Wrath Domain, Behind the Wall, January 18, 2026
Another fourteen days had passed, making it the eighteenth day of the new inmate's stay in the third layer of the Pit.
His cell's placement, tucked further down the layer, remained unchanged. Cold stone. Iron bars. The faint smell of damp earth and rust. It was the same.
Inside, he could be seen—
Bare-chested, lean muscles coiled tight beneath scarred skin, Ashen Hart moved through a boxing sequence with almost mechanical motions.
But it wasn't his form that would catch attention.
It was the point.
A single mote of milky-white light traveled across his torso in ever-changing, geometric patterns. It moved at blurring speed, zipping from one location to another in perfect synchronization with his movements.
Left jab—
The point traced a lightning-fast path across his left shoulder, down through his pectoral, streaking along his obliques in angular lines that looked almost like star mappings.
Right cross—
It shot across his chest, following the twist of his core, the engagement of his back muscles, the coiling of his right arm—each activated fiber lit by the point's passage for the briefest instant before it jumped to the next cluster.
The trajectory wasn't random.
It took the shortest path between each muscle group, akin to a geometric precision incarnate, as if the point were drawing connected stars across his skin. When his abs flexed, the light traced through them in a grid. When his serratus engaged, it swept across in diagonal slashes.
Almost simultaneously… Almost impossibly fast.
The effect was mesmerizing—like watching someone sketch a living constellation in real-time, each movement adding new lines to an ever-shifting diagram of muscle and mana.
Fwhoosh—
His fist cracked into empty air with enough force that the resulting air blast rattled the iron bars.
The point zipped across his arm one final time, completing the pattern, before he stopped.
And immediately, his body began falling apart.
⛧
That milky-white point was actually fifty percent of Ashen's total mana, compressed into a space smaller than a grain of rice.
After familiarizing himself with Mana Authority over the past weeks, he'd discovered both its limits and its staggering potential.
First, the innate skill allowed him to move mana inside his body with just a fleeting thought. No more intense focus and certainly, no more willing mana with every fiber of his being just to get it to budge.
But that didn't mean his worries about mana were over.
Operating mana could be separated into two main phases:
Phase One, where moving the mana to where you needed it happened… and phase two, which was where willing a specific phenomenon into it occurred, like strengthening your body, creating flames, generating force.
Path skills simplified this process dramatically. They required only initial movement for the first phase and initial intent for the second. Once triggered, the skill handled the rest automatically.
That was why people usually couldn't replicate path skills without the system's help. The complexity of maintaining both phases simultaneously was beyond most practitioners.
Mana Authority gave him absolute command over Phase One: Mana Movement.
Just that and nothing more.
But Ashen had used that single advantage, combined with his inspiration from how Rowan had employed the Riven Formation, to develop something new.
Where Rowan had treated his army as a collective and redistributed their mana to strengthen select soldiers, Ashen treated his body as the army. Each individual muscle became a battalion that could be reinforced.
The concept was straightforward.
The execution, though… It was agony.
RRIP—
Muscle fibers tore with wet sounds, red deepening to angry purple across his chest and arms.
SNAP—CRACK—
Blood vessels ruptured in a cascading sequence, unable to handle the concentrated mana that had just passed through them. Crimson spattered onto the cell floor in rhythmic drips.
POP—POP—POP—
Capillaries burst beneath his skin like tiny firecrackers, painting his torso in spreading bruises.
Ashen's face remained the epitome of indifference.
He'd lost count of how many times this had happened over the past fourteen days.
Without a word, he sat down cross-legged, shin meeting palm, on the floor, closed his eyes, and slipped into Daydream. The world softened around the edges. His breathing evened out.
He redirected every other inch of his remaining mana to Vital Drift.
The damage began mending… slowly, steadily, cell by cell. But he knew it would take at least a few hours for full recovery.
Might as well check his progress.
He opened his status window.
==============================
Name/Arrival date: Ashen Hart - 2025/02/11
Sex/Age: Male/26
Height/Weight: 195 cm / 92 kg
Current condition:Medium circuit permanent damage
Pathway: 6th Step: Idle Chronicier.
Thema: Bellator
Affiliation: Atlas Defense/Bloodwall Army/Wrath Domain.
Title: Tidewalker
[2. Traits]
—Forged Willpower
—Observant
—Liminal Dreamer
[3. Physical Level]
Strength: D | Endurance: D+ | Agility: D
Perception: C+ | Stamina: D+ | Mana: E-
[4. Abilities]
4.1 Innate Powers:
—Beholder's Eyes
—Twin souls
—Mana Authority
—Equivalent Exchange (0)
4.2 Path Skills:
—Lucid Dreamweaving (Skilled+)
—Trance (Skilled+)
—Somatic Autonomy (Basic-)
—Vital Drift (Basic+)
4.3 Other skills:
—Spear Thrust (Masterful+)
—Spear Slash (Skilled+)
—Spear Parry (Skilled+)
—Heartforge Cycle (Skilled+)
—Grafted fighting style (Skilled-)
—Clean (Skilled+)
[5. Conceptual powers]
—The concept of Sloth Efficiency(Glimpse)
[6. Cognitive Depth (Thoughts, Mindset, Disposition)]
— Breathing is painful / Indomitable / Determined
==============================
There were changes, sure. But Ashen, who'd had nothing but time on his hands in this cell, had made a habit of checking his status window regularly.
So to him, most of it looked static.
If there was one thing he felt genuine pride about, though, it was his physical level.
And that progress owed no small part to the torturous new method he'd discovered.
Somatic Autonomy helped, of course. But the real breakthrough came from his new routine: deliberate destruction and reconstruction of his muscles, bones, blood vessels, and even organs whenever that deadly point of concentrated mana passed through.
Vital Drift healed the damage afterward, and each cycle left him marginally stronger.
The result? His body had pushed to D rank across the board, with Endurance and Stamina approaching C-.
Perception being ahead of everything else was expected. He'd always been gifted in that area, and after consuming the Whisp and gaining the Observant trait, the gap had only widened.
Mana, though...
'At least it's not F anymore,' Ashen consoled himself, deliberately looking away from that particular stat.
His gaze fell on the new section instead: Conceptual Powers.
During those eight days, during which he'd done nothing but thrust his spear as fast and as hard as physically possible, he'd unknowingly comprehended a concept.
Which was frankly insane, even if it was merely at the Glimpse stage.
The professors at the tutorial phase had nearly made his ears fall off with how much they'd harped on the impossibility of comprehending concepts without the system's structured guidance. How even other races with natural affinity took decades to master one.
How it was the entire point of advancing through the Steps.
'...And yet here I am, acquiring a new concept just because I refused to die in an impossible situation.'
Ashen didn't care how unfair it was, judging by the smug satisfaction on his face. But then again, he had to be at least this competent if he wanted any chance of achieving what he'd set out to do.
The new concept wasn't mere decoration, of course.
He expanded its description and read through it again:
==============================
Sloth Efficiency: The paradox wherein a being evolved for minimal exertion optimizes every action to reduce effort by executing said action with maximum efficiency.
To do something as quickly as possible... so that one might return to doing nothing sooner.
The shortest path. The perfect economy of motion. The elimination of wasted energy not through inaction, but through action so refined it approaches the ideal.
When effort is inevitable, make it brief. When motion is required, make it count. When work cannot be avoided, make it so efficient that rest arrives all the sooner.
The sloth does not move often. But when it moves, not a single motion is wasted.
==============================
The concept's uses appeared obvious at first glance. It was all about efficiency.
Integrating it into his existing skills, however, proved challenging.
He'd only had two successes so far.
The first was his basic Spear Thrust, which had crossed the threshold from Skilled into Mastery the moment he'd applied the concept. Apparently, integrating a concept into a skill was a condition for pushing it past Skilled rank.
Good to know.
The second success wasn't among his old skills, surprisingly.
It was in the new state he'd been developing.
He called it the Riven State… named after the Riven Formation to pay homage to the Pride army that had laid down their lives protecting humanity, and to honor Rowan Vance, who'd passed this skill on to him.
Moving fifty percent of his mana alongside the required muscles might have sounded straightforward with Mana Authority's help.
But how many muscle fibers actually activated in a single second?
Hundreds? Thousands?
Enough to overwhelm even Mana Authority, apparently.
That was where Sloth Efficiency came through.
Just like with his spear thrusts, the concept engineered the optimal path for the mana point to follow, tracing the shortest geometric route through each activated muscle cluster the instant exertion occurred.
Only then was Ashen's idea even barely functional.
But it worked.
Sort of.
As long as he didn't mind his body destroying itself afterward.
⛧
⛧
⛧
Hours passed.
The damage mended, fibers knitting back together stronger than before, blood vessels regenerating with thicker walls. Ashen felt the familiar tingling sensation that signaled Vital Drift completing its work.
He opened his eyes.
Then stood.
This time, he moved into a peculiar stance.
His feet positioned shoulder-width apart, left foot forward, weight distributed sixty-forty. His rear leg remained bent, coiled, ready to drive power through his hips. His front leg stayed loose, but maintaining balance.
His right hand extended forward at chest height, fingers curved as if gripping something cylindrical. His left hand hovered near his ribs, elbow bent at ninety degrees, palm facing up as if supporting a weapon's shaft.
His shoulders aligned perpendicular to his hips, torso twisted to create maximum rotational potential. His head turned toward where an enemy would stand, chin tucked slightly, eyes focused on empty air.
It was a spear stance with perfect form and textbook positioning.
Except his hands remained completely empty.
While he didn't have his spear—Cornelia had confiscated it upon arrest—he knew its weight intimately. Its length. The way it would shift and respond to each minute adjustment of grip and angle.
The balance point. The flex of the shaft. The bite of the cross-blades when he twisted his wrists.
So even without the physical weapon, he could still train his spearmanship.
thrust.
His body moved with explosive precision, rear leg driving, hips rotating, core engaging, shoulders following through as his arms shot forward into empty space.
The movement stayed textbook. The form, immaculate.
And the mana point danced.
It zipped across his calves as they flexed, traced geometric patterns through his glutes and lower back as torque generated, swept across his obliques in sharp angular lines as his core twisted, then blazed through his shoulders and triceps as force transferred into the imaginary thrust.
A perfect constellation drawn in under half a second.
RRIP—POP—SNAP—
Muscle fibers tore. Blood vessels ruptured… His body was paying the price in real time.
But Ashen didn't stop.
He transitioned into the next form: a sweeping diagonal slash with the phantom spear. His footwork adjusted, weight shifting as he pivoted, the imaginary weapon carving an arc through the air that would have bisected an opponent from shoulder to hip.
The mana point followed, tracing every activated muscle.
Another thrust, this time low, targeting imaginary knees.
The point blazed across his hamstrings, up through his lower back, across his lats.
A parry, deflecting an attack that existed only in his mind.
His forearms lit up with geometric patterns as the point traced their engagement.
He moved through the forms one after another, dancing with nothing in his hands, fighting imaginary enemies with an imaginary weapon.
It should have looked ridiculous.
But there was something almost... elegant about the way he moved. Despite the empty hands, despite the phantom weapon, his technique remained flawless. Each transition flowed seamlessly into the next. His footwork stayed precise. His balance, perfect.
The muscle rupturing and blood leaking from torn vessels only soaked the elegance in tragedy.
DRIP—DRIP—DRIP—
Crimson splattered onto the stone floor with each movement, painting abstract patterns beneath his feet.
Ten minutes.
That was his current limit with fifty percent of his mana concentrated.
When he finally stopped, his entire body had become a canvas of burst capillaries and torn muscle. Sweat mixed with blood, running in diluted pink streams down his torso.
He sat back down without ceremony, closed his eyes, and redirected his remaining mana to Vital Drift once more.
But not before casting Clean on the bloody floor.
The spell activated, and crimson stains evaporated into nothing, leaving only damp stone behind.
This had been his life for the past fourteen days.
⛧
⛧
⛧
At first, he could only channel twenty-five percent of his mana for no more than a minute before his body gave out completely.
Increasing that duration required improving his body's tolerance to concentrated mana.
That was when he'd remembered a story Alice had told him years ago.
They'd been lying in their apartment, post-sex, exhausted and sprawled across the couch. She'd been reading something on her tablet, one of those webnovels she was obsessed with, and had started explaining the plot with way too much enthusiasm.
"So there's this body cultivator…" she'd said, eyes bright, "...and he tempers his body in this super methodical way. First skin, then muscles, then bones, then marrow for blood production, and finally organs!"
Ashen had been only half-listening at the time, more interested in the way her breasts unconsciously swayed when she got excited about something.
But he'd retained the general concept.
"It's all about gradual strengthening," she'd continued, gesturing animatedly. "You can't just jump to tempering your heart or your brain—you'd die instantly. You have to build the foundation first. Skin toughens to contain the power. Muscles strengthen to wield it. Bones harden to support the strain. Blood improves to nourish everything. And only then can organs safely enhance themselves."
She'd looked at him with that slightly manic grin she got when discussing cultivation systems.
"Isn't that cool? It's like... structured body modification based on physiological hierarchy!"
Ashen had nodded, thinking it sounded vaguely insane but internally filing the information away under 'Alice's weird fiction interests.'
Now, sitting in a prison cell with nothing but time and pain, that 'weird fiction' had become his training manual.
He'd started with skin.
Twenty-five percent of his mana concentrated into the traveling point, moving it exclusively along his skin's surface as he exercised. The mana would pass through, and his skin would tear, blister, and burn from the concentrated energy.
Then Vital Drift would heal it.
And each time, the skin came back tougher. More resistant. Able to handle slightly more abuse before failing.
After a day of this, his skin had reached a threshold where it no longer tore immediately from the twenty-five percent concentration.
So he'd moved to muscles.
Same process. The mana point would trace through his muscle fibers as they contracted and extended, and they'd tear catastrophically from the overload.
Vital Drift would repair them.
They'd grow back stronger, denser, and more efficient at handling mana saturation.
Another day and a half.
Then bones.
This was where things got interesting—and significantly more painful.
The mana point couldn't travel through bones the way it did muscles, so instead, it passed along the periosteum, which was the membrane surrounding each bone, while simultaneously concentrating into the bone tissue itself during moments of impact or load-bearing.
The result was microfractures. Hundreds of them. His entire skeleton was developing hairline cracks that Vital Drift had to methodically seal.
Each healing cycle increased bone density fractionally.
Everything had passed relatively smoothly until here, apart from the madness-inducing pain that accompanied each session.
And Ashen didn't dull that pain, even though Somatic Autonomy could have adjusted his nervous system to filter it out entirely.
Because pain served a purpose.
Pain told you when to stop. When something was critically wrong. When you were hurting yourself beyond what recovery could fix.
Pain also reminded you that you were still alive—still capable of feeling, still present in your own body.
And perhaps most importantly for Ashen, pain trained willpower and perseverance.
He shuddered whenever he thought about that deadbeat version of himself—the one who'd given up, who'd let himself rot through inaction and self-pity.
So he did everything possible not to regress.
Including torturing himself with pain as a form of discipline.
For marrow and organs, though, Ashen knew better than to play games.
Those were delicate. One mistake with his bone marrow or heart, and he'd be dead before Vital Drift could even attempt repairs.
So he used Somatic Autonomy differently here.
Instead of destroying and reconstructing, he had SA to gradually strengthen these systems to match the reinforced foundation he'd built with skin, muscle, and bone.
For blood, which was produced in the marrow, SA optimized red blood cell production for better oxygen carrying capacity. It enhanced white blood cell efficiency for faster recovery from injury and illness. It improved platelet quality for quicker clotting.
The result was blood that nourished his body more effectively, delivered oxygen with greater efficiency, and repaired damage faster than before. Which was just what his upgraded muscles and bones craved.
For organs, the improvements were function-specific and carefully controlled.
His stomach's digestive enzymes became more effective, extracting maximum nutrition from minimal food. His kidneys' filtration systems improved, purifying his blood more thoroughly while requiring less energy. His liver's detoxification processes accelerated, handling mana corruption and physical toxins with greater efficiency.
And his heart, perhaps most critical of all, SA reinforced the cardiac muscle while optimizing its rhythm, allowing it to pump blood with greater force while using less energy per beat.
The enhanced blood and strengthened heart combined to flood his entire body with better circulation, which in turn supported everything else.
Those upgrades, while they sounded amazing, were actually not that exaggerated since SA could only do so much with Ashen's little amount of mana.
But it was enough to match the rest of his body for now.
When his whole body had strengthened enough to maintain the Riven State with twenty-five percent mana for fifteen minutes straight, he'd felt the improvement slow to a crawl.
Diminishing returns had set in.
So he'd increased the concentration to fifty percent.
The same torture started over, now with twice the mana density, and his tolerance had reset to only ten minutes before total breakdown.
That's where he was now. Day eighteen. Ten-minute sessions with fifty percent concentration before his body catastrophically failed.
He knew what came next.
When he moved to seventy-five percent, his tolerance would probably drop to around five minutes after completing another full cycle of tempering.
And at one hundred percent of his mana…
His body would likely hold for barely a minute, even if he pushed himself to the absolute limit of what Vital Drift could repair.
'...But even with this, it's not enough.'
The thought came unbidden as Vital Drift finished knitting together the latest round of damage.
Ashen opened his eyes and stared at his hands: scarred, callused, capable of crushing stone but still fundamentally limited by biology.
'If only I had more mana... I could push my body even further.'
But then he shook his head, denying the thought immediately.
'No. Mana isn't the only problem here.'
He clenched his fists, feeling the density of his enhanced muscle, the solidity of his reinforced bone.
'It's my body. It's approaching its full potential, and no amount of training will change that unless...'
Unlike gaining more mana, which would be time-consuming and extraordinarily challenging given the permanent damage to his circuits, upgrading his body's fundamental potential might actually be achievable.
There was a clear path for that.
A difficult path, certainly, but a path nonetheless.
Ashen stood slowly, moving to the center of his cell.
'...Sixth step. Idle Chronicler.'
The system measured advancement through Steps for a reason. Each Step represented a fundamental transformation, not just in power, but in the very nature of what you were capable of.
So his next became clear…
'It seems I have to find a way to take the next Step.'
⛧⛧⛧