grumpy and despised by the town, but he was the only one who didn't charge Kaelen extra for being a Null.
"You're late, boy," Vance grunted, not looking up from the glowing piece of steel he was folding.
"Training took longer," Kaelen replied softly, setting his rusted sword against the stone wall. He walked over to the corner, picking up a massive pair of bellows, and began to pump them, stoking the forge's fire. This was his job. To afford his meager rations and rent, he worked manual labor for Vance.
Vance paused, his sharp, surprisingly clear blue eyes scanning Kaelen's bruised shoulder and bleeding hands. For a fraction of a second, an unreadable emotion flashed in the old man's eyes—something ancient and dangerous—but it vanished as quickly as it came.
"Flesh has limits, boy," Vance said, his voice grating like two stones rubbing together. "You swing that piece of scrap iron ten thousand times a day. You break your bones so they heal thicker. You eat bark and raw beast meat to force your stomach to adapt. It's useless. Against a Peak Rank 1, you are an insect. Against a Rank 2, you are dust."
"I know," Kaelen said calmly, maintaining the rhythm of the bellows. Push. Pull. Push. Pull. "But if I don't swing it ten thousand times, I am less than dust. I am nothing."
Vance scoffed, spitting a glob of phlegm into the fire. "Stubborn fool. Go to the market. Buy five pounds of iron ore. The cheap stuff. And don't get robbed; I won't pay you twice." He tossed a small leather pouch containing a few dull copper coins onto the anvil.
Kaelen nodded, pocketing the coins. As he turned to leave, the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was a rhythm.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound of massive armored beasts marching in unison. Kaelen stepped out of the forge and looked toward the main thoroughfare of Oakhaven. The bustling street had gone deadly silent. Mercenaries, merchants, and beggars alike were backing away, pressing themselves against the wooden walls of the buildings, their heads bowed.
Down the center of the muddy street rode a procession. At the front were four knights riding heavily armored Dire-Wolves. The knights wore pristine, silver-white armor that seemed to repel the filth of the town. Even from fifty yards away, Kaelen felt a suffocating pressure radiating from them.
Mid Rank 3: Earth Realm, Kaelen realized, his breath catching in his throat. Rank 3 warriors could shatter castle walls with a single punch. They were literal one-man armies. What were beings of such catastrophic power doing in a slum like Oakhaven?
But they weren't the center of attention.
Behind the knights was an open carriage drawn by two majestic, winged feline beasts. Inside the carriage sat a young woman.
Kaelen's heart skipped a beat, not out of infatuation, but out of sheer, primal terror.
She looked to be around his age. Her hair was a cascading river of liquid silver, shimmering with an ethereal light even in the gloomy morning. Her skin was flawless porcelain, and she wore elegant, intricately woven white robes lined with gold thread. But it was her eyes that froze Kaelen's blood. They were a piercing, crystalline azure.
She wasn't intentionally releasing her aura, but her mere existence was warping the air around her. The ambient mana in the environment was being forcibly dragged toward her, creating a localized vacuum.
For the people of Oakhaven, this pressure was unbearable. Ranks 1 and 2 fell to their knees, gasping for air as the girl's natural mana gravity crushed their lungs.
Kaelen, standing at the edge of the alley, felt the pressure hit him like a physical wall of lead. His knees buckled instantly. The air was sucked from his lungs. The capillaries in his nose burst, and a stream of warm, red blood trickled down his chin.
Bow, his survival instinct screamed. Get down. You are a Null. This is a being favored by the heavens. Bow!
Kaelen gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging. The dark reality of the world pressed down on him, demanding his submission. But a strange, dark fire flared in the abyss of his gray eyes. He was Rank 0. He had nothing. No talent, no core, no future. The only thing he owned in this entire universe was his unbroken spine.
He planted his feet. His bones creaked ominously. His torn muscles screamed in absolute agony as he fought against the invisible weight of the girl's mere presence. He did not stand perfectly straight—he was hunched over, trembling violently, bleeding from his nose and lips—but he did not let his knees touch the mud.
As the carriage passed, the silver-haired girl blinked. She turned her head slightly, her crystalline azure eyes sweeping over the kneeling, groveling masses.
And then, her gaze locked onto Kaelen.
Time seemed to stop. For one microscopic fraction of a second, the ultimate genius of the heavens looked at the absolute trash of the earth. Kaelen saw no pity in her eyes, no arrogance, no disgust. He saw only a terrifying, unfathomable coldness—like looking into the heart of a glacier.
She tilted her head, a fraction of an inch, perhaps mildly curious as to how a boy with absolutely zero mana was managing to resist the passive gravity of her Supreme Mana Veins. But before the thought could fully form, the carriage rolled onward, and she turned her gaze back to the road ahead.
The procession passed. The crushing pressure vanished.
Around Kaelen, the mercenaries and townsfolk began to gasp for air, picking themselves up from the mud, whispering in awe and terror about the 'Holy Maiden of the Azure Sky Sect'.
Kaelen didn't listen to them. He leaned against the wooden wall of the alley, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his bruised hand. His entire body was screaming in pain from the exertion of just standing in her presence.
He looked down at his trembling, bloodstained hands. He remembered her eyes. The sheer, insurmountable gap between them. She was a god walking among insects.
"Not yet," Kaelen whispered to himself, a chillingly calm smile gracing his bloodied lips. It wasn't a smile of joy, but the smile of a maniac who had just seen the peak of the mountain and realized how far he had to climb. "I am zero. But every number starts at zero."
He pushed himself off the wall and limped toward the market. The final war, the beast tides, the machinations of gods and emperors—he knew nothing of them yet. He only knew that today, he needed to buy five pounds of iron ore, survive the night, and swing his rusted sword ten thousand and one times tomorrow.
Because in the shadows of Kaelen's rundown shack, hidden beneath the loose floorboards, a pitch-black, unopenable stone box left by his dead parents had just registered the microscopic trace of extreme mana pressure he had brought back with him.
And very slowly, a single, hairline crack appeared on its indestructible surface, glowing with a dark, devouring light.