"What is he doing out there with that stick?"
Lina's voice came from the window, half curious, half offended. She leaned on the sill, braids a little messy, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Miya glanced up from folding laundry. "Who?"
"Who else?" Lina pointed. "Ikarus. Look at his face. He looks serious. With a stick."
Miya wiped her hands on her apron and joined her at the window.
Outside, in the small yard, a four-year-old boy stood on the packed dirt. Bare feet, plain shirt, hair a soft black that caught the light. In his hands: a straight, thin branch—too long to be a toy, too light to be a real weapon.
He wasn't swinging it wildly like an excited child.
He was… standing still.
Feet placed deliberately. Shoulders relaxed but aligned. Eyes half-lidded, focused on something far beyond the fence. After a moment of stillness, he moved—the stick cutting through the air in a slow, controlled arc, stopping exactly where he seemed to want it.
Then he reset and did it again.
Miya watched quietly for a few breaths.
"Isn't Ikarus always serious?" she said at last. "Focused, quiet, too old in the eyes. For a four-year-old, he's… unusual."
She tilted her head at Lina. "Which is more than I can say for some people. You're five years older and still create trouble wherever you step."
Lina gasped theatrically. "Excuse me? Sister Miya, you started this. You hoard him during chores time. You're just jealous because he likes my stories better."
Miya snorted. "Your stories end with dragons eating everyone."
"Happy endings," Lina insisted.
Marta, sitting nearby mending a shirt, raised her head at the commotion. "What are you two arguing about now?"
Lina jabbed her thumb toward the yard. "Look at him, Sister Marta. He's out there alone, staring at nothing and waving a stick like he's fighting invisible monsters. It looks… I don't know. Serious."
Marta frowned slightly and came to the window.
Outside, Ikarus adjusted his grip, moved his front foot a fraction, and repeated the swing. His expression didn't match a game. It was calm, focused, intent on something only he could see.
Marta's chest tightened with a complicated feeling.
"I can't believe it's already been four years," she murmured.
Lina glanced at her. "What?"
"Nothing." Marta gave a small, private smile. "Just… the choice I made back then. The one that could have cost me everything. It brought me more happiness than I knew I could have."
Her eyes softened as she watched the boy.
"He's holding a stick," she went on softly. "He's… training? But how, and why, at his age…?"
Miya folded her arms again. "The best thing about an orphanage is that everyone can be free, in their own way," she said. "No bloodlines, no clan expectations. Just who we become."
She looked closer at Ikarus.
"But the look on his face… that isn't a child playing. It's someone who decided something."
Lina shivered slightly. "He really is an odd child."
Marta sighed, fond and worried at the same time. "Well. If he wanted me to know, he'd have asked. For now… we let him be. But he's not skipping meals or rest. I'll drag him in myself if I have to."
"Would pay to see that," Lina muttered. Miya elbowed her.
Outside, oblivious to the three pairs of watching eyes, Ikarus took another slow breath and focused on the stick in his hands.
This stick is weird, he thought.
It was just a branch, really. Straight enough, light enough. But every time he held it, his body reminded him how far reality was from the clean movements in his head.
He lifted it, aligning it with the invisible line only he could see.
[Comment: It's not the stick that's weird, host. It's you.]
The system's voice slid into his thoughts with its usual dry tone.
"If I want to be strong," Ikarus answered silently, setting his stance, "then I have to train. This is your manual, remember?"
He could feel the structure beneath his movements now. The mental dojo he'd built over years had finally leaked into his muscles. Each time he gripped the branch, his fingers naturally fell into the right places. Each time he stepped, his body tried to follow the three-line patterns he'd etched into his neurons.
[Correct,] the system said. [This session: applied use of Beginner Swordsmanship Manual – foundation layer. Also: basic combat exercise for hand and arm coordination.]
Ikarus exhaled, raised the stick, and swung.
The arc wasn't perfect. His real arms trembled a bit at the end of the path. The air didn't part cleanly. His feet scuffed the dirt.
But it was a beginning.
Something else tickled at the edge of his awareness.
"Oh, right." Ikarus's thoughts sharpened. "I wanted to ask—this sword style. The one you've been pushing into my head through memories. Where is it from?"
He adjusted his stance and swung again.
Images flickered faintly in his mind. Not clear scenes, but… impressions. A tall figure under a sky full of stars. A blade moving so simply it barely seemed to move at all, yet mountains cracked. Footsteps that left no sound even on shattered stone.
"It's like weird memories from my previous life, but it isn't," Ikarus said inwardly. "You pulled it from somewhere creepy, didn't you?"
[Observant,] the system said. [Jokes aside, that combat manual is not from your old world. Its origin is tied to Infinity.]
"So… some god's style?" Ikarus guessed.
[Designation: Infinity God's Sword Manual – Fragment. Foundation-level forms only.]
He almost tripped.
"Wait. Infinity God? You're saying the style I'm practicing is from a god-level being. How strong is that supposed to be?"
There was a short pause. Then:
[Host, even the thought of comparing your current self to that strength level is… unqualified.]
"…Man," Ikarus muttered, resetting his feet. "You could just say 'very strong' without burning me."
[Consider it motivational realism.]
He huffed out a breath that was half-laugh, half-annoyance.
"Fine," he thought. "You don't think I'm qualified? I'll show you."
He gripped the stick tighter.
The lines from his mental training mapped themselves under his feet. Three-line step. Forward, back, side. Cut, recover, guard. His arms burned faster than they did in his imagination, but the shapes were right.
Step, swing, stop.
Step, swing, adjust.
Step, swing, breathe.
Time bled away. The sun climbed higher, then tilted west.
He lost count of how many times he repeated that simple sequence. Sweat dampened his shirt. His hands grew sore. His shoulders ached.
He almost dropped the stick once when a tremor ran through his small arms.
"Hngh…"
He bit his lip and steadied himself.
If I can't handle this, he told himself, how am I supposed to stand in front of Marta and the others when real danger comes?
Four hours passed in that rhythm of step and swing, focus and correction.
Inside, the system occasionally dropped tiny notes:
[Angle improved.]
[Less wasted motion.]
[Balance shift closer to optimal.]
Outside, to anyone watching, it was just a quiet, stubborn child practicing with a branch like the whole world depended on it.
At some point, the back door creaked.
"Ikarus!"
Marta's voice cut through the drifting haze of his concentration.
He froze mid-reset and turned his head.
She stood at the threshold, arms crossed, expression a mix of exasperation and concern.
"I don't know what you think you're doing out here," she said, "but you are going to rest now. Your shirt's soaked. You're red as a beet."
Ikarus swallowed.
"…Yes, Sister Marta," he said softly.
Inside, he thought, I guess her eyes can kill me faster than any monster.
He set the stick down carefully by the fence and padded toward her.
Marta watched every step as if expecting him to topple. When he reached her, she touched his forehead, then his cheek.
"Too warm," she muttered. "No more mysterious stick-fighting for today."
He gave a tiny, sheepish nod.
Lina peeked around her, eyes sparkling with smugness. "Told you she'd catch you."
Miya, standing further back, just shook her head with a small smile. "At least he's not blowing anything up."
"Yet," Lina added.
Marta herded them inside, grumbling about reckless boys and early back problems. Ikarus didn't argue. His arms were trembling anyway.
Later, when everyone else was asleep, he opened his eyes in the dark again.
[You're a training freak, you know that?]
The system's voice greeted him the moment his awareness dropped into the inner space.
Ikarus raised an eyebrow mentally. "Says the one who calls me useless every other day."
[Useless and overzealous are not mutually exclusive.]
The dojo felt… different tonight.
The lines on the floor pulsed faintly, not just with movement patterns, but with something deeper—an undercurrent he couldn't quite name.
He stood there, barefoot, hand empty. For once, no sword appeared automatically. The emptiness made him oddly aware of his own body.
"What now?" he asked. "We've hammered the forms into my head. My real arms now know what tired is. What's next?"
[Next,] the system said, [we stop treating your body like a separate thing and start treating it as what it is—structured energy.]
Ikarus frowned. "Explain."
[Everything in this world is built from matter shaped by mana,] the system went on. [Your flesh, bones, blood—down to the smallest parts, your molecules—are not separate from mana. Others will be taught to 'gather mana' from outside, like drawing water into a bucket.]
"And I won't?" Ikarus asked.
[You will start somewhere else first.]
[You will learn to feel how mana already sits in what you are.]
A spark tickled somewhere inside his chest.
"You're going to make me… what, awaken my molecules?" he asked slowly. "Sense mana not as something floating around, but as something tied into every piece of me?"
[Accurate enough, for your level of vocabulary.]
He snorted.
"So while other kids close their eyes and imagine light gathering in their hands, I'm going to be in here, trying to feel the way my blood hums?"
[Yes. And no.]
[You will feel motion. Vibration. The difference between stillness and flow inside your own frame. Mana rides those differences.]
He fell silent, considering.
In his old world, he'd once read that even imagined movement could change the brain—motor imagery improving real performance, invisible work shaping visible skill. That had proven true already, through sword practice.
This was just… a layer deeper.
"All right," he said. "Show me what to do."
The floor beneath his mental feet dissolved into a vague, pulsing field—neither solid nor liquid, but something in between. His own body, too, blurred at the edges, lines softening.
[First task,] the system said. [Stand. Breathe. Stop thinking about swords. Feel the smallest shifts.]
Ikarus inhaled—not with lungs, but with awareness. He tried to let go of the idea of "arms" and "legs," focusing instead on the faint sense of pressure, rhythm, and quiet motion that existed even in stillness.
At first, there was nothing.
Just darkness and the echo of his own expectations.
Then—very faintly—he sensed something like a hum.
Not sound. Not really. More like the awareness of countless tiny movements, too small to name. The way his heart would beat, blood would pump, cells would shift, even if he didn't consciously move.
The system's voice was softer now.
[That. Don't chase it. Don't force it. Just notice it.]
He let his attention hover there.
"For everyone else, mana is… outside," he murmured. "For me, you want it to be… pattern."
[For you,] the system replied, [sword, body, and mana will eventually be the same language. If you learn it as movement first, you'll speak it fluently later.]
Ikarus focused, patiently, stubbornly.
His life had been broken twice already. His body had been judged trash at birth. If there was a different path to strength—one that fit everything he'd already been doing—he would walk it, no matter how abstract it felt at the start.
Hours passed like that, or maybe minutes. Time didn't behave properly in this space.
Eventually, fatigue pulled at him again, heavier than any physical tiredness.
He let his awareness float back, the faint hum of inner motion lingering at the edges of his thoughts.
In the dark orphanage room, his small hand twitched once under the blanket. His breathing shifted, then settled.
Outside, the night was quiet.
Inside, Ikarus slept—not empty, but with new threads weaving into the tapestry of who he was becoming.
The others would one day gather mana like mist. He would build from the inside out, molecule by molecule, step by step.
And when the time finally came to swing real steel and cast real spells, he intended to show everyone—system included—just how far a "squishy," forsaken child could go.