He wasn’t always Aleksander Morozov.
In a previous life, he was a nameless financial analyst in a sterile high-rise, chained to a desk by endless deadlines, artificial lighting, and severe sleep deprivation.
He distinctly remembered the climax of that existence: the sudden, crushing weight in his chest at 2:00 AM, the cold numbness radiating down his left arm, and his cheek hitting the keyboard as his overworked heart finally gave out.
When he opened his eyes again, he was an infant.
It took him a few years of observing whispered conversations and hidden weapons to realize he had been reborn into a world of gold coins, bespoke suits, and blood oaths—the hidden assassin underworld.
But far more jarring than his new reality was his new mind.
The crippling anxiety, stress, and brain fog of his past life were gone, replaced by a terrifying, flawless clarity.
His cognitive capacity had evolved into something fundamentally superhuman.
He possessed what he could only describe as an Absolute Mind.
He didn’t have innate, magical omniscience—he still had to read, observe, and acquire information—but the speed at which he processed, comprehended, and mastered that information was instantaneous.
He saw the world in raw data, geometric angles, kinetic physics, and psychological variables.
His memory was a bottomless, perfectly organized archive, and his emotional control was absolute.
When his new parents—both active syndicate assassins—were killed on a job in Berlin when he was six, his mind didn’t fracture.
The grief was immediately compartmentalized, analyzed from a detached, clinical distance, and filed away.
He was in complete control of himself because his supreme intellect simply allowed no other option.
Now, at seven years old, he had been taken in by his parents’ old associate, Koji Shimazu.
The wooden floors of the Osaka Continental’s private dojo were cold beneath Aleksander’s bare feet.
Across the mat, Koji adjusted his gi.
Beside Koji stood his daughter, Akira, panting slightly.
They had been practicing a traditional Judo shoulder throw—Ippon Seoi Nage—for an hour.
“Again, Akira,” Koji commanded, his voice a calm rumble.
“You are memorizing the steps, but you are not understanding the weight.”
Akira grunted, stepping in and pulling the training dummy over her shoulder.
She slammed it to the mat.
It was a good throw for a child, but inefficient.
“Aleksander,” Koji said, not looking away from his daughter.
“Your turn.”
Aleksander stepped forward.
He didn’t look at the dummy; he looked at Koji.
He replayed the demonstration Koji had given an hour ago.
Through the lens of his Absolute Intelligence, he didn’t just recall the visual of the throw—he deconstructed the exact angle of Koji’s wrist, the tension in his calves, the forty-five-degree pivot of his hips, and the exact center of gravity required to break an opponent’s balance.
Aleksander grabbed the dummy.
He didn’t replicate Koji’s form exactly.
Instead, his mind instantly calculated the difference in height, muscle mass, and bone density between Koji and himself.
To compensate for being a child, he shifted his grip two inches lower on the lapel and dropped his hips a fraction of a second earlier.
With a smooth, effortless motion that required almost zero physical exertion, the heavy dummy flipped over his shoulder and slammed onto the tatami mat with a deafening crack.
Akira stared.
Koji’s eyes narrowed.
He walked over, looking at where Aleksander’s hands were positioned.
“Your grip was wrong.
That is not traditional.”
“Traditional is inefficient for my current height and muscle mass,” Aleksander said.
His voice was quiet, stripped of the usual hesitation of a child.
“You are six feet tall.
Your fulcrum is higher.
If I copy you exactly, I have to lift an extra ten pounds of dead weight.
By lowering the grip and dropping my center of gravity to thirty-two degrees instead of forty-five, the opponent’s own momentum does ninety percent of the work.
It’s basic physics.”
Silence hung in the dojo.
Koji looked at the boy.
He had taken Aleksander in out of loyalty, expecting a traumatized orphan who would need years of careful psychological repair.
He had not expected a savant who viewed martial arts as a math equation.
“Pick up the bokken,” Koji ordered, pointing to the wooden training swords on the rack.
Aleksander picked one up.
He had never held a sword before in either of his lives.
Koji drew his own wooden blade.
“Watch.”
Koji moved through a complex, eight-strike Kenjutsu sequence.
It was a high-level kata, designed to teach fluidity and wrist control.
It took years to master the subtle decelerations of the blade.
“Do it,” Koji said.
Aleksander blinked.
His mind broke the fluid blur of motion into a series of static, high-resolution frames.
He intuitively mapped the kinetic chain from Koji’s ankles to his shoulders.
He understood not just what Koji did, but why the blade needed to move that way to maintain velocity without sacrificing defense.
Aleksander raised the bokken.
He stepped forward and executed the sequence.
It wasn’t a clumsy imitation.
It was flawless.
The snap of the wood cutting the air sounded exactly like Koji’s.
But on the seventh strike, Aleksander slightly altered the angle of his wrist, recovering his guard a half-second faster than Koji had.
He hadn’t just learned the kata; he had instantly identified its mechanical flaws and optimized it.
He lowered the sword, breathing evenly, his heart rate entirely unchanged.
To say Koji was stunned would be a severe understatement.
The seasoned assassin felt a rare chill creep up his spine.
Muscle memory took thousands of repetitions.
True comprehension took decades.
This boy had simply looked at a centuries-old martial art, consumed its mechanics, and improved it in thirty seconds.
If left alone, a mind operating at this terrifying velocity would either drive the boy to madness or turn him into something monstrous.
He needed structure.
He needed an endless, heavy ocean of information to process, or his own intellect would tear him apart from the inside.
Koji stepped forward, taking the wooden sword from Aleksander’s hand.
He looked down into the boy’s cold, hyper-aware eyes.
“Tomorrow, you will not just learn Judo or Kenjutsu,” Koji said quietly, placing a heavy hand on Aleksander’s shoulder.
“You will learn anatomy.
You will learn linguistics, ballistics, architecture, and chemistry.
I will feed you every piece of knowledge this world has to offer, Aleksander.
Let us see how deep this well goes.”