The sunroom was stifling. Thermal crystals glowed dull red in the sconces, radiating a dry, heavy heat that clashed with the bruised, gray sky outside the massive windows. The first real snowstorm of the year was threatening to break over the estate.
Inside, it was a tableau of domestic peace.
Neo sat cross-legged on a plush rug, resting his chin in his hands. He was currently staring at a very large, very round obstacle.
Sylvia reclined on a chaise lounge, her hands resting protectively over her swollen stomach. Seven months had passed since the banquet. The Duchess was in the final, exhausting stretch of her pregnancy. Her normally vibrant energy was dimmed, replaced by a weary pallor.
"Is it kicking again?" Sylvia asked softly, her eyes curving into tired crescents.
Neo leaned forward, pressing his cheek lightly against the soft fabric of her dress.
A faint, distinct thump met his cheek.
His eyes widened slightly.
"Yeah. It's kicking hard today, Mama. They want to come out and play."
"They are going to have to wait just a little longer," Sylvia sighed, her fingers gently brushing through his white hair. "You're taking such good care of us. Sitting here all day instead of playing outside with the knights."
"I like sitting with you," Neo said, his voice pitched to a perfect, innocent frequency.
It wasn't a lie. Over the last seven months, the suffocating reality of the plot had constantly weighed on his mind. The child growing inside his mother was the same sibling destined to be executed. Feeling that tiny kick was a reminder of exactly what he was preparing to protect.
After a few minutes of quiet humming, Sylvia's breathing evened out. The exhaustion claimed her, pulling her into a deep nap.
Neo's toddler smile vanished. His face smoothed into a mask of cold focus.
He stood quietly, dusted off his knees, and slipped out of the sunroom. Navigating the heavily guarded hallways of the mansion, he completely avoided the lines of sight of the patrolling knights with practiced ease.
Ten minutes later, he stood in the sprawling, frosty gardens behind the estate. He didn't head for the blackberry bushes. That hideout had been compromised three months ago.
He still cringed remembering it. He had crawled out of the briars looking like he'd fought a feral badger, only to walk directly into his mother. Sylvia had nearly suffered a heart attack. The knights had drawn their swords. When Neo frantically played the cute card—wailing that he just wanted a 'secret explorer fort' to play in—Sylvia had sighed, pinched the bridge of her nose, and done something only an Archmage could do.
Neo walked over to an ornate stone gazebo at the edge of the property. Ensuring the perimeter was clear, he pressed his hand against a specific, unassuming brick on the floor. He pushed a thread of mana into the stone.
The floor seamlessly slid apart, revealing a spiraling staircase leading down into the earth.
Sylvia had carved a reinforced, magically lit, soundproof stone bunker underneath the garden just so her son could play without getting scratched by thorns. It was an absurd display of overpowered parenting.
For Neo, it was the perfect, indestructible training room.
He hurried down the stairs, the stone floor sealing shut above him. The bunker was spacious, illuminated by glowing moss that clung to the walls.
Neo sat in the center of the smooth stone floor and took a deep breath.
'Status.'
A faint chime sounded in his mind. The translucent blue screen materialized in the cool air.
[ STATUS WINDOW ]
Name: Neo Draven
Age: 5
Title: Heir of the Demon
Rank: Initiate (Intermediate Stage)
Mana Core Grade: Sapphire (Perfect)
[ ATTRIBUTES ]
Strength: 7
Agility: 9
Vitality: 10
Intelligence: 51
Mana Capacity: 1250 / 1250
Neo stared at the numbers, a mixture of pride and pragmatic annoyance settling in his chest.
Seven months of grueling, agonizing secret training. He had spent hours every single day channeling the violent energy of the Frost-Vein Core into his Dantian, tearing and stretching his magical reservoir to its limits.
He had successfully broken through to the Intermediate stage of the Initiate Rank. A normal genius might reach that stage by the time they were twelve. Neo was five. His physical stats had marginally improved alongside his core, though he was still essentially a squishy potato.
But the progress had severely slowed down.
When he crossed the thousand-capacity mark, he encountered a brutal law of magic. Mana wasn't just numbers. As the capacity grew, the energy inside his center physically changed states. It went from a light, airy gas into a thick, heavy liquid. Expanding the core now felt like trying to push solid concrete against a brick wall. It was dense, difficult to control, and required exponentially more effort to increase.
'I'm hitting the density wall,' Neo thought, swiping the screen away.
It was frustrating, but he wasn't going to complain. He knew exactly who he was up against. In the original timeline, Kael didn't deal with density walls. If the protagonist needed more mana, his System would hand him an elixir for saving a cat from a tree, instantly granting him capacity without a drop of sweat.
And Nora? Her talent meant her core naturally expanded like a black hole, effortlessly swallowing the ambient mana around her just by existing.
'Whatever,' Neo sighed, pulling the familiar wooden box from his pocket. 'They can keep their cheats.'
He opened the box. The Frost-Vein Core sat inside, but it looked different now. The once jagged, terrifyingly bright obsidian stone was visibly duller. The glowing blue veins had faded to a weak pulse. He had practically sucked the artifact dry over the last seven months.
But the stone had given him something far more valuable than raw capacity.
Neo closed his eyes and slipped into his mindscape.
Usually, elements in this world were inherited through bloodlines, or slowly acquired by a mage immersing themselves in an extreme environment for years. It was a theoretical science. Kael bypassed this by buying element scrolls from his System.
Neo had bypassed it by aggressively gripping a sub-zero, highly volatile magical rock every day for over half a year. His pristine core had naturally adapted to the foreign energy, assimilating it into his very being to protect his body from the cold.
He opened his eyes and raised his right hand, spreading his fingers.
He didn't pull raw, neutral mana. He reached deeper into the core, grabbing the cold, heavy, liquid energy that had settled at the bottom.
The temperature in the underground bunker plummeted instantly. A faint, white mist began to form around his fingertips.
He couldn't practice offensive spells. The cannon was strictly forbidden unless he wanted to atomize his secret base and expose himself completely. So, over the last few months, he had turned his adult intellect toward the library. He had sneaked out advanced grimoires, devouring magical theory while the rest of the house slept.
He had learned the structure of defense.
"Frost Aegis," Neo whispered.
The mana surged out of his palm. It didn't explode outward. It cascaded, weaving itself into a complex, hexagonal pattern in the air exactly one foot in front of him.
The mist flash-froze.
A thick, intricately carved shield of solid, crystalline ice materialized. It was roughly the size of a large buckler, gleaming with a hard, diamond-like density. The air radiating off of it was so cold it made Neo's breath puff out in white clouds.
Neo reached out and knocked his knuckles against the ice.
It felt like striking solid steel.
'Not bad,' Neo thought, his teeth chattering slightly.
'A solid Adept-rank physical strike might crack it, but it'll hold against anything an Apprentice throws at me. And I can sustain it for about ten minutes before I run dry.'
It was a massive tactical advantage. He wasn't a glass cannon anymore. He had a shield.
Neo held the spell for a few more minutes, testing the structural integrity and practicing moving the shield around his body with mere thoughts. When he finally felt the familiar, dull ache of magical fatigue settling behind his eyes, he cut the flow of mana.
The ice shield shattered into a thousand harmless, glowing particles of light that quickly evaporated into the air.
He stood up, stretching his legs. It was time to head back before Sylvia woke up.
He pressed his hand against the wall, feeding a tiny bit of mana into the stone to trigger the stairs. As he climbed back up to the surface, the stone floor sealing silently beneath him, a cold wind hit his face.
Neo looked up.
Tiny flakes of white snow were falling from the bruised sky, melting as soon as they touched the dormant grass.
Winter was officially here.
Neo let out a long, heavy sigh, pulling his thick coat tighter around his small shoulders. The snow meant the year was ending. It meant the continent-wide Winter Festival was only a few days away.
And that meant the guests were arriving.
'She's coming back,' Neo thought, a bizarre mixture of dread and genuine anticipation twisting in his stomach.
Nora Valentina. His terrifying, emotionally stunted fiancée.
He hadn't seen her in seven months. They had exchanged exactly zero letters. But Neo knew she hadn't forgotten him. He was the only person in the world who didn't give her a sensory migraine.
'I need to tell the maids to reinforce the stitching on my left sleeves,' Neo noted grimly, trudging through the light snow toward the kitchen entrance.
'She's probably going to latch onto my Sleeves the second she steps out of the carriage and refuse to let go until spring.'
The plot was slowly but surely ticking forward. The chess pieces were growing stronger. But as Neo looked at his own two hands, knowing the ridiculous amount of dense, freezing power hidden inside them, he didn't feel the suffocating panic of the first day anymore.
Let the Calamity come. He was ready for her.