Chapter 6: Try Rioting, I Dare You
Ten months old.
The nursery had become my kingdom of repetition, a silent empire measured in push-ups against weighted blocks, controlled breaths that bordered on meditation, and laps around the reinforced playpen that now felt too small for my growing frame. I could stand unsupported for minutes at a time. Walking was no longer a distant dream—I took my first unsteady steps yesterday, rewarded instantly by the System. Every fall, every recovery, every deliberate crawl sharpened the blade I was forging from this fragile infant body.
The Hard Work System had grown almost conversational in its feedback, as if it approved of my obsession.
[Hard Work System]
Skill: Basic Locomotion (Lv. 9 → Lv. 12)
Strength +3 | Constitution +4
New Passive: Early Muscle Memory – Repetitive movements now require 31% less conscious effort.
Body Cultivation Foundation: Basic Muscle Tempering (Stage 2.4%)
My status window reflected the grind: Current Status:
[Name]: Unnamed
[Age]: 10 months
[Strength]: 21
[Constitution]: 27
[Perception]: 19
[Willpower]: 34
[Mana Affinity]: 7 (Awakening)
[Soul Power]: 11 (Minor Accumulation)
The Dungeon Maker System remained sealed, but the soul trickle was becoming a stream. I could feel it now—a faint, warm pulse behind my eyes when I focused hard enough. The Hidden Quest "First Brick" had progressed to 67%. One more month of unrelenting work and I might unlock something before the official age of five. The thought kept me going when the wet nurse avoided my gaze or when the servants changed shifts with trembling hands.
Today, though, the usual nursery quiet had shattered.
Whispers from the hallway had turned frantic hours ago. I lay on my mat, pretending to nap while my ears—honed by endless auditory repetition drills—caught every word.
"Slums are boiling again," one maid hissed. "Famine hit harder this season. The mana stone tax took the last of their winter stores. They're gathering at the eastern gate with torches and stolen blades."
"Lord Zen rode out at dawn," another replied. "Lady Seraphina ordered him to 'make an example.' Kael begged to go with him, swinging that stupid wooden sword like a hero from the stories. She laughed and sent the boy back to his chambers."
My sister Elara, I learned, had been dispatched to the rooftops with a cadre of mana archers. Nine years old and already raining death from above. This family didn't raise children. It manufactured weapons.
I rolled onto my stomach and began another set of weighted drags, pulling three heavy blocks behind me with a rope clenched in my teeth. The repetition helped me think. A riot in Oakhaven wasn't just unrest—it was suicide. From everything I had overheard these past months, the nobility didn't negotiate. They culled. The world's three paths of cultivation existed to ensure the strong stayed on top. Body cultivators like my father formed the frontline meat grinders. Mana users like my mother orchestrated from the shadows. Soul cultivation remained a dismissed fairy tale, which made my growing soul accumulation all the more precious.
Distant screams began to drift over the estate walls. Not the theatrical kind from plays I remembered from my first life. These were raw, wet, and abruptly silenced. Smoke carried on the wind, faint but acrid. My heightened Perception picked up the copper tang of blood even from this distance.
[Hard Work System]
Skill: Crisis Endurance (New – Lv. 1)
Willpower +5
New Passive: Detached Observation – Mental strain from witnessing indirect violence reduced by 40%.
Soul Power +3. Dungeon Maker resonance increasing.
Good. Fear was useless. I would turn even this into fuel.
The screams peaked around midday. I counted them—not out of cruelty, but pattern recognition. Seventy-three distinct voices before the mana explosions began. Elara's work, most likely. Blue-white flashes visible even through the nursery's high windows. Then silence.
Heavy boots echoed down the corridor later that afternoon. I dropped into my "normal baby" posture, sucking on a mana-infused rattle while tracking the approaching killing intent. The door slammed open.
Zen Worldheart stood framed in the entrance, armor splattered with gore that wasn't his. A fresh scar ran across his forearm—sloppy work from a desperate rioter, already healing thanks to his Iron Tempering stage. Behind him, two guards dragged a battered man in chains. The prisoner's face was a ruin of bruises, one eye swollen shut. His clothes marked him as a slum laborer, probably a Body Cultivation grunt who had reached the lowest rung of strength before deciding today was the day to die.
Zen's blood-red eyes found me immediately. He didn't smile. He never did.
The prisoner spat blood onto the nursery floor. "You nobles treat us like cattle! We starve while you hoard mana stones for your spoiled whelps. That thing in the cradle there—" he jerked his chin at me "—will grow up just like you. Another monster."
Zen's hand moved like a whip. The backhand sent the man crashing into the wall. Servants froze in the hallway, too terrified to even clean the blood.
"Try rioting," Zen said, voice low and almost conversational, "I dare you."
He said it without heat, without theatrics. Just cold certainty. The same tone he had used when telling me I might earn a name if I survived to one year. The prisoner laughed wetly, defiant to the end.
"More will come. The Abyss Syndicate is stirring in the capital. Your false throne is cracking—"
Zen didn't let him finish. A single punch, reinforced with tempered mana, caved the man's chest. The body slid down the wall like a discarded puppet. My father wiped his knuckles on the dead man's shirt and looked at me again.
"You saw that?" he asked, as if I were an adult. Maybe he sensed I was. Those red eyes lingered on my steady gaze. "Good. This world doesn't reward begging. It rewards strength. Keep training, boy. Your mother still thinks you're a waste of milk. Prove her wrong and I'll name you myself."
He turned to leave, pausing at the door. "Burn the body outside the gates. Let the slums count their dead. If they riot again before winter, we'll salt the fields with their bones."
The door closed. Servants scurried to obey, dragging the corpse away. I remained on my mat, heart steady only because I had trained it to be.
Inside, the System exploded with notifications.
[Hard Work System]
Skill: Crisis Endurance (Lv. 1 → Lv. 5)
Willpower +8 | Perception +4
Title Upgraded: "The Silent Builder" → "The Unflinching Observer" (Epic)
Effect: +25% efficiency to all training while under indirect threat or witnessing brutality. Soul Power +7.
Hidden Quest "First Brick" – Progress: 89%. One intentional structure formed through will and repetition will partially unseal Dungeon Maker functions.
The soul warmth surged stronger than ever. For the first time, I felt something beyond a pulse—a faint blueprint forming in the back of my mind. A single corridor. A simple trap room. The seed of a dungeon born from an infant's relentless focus. It would be tiny, pathetic by future standards, but it would be mine.
I stood up on wobbly legs, gripping the playpen rail. Ten months old and already walking toward the bars like a drunkard. The dead man's blood was still drying on the floor where servants hadn't finished scrubbing. The scent didn't disgust me anymore. It was data. A lesson.
This world dared the weak to riot. It dared them to dream of justice or mercy. My parents embodied that dare—Zen with his fists, Seraphina with her indifferent calculations. My siblings trained to become extensions of that machine.
I would not riot. Rioting was for those who still believed the system could be overthrown with torches and shouts.
I would build.
Beneath this nursery, beneath this rotten town, I would create labyrinths that devoured the strong and spat out their bones. When my systems fully awakened, Oakhaven itself might become the first true dungeon.
I took three careful steps away from the rail, then four back. Repetition. Always repetition.
The System chimed approvingly.
[Hard Work System Bonus]
Mana Affinity +3. Dormant circulation beginning.
Soul Power threshold reached. Earliest partial Dungeon unsealing estimated at 14 months if pace maintained.
I smiled that small, ugly smile again.
Let them dare me to rebel.
I had already chosen a better path.
By the time they finally gave me a name, this entire world might already be trapped inside the first walls of my making.