Berak was the youngest of seven siblings. The fourth son, born into a serf family, into a life where going hungry was routine.
The moment he was past five, he had to start getting ready to dirty his hands with soil.
Unfortunately, Berak was sickly.
He coughed often, and under the scorching sun he quickly ran out of breath. He would plop down on the ground in the middle of transplanting rice seedlings.
Every time that happened -
"Lying down again, you damned brat?"
"Who do you think is going to open their mouth any less for you? Get back up this instant, Berak!"
His father, and his older brothers too.
They treated him like nothing more than a tool that didn't work well.
Days like that went on.
From the age of 8, he was dragged into real farm work rather than odd jobs, and young Berak could only hang on, teetering.
And so, he turned 10.
That day was the same as any other. Sun, sweat, scolding, hunger. Before he knew it, he lost consciousness and collapsed.
But the outcome was different.
"...He's not getting up."
"He won't even open his eyes. His body, it's burning up......"
Berak couldn't get up for an entire day.
He was breathing, but his eyes didn't open. Tormented by fever, he babbled deliriously again and again.
His family had already picked out the spot on the hill out back where they would dig the pit to bury him.
But he survived.
Miraculously.
After that day, Berak wasn't the same as before.
Something was... strange.
He had only been doing work that was all too familiar. Picking stones.
Stones turned up every year.
Every spring, before the fields were plowed.
Over the winter, they popped up here and there as if welling out from beneath the soil.
From small stones to big ones, he stooped all day long. Toss it in the basket, bend down again. It was tedious repetition.
If anything was different this year, it was that they had started work at the tail end of winter, while fingertips still froze.
All Berak had heard was the village chief saying spring would come early this time. He didn't really know about things like the barony wanting the crops brought forward.
Berak had collapsed in the cold and fallen gravely ill, but there was no such thing as consideration. The very next day, he had to come back out and pick up stones again.
Stones half-buried in the dirt scraped his palms as they came free. After carrying only a few, his thin skin quickly peeled away. The sting lasted only a moment. Soon enough, the feeling was gone.
Much of the ground was still frozen, so he had to walk pulling his straw sandals out of the muck. He ran out of breath faster than usual.
Every time he bent over, his back felt like it would snap in two. But every time he tried to catch his breath, a bellow came with ghostly timing.
"Berak! You're slowing down again!"
When he had barely managed to finish another exhausting day's work.
Something appeared before Berak's eyes.
「Stamina + 1」
「Refinement - 1」
Berak didn't know letters. He had never learned how to write numbers, either. He was simply startled and bewildered.
The strange things flickering before his eyes soon vanished. He had no choice but to think he'd seen things.
But that wasn't the case.
The next day, too.
「Stamina + 1」
「Refinement - 1」
And the day after that.
「Stamina + 1」
「Refinement - 1」
Whenever he finished the grueling farm work, the letters popped out as if to welcome him.
Without having to ask, he sensed this was happening only to him. Berak told no one. He figured nothing much good would come to a 10-year-old serf who stood out as odd.
It wasn't a judgment he'd reasoned out. It was closer to a knack for reading the room that he'd absorbed through all the scolding.
That was why, curious as he was about what the letters were, he kept quiet and simply buried the question.
As the days passed, Berak's curiosity began to be satisfied little by little. Just in a direction other than learning to read.
At first, it was a small question.
That day, he didn't cough.
His throat felt dry, but the usual dry cough didn't come boiling up from deep inside. He thought nothing of it. There could be a day like that once in a while, he supposed.
But it went on like that from that day forward.
The cough never came. That alone made Berak breathe a sigh of relief inside. He remembered the days of curling up in the grass out of his brothers' and father's sight, holding his breath to stifle his coughs.
Just not needing to do that anymore made life a tiny bit easier.
It was even later that he noticed his body had grown lighter.
While carrying stones in his basket as usual, he suddenly felt puzzled.
He had carried this much, yet he wasn't as winded. His back throbbed, but it was a weight that normally would have had him collapsing long ago. His legs weren't shaking as much, either.
'...Why?'
He couldn't tell why. But his body was definitely changing.
It was a few days later that he became completely certain.
Around afternoon, when everyone was flagging. Berak kept up to the end without sitting down halfway. His pace was a little faster than usual, but no one noticed. No one cared.
Berak himself knew, though. That it was something he could never have done before.
That day too, the letters appeared without fail.
「Stamina + 1」
「Refinement - 1」
At some point, Berak had memorized those letters. He didn't know a single thing they meant, but he simply took them in whole. Whatever they were, they were good, that much was certain.
His body was hurting less than before, growing lighter, holding up better.
Maybe......
'Those... might be saying something like, get sturdy.'
At some point, Berak stopped holding his breath like before when he went outside at dawn.
'Will those letters show up today too? Once today's all done, will I get a little sturdier again?'
A small hope he couldn't tell anyone.
It was still hard. His back was soaked in sweat, and until the long day's sun went down, there was never a moment to rest.
But.
At the end of every day, those strange letters appeared without fail.
That much, at least, was no lie.
Little by little, Berak came to believe that something was building up even within these hard days.
And so the seasons slowly changed.
Once water began flowing along the paddy ridges, he went around the sluice gaps, packing mud into the cracks. The threshed and dried rice seeds sprouted and went out into the paddies. Transplanting began, and grueling labor followed.
The monsoon season was drawing near. Before anyone knew it, Berak had caught the eye of people in and around the village. Like he'd turned into an ox, he could turn soil and haul loads all day long without showing any sign of tiring.
So his brother and father often tried to pass heavier loads onto Berak. But every time, Berak just toppled right into the mud.
His body had certainly changed. But only in lasting longer. He hadn't gotten any stronger.
His father couldn't for the life of him understand why Berak, who barely even broke a sweat, couldn't lift heavy things. He'd yell at him to stop faking, or even raise a hand to him.
That didn't make Berak suddenly any stronger. Instead, his father decided to make use of him another way.
Berak was the first out to the fields and the last back. He even helped with other serf households' work.
In front of the villagers, his father never failed to add a word.
"These days, that one can run around all day and not bat an eye."
Whenever he said that, the villagers really did call on Berak more.
Serfs weren't outright slaves. Within the village, they had their own sort of face and standing. His father filled that up through Berak.
Looking good to the overseer was a bonus. With just the reputation of 'that household is diligent,' labor duties got lighter and punishments stayed away.
The reason Berak could endure labor that bordered on abuse was, again, thanks to the letters that appeared every day.
No, not every day. At some point, they had started showing up about once every two days. The first day the letters didn't appear, Berak's heart sank, and the next day he sighed in relief.
In the old days, he wouldn't have questioned his father's orders at all. But lately, he sometimes had thoughts like this.
'Why is it only me? This isn't right.'
And then the thought that naturally followed.
'...Can I run away?'
Those words lingered in his heart for a long time. If he just kept walking over the mountains, could he get somewhere? It felt like he could walk for ages without tiring. He even imagined things like that.
But soon his mind went blank.
Where to? Eating what? When he didn't know a single road? What about when night fell? And if he got caught, what would happen?
So for now, Berak decided to quietly wait and watch. How much more his body would change. How long those strange letters would keep following him.
There was one thing that had at least gotten better. He was no longer pushed around by his brothers.
"Dragging your feet again, you retard?"
In the old days, he would have flinched and curled up. But Berak only adjusted his grip on the A-frame strap in his hand. Then he raised his head and looked his brother straight in the eye.
"Then do it yourself."
The words that came out were quiet, but his brother definitely heard them.
His brother's face twisted. "You little punk...!" he said, even raising his hand.
But Berak didn't so much as blink. Just as when he'd first raised his head, he looked at his brother, unshaken.
A brief silence. In the end, his brother turned away without bringing his hand down.
From that day on, Berak's brothers didn't hit him.
It wasn't only his body that had changed. His mindset and attitude were changing, too.
Perhaps the realization that he was different from others had stirred something inside Berak.
Or perhaps those letters that kept appearing weren't simply making his body healthier.
Even as he harbored such thoughts, Berak's days flowed by just the same. And before long, winter came around again. He had turned 11.
***
[Stamina: 248]
[Refinement: 0]
At first, the letters had only appeared after farm work was done. But one day, Berak suddenly wondered.
'Can I see them now, too?'
The moment he pictured it in his mind, the letters really did appear before his eyes.
From that day on, Berak called up those letters whenever he had a spare moment. He couldn't tell what they meant, but just watching their shapes change bit by bit was fascinating.
The top line always changed, but the bottom one was always the same.
As always, Berak began his day by checking the letters the moment he opened his eyes. But today, something was different.
Around morning, a stranger entered the village. He wore a leather coat fastened with iron buttons. At his waist hung a sturdy club. People called him the 'Forest Warden.'
"He's here, isn't he?"
He stopped right in front of Berak's house.
"I hear there's a kid who can work all day without collapsing."
The voice came from beneath a rough beard. As if he'd been waiting for this, Berak's father pushed him forward.
"Yes. This one here."
Berak felt the Forest Warden's gaze slowly sweep down over him.
"I'm taking him to the forest. A new logging camp has been set up, so we'll put him to use there."
Berak didn't resist. The thought of being separated from his family crossed his mind, but his chest didn't ache, nor did tears well up.
If anything, he even felt a little lighter. A place without his brothers' glares or his father's yelling...... even if it was a forest, could it be any worse than now?
His mother and sisters did flit through his mind. But not enough to hold his steps back.
On the first day, Berak wasn't handed a big axe. Felling big trees was the grown men's job.
Berak was assigned to lop the branches off felled trees.
He was weak, so even cutting a single thick branch took several times more swings than it took others.
But he didn't stop. Berak kept raising and lowering his arms over and over.
Then, at some point.
His arms stopped obeying him. Even though he wasn't tired, his hands trembled so badly he couldn't grip the axe handle properly. The blade kept biting shallowly into the bark and bouncing back out.
Still, Berak didn't put the axe down. His strength was gone, but he kept trying to chop at the branch without stopping.
One of the laborers watching him clicked his tongue.
"The little bastard sure is stubborn. Usually they just give out once they figure they can't do it."
Soon another laborer burst out laughing.
"Chopping's a lost cause for you. Hey, quit banging away and go haul twigs or something."
The words were rough, but no one called Berak lazy. The sight of him trying to hold out to the end despite his weak arms stuck in their minds.
Evening came, and he was on his way to the log hut where he would sleep from now on. The smell of damp earth and pine resin stung his nose. At that moment.
「Strength + 2」
「Refinement - 2」
Familiar letters, yet somehow different in shape, appeared before Berak's eyes.