Six years at the Shin’ō Spiritual Arts Academy were supposed to be grueling.
For the average student, every day meant waking up at sunrise, running six miles around the inner courtyards, getting bruised in sword sparring, and memorizing long Kidō incantations until their brains hurt.
For Kazuma, it was a paid vacation.
His daily routine was a work of art:
1.
Show up to morning roll call five seconds before the bell.
2.
Sleep through swordsmanship theory in the back row with his eyes open.
3.
Throw exactly three sloppy practice swings during sparring, take a light hit to the shoulder, fall down, and tap out with a tired groan.
4.
Eat three full bowls of hot white rice and fried tofu at the mess hall on Central 46’s coin.
5.
Take an afternoon nap behind the archery ranges where the instructors never checked.
By year three, the teachers had completely given up on him.
“Kazuma,” Instructor Yamamoto, a strict middle-aged seated officer with a thick mustache, sighed as he handed back the mid-term parchment.
“Bakudō #9: Geki.
You managed to paralyze a field mouse for three seconds before the binding broke.
Score: 52.”
“I was aiming for two seconds, sir,” Kazuma said, taking the paper with a polite, vacant smile.
“Progress is important.”
“Get back to your seat before I demote you to latrine duty,” the instructor growled, rubbing his temples in utter defeat.
“Thank you, instructor.”
Kazuma strolled back to his corner desk, tucked the failing paper into his uniform sleeve, and rested his chin in his hand, gazing out the sunny window with pure, uninterrupted satisfaction.
To the academy, he was the model of hopeless mediocrity.
He was ranked 240th out of 250 students in the Sixth Class—just high enough to avoid getting expelled, but low enough that not a single Gotei 13 division recruiter would ever look in his direction.
Which meant nobody was watching him when night fell.
Every night at two in the morning, while the entire dormitory slept like corpses, Kazuma vanished into the shadows.
His first stop was the academy’s central archives—the restricted section where copies of intermediate and high-level Kidō scrolls were kept locked behind iron wards.
For an ordinary student or even an unseated Gotei officer, touching those wards would sound an alarm straight to the Kidō Corps.
Kazuma didn’t touch them.
He just placed his palm flat against the iron lock and released a fraction of Jakumetsu’s cold stillness.
The kinetic vibrations of the alarm runes simply froze.
The spirit flow inside the lock dropped to absolute zero.
Click.
The heavy brass bolt slid open with zero resistance, completely silent.
Kazuma stepped inside, pulled a scroll from the shelf, and sat cross-legged on the floorboards under the moonlight.
Tonight’s reading: Hadō #73: Sōren Sōkadan (Twin Lotus Blue Fire, Crash Down).
A devastating, high-tier fire spell.
In class, students spent four years just trying to master basic Hadō #31: Shakkahō, and even then, they had to shout a five-line poem just to make a fist-sized spark.
Kazuma scanned the scroll once.
His modern physics knowledge broke the spiritual formulas down in seconds.
A Kidō chant wasn’t magic—it was a vocal tuning fork used to compress spirit particles into specific frequencies.
If you had perfect control over pressure, temperature, and Reishi density, chanting was just useless noise.
Kazuma set the scroll down, raised his right hand, and pointed two fingers at the damp air.
He didn’t speak a single word.
He didn’t even flare his spiritual pressure.
Inside his chest, he compressed his Reishi, stripped the kinetic friction from the ambient air, and spiked the thermal density at the tip of his index finger.
Hiss.
Two blinding, compressed orbs of pure cerulean flame ignited at his fingertips, burning with so much heat they turned the air into glass.
Yet, not a single drop of heat leaked into the room.
Kazuma used his innate power to absorb every stray thermal wave, keeping the library freezing cold while holding two suns on his knuckles.
With a flick of his wrist, he snuffed the blue flames out before they could scorch the air.
“Too loud for daytime use,” Kazuma murmured to himself, tossing the scroll back onto the high shelf.
“Hadō #54: Haien is better.
It erases the body and leaves zero ash.
Clean, quiet, and no cleanup.”
In three years of midnight study, Kazuma had secretly mastered:
* Hadō 1 through 88 without incantation.
* Bakudō 1 through 75 with instant release.
* Silent flash-step (Shunpo) by eliminating the sound of footing entirely.
He was eighteen years old.
In secret, his raw combat output already rivaled a veteran Vice-Captain.
On paper, he was still the idiot who couldn’t paralyze a mouse.
In the spring of their sixth year, graduation day finally arrived.
The grand courtyard was filled with Captains and Vice-Captains from all thirteen divisions, their white and black haoris fluttering in the breeze as they evaluated the new recruits.
The top-tier nobles from Class One were scooped up immediately by the Second, Sixth, and Tenth Divisions.
Kazuma stood at the very end of the line, slouching against a wooden post with his straw hat tilted over his eyes, waiting for the leftovers.
A weary-looking recruitment officer from the Tenth Division walked down the line, holding a roster of empty posts.
He stopped in front of Kazuma, looked at his file, and frowned.
“Kazuma,” the officer said, his tone dry.
“Class Six.
Test scores barely passing.
Swordsmanship rated ‘lethargic.’ Kidō accuracy rated ‘abysmal.'”
“I try my best, sir,” Kazuma said, yawning politely behind his hand.
The officer let out a long breath and stamped the paper with red ink.
“Congratulations.
You’re assigned to the Tenth Division’s outer boundary patrol.
Low pay, long shifts, and nothing ever happens.
Report to the barracks tomorrow morning.”
Kazuma took the assignment slip, his chest filling with warm, genuine joy.
“Understood, sir,” Kazuma said, bowing low to hide his grin.
“I won’t let you down.”
‘Outer boundary patrol,’ Kazuma thought as he walked out of the academy gates with his hands in his pockets.
‘A quiet wall, an empty shack, and nobody checking on me for hours.’
‘Step one complete.’