The text that appeared was not what he expected.
He didn't have a clear expectation, but whatever he had imagined, some grand interface announcing itself with a sweeping display of power and possibility - it didn't happen.
The reality was more modest.
[ NARRATIVE UPDATING PROTOCOL SYSTEM ]
[ Main Menu ]
[ ▸ Status ]
[ ▸ Skills ]
[ ▸ Narrative Quests ]
[ ▸ ─────── (Locked) ]
[ ▸ ─────── (Locked) ]
[ ▸ Narrative Relevance: 0.11% ]
Jin looked at it.
There were six options. Three of them were unlocked, and two were greyed out without even a hint of what they contained. The last one displayed the narrative relevance percentage, which he had yet to learn more about.
'Status,' he thought.
«« Status »»
[ Host: Encrid Gannon ]
[ Age: 23 ]
[ Realm: Initiate ]
[ Star Level: Unbound ]
« Titles »
[ ▸ Fourth Son of the Gannon Family ]
[ ▸ Scoundrel of the North ]
Jin read it through once, then again.
He stood up and crossed to the mirror.
'Twenty-three years old?'
The face looking back at him didn't look twenty-three at all. It looked closer to thirty - not in any specific way he could point to, but he just felt it.
Jin looked at the reflection a moment longer, feeling along his face and jaw, before he went back to the bed and sat down.
'Initiate.'
He turned the word over carefully, pulling from memory everything The Last Age of Radiance had established about how power worked in this world.
The cultivation system was one of the novel's most celebrated pieces of worldbuilding, and for good reason.
Stars.
Stars were the sealed nodes of potential energy that every mortal was born with. What differentiated people was how many Stars a person could use and how deeply they could cultivate each one.
Each Star corresponded to a different elemental affinity that shaped everything from fighting style to the kind of cultivator a person could become.
Unsealing a Star was only the beginning. From there, a cultivator developed their Realm, deepening their mastery of that Star's energy and building toward higher and higher levels of capability.
The Star Realms ascended in stages, starting with the Initiate.
The more Stars unsealed, the broader the arsenal. The higher the Realm, the deeper the strength.
It was simple in concept but brutally demanding in practice.
Initiate in the star level meant only one Star had been unsealed. Unbound meant that the unlocked star was at the very threshold of cultivation- not truly begun, but just past the starting line by the narrowest possible margin.
To give an idea of how his strength compared to others, every side character in the novel had unsealed at least two Stars and pushed deep into the Ascent or Apex Realm by the time the story found them. Some had three or four.
'Well,' Jin thought flatly. 'This was expected from this degenerate.'
Still, there was an underline beneath the word Initiate. He focused on it.
A new window opened.
«« Realm »»
«Azure Star»
[ Star Level: Unbound ]
[ Star Ability: None ]
[ Star Connections: None ]
Jin stared at the Star name for a moment.
Then he said quietly, "Oh."
The Azure Star.
Of the seven Stars present in every mortal body, the Azure was the third most difficult to unseal. It demanded a specific and uncommon aptitude that most cultivators never possessed.
The fact that Encrid had unsealed it -even accidentally, or through whatever other means, meant that underneath everything else, he still had genuine potential.
Jin looked at the Star Ability and Connections fields.
Both were empty.
He set that aside with some effort. There was much else to get through first.
"Let's deal with that later," he said to no one, and turned his attention to the titles.
« Fourth Son of the Gannon Family »
[ Bearer holds recognized membership in one of the four ducal households of the Astralis Empire. The Gannon name carries significant social and political weight across imperial territories and its institutions. ]
[ Effects: ]
[ ▸ Increased credibility in formal interactions with imperial citizens and nobility ]
[ ▸ Access to Gannon family resources and networks (Conditional) ]
[ ▸ Recognition by imperial institutions, military, and trade organizations as a noble of standing ]
Jin read through the whole thing.
"This will be quite useful."
The part that said Conditional was worrying, but the title still had clear benefits - especially the resources and networks. He had a good feeling it would serve him well.
After reading through it once more, he moved on to the second title with already diminishing optimism.
« Scoundrel of the North »
[ A title accumulated through conduct consistently unbecoming of noble status. Recognized across the northern territories of the Astralis Empire. Reflects a history of public disorder, disrespect toward authority, and general disregard for social expectations. ]
[ Effects: ]
[ ▸ Decreased credibility in formal and informal interactions with northern citizens and nobility. Most will begin interactions with a negative disposition. ]
[ ▸ Increased familiarity and baseline trust with mercenaries, criminals, frontier populations, and others who hold a general distrust of nobility ]
[ ▸ Discounted drinks at all taverns across the northern territories ]
Jin read the last line twice.
'Discounted drinks.'
The northern territories were vast. That discount covered an enormous number of taverns. He considered briefly the sheer volume of drinking required to earn recognition on a geographic scale that large.
He also noticed that, setting aside the indignity of it, the title wasn't entirely useless. At the Wall, where the population consisted almost entirely of the exact categories listed under the second effect, a reputation for being the kind of nobleman people didn't need to be wary of had practical value. Not great value. But value.
He filed it and moved to the skills.
«« Skills »»
« Gannon Family Swordsmanship »
[ The foundational sword art of House Gannon, developed over nine generations. It specializes in close-quarters combat and Roamer hunting. The complete style comprises six progressive forms. At full mastery, it is a high-tier martial technique capable of channeling Star energy into both offensive and defensive applications. ]
[ Skill Grade: 6th Tier ]
[ Skill Proficiency: F ]
Jin went still.
He read the tier again.
'Sixth tier??'
Skill tiers in The Last Age of Radiance were not handed out generously. The protagonist had spent an entire volume chasing a fifth-tier technique before he could even begin learning it. The sixth tier was the territory of old family legacies and imperial techniques - the kind of thing people would pay an enormous sum to learn.
And Encrid Gannon had inherited a sixth-tier sword art by birthright.
And then given it an F proficiency.
Jin sat with his hands on his knees for a moment, looking at nothing.
"This man," he said quietly, to the room.
He thought about the bottles by the window, the desk buried under unopened letters, the training that had clearly stopped years ago and never resumed. He felt something that wasn't quite anger, more like the specific frustration of watching someone waste something irreplaceable.
Except that the person who had wasted it was gone, and Jin was the one sitting here in his body.
"I will not," he said, and wasn't entirely sure who he was making the promise to "waste this chance."
He moved on.
« Horsemanship »
[ Proficiency in riding, managing, and navigating varied terrain on horseback. ]
[ Skill Grade: 2nd Tier ]
[ Skill Proficiency: E ]
'E is better than F,' Jin consoled himself.
At least he could ride.
The Wall was at least twelve days on horseback. It was a journey he had to make and while he was considering requesting a carriage, there would still be travel to deal with after he arrived.
'Useful, regardless.'
« Noble Etiquette »
[ Knowledge and application of formal conduct, social protocol, and behavioral expectations within imperial noble culture. Encompasses dining customs, forms of address, ceremonial participation, political discourse, and the management of status interactions at all levels of the imperial hierarchy. ]
[ Skill Grade: 2nd Tier ]
[ Skill Proficiency: C ]
Jin read this one slowly.
'This doesn't make any sense.'
A C proficiency meant he was genuinely competent and capable of applying the rules fluently and naturally, without visible effort. In a world where noble culture was its own elaborate language, C-grade fluency meant he could move through that language without an accent.
Which made absolutely no sense, sitting two entries below the title above it.
'Scoundrel of the North.'
There was only one conclusion he could draw.
Encrid had known exactly what he was doing.
There was a vast difference between a man who didn't know how to behave and a man who knew perfectly well and had decided not to. One was ignorance. The other was something else entirely.
Jin thought about that.
He thought about the Azure Star, which was unsealed but never developed. The sixth-tier sword art with an F proficiency. The C-grade etiquette that was buried under a reputation that covered the entire northern territory.
'What did he experience,' Jin thought slowly, his eyes drifting to the portrait on the far wall, the woman with dark hair and a warm smile, maintained carefully while everything else in the room gathered dust, 'to fall so deliberately?'
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