Kai discovered something irritating the morning after rebuilding his body.
He was strong.
Very strong.
That wasn't the irritating part.
The irritating part was that he had no idea how much of that strength actually belonged to him.
Kai stood in the training courtyard beneath the early morning sun.
A stone block rested in front of him.
It was larger than a car.
Yesterday, his old body hadn't been able to move something a fraction of its size without Origin.
Today?
Kai crouched.
Placed both hands beneath it.
Lifted.
The block rose.
Easily.
Kai straightened until several tonnes of stone rested above his head.
"Huh."
He lowered it.
Then made another twice as large.
Lifted that too.
Another.
Larger.
Kai stopped when the block was roughly the size of a small house.
He stared upward at it.
His arms weren't shaking.
His breathing hadn't changed.
"Okay."
He threw it.
The block vanished.
Kai's head tilted back.
A distant speck crossed the sky.
"...That was further than intended."
Several seconds passed.
A tremendous crash rolled over the mountains.
Birds erupted from the forest.
Kai winced.
"Sorry."
He restored the damaged mountain.
Then looked at his hands.
The new vessel was absurdly powerful even without consciously drawing on Origin.
And yet—
Kai didn't feel satisfied.
He felt suspicious.
His body had been designed around Origin. Its strength was genuine. Its speed, durability and adaptability were his now.
But there was a difference between possessing an incredible body and knowing how to use one.
Kai remembered the alley.
He'd had a metal bar.
His attacker had possessed a folding knife.
Kai had still missed his first swing badly enough to hit a wall.
More strength wouldn't have fixed that.
He needed something power couldn't simply hand him.
Experience.
Kai walked back toward the palace.
His notebook appeared in his hand.
He opened to a fresh page.
For several seconds, he considered what to write.
Then smiled.
A memory surfaced from Earth.
A bald man.
A yellow suit.
One hundred push-ups.
One hundred sit-ups.
One hundred squats.
A ten-kilometre run.
Kai laughed.
"Sure."
He wrote:
100 PUSH-UPS
100 SIT-UPS
100 SQUATS
10 KM RUN
Then underneath:
NO ACTIVE ORIGIN.
Kai stared at the page.
"This is either genius or I've finally lost it."
Probably both.
The first hundred push-ups were easy.
Embarrassingly easy.
Kai completed them without slowing.
Sit-ups followed.
Then squats.
Nothing.
The ten-kilometre run barely raised his breathing.
Kai returned to the courtyard.
"Well."
That had accomplished absolutely nothing.
He could increase the repetitions.
Ten thousand push-ups?
A hundred-kilometre run?
That wasn't training.
That was wasting time with larger numbers.
Kai looked toward the mountains.
Then understood.
The problem wasn't the routine.
It was the environment.
Origin stirred.
Kai pointed toward an empty valley beyond the palace.
Gravity changed.
Twice Earth's.
Trees bent.
Rock groaned.
Kai felt the increase even from where he stood.
"Better."
He stepped into the valley.
His body became heavier.
Still manageable.
Three times.
Kai rolled his shoulders.
Five.
His boots sank slightly into the ground.
Ten.
Kai's knees bent.
A grin appeared.
"There you are."
He dropped.
Push-up.
His body rose.
Down.
Again.
By twenty, Kai felt resistance.
By fifty, his muscles had warmed.
At one hundred, sweat ran down his forehead.
Kai sat back on his heels.
For the first time since creating the vessel, his breathing had changed.
He smiled.
"Again."
Days found a rhythm.
Morning belonged to his body.
Kai increased gravity whenever the previous level became comfortable.
Not enough to crush himself.
Enough to demand adaptation.
He ran mountains rather than roads.
Swam against currents strong enough to tear ordinary trees from the ground.
Lifted weights without changing their mass.
Climbed cliffs using his hands instead of teleporting.
Origin created the challenge.
Kai's body overcame it.
That distinction mattered.
He could have commanded himself stronger.
Instead, he allowed the vessel to do what he'd designed it to do.
Adapt.
The changes came quickly.
Too quickly by human standards.
Kai's muscles became denser.
His movements sharpened.
His balance improved.
The black markings remained dark while Origin rested.
His golden eyes were the only obviously unnatural thing about him.
At least until he took his shirt off.
Then the six-foot-six man covered in black markings became somewhat harder to explain.
Kai looked at his reflection in the lake after one morning's training.
Broad shoulders.
Defined chest.
Lean waist.
Muscle packed across his frame without slowing him.
Asha would never believe he'd earned it.
"You cheated."
Kai pointed at his reflection.
"That's exactly what you're going to say."
The imaginary argument continued.
You literally built your own body.
"Foundation. I built the foundation."
Cheater.
"I still trained."
With magic gravity.
Kai paused.
"You're extremely annoying for someone who isn't here."
The smile disappeared.
He missed her.
Kai turned away from the water.
"Keep moving."
So he did.
Afternoons belonged to combat.
The three wooden constructs from his previous training were no longer enough.
Kai created twenty.
Featureless.
Mindless.
Nothing alive behind their wooden faces.
Some carried swords.
Others spears.
Bows.
Staffs.
Knives.
Kai stood among them unarmed.
He could feel every construct through the domain.
That was another shortcut.
"No."
His awareness of the realm withdrew.
Kai closed his deeper perception.
No Origin.
No teleportation.
No supernatural senses.
Only his body.
"Begin."
An arrow came first.
Kai moved.
It passed beside his cheek.
A spear followed.
He caught the shaft.
Pulled.
The construct stumbled toward him.
Kai drove a knee into its chest.
Wood cracked.
Something struck his back.
He turned too late.
A staff hit his jaw.
Kai flew across the courtyard.
He landed on one hand, rolled and came upright.
A sword was already descending.
Kai stepped inside the swing.
Elbow.
Palm.
Shoulder.
The construct collapsed.
Three more arrived.
Kai lost.
Badly.
He lay beneath a pile of wooden limbs.
One construct's foot rested on his chest.
Kai stared at it.
"I dislike all of you."
Nothing responded.
"Good."
He shoved the pile away.
"Again."
Months passed.
Twenty became fifty.
Fifty became a hundred.
Kai learned that fighting wasn't a collection of impressive movements.
It was distance.
Balance.
Timing.
Attention.
He learned to stop watching weapons and start watching shoulders, hips and feet.
A sword couldn't swing until the body moved it.
A punch began before the fist travelled.
A kick announced itself through weight distribution.
Kai learned to see decisions before attacks.
He was still hit.
Constantly.
That was useful too.
His vessel was incredibly durable, but pain remained because Kai had chosen to keep it.
Pain told him when he'd failed.
So did blood.
One afternoon, a spear cut his cheek.
The wound closed almost instantly.
Kai stopped.
He touched the skin.
Nothing remained.
Regeneration.
He hadn't consciously activated it.
His vessel had repaired itself automatically.
Kai frowned.
"That's useful."
Then considered the problem.
If his body healed every injury instantly, he could become careless.
But disabling regeneration entirely would be equally stupid.
He thought for a moment.
"Keep it."
Origin listened.
"But pain stays."
The next construct punched him directly in the mouth.
Kai staggered.
His split lip healed.
The pain remained.
Kai glared at the wooden figure.
"Excellent test."
He punched its head off.
Night belonged to understanding.
That became the most important part.
Kai sat in the palace library surrounded by books he'd created from memories of what he'd once studied.
Physics.
Biology.
Chemistry.
Mathematics.
Most were incomplete.
Kai hadn't memorised textbooks on Earth.
Creating a book didn't magically provide knowledge he had never possessed.
That limitation pleased him.
It meant he couldn't simply manufacture answers.
He had to discover them.
Kai held a flame above his palm.
Fire.
Easy.
He could make it larger.
Hotter.
Gold.
Black.
Cold, if he abused Origin enough.
But what did he actually understand?
Combustion.
Heat.
Fuel.
Oxygen.
Energy transfer.
Those were Earth's answers.
Would another world's fire follow them?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Magic could produce flames without fuel.
A supernatural flame might burn souls.
Another might burn memories.
A sufficiently strange world might call something "fire" while obeying none of the rules Kai associated with the word.
He extinguished it.
"That's going to be a problem."
He remembered manga.
Anime.
Novels.
All the powers he'd spent years reading about.
As a teenager, Kai had known an embarrassing amount about fictional abilities.
Sharingan.
Ki.
Cursed energy.
Spiritual pressure.
Devil Fruits.
Magic.
Nen.
Quirks.
Authorities.
Domains.
Conceptual abilities that had required him to read forum arguments longer than some university essays.
Back then, it had been entertainment.
Now?
Potential preparation.
Kai stood.
An ordinary steel sword appeared in his hand.
No Origin enhancement.
No impossible edge.
Just metal.
He looked at it.
One concept had appeared in countless stories.
Sword intent.
Kai raised the blade.
He imagined cutting the mountain outside.
Origin responded immediately.
A golden arc erupted from the sword.
Kai's eyes widened.
"No—"
The horizon flashed.
Silence.
Then the top of a mountain slid sideways.
Kai stared through the window.
Several million tonnes of rock crashed into the valley.
Dust climbed into the sky.
Kai slowly lowered the sword.
"That..."
He looked at the blade.
"...was not sword intent."
The sword seemed innocent.
"That was just a very large sword attack."
Kai spent the next two days repairing the mountain.
Afterward, he changed the question.
Not:
How do I create sword intent?
Instead:
What is a sword?
A tool for cutting.
Too simple.
What was cutting?
Separation.
Kai sat beneath a cherry tree with the ordinary sword across his knees.
A leaf drifted down.
He watched it.
No Origin.
No golden energy.
No enormous blade.
Only understanding.
The leaf passed before him.
Nothing happened.
Kai waited for another.
Nothing.
Again.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Kai didn't become frustrated.
That was new.
He studied.
Practised.
Cut wood.
Stone.
Water.
Leaves.
He learned the blade's balance.
Its distance.
The smallest movement necessary to produce a clean cut.
Eventually, the sword stopped feeling separate from his hand.
One afternoon, Kai sat beneath the same tree.
A leaf detached.
He watched it fall.
He didn't reach for the sword.
Didn't reach for Origin.
He simply understood.
Separation.
The leaf passed before him.
It divided.
Two halves landed in the grass.
Kai remained perfectly still.
His golden eyes lowered toward them.
No flash.
No explosion.
No mountain requiring repairs.
A slow smile appeared.
"Okay."
Now that was interesting.
Kai opened his notebook.
He wrote:
DON'T COPY POWERS.
He considered the sentence.
Crossed out POWERS.
Wrote:
DON'T COPY RESULTS.
Below it:
Understand the principle. Origin can build my answer from there.
Kai stared at those words.
That changed everything.
He didn't need to enter another world and steal its techniques.
He didn't need to become a cheap imitation of whoever lived there.
If he encountered something he didn't understand, he could learn the principle behind it.
Then create his own answer.
Kai looked at the divided leaf.
A sword was only the beginning.
Sound.
Poison.
Space.
Time.
Souls.
Magic.
Curses.
Life.
Death.
Things he didn't even have names for yet.
Origin stirred inside him.
Not impatiently.
Waiting.
Kai closed the notebook.
He had spent months learning how not to rely on power.
Now he finally understood what all that restraint had been preparing him for.
Not weakness.
Precision.
Kai picked up the ordinary steel sword.
Another leaf fell.
This time, he cut it himself.