He hadn't asked for this blessing. He hadn't wished for it, hadn't even known it existed. But since he needed it, the world had simply given it to him of its own accord, stepping in to help him out before he even had the chance to realize he was lacking something. He didn't even need to ask, and that fact alone made him smile awkwardly, unsure of how to react to such an unsolicited act of generosity from something as vast and incomprehensible as the world itself.
"Thanks." He said toward the sky, his voice carrying upward into the open air. But nothing happened in response. There wasn't an acknowledgment, signs, or tremor; all he got was silence.
It left him standing there feeling awkward, the gratitude hanging in the air with nowhere to land. He was normally the type of person who would avoid taking things for free, even when someone offered willingly. It wasn't out of pride or some misplaced sense of superiority—it was simply embarrassing to him, the idea of receiving without giving something back.
On top of that, he was always scared that if he accepted too easily, he would become one of those people who asked all the time and rarely returned anything in kind. The thought of becoming that kind of person bothered him more than most things did.
Sighing and pushing the thought aside, he went on to use Appraisal on himself, curious to see what his new existence looked like, laid out in front of him.
[Name: Reinhard Pendragon
Race: Human / Dragon / God
Age: 21 years old
Number of Circles: Disable
Warrior Rank: 4th Rank
Abilities: [Blessing of the World], [Authority of Adaptation], [Disaster]]
Reinhard frowned at his stats the moment they materialized before his eyes. Most of it was expected, but one detail stood out immediately and refused to be ignored. How was he a cripple?
He had no idea what that meant in the context of this body, but his Appraisal was overpowered, allowing him to pull information on just about anything he needed to understand. So rather than sit there confused, he went on to start with his name, pulling up everything the blessing could tell him.
[Reinhard Pendragon is the disowned prince of Alavon. He was born with mana pathways that absorbed mana passively, but had no means to channel or use it. Unable to release the mana his body took in, his body grew stronger than most as the accumulated mana strengthened his physical form even when he did nothing. But this process was painful—agonizingly so—forcing him to train relentlessly just to prevent his body from tearing itself apart under the pressure of all that stored energy. Over time, he became an adventurer and headed to the dwarven lands to capture some dwarfs to sell as slaves, but he died in his attempts.]
Reinhard frowned at this, not liking such troublesome backstories; they were more of a pain than anything else. He went on to have the Appraisal show more information, digging deeper into the details.
For one, he wanted to know why his parents had disowned him in the first place. The answer came quickly, and it wasn't pleasant. His father had wanted to kill him upon birth, viewing Reinhard as nothing more than a stain that brought shame upon the royal bloodline. A prince who couldn't use mana was no prince at all in this world.
However, the king had given Reinhard a chance to live when he sensed how the mana Reinhard absorbed was passively strengthening his body—there was at least some potential there, even if it was unconventional.
But Reinhard's growth, while fast in terms of raw physical development, came with a fatal flaw that no amount of training could fix. He wasn't able to control the mana inside his body. Warriors in this world were able to use the mana flowing through their bodies to dramatically increase their strength, speed, reflexes, toughness, senses, and cognitive ability. This fundamental technique was known as Mana Empowerment, and it was the foundation upon which all combat power was built.
Reinhard was unable to do this. He could absorb mana endlessly, but he couldn't direct it, couldn't shape it, couldn't wield it with any degree of precision. This meant that although he was physically gifted far beyond what his rank would suggest, he would always be weaker in practice than those of the same rank who could enhance themselves freely.
In fact, he couldn't even use enchanted items or magical gear properly, since those required the user to channel mana into them to activate their effects. Without that ability, they were nothing but dead weight in his hands.
This crippling limitation had left Reinhard vulnerable, and the people around him had taken full advantage of it. He was bullied relentlessly—not just by his peers, but by his own parents, and even the servants of the royal household, who saw him as easy prey unworthy of their respect.
In the end, he was disowned entirely. His mother had personally thrown him out of the palace, casting him from the family with her own hands. She was a proud dragon by blood, and giving birth to what she considered trash was something she couldn't stand to acknowledge.
It was a blemish on her pride, a wound that festered every time she looked at him. She would have killed Reinhard outright to wash away the shame completely, but doing so wouldn't have looked good for her image or for the reputation of the royal family.
A queen murdering her own son, even a defective one, would raise questions she didn't want to answer. So instead, she had cut Reinhard off completely—severed every tie, every connection, every shred of support—forcing Reinhard to flee the capital and go into hiding for years.
He had lived in constant fear that they would send someone to kill him quietly, far from the public eye. It wasn't until much later that he finally stepped out under a new identity and became an adventurer, leaving behind the name and the life that had tried to destroy him.
'What a pain… that's something I will have to deal with in the future.' Reinhard thought, his gaze distant as he processed the sea of information he had read through. The history of the body he now inhabited was heavy, tangled with resentment and cruelty. He sighed, setting the matter aside for now, and shifted his attention to his race, pulling up the next layer of information.
[The Pendragon royal family is the descendants of King Arthur, the first king of humanity. Arthur had been birthed by a woman who slept with a god who descended to the lower plane specifically to create a seed worthy of leading humanity toward a brighter future. That was the birth of Arthur Pendragon.
He went on to quickly gather the scattered remnants of humanity under a single banner, rallying them to fight in the great War of Races thousands of years ago. During that brutal conflict, he befriended the dragon Pendragon, a mighty beast who became his sworn companion. But when Pendragon fell in battle, Arthur had been heartbroken, the loss cutting deeper than any wound he had ever suffered. Still, at its dying breath, the dragon refused to let their bond end. Pendragon wanted to fight alongside Arthur even in death, so it had Arthur drink its blood to gain the bloodline of the dragons. It then asked Arthur to forge its body into a sword, so that the two of them could always fight alongside each other, inseparable even beyond the grave. Arthur had agreed, and from that day forward, he took on the name Arthur Pendragon to honor the brother he had lost and the bond they would carry into eternity.]
Reinhard's eyebrow raised at this. The history was richer and deeper than he had expected, and it only made him more curious. His mind latched onto one detail in particular—the sword. He asked the Appraisal for more information on that matter, wanting to know everything he could about the weapon born from such a sacrifice.
Luckily, since the sword was connected to his blood, tied directly to the Pendragon lineage that now ran through his veins, he was able to pull information on it without difficulty. The sword in question was called Excalibur, and it wasn't simply forged using Pendragon's body alone.
A figure known as the Lady of the Lake had stepped forward during the forging process and lent her power to ensure the sword was properly wrought for Alavon and its people. The gods themselves had even blessed the weapon, pouring their divine favor into the steel.
What emerged from that combined effort was a blade of unparalleled power—a sword that King Arthur would go on to wield in the defining battle of his era, fighting against the demon race when they attempted to invade this world and consume everything within it.
That battle had ultimately taken Arthur's life, the cost of saving the world paid in full with his own blood. But he had succeeded. The world was saved, and in his final act, he left his sword stabbed deep into a stone, waiting there for the person the sword itself deemed worthy of wielding it.
'So much history… why doesn't it show the type of bloodline I have?' Reinhard thought, curious about why the information on his specific racial traits was conspicuously absent. But the answer came quickly, explained without him even needing to dig further.
His nature—the fusion of wishes that Veronica had performed—had pretty much erased the unique bloodline traits of all three races that made up his existence. They hadn't disappeared entirely, but they had been dissolved into something new.
As he adapted and grew, he would naturally fuse the three races together and become a unique existence all his own, something that had never existed before. He didn't need the individual bloodline traits of humans, dragons, or gods in their separated forms. They would only slow him down, acting as limitations rather than strengths. What he was becoming was something beyond all three.
[Reinhard is crippled… well, the old one was. You are different. You are able to absorb so much mana from the world around you that no one within the vicinity can use magic at all. Every trace of ambient mana in the atmosphere is drawn to you like iron to a magnet, leaving nothing for anyone else. You also nullify incoming magical attacks almost entirely, the energy dissolving before it can reach you, preventing you from suffering a blow from magic under normal circumstances. The only exception would be if a mage were skilled enough to alter the composition of a spell mid-casting, restructuring its very nature in real time to slip past your absorption.
Whenever you absorb mana, everyone within a certain vicinity of you is rendered unable to use magic through external mana, as all mana from the atmosphere forcibly diverts toward you. But don't worry—you can absorb as much mana as you want without limit. All of it is used to strengthen you, continuously and without pause. You are always passively using the Mana Empowerment technique, even while asleep. Your body never stops growing stronger from the mana it consumes.
You are also able to channel mana into weapons, but only while you are physically holding the weapon in your hands. However, the mana you unleash into weapons and items is uncontrollable and volatile, which can lead to most items being destroyed after being used only once, shattered by the overwhelming force you pour into them.]