The Shin’ō Academy entrance courtyard was packed with hundreds of hopeful souls, all sweating under the afternoon sun.
Nobles in embroidered silk stood in the shade, boasting about their family lineages.
Starving kids from the outer Rukongai districts clutched wooden practice sticks, their eyes wide with desperate hunger.
Kazuma stood dead in the center of the crowd, yawning so hard his jaw clicked.
He had one goal today: pass the entrance test with the exact minimum score required to get a free dormitory room, three meals of white rice a day, and a monthly stipend funded by Central 46.
Anything higher than a passing grade meant extra training, teacher attention, and early officer recruitment.
Effort was a trap.
“Next!
Sato Kazuma from District 79!” an instructor barked from a raised wooden platform.
Kazuma stepped forward, dragging his straw sandals lazily across the gravel.
On the platform sat three testing stations: a Spiritual Pressure pillar, a wooden target dummy for swordsmanship, and a chalk circle for basic Kidō incantations.
The examiner, a stern unseated officer with a clipboard, pointed a thumb at a glowing crystal orb resting on an iron pedestal.
“Place your hands on the orb and channel your spirit energy.
The light indicates your tier.
Class One is nobility level, Class Six is barely passable.”
Kazuma walked up to the crystal.
Inside his chest, that bottomless well of cold power sat waiting.
If he let even a fraction of his true energy loose, the crystal would probably shatter into dust.
Instead, Kazuma carefully squeezed his spiritual pathways, letting out just enough energy to mimic a tired candle.
*Flicker.*
The crystal gave off a dull, sickly yellow glow.
It reached the Class Five marker, wobbled for two seconds, and died.
The examiner scribbled on his parchment.
“Spiritual density: Class Five.
Low-grade, but sufficient for basic graduation.
Next, swordsmanship.”
Kazuma walked over to the wooden dummy.
He drew the dull wooden training sword from his belt with a sloppy, awkward grip.
He swung horizontally—slow enough that a blind grandmother could have dodged it.
*Thump.*
The wooden blade bounced off the dummy’s padded shoulder with a pathetic clatter.
The examiner sighed, rubbing his temples.
“Terrible form.
Zero killer intent.
Grip is too loose.
Grade: D-minus.
Move to Kidō.”
In the chalk circle, Kazuma stood with his hands tucked into his sleeves.
“Demonstrate Hadō #1: Shō,” the instructor ordered.
“Recite the incantation.”
Kazuma deliberately messed up the second phrase of the chant, paused for three seconds like he forgot the words, and pointed one finger at the target wall.
A tiny puff of compressed air shot out with a sound like a wet cough.
The paper target fluttered slightly, not even tearing from its wooden peg.
The examiner looked at his clipboard, shaking his head with open disgust.
“Sato Kazuma.
Total score: 51 out of 100.
Bare minimum pass.
Assigned to the Sixth Class—general infantry track.”
“Thank you, instructor,” Kazuma said, bowing with the happiest, most relaxed smile in the entire courtyard.
“Where do I pick up my meal vouchers?”
The examiner scoffed and waved him away like a stray dog.
“Dormitory Four.
Get out of my sight.”
Kazuma turned on his heel and walked toward the student barracks with light, easy steps.
To the instructors, he was just another useless stray from the slums who would barely survive graduation.
That night, well past midnight, Dormitory Four was dead silent.
All seven of his roommates were snoring loudly, exhausted from the day’s physical exams.
Kazuma slipped out from under his thin blanket, stepping soundlessly onto the wooden floorboards.
He didn’t make a sound.
Using his innate power, he absorbed the kinetic friction between his bare feet and the old timber, moving like a ghost through the window and out onto the academy’s tiled roofs.
He dropped into the deep bamboo forest behind the academy grounds, far past the sensory boundary line.
The air here was damp and freezing.
Kazuma drew the plain Asauchi blade he had been assigned that morning.
Under the pale moonlight, he closed his eyes and let go of the chokehold he kept on his spirit energy.
*WHOOSH.*
A suffocating, bone-chilling aura exploded from his body.
The bamboo trees within fifty yards didn’t bend or shake in the wind—they completely froze solid, coated in a thick layer of blue-white frost as every ounce of heat was violently ripped from the air.
The crickets in the grass went dead silent in an instant.
Kazuma’s Zanpakutō vibrated in his palm.
The plain steel blade turned pitch black, cold mist pouring off the edge like liquid smoke.
A deep, quiet whisper echoed directly inside his soul.
‘Drink, Jakumetsu.’
Kazuma swung the blade once toward a massive granite boulder twenty yards away.
There was no flashy blast of light, no roaring shockwave.
The air itself simply died.
The massive rock lost all molecular motion in a microsecond.
The stone cracked internally from absolute thermal collapse, shattering into a pile of fine, gray sand that collapsed silently into the frozen grass.
Kazuma looked down at his blade, the mist curling over his fingers.
“Not bad for day one,” Kazuma muttered, sheathing the sword and letting the frost melt back into the night air.
“Six years of pretending to be an idiot in class, and then I get a quiet seat in the Gotei.”
He yawned, turned around, and hopped back toward the dormitory to get some sleep.
The easy life was just getting started.