The morning cold in the Northern Forest didn’t wake you gently; it stabbed you until you opened your eyes.
Ed opened his before dawn.
The campfire had reduced to a few orange embers.
His body was stiff, and every muscle in his back ached from sleeping on the hard dirt, but his mind—tempered by memories of war and the life of a king—didn’t allow him to utter a single groan.
He rose in one fluid motion.
His breath drew small clouds of vapor in the freezing air.
He was alive.
Now he had to make sure he stayed that way.
The otaku fragment in his unified mind knew exactly what to do next.
In the stories he used to consume, ignorance was the first step toward death.
He needed to know his tools.
“System,” Ed muttered, his voice raspy.
The air in front of him flickered.
A translucent, orderly interface in a military blue hue unfolded in his field of vision.
Unlike the silence of the previous day, this time, a line of text began to type itself out, accompanied by a subtle mechanical hum in his head.
[System booting.
Good morning, Host.
You successfully survived the night.
The statistical probability of you dying from hypothermia was 64%.
I am pleasantly surprised.
Or I would be, if I had endocrine glands.]
Ed blinked slowly, his face stoic and expressionless.
Far from being annoyed by the AI’s sarcastic tone, his pragmatic side appreciated it.
A system that spoke with brutal honesty was better than one that sugarcoated reality.
“Show me the general status.
No fluff,” he ordered mentally, knowing the interface responded to his thoughts.
[As you wish.
Opening the panel of human misery.]
[Name: Ed Rothtaylor (Complete Assimilation)]
[Physical Strength: F-] (Comment: A rotten log puts up more resistance).
[Agility: E]
[Mana Reserves: F]
[Mana Core: Embryonic]
[Active Skills:]
Wind Blade (Lv.
1)
Basic Ki/Mana Control (Lv.
Max – Limited by physical vessel)
[Multiversal Network Functions:] Locked.
Requires Orange Stage Mana Core for dimensional stabilization.
Ed ignored the mocking comments.
His golden eyes scanned the information like a commander reading a casualty report.
It was exactly what he suspected: he possessed the flawless martial technique of King Grey, but the “vessel” (the original Ed’s body) was a fragile glass cup.
If he tried to use a large-scale attack, his own blood vessels would burst.
He had to rebuild his mana core from scratch, using the martial arts style of his past life, and forge this body through raw effort.
But before he could train or manipulate magic, his human body imposed a non-negotiable demand.
A loud growl came from his stomach.
The military veteran within him calculated that he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the previous day at Ophelius Hall.
If he didn’t ingest calories in the next few hours, his focus and reaction times would plummet.
[Medical Alert: Caloric deficit detected.
Suggestion: Hunt something.
Chewing tree bark provides fiber, but statistically won’t stop you from collapsing.
And searching for another host in this universe would be a highly tedious process for me.]
The subtle concern disguised as a robotic complaint didn’t go unnoticed, but Ed merely closed the interface.
He grabbed his small hunting knife.
He had no bow and no arrows.
In Sylvania’s original storyline, Ed took days to acquire a decent hunting tool and suffered constant starvation.
But this Ed wasn’t going to wait.
He stepped out of his shelter in silence.
His footsteps became light, placing the ball of his foot first and then the heel, distributing his weight so as not to snap a single dry twig.
The forest was full of short-horned giant squirrels, a common pest in the North.
It took him twenty minutes to find one.
It was eating acorns at the base of a large oak tree, about fifteen meters away.
Too far to lunge at, and if he got closer, the animal would flee.
Ed’s expression didn’t change.
He slowly crouched down and picked up a stone the size of a marble from the dirt.
He weighed it in his hand.
His body was weak, yes, but lethality didn’t require massive muscles; it required absolute precision.
He closed his eyes for a microsecond.
He circulated a microscopic thread of mana from his sternum to his fingers, using Grey’s ki technique to channel it without loss.
He didn’t conjure a visible Wind Blade; instead, he coated the stone in a thin layer of pressurized wind, giving it the aerodynamic properties of a bullet.
Ed raised his arm and threw the stone with a sharp snap of his wrist.
There was an almost inaudible whistle cutting through the air.
CRACK!
The giant squirrel fell to its side, dead instantly from a clean, blunt-force impact to the head.
It never even knew what hit it.
Zero suffering.
Military efficiency.
Ed walked over to the prey, picked it up by the tail, and drew his knife.
Blood didn’t disturb him.
For someone who had led entire wars, skinning a rodent in the woods was practically a vacation.
As he walked back to camp to prepare breakfast, the System blinked again in the corner of his eye, this time without large text boxes, just a discreet notification.
[Skill Acquired: Accelerated Marksmanship (Lv.
1)]
[Analysis: Clean hit.
Not bad…
for a malnourished human.
Suggestion: Make sure to cook the meat thoroughly.
I don’t feel like dealing with parasitic infections today.]
Ed sat in front of the embers of his campfire, used a thread of wind to fan the flames, and roasted the meat in silence.
The food had no salt or spices.
It tasted like blood, smoke, and survival.
But as he chewed, looking out at the cold trees of Sylvania with his icy golden eyes, Ed felt something strange.
Peace.
There were no nobles conspiring around him.
No rival kings.
Just him, the fire, and a sarcastic system.
For now, that was enough.
However, his knowledge of the story told him that peace in this academy had an expiration date, and the first Joint Combat Exam was just around the corner.
He had to be ready.