By his third Name-Day, the suffocating vigilance that had defined Seiyuu's infancy finally began to fray.
The Keep's resources were stretched too thin, and the adults were too exhausted to maintain a constant, paranoid watch over a child who had proven himself remarkably quiet and content to sit still. He no longer required Magda the wet nurse, and Elara's days were entirely consumed by the desperate logistics of stretching the autumn harvest to cover the impending winter.
For the first time in his new life, Seiyuu was granted a measure of quiet autonomy. He was permitted to roam the upper corridors of the keep, provided he did not venture near the steep stone stairs or the outer courtyards. Kaelen, of course, was never more than a room away, a silent shadow in scuffed leather. But she was a professional; she gave him space, watching the doors and the windows rather than hovering anxiously over his shoulder.
He used this new freedom to lay claim to the Walderose library.
It was a cavernous, forgotten room situated directly above the master solar. Stepping inside the tomb gave hints of a more prosperous age. The air was thick with the scent of decaying leather, dry rot, and cold dust. The great hearth had not been lit in years to preserve the delicate parchment, making the room bitterly cold, but Seiyuu did not mind.
"Look at him," Elara would whisper affectionately from the doorway, pausing for a brief moment in her endless daily chores to watch her son sit cross-legged on a heavy rug, a massive tome spread open before him. "He stares at the illuminated dragons for hours. He has such a quiet soul."
Seiyuu would occasionally reach out and trace a colorful, lapis dragon in the margins just to maintain the illusion, but his dark eyes were locked on the dense, geometric runes of the text.
The book currently crushing his small lap was an old, crumbling volume titled 'The Architecture of the Unseen: A Primer on Aetheric Channelling'. A dense read, written by a Veridian scholar centuries ago.
From the text, he learned that magic in Aethelgard was essentially a biological filtration system for a cosmic radiation. Every human possessed 'mana channels'—a secondary, invisible nervous system meant to process the ambient Aether of the world. In the peasantry, these channels were thin and brittle, incapable of drawing in enough energy to light a candle without bursting.
In the nobility, centuries of selective breeding had resulted in wider, more resilient channels. But until a child reached their tenth year, these channels remained sealed, protecting the developing brain from the sheer, overwhelming voltage of the Aether. The 'Awakening' was simply the violent unsealing of these pathways.
Scribe Vance said my soul was dense, a 'collapsed star'. The capacity is there. But if the physical channels—the pipes—cannot withstand the sudden influx of pressure at the Awakening, the vessel shatters. Hence the high mortality rate.
He closed the heavy tome, the thud echoing in the dusty silence of the library.
Intellect alone would not save him. If his mind was a supercomputer, it was currently hooked up to the weak wiring of a toddler's body. He needed to build physical resilience.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
That night, long after the keep had fallen silent and Kaelen had settled into her light, vigilant sleep on the pallet outside his door, Seiyuu slipped from his bed.
The stone floor of his bedchamber was freezing. The only light came from the silver slashes of moonlight cutting through the narrow window. Seiyuu reached under his mattress and pulled out the small, wooden practice sword his father had given him two years ago.
He moved to the center of the room, standing in the pool of moonlight. He closed his eyes, recalling the precise, lethal geometry he had watched Kaelen practice in the courtyard. He visualized the Vanguard forms: the low center of gravity, the pivot of the heel, the explosive transfer of momentum from the shoulder to the wrist.
He opened his eyes. He widened his stance, bending his knees.
He swung the wooden sword.
It was pathetic.
He knew the angle the blade needed to travel, but his shoulder lacked the muscle density to arrest the momentum. The weight of the wooden toy pulled him entirely off balance. He stumbled, crossing his stubby legs, and fell hard onto his rear on the cold stone.
Seiyuu sat in the dark, a profound sense of frustration washing over him. It was a humiliating disconnect between a supreme intellect and a profoundly inadequate physical form. He was an architect trapped inside a collapsing building.
He dropped the wooden sword. He needed a baseline. He needed to know exactly what he was working with, beyond the subjective feelings of infant clumsiness.
He closed his eyes and looked inward, into the calculating void of his own mind. He had not touched the anomaly since the day of his birth. He had wanted to understand the natural laws of this world first.
System, he commanded silently.
Instantly, the darkness behind his eyelids was banished by the crisp, familiar glow of a semi-translucent blue interface. The celestial grinding of gears echoed faintly in his consciousness.
[Status Window] Name: Seiyuu Walderose Age: 3 Years, 2 Months Title: Heir to the Fallen House of Walderose Level: 1 Class: [Locked - Requires Age 10]
[Attributes]
Strength: 1.2
Agility: 1.8
Vitality: 2.1
Intelligence: [Suppression lifting... Current functional output: 15]
Mana: 15/15 [Channels Dormant]
[Traits]
Absolute Neutral: Immune to charm, fear, and morality-based psychological debuffs.
Bottomless Ambition: Experience gain increased by 200% when actively working towards the subjugation of a rival entity.
Seiyuu reviewed the metrics with cold detachment.
His physical stats were hovering in the single digits, barely registering above a rounding error. However, he noted the subtle changes. His Agility and Vitality were slightly higher than his Strength, likely a result of him constantly roaming the keep and surviving the meager rations.
More importantly, the functional output of his Intelligence had risen from 10 to 15. As his biological brain grew and formed new neural pathways, the system was slowly releasing the cap on his true processing power. His Mana pool had grown proportionally, though it remained locked behind the dormant channels.
He could not force the Awakening early. The system confirmed the class and magic were hard-locked to his tenth year.
But physical attributes had no such locks and could be molded through stress and adaptation.
He dismissed the system interface, letting the blue light fade from his mind. He picked the wooden sword back up from the cold stone floor.
He was not going to learn the Vanguard martial arts tonight. He was three years old; attempting complex swordplay would only result in bad habits and broken furniture. But he could build the foundation.
Seiyuu squared his shoulders. He did not swing the sword. Instead, he gripped the hilt with both hands, raised it to eye level, and simply held it there. He engaged his core, bent his knees slightly, and forced his body to remain perfectly still.
Within thirty seconds, his small arms began to tremble. A dull ache bloomed in his undeveloped shoulders. His breath hitched in the freezing air.
He did not lower the sword.
I need to raise my endurance, Seiyuu thought, his dark eyes locked on the moonlit wall.
He held the pose until his muscles completely failed, dropping the wooden blade with a quiet clatter to the floor. He rested for exactly one minute, tracking the seconds in his head. Then, he picked the sword up and repeated the process.
When the first pale light of dawn began to bleed through the window, Seiyuu finally crawled back into his bed, his limbs shaking with exhaustion, his muscles screaming.
It was a pathetic start. But as he pulled the heavy wool blankets up to his chin, Seiyuu felt a grim satisfaction. The daily deposits of physical stress had begun. He would build the structural integrity required to wield the sword.