The daily quest was a relentless, mechanical tyrant. Day after day, the golden interface materialized in Zeke's vision at the stroke of midnight, resetting the counter and demanding his pound of flesh: the four liters of water, the agonizing ten-mile run through the pre-dawn smog, and the grueling three thousand total repetitions of physical conditioning.
By the end of the second week, Zeke could feel a profound transformation taking root beneath his skin. His school uniform fit tightly across his shoulders, his baseline stamina had skyrocketed, and his movements had lost their heavy, sluggish teenage gait. He was becoming an elite physical specimen, a hard-boiled human container.
But physical conditioning alone was a blunt instrument. On the streets and in the arenas of the modern world, a man who only knew how to run and do push-ups was just a highly durable target. Keith had been an idiot who relied blindly on a C-Rank Strengthening ability, but a trained combatant with a weapon or a proper martial scroll would have sliced Zeke to ribbons before his unguided fists could ever connect. If he wanted to survive long enough to reach Level 10 and smash through the cosmic digital firewall locking away his Aetherflame, he needed to learn how to fight. He needed structure, technique, and violence.
Finding someone willing to teach a confirmed Zero, however, was a humiliating exercise in futility.
Zeke spent three grueling days after school combing through the city's commercial districts, targeting the neon-lit, high-end combat dojos that catered to the children of wealthy families and aspiring corporate Vanguards.
His first stop was the Aegis Vanguard Academy, a sleek, glass-fronted facility where students practiced channeling their MP into kinetic barriers. Zeke walked up to the sleek front desk, the sharp scent of ozone and air conditioning hitting his nose.
"Can I help you?" the receptionist asked, her eyes scanning his faded school jacket.
"I'm looking to enroll in the fundamental striking and combat classes," Zeke said.
The receptionist gave a polite, practiced smile and slid a glowing glass tablet across the counter. "Of course. Please place your palm on the registration scanner to log your baseline MP and current ability profile. We tier our classes by magic capacity to ensure optimal scroll synchronization."
Zeke hesitated, then pressed his palm to the smooth glass. A brief red pulse flickered beneath his skin, followed by a sharp, electronic chime. The tablet displayed a single, glaring number: 0 MP.
The receptionist's polite smile vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, clinical look of utter dismissal. She smoothly slid the tablet back across the counter. "I'm sorry, but our curriculum strictly requires a baseline awakening of at least 45 MP to ignite our instructional scrolls. We do not offer programs for... non-viable individuals. Try the municipal recreation center."
It was the same story everywhere he went. At the Iron Fist Dojo, a burly instructor with glowing orange mana swirling around his knuckles laughed in Zeke's face the moment his Zero status was brought to light. At a weapon-arts gym down the street, the manager didn't even let him past the threshold, bluntly stating that teaching an MPless human was a waste of instructional resources. In a world completely intoxicated by the shortcut of Ability Scrolls, a person without magic wasn't even considered human—they were a broken tool.
Frustrated, his knuckles white with suppressed rage, Zeke abandoned the shiny commercial sectors and headed deep into the lower districts. This was the underbelly of the city, a labyrinth of crumbling brick warehouses, rusted iron fire escapes, and alleyways that smelled heavily of wet asphalt and industrial grease. Here, people didn't care about corporate prestige; they cared about survival.
He began asking around the dingy local taverns and black-market scrap yards, targeting the grizzled, older workers who bore the scars of the outer race border skirmishes.
"Looking for a real teacher?" a one-armed mechanic muttered, spitting a glob of grease onto the floor of his garage when Zeke questioned him. He pointed a wrench toward a dark, winding alleyway that led toward the old industrial shipping docks. "If you want the shiny stuff, you're in the wrong place, kid. But if you want to learn how to break bones without a fancy scroll, look for the old wooden gate at the end of Seventh Street. There's an eccentric old bastard down there. Doesn't advertise, doesn't care about your school records. But he only takes people who are desperate enough to bleed for it."
Zeke followed the directions, navigating the narrow, shadowed corridors of the lower district until the ambient noise of the city faded into a heavy, stagnant silence. At the dead-end of Seventh Street stood a weathered, unassuming dojo, its dark timber frame hidden behind a rusted iron gate. The simple wooden sign hanging over the entrance was cracked and faded, bearing a single, hand-carved phrase: Martial Arts.
There were no glowing holograms, no MP scanners, and no glass tablets.
Zeke pushed the heavy wooden door open, stepping inside. The air was cool and thick with the nostalgic scent of aged cedar wood, beeswax, and dried, bitter medicinal herbs. The dojo was completely empty of modern equipment—no training simulators or mana-measuring crystals. The only feature was a perfectly polished wooden floor that gleamed under the soft, ambient light filtering through the paper screen windows.
Sitting cross-legged in the exact center of the floor was an elderly man clad in a simple, unadorned grey tunic. His hair was a stark, flowing white, and a neatly trimmed beard framed a face etched with deep, weathered lines. Yet, despite his apparent age, his posture was impossibly straight, his chest broad and solid. He sat in absolute, terrifying stillness, radiating an unbothered aura of raw weight that felt like an invisible gravity pressing down on the room.
This was Teacher Cyrus.
Zeke took a step forward, his sneakers squeaking softly against the threshold.
"You walk heavily for someone with no Magic Power," Cyrus said smoothly. He didn't open his eyes. His voice wasn't loud, but it echoed with a resonant depth that seemed to vibrate directly in Zeke's chest. "The world outside is entirely obsessed with MP capacities and commercial Ability Scrolls. They run around like children playing with matches. What brings a verified Zero to a forgotten floor like mine?"
Zeke dropped his backpack by the door, the heavy thud of his training weights echoing through the quiet dojo. He walked until he stood three paces away from the old man, his dark, ordinary eyes fixed on Cyrus's face.
"I want to learn how to fight," Zeke said, his voice firm and devoid of the hesitation he had felt at the commercial academies. "Not just swinging my fists, and not by copying some digital scroll. I need to know how to control and unleash the energy inside the human body without relying on magic. I've been told you're the only one who doesn't look at a Zero like a corpse."
Cyrus slowly opened his eyes. They weren't blue, red, or gold like the mana-infused eyes of the high-tier students at school. They were a deep, piercing slate grey—completely lacking any magical hue, yet so incredibly sharp that Zeke felt as if his entire anatomy was being dissected and measured in a single glance.
A faint, knowing smile touched the old man's lips as he looked at Zeke's calloused hands and the subtle, explosive tension in his posture.
"Ah. You seek the old way," Cyrus said. He stood up in a single, fluid motion—a silent grace so effortless that it defied his age entirely. He didn't use his hands for leverage; his body simply rose from the floor like a ghost. "The modern human collective has grown soft, blinded by the easy power of the universe's leftovers. They think our survival began when we discovered how to ignite Ability Scrolls. They completely forget that before humanity ever learned to channel external magic, our ancestors discovered Qi—the raw, primordial life energy generated entirely by the physical vessel itself."
Cyrus stepped closer, his footsteps making absolutely no sound on the polished wood. He stopped mere inches from Zeke, raised a single, weathered index finger, and tapped Zeke directly on the center of his chest, right where the sealed firewall resided.
"The other races—the proud Celestial Order of the Angels, the brutal Abyss Empire of the Demons, the Sovereigns ruling the deep seas—their Qi remains completely dormant, uncultivated. Why? Because they are born pampered by their biology, relying entirely on their immense racial magic and innate MP pools. But for humans, Qi is the ultimate equalizer. It requires no Magic Power. It doesn't care about your empty mana testing crystals. It demands only absolute physical conditioning, a tempered mind, and a soul strong enough to command the meat and bone of your container."
Cyrus walked back to the center of the mat, his feet shifting apart as he fell into a deep, incredibly grounded stance. The moment his weight shifted, Zeke felt a sudden spike in atmospheric pressure inside the dojo, as if the air itself had become dense.
"I will teach you the first stage of Qi Mastery," Cyrus commanded, his grey eyes flashing with a sudden, intense focus that made the hair on the back of Zeke's neck stand up. "We will teach your consciousness to gather the bio-kinetic energy from your moving muscles, your focused breath, and your circulating blood, compressing it into a single point. When you can control your Qi, your physical strikes will carry the explosive weight of an iron sledgehammer, and your skin will turn to steel—all without a single drop of MP."
Zeke felt a powerful, electric thrill go through his chest. The system didn't display a notification chime, but the immense friction behind his sealed firewall seemed to pulse violently in sheer recognition of the old man's words. Qi was the catalyst his physical vessel needed.
"Show me," Zeke said, stepping firmly onto the polished wooden mat, throwing himself into a basic stance.
Cyrus's smile widened, revealing a row of sharp, white teeth. "Brace yourself, boy. Qi is not an intellectual pursuit. It isn't learned by reading or memorizing. It is forged through impact, broken bones, and absolute suffering. Let us see if that container of yours can hold water."