Even before sunrise, a boy was outside.

The training ground was silent except for the rhythm of iron meeting air steady, controlled, deliberate.

One whole month of isolation.

His black hair clung to his neck, damp with sweat despite the cold morning air. His blue eyes caught the last of the moonlight, sharp, quiet, patient.

And his face

The jade-toned skin, the clean angle of his jaw, the stillness of his expression there was something almost unsettling about it.

No one who had seen the Young Master a month ago would recognize him now.

***

Hh... huh... hh... huh...

One. Two. Three.

Twenty.

Fifty.

Seventy.

One hundred.

I pushed myself up from the ground and rolled my shoulders back.

"One hundred push-ups done. Time for a run."

I headed outside the mansion grounds proper outside, not the garden corner I had started with a month ago. The estate walls no longer felt like a boundary. They felt like a starting line.

I had warned Sebastian not to follow me.

He nodded politely and said nothing.

Which meant absolutely nothing, because Sebastian was not an ordinary person. He was an assassin. Tracking people was probably something he did the way other people breathed automatically, without thinking about it.

I couldn’t detect him.

I had tried.

Somewhere behind me, or above me, or frankly anywhere, I thought, picking up my pace, he’s probably watching right now.

I smiled at that and kept running.

Besides, if I ran into trouble out here, the system would probably reward me for it.

Today marks thirty-one days since my arrival.

And in thirty-one days, I had made exactly zero progress on the main quest.

Aria was still in the capital.

Her eighteenth birthday was approaching.

I should get her a gift, I reminded myself. Something thoughtful.

I kept running until the manicured grounds gave way to wild grass, and wild grass gave way to trees. The forest swallowed the light whole, dense, dark, indifferent.

I had found the cave a week ago entirely by accident.

At first it had unsettled me deeply. Despite being surrounded by forest, nothing lived near it. No birds. No insects. No rustling in the undergrowth. The flora and fauna simply... stopped, as though something had drawn an invisible line and everything with instincts had agreed not to cross it.

The silence around it was the kind that felt intentional.

And there was something else.

During the day, no matter how certain I was of the path, I could never find it. The route simply didn’t exist in daylight, trees where there should have been a clearing, undergrowth where there should have been an opening.

But at night?

The path was always there. Waiting.

It was my secret base.

No servants. No Sebastian probably. No eyes watching every move I made inside the estate walls.

Just me, the silence, and the work.

Over the past month I had made real progress. Basic magic was no longer basic to me Fireball, Wind Blade, a handful of others. I could cast them cleanly now, without the fumbling uncertainty of the first attempts. The mana breathing had moved beyond technique into instinct, as natural as breathing itself.

Which was, I supposed, the point.

Pop.

White smoke materialized in the center of the cave.

I didn’t need to look up.

"Luna."

She appeared with her usual complete lack of warning and complete abundance of judgment, hands clasped behind her back, surveying me the way a disappointed professor surveys a student who has technically done the homework but clearly missed the point.

"One month, Kael. Thirty-one days." A pause. "Zero progress on the main quest."

"I’m aware."

"Shall I remind you what the failure penalty involves?"

"Absolutely not."

I straightened up and met her gaze. Those abyss-dark eyes. Unreadable as always.

I had collected Power Stones here and there, small rewards for small unexpected moments. Enough to feel the system working, not enough to feel comfortable. Nothing I had done yet qualified as extraordinary.

She said nothing. Just watched.

I kept practicing.

Fireball. Wind Blade. Form correction. Repeat.

The silence stretched comfortably between us or as comfortably as silence could stretch with Luna in the room.

"Fascinating, isn’t it," she said finally, tilting her head. " 15 kilograms in one month."

I paused mid-cast and glanced at her.

"The mana concentration in this cave helped," I said, rolling my shoulders. "Dense ambient mana accelerates metabolism alongside the breathing technique. Losing weight was difficult but not as difficult as it would have been anywhere else."

Luna let out a quiet chuckle.

It was somehow more unsettling than her usual silence.

"Also," she added, almost as an afterthought, "due to zero progress on the main quest, you’ve been allocated a side quest. Check the system for details."

And then she was gone. No smoke. No warning. Just absent.

I stared at the empty space where she had been for a moment, then turned back to the cave wall and kept going Fireball, Wind Blade, circulation, repeat until the last of my mana had been completely wrung out of the bronze heart in my chest.

I sat down on the cave floor, breathing slowly.

"System," I whispered.

[STATUS WINDOW]

Name: Kael Ardyn

Title: Trash of the Family, Fat Pig (Inactive)

Level: 3 Class: [NONE]

Stat

Strength: F → E

Dexterity: F → E+

Agility: F → E

Endurance: F → E

Magic: F → F+

Active Abilities: Fireball / Wind Blade / Basic Mana Pulse

Passive Abilities: Infinity Mana Breathing (Mastered)

Traits: None

Mana Heart: Bronze → (Cracks forming — evolution imminent)

[Title Effect — Fat Pig: INACTIVE. Condition no longer met.]

[SIDE QUEST 1 UNLOCKED]

Make your existence known. Attend your sister Aria Ardyn’s eighteenth birthday celebration at the main Ardyn Estate.

You were invited. You were expected to decline. Don’t.

Reward: 50 PS

Failure Penalty: 20kg weight gain

[SIDE QUEST 2 UNLOCKED]

Humiliate a prince who thinks too highly of himself. A certain prince will be attending Aria’s birthday celebration. He has looked down on the Ardyn trash for years.

Make it entertaining. Make it memorable. Make him regret it.

Reward: 100 PS + ???

Penalty: None

[POWER STONES: 34]