The thin, silk sheets felt like sandpaper against Arthur's skin. His head throbbed with the rhythmic cadence of a war drum, and his throat was so parched it felt as though he'd been swallowing hot coals.
As he blinked, the blurred canopy of a four-poster bed came into focus. This wasn't his apartment. There were no flickering neon signs outside, no hum of a cooling fan. Instead, the air smelled of lavender, stale sweat, and expensive wood.
[System Initialization Complete.]
[User: Arthur Fenric]
[Innate Talent: The Infinite Archive (Passive)]
[Effect: Every repeated action or learned concept manifests as a quantifiable Skill.]
Arthur groaned, clutching his forehead. A memory—not his own—surged forward. Arthur Fenric, the Third Prince of the Kingdom of Oakhaven. Known as the "Glass Prince," a boy born with a mana circuit so brittle it shattered before he could cast a single spark. After a week-long fever that the palace physicians whispered was a "mercy," the original Arthur was gone. In his place was a man who had spent thirty years mastering spreadsheets and morning commutes.
"I'm a disgrace, then?" Arthur croaked.
[Skill Acquired: Vocalization (Lvl 1)]
He stared at the translucent blue box floating in his vision. A wry smile tugged at his cracked lips. "Well. At least the UI is clean."
The Weight of a NameArthur pushed himself upward. His muscles screamed in protest, twitching with the atrophy of a week in bed.
[Skill Acquired: Physical Fortitude (Lvl 1)]
[Skill Acquired: Resilience (Lvl 1)]
The door to the chambers creaked open. A young maid, carrying a basin of water, stopped dead. The ceramic bowl shattered against the stone floor.
"Prince Arthur! You—you're awake!" she gasped, her eyes wide with a mix of shock and, more tellingly, disappointment. "The King... the High Priest said you wouldn't survive the night."
"Sorry to ruin the funeral arrangements," Arthur said, his voice gaining strength.
[Skill Acquired: Sarcasm (Lvl 1)]
[Skill Acquired: Social Intuition (Lvl 1)]
"I'll fetch the Royal Healer!" she cried, fleeing the room.
Arthur didn't wait. He forced his feet onto the cold floor. If he was truly a "disgrace," being bedridden was a death sentence. In a world of knights and magic, power was the only currency that didn't devalue. He needed to move.
He began to pace. One step. Two steps.
[Physical Fortitude has leveled up to Lvl 2.]
[Acrobatics (Lvl 1) Acquired.]
By the time the Royal Healer, a man with a beard long enough to be a tripping hazard, entered the room, Arthur was doing lunges.
"Your Highness! What in the name of the Six Divines are you doing?" the Healer shouted.
"Improving," Arthur replied, sweat pouring down his face. "Tell me, Healer. Is it true my mana circuits are broken?"
The old man sighed, checking Arthur's pulse with a glowing fingertip. "Completely inert, my Prince. You have the magical capacity of a common pebble. It is... a tragedy for the bloodline."
Arthur didn't feel tragic. He felt a notification.
[Skill Acquired: Mana Sensing (Lvl 1)]
[Note: Due to broken circuits, mana cannot be stored, but environmental fluctuations can be observed.]
"A pebble, eh?" Arthur mused. "Then I suppose I'll just have to be a very heavy pebble."
The Training GroundsThree days passed. While the rest of the palace ignored him—preferring to focus on his older brothers, the "Lion of Oakhaven" and the "Arcane Prodigy"—Arthur spent every waking second breaking his body.
He ate.
[Skill Acquired: Efficient Digestion (Lvl 3)]
He read the histories of the world.
[Skill Acquired: Speed Reading (Lvl 5)]
[Skill Acquired: Historical Insight (Lvl 2)]
On the fourth day, he descended to the training grounds. The knights stopped their sparring, their gazes dripping with mockery. Leading them was Sir Kaelen, a man whose ego was larger than his breastplate.
"The Glass Prince has left his padded room!" Kaelen barked, tossing a wooden practice sword at Arthur's feet. "Careful, Highness. If you trip, you might shatter."
Arthur picked up the sword. It felt heavy, unbalanced, and wonderful.
[Skill Acquired: Swordplay (Lvl 1)]
"Spar with me," Arthur said.
The knights erupted in laughter. Kaelen grinned, unsheathing a blunt training claymore. "As you wish. Try not to cry for your father."
The duel lasted precisely six seconds. Kaelen moved with the practiced grace of a tier-three knight. He lunged, intending to knock the sword from Arthur's hand and humiliate him. Arthur didn't know how to parry, but his eyes tracked the movement.
[Skill Acquired: Combat Observation (Lvl 1)]
Arthur moved his head an inch to the left. The claymore whistled past his ear. He swung his own blade—a clumsy, desperate arc.
[Swordplay has leveled up to Lvl 2.]
Kaelen parried easily, sending a jarring vibration up Arthur's arm.
[Skill Acquired: Pain Tolerance (Lvl 1)]
"Too slow!" Kaelen laughed, kicking Arthur in the chest.
Arthur hit the dirt, the wind knocked out of him. He stared at the sky.
[Physical Fortitude has leveled up to Lvl 5.]
[Resilience has leveled up to Lvl 4.]
[Skill Acquired: Falling Technique (Lvl 1)]
Arthur stood up. He wiped blood from his lip. "Again."
The Infinite GrindFor the next four hours, the training grounds became a theater of the absurd. Arthur Fenric was beaten, tripped, disarmed, and mocked. But every time he hit the ground, a new box appeared.
Losing a clash?[Skill: Weight Distribution (Lvl 2)]
Missing a strike?[Skill: Precision (Lvl 1)]
Watching Kaelen's footwork?[Skill: Footwork Mimicry (Lvl 1)]
By sunset, the knights weren't laughing anymore. They were tired. Arthur, however, looked like a man possessed. His movements were no longer clumsy. He was weaving together dozens of low-level skills into a cohesive, terrifyingly efficient style.
"I said... again," Arthur panted.
Kaelen, sweating and annoyed, lunged with a horizontal slash. Arthur didn't block. He stepped into the strike, using the [Falling Technique] to drop his center of gravity, sliding under the blade. He drove the wooden hilt of his sword into Kaelen's stomach.
[Skill Acquired: Close-Quarters Combat (Lvl 1)]
[Swordplay has leveled up to Lvl 10.]
[Evolution Detected: Swordplay (Lvl 10) + Precision (Lvl 5) = Skill: Focused Blade (Lvl 1)]
Kaelen doubled over, gasping for air. The training ground fell silent. A Prince with no mana had just touched the fastest knight in the royal guard.
The Awakening of the DisgraceThat night, Arthur sat in the library, his body a map of bruises. He wasn't looking at books; he was looking at his status screen.
Skill
Level
Physical Fortitude
12
Focused Blade
3
Mental Mapping
8
Tactical Analysis
4
He realized something vital. The "Glass Prince" failed because he tried to use magic like a faucet—turning it on and expecting it to flow through his broken circuits.
Arthur looked at a candle. He reached out his hand. He didn't try to push mana. He simply watched the heat. He analyzed the flicker.
[Skill Acquired: Thermal Observation (Lvl 1)]
He repeated the movement of his fingers, mimicking the way the heat rose. He did it a hundred times. Two hundred.
[Skill Acquired: Kinetic Friction (Lvl 1)]
Suddenly, a notification flashed gold—a color he hadn't seen yet.
[Warning: User possesses no mana storage. Logic dictates alternative energy source.]
[Merging Skills: Thermal Observation + Kinetic Friction + Mana Sensing.]
[New Skill Created: World-Mana Manipulation (Lvl 1).]
[Description: Instead of using internal circuits, the user draws directly from the atmosphere. Efficiency: 1%.]
A tiny spark ignited at the tip of his finger. It wasn't the royal blue of the Fenric line; it was a white-hot, jagged bolt of pure energy. It hissed, eating the air around it.
Arthur smiled. The "disgrace" was gone. He wasn't a prince trying to reclaim a throne; he was a system architect building a god, one repetition at a time.
"Arthur?"
He turned. Standing in the doorway was his eldest brother, Prince Valerius, the Lion of Oakhaven. Valerius looked at the bruised, sweating mess of his younger brother, and then his eyes drifted to the white spark still dancing on Arthur's fingertip.
"They said you were dying," Valerius said, his voice cold and sharp.
"I was," Arthur said, standing up. The spark vanished, but the power behind it—the dozens of skills humming in his blood—remained. "But I decided to pick up a few new hobbies instead."
Arthur walked past his brother, his footsteps silent and perfectly balanced.
[Skill Acquired: Intimidation (Lvl 1)]
[Skill Acquired: Presence Control (Lvl 2)]
The world thought Arthur Fenric was a broken vessel. They were right. A vessel has a limit. Arthur was no longer a vessel; he was a vacuum, and he was just getting started.