In this world, magic decided everything.
It was an absolute hierarchy. Commoners and nobles weren't distinguished by bloodlines or titles alone, but by their inherent magic potential. There were rare exceptions where a commoner's spark burned bright enough to surpass a high-born, but those were outliers.
Usually, the system held firm.
Then there was me—a Dull Stone.
I didn't possess an elemental affinity. I couldn't throw fire or conjure ice. My core was inherently incapable of doing anything other than the bare minimum: regulating the Aether flow within my body to keep me alive.
Usually, a mage would level their core to increase their affinity's output. The power rose exponentially through the stages:
Every child knew the hierarchy by heart:
Iron → Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum.
The final stage, Sovereign, was a myth—a tier achieved by only a handful in history.
But because my core was "Dull," it didn't convert Aether into Mana. Most people didn't see the difference, but the distinction was fundamental. Mana was the refined fuel; Aether was the raw, volatile source code of the world.
Because my body didn't process magic "correctly," I remained physically frail. I didn't have the reinforced muscles of a mana-user or the supernatural endurance of a knight.
I looked exactly like what I was: a sickly noble son who spent too much time indoors.
Which meant I needed a cover.
Swords didn't hold much value in this society. Those who used them were almost always magic swordsmen who coated their blades in elemental mana. A "pure" swordsman was considered a relic—someone using an inferior tool because they lacked the talent for anything else.
That was my plan. To the world, I would be a struggling, frail swordsman.
Underneath that, I would be weaving Aether strings. A lost technique I'd only read about—a manual bypass for a man without a functional core.
"Hey Aldaric! How have you been, my dear friend?"
I blinked, pulled from my thoughts. Kael was leaning back in a velvet chair in the receiving room, looking entirely too comfortable.
"When was it established that 'we' are friends?" I asked, my voice flat.
Kael laughed, waving a hand as if brushing away a minor technicality. "Anyway, the reason I'm here is to hunt monsters. The Academy requires fifteen confirmed kills before the term starts. You didn't forget, right?"
I felt a slight headache forming. "Fifteen? And why, out of all the people you know, would you choose me?"
"Because you're fun," he said, his eyes glinting with an annoying level of energy. "Everyone else is too tense and serious. They're all busy measuring their mana pools and polishing their family crests."
"You know I can't use magic, right?" I gestured to my own slight frame. I wasn't exactly built for a brawl.
"Yeah, but you can do swordsmanship," Kael said, standing up.
It was baffling. A Duke's son—the pinnacle of the magical hierarchy—seemed almost ignorant of the fact that pure swordsmanship was considered a joke. Or perhaps he just didn't care.
"We are going to hunt C-rank monsters," Kael added, heading for the door. "Meet you in a week! Be ready."
"Wait—C-rank?!" I stood up, my heart rate spiking. "Why? I can barely handle an F-rank threat."
Kael paused at the doorway, glancing back once.
"You'll come," he said simply. "You don't look like someone who runs from opportunities."
The door opened. Closed. Silence.
I stood there for a moment, letting the words settle. He wasn't wrong. This was the best opportunity I had been handed since arriving in this world.
Access to a controlled hunting ground. Exposure to real combat. A chance to test the strings under pressure without drawing too much attention.
Opportunities like that didn't come twice.
Which was exactly why it was dangerous.
My father was, predictably, thrilled. He didn't ask if I would survive a C-rank encounter; he only saw the social bridge I was building to a Ducal house. To him, the risk was an acceptable business expense.
Even my brothers, Gareth and Elian, seemed to shift their perspective. Blades of Sovereign wasn't a story populated by incompetent villains. My brothers were ambitious and sharp.
They didn't suddenly love me, but they were slightly relieved. If I wasn't going to be a powerful mage, at least I was being socially useful. We shared the same blood, after all. If I wasn't a complete failure, it was better for the family brand.
The logistics were handled with terrifying speed. The Duke—Kael's father—had specially reserved a sector of the forest for us. It was a restricted hunting ground, high-yield and dangerous, cleared of everyone but the monsters and us.
It was a flex of power, really. But for Kael, it was just a convenience. Rumor had it that Kael was already remarkably strong for his age; C-rank monsters weren't a threat to him—they were a warmup.
That kind of strength didn't make him reliable. It made him unpredictable.
In the original novel, Kael was an irrelevant character, a background name that barely occupied a paragraph before disappearing into the white space of the story.
He didn't exist long enough in the story for me to understand him. Which meant I couldn't predict him.
Against the "Lightning Queen" or the "Protagonist," I had a manual.
Against Kael, I was flying blind.
I had one week.
I spent those seven days in the woods behind our estate, far from prying eyes. I didn't train my muscles; they wouldn't grow fast enough to matter. Instead, I practiced the strings.
Invisibly thin lines of pure Aether.
I leaned on a heavy training sword, looking like a boy who was about to faint from exhaustion. But in the air around me, the threads were moving.
I didn't need to be strong. I just needed the strings to be sharp.
One week later, we stood at the edge of the reserved forest.
The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth and the metallic tang of ambient mana. Kael stood there with a rapier at his hip, looking like he was going on a picnic rather than a hunt.
"My dad really went all out," Kael mused, looking at the towering, darkened trees.
I gripped my standard iron sword. It was heavy, and my arm already felt the strain, but it was the perfect distraction.
"Let's just get the fifteen kills and leave," I said.
Kael smiled, stepping into the shadows of the canopy. "Where's the fun in that? Let's see what kind of mess we can get into."
I followed him into the dark. In the book, this was the environment where the weak were culled to show the reader the "true" nature of the world.
I adjusted my grip on the sword I couldn't really swing, while my fingers twitched, ready to pull the invisible threads.
This wasn't how the story was written.
And I had already changed too much to go back.