Power.
What is power, really?
Is it the strength to crush mountains with a single blow.
Is it the authority to command millions of soldiers with a word.
Is it ruling over an entire continent, deciding who lives and who falls.
Or is it reaching the throne of the so called god itself.
People argue endlessly about it.
Warriors, kings, scholars, even monsters.
Yet none of them ever ask the most important question.
Where does power come from?
Everything has a source.
Fire, water, life, death.
Even the endless has a beginning.
And if even infinity has a source, then power must have one too.
The world trembled the moment that truth took form.
Not with thunder.
Not with divine light.
Not with prophecy carved into the sky.
But with the cry of a single newborn child.
At that instant, something shifted.
The seas stirred, as if disturbed by a overwhelming presence.
The ground resonated with a pulse older than history.
The sky itself felt heavier, like it was watching.
No one noticed.
No god descended.
No kingdom celebrated.
No alarm was sounded.
Yet every living being, every creature, every unseen entity felt it deep within their existence.
A presence had been born.
A child who would one day search for the source of all power.
A being who would not be bound by land, sea, or sky.
A soul that defined what it truly meant to be great, to be strong, to be absolute.
The one who would become known as.
The Infinite Source Mage.
..
“Light…”
“Bell! Hey, Bell!”
“Bell… who’s… that…”
A ringing voice echoed in his ears.
“Hey, Bell! Wake up!”
Bell suddenly jolted awake and shot upright from the matted floor.
His head spun, and his vision blurred from the sudden movement.
“Argh… I shouldn’t have stood up that fast.”
Still dazed, Bell barely had time to collect his thoughts before the orphanage lady approached him and began nagging him about waking up so late.
She told him to get to work and start chopping wood at the back of the orphanage.
Bell remained confused, but he silently nodded and followed her instructions.
As he made his way toward the back, his eyes wandered around the unfamiliar surroundings.
Then he noticed a wooden sign hanging outside the building.
“Nina’s Orphanage.”
Bell stared at it for a moment before looking down at his own hands.
He froze.
They were small.
Fragile.
Undeniably the hands of a child.
“Am I in someone else’s body…?”
He stepped outside and made his way behind the orphanage, his thoughts becoming increasingly difficult to organize.
“What happened…? Why am I in a child’s body? My powers and magic seem to be gone…”
His expression tightened.
“It’s like I either got reincarnated… or cursed…but how I didn’t die..”
Bell retrieved an axe and several pieces of wood, preparing to do as he had been told.
But the moment he gripped the handle, he immediately noticed something wrong.
The axe was heavy.
Far heavier than it should have been.
His small arms strained just trying to lift it properly.
“Ugh… how is this body so frail and weak? If only I could just…”
Bell closed his eyes and attempted to tap into the methods he had once used to harness mana.
Nothing.
His expression changed.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
Bell opened his eyes in disbelief.
“I don’t have any mana?”
He stared at his hands.
“No… that can’t be possible. I, the one who uncovered the truth of all kinds of powers, can’t even gather mana?”
Bell let out a deep sigh.
If his body could no longer produce or contain mana the way it once had, then he would have to rely on something much more primitive.
An old method.
A traditional method of gathering mana directly from the surrounding environment.
Bell sat down on the ground and closed his eyes.
He took several slow breaths, calming his mind before focusing on the faint mana scattered throughout the air.
He reached outward with his senses, attempting to draw even the smallest traces of mana into himself.
Unfortunately, the village had an incredibly low mana presence.
There was barely anything to gather.
Still, Bell persisted.
Little by little, he managed to pull a small amount of mana into his body.
He inhaled.
Then, as he exhaled, the mana he had gathered rushed through his arms.
Bell immediately grabbed the axe again.
This time, he could hold it properly.
He raised it and brought it down onto the wood.
Thunk!
Again.
Thunk!
The process continued as Bell chopped through the logs, using the small amount of mana he had gathered to compensate for his body’s weakness.
But there wasn’t much mana to work with.
By the time he reached the third log, the last of it had been completely drained.
Bell’s arms began to tremble.
The axe suddenly felt unbearably heavy.
His grip weakened, and his trembling hands finally gave out.
“Tsk.”
The axe slipped from his hands and landed on the ground.
Bell looked around the back of the orphanage.
A fence surrounded the area, though it wasn’t particularly tall.
The wooden planks were old and weak, and several of them had already begun to break apart.
Then Bell noticed something.
There was a small gap in the fence.
It was just wide enough for a child to crawl through, but far too small for an adult.
Bell looked at his own body.
Since he was now in the body of a child, the gap was more than enough.
Without hesitation, he crouched down and crawled through the broken section of the fence.
He had no intention of spending the rest of his time here struggling to lift an axe with a body this weak.
Once outside, Bell began walking through the village.
Everything was unfamiliar.
The layout.
The buildings.
Even the faint presence of mana in the air.
That last part bothered him most.
Bell had traveled across countless lands in his previous life.
He remembered every place he had ever visited, yet this village was nowhere in his memories.
“Strange…”
He continued walking for a while before suddenly breaking into a sprint.
Bell ran straight out of the village and toward a wide grassy field.
Once he reached it, he slowed down and looked around.
Nothing.
There was nothing familiar about the surroundings.
Bell stared across the field for several moments before letting out a heavy sigh.
“Let’s just do what I came here for.”
He sat down on the grass and closed his eyes.
Unlike the village, the mana outside was abundant.
The moment Bell began drawing it in, he could feel the difference.
Mana flowed toward him with ease, filling his body far more quickly than before.
After several moments, Bell had gathered enough mana throughout his entire body.
Now came the part that required precision, carefully he began controlling the mana within himself.
He circulated it through his nervous system, guiding it upward until it reached his brain.
Then he began directing the mana toward his Visual Association Cortex.
He proceeded slowly and cautiously.
One wrong step could damage the delicate area of his brain.
His eyesight could be affected.
He could even lose his ability to properly process what he saw.
Bell knew exactly how dangerous this process was, which was why he refused to rush it.
Every movement of mana had to be precise.
Every adjustment had to be controlled.
And for the first time since awakening in this unfamiliar body, Bell began working toward regaining something that once belonged to him.
As Bell continued the process, something slowly began to change within his vision.
He could see the mana.
It flowed through the specific part of his brain he had carefully targeted, moving exactly where he directed it.
Bell maintained his concentration as he began shaping the mana into something more complex.
A translucent, holographic-like screen.
But he wasn’t creating it from mana alone.
Bell relied on the fragments of his past memories, recalling a power system he had once encountered on another continent known simply as the “System.” He remembered its interference, its structure, and most importantly, the way its interface appeared.
Using those memories as a foundation, he carefully combined them with the mana he had gathered.
Then suddenly—
ZZIP!
Bell’s eyes snapped open.
Floating directly in front of him was a glowing, translucent screen.
It contained his personal information.
He stared at it for several moments.
CURRENT STATS: