The morning air outside the village inn was crisp and bit sharply at my lungs as I made my way toward the training grounds. Tucked behind the stone wall of the garrison, the arena was nothing more than an open clearing of packed, hardened dirt, surrounded by a low wooden fence and a rack of weathered practice weapons. At this hour, it was completely empty. The normal village guards wouldn't report for duty for another hour, leaving the quiet arena shrouded in the long, cool shadows of the surrounding pines.
I stepped into the centre of the ring, the dry dirt crunching softly under my boots. I walked over to the weapon rack, my eyes skipping past the blunt iron spears and focusing entirely on a standard, weighted wooden greatsword.
I reached out and gripped the leather-wrapped hilt. The moment my fingers closed around the wood, a powerful, familiar surge of muscle memory slammed into my shoulders.
For ten years in the future, Astraea's Edge had been an extension of my own arm. I knew the exact balance point of a heavy blade, the precise angle of a parry, and how to use the momentum of a swing to shatter an opponent's guard. Out of pure instinct, I lifted the wooden blade, dropping my weight into a low, aggressive vanguard stance. My left foot slid back exactly half a meter, my hips squared, and the tip of the sword levelled perfectly with an imaginary opponent's throat.
"Now, flow," my mind commanded.
I stepped forward, executing a standard vertical downward slash—the bread-and-butter opening move of my old A-Rank Heavy Blade Resonance style. The sword cut through the air with a faint, clean whistle. But the moment the swing passed my chest, a jarring, agonizing ache flared across my shoulders and lower back.
The momentum of the heavy wooden sword violently pulled me off balance. My back foot slipped in the loose dirt, and I had to awkwardly stumble a meter forward just to keep myself from tumbling onto the ground.
I stood there, gasping for breath, my arms trembling from the sheer weight of a weapon that used to feel as light as a feather. A cold, bitter realization settled over my chest. My mind was fully capable of calculating the advanced angles of elite, high-rank swordsmanship, but this unawakened, seventeen-year-old body simply lacked the physical attribute points to back it up. My current strength stat was at the base baseline of an ordinary civilian. My agility was restricted, and my current tendons didn't have the density to handle the torque of a veteran's footwork.
If I forced my body to fight like a level-eighty vanguard captain right now, I would tear my own muscles directly off the bone before I ever set foot in the academy.
I took a slow, deep breath, forcing my heart rate to steady as I raised the wooden sword once more. I couldn't use the high-rank styles yet—not until my mana channels were unsealed at the altar tomorrow. But I could practice the absolute fundamentals. I could condition this pristine frame, building up its raw stamina and basic coordination step by step.
For the next two hours, I turned the quiet arena into my own personal battlefield. I abandoned the complex vanguard forms and focused entirely on the basic components: a thousand clean, repetitive horizontal swings, a thousand vertical cuts, and a thousand precise lunges across the packed dirt. With every hundred repetitions, the burning fatigue in my young muscles multiplied, but the clumsy weight of the wooden sword slowly began to feel more natural in my hands. I was systematically synchronizing my adult combat mind with the unconditioned flesh of my youth.
By the time the first village guards began to trickle through the garrison gates, my shirt was completely soaked in sweat, and my palms were raw. I placed the training sword back onto the wooden rack, my arms shaking with exhaustion, but a cold, dangerous sense of satisfaction burned deep beneath my ribs.
The countdown to the ceremony was still ticking away. I was physically weak, unawakened, and holding nothing but a piece of timber—but the foundation was being laid. Tomorrow, when the global system finally initialized, I wouldn't just be receiving a status screen. I would be unleashing a mastermind who already knew exactly how to conquer it.