The wind in the village of Hage didn't just blow; it scraped. It tore at the rocky soil and the tough, stringy weeds that passed for vegetation. Lencar Abarame, aged fifteen, was using it as a whetstone.
He was on the cliff edge overlooking the giant demon skull that served as the village's primary landmark. While the rest of the village's children were still asleep or preparing for chores, Lencar was finishing the final phase of his daily, decade-long routine.
His body was drenched in sweat, shimmering in the pale dawn light. He was in a low, agonizing horse-stance, a position he'd held for the last twenty minutes. But this was no ordinary stance.
To a bystander, he was just a boy with iron-clad discipline. Internally, he was at war.
Push.
He willed his mana—a small, flickering, but tenaciously controlled pool—to wrap around his quads and glutes, resisting his own stance. He was actively trying to force his own knees to buckle, while his muscles, forged by this very process, refused to yield.
He'd called it "Mana-Forging" ever since he was six.
This was the secret of his second life. He was Kenji Tanaka, a 28-year-old data analyst from Tokyo, who had died a boring, spreadsheet-filled death and been reborn in a world of magic. A world he recognized. Black Clover.
The "how" of his death was a blur. The "what now" had been terrifyingly clear. He was a commoner in a feudal, magic-obsessed kingdom. A data point at the bottom of the graph.
He wouldn't accept that.
At age five, he'd first felt his mana. At age six, Kenji's knowledge of fitness, physiology, and progressive overload had merged with Lencar's new reality. While nobles used mana to replace physical effort, he would use it to enhance it.
He used mana for resistance, making every push-up, every squat, every run feel like he was moving through wet cement. Then, he used his mana for recovery, flooding his torn muscle fibers, forcing them to repair faster, denser, and stronger.
The result was a 15-year-old body that had no right to exist in a poor village. He wasn't a giant, but every inch of him was packed with the dense, efficient muscle of a dedicated fighter. It wasn't Asta's manic, sculpted-from-nothing muscle. It was a hybrid, forged by a unique blend of two worlds.
With a final, gasping shudder, he broke the stance and collapsed onto the dirt, his chest heaving. His mana was completely, utterly spent. It was the best feeling in the world. Draining the lake to make it just a little bit bigger when it refilled.
He lay there for a minute, staring at the purple-orange sky.
Today.
Today was the Grimoire Acceptance Ceremony. The day his 15-year plan finally moved to phase two.
He'd done all he could. He had the meta-knowledge of the plot. He had a body that, he suspected, could rival a knight-in-training. All he needed now was the final piece: a grimoire.
He stood, his muscles already knitting back together under his mana's gentle, practiced flow. He wasn't even sore anymore.
He ran back to his family's small but sturdy farmhouse, his feet barely touching the ground. His "mother" and "father," simple, kind commoners, waved him in for a breakfast of hard bread and potato soup. They loved their strange, quiet, intensely disciplined son, even if they didn't understand him.
"Don't forget the delivery for the church, Lencar," his mother said, using her weak wind magic to clear the dust from the table.
"I won't," he replied, grabbing the warm, cloth-wrapped loaf. His family's farmland was decent, and they always shared their bread with the Hage church.
"You're a good lad," his father added, stoking the hearth with a small, controlled puff of fire magic from his finger. Both their grimoires were thin, three-leaf clovers with only two pages of spells each, but they were content.
Lencar dropped off the bread, exchanging brief, friendly nods with Asta and Yuno, who were already bickering by the church steps. He had avoided them his entire life. They were the protagonists. Getting close to them was a one-way ticket to chaos. He had his own path.
The Prodigy of Magic. The Prodigy of Muscle.
And me, Lencar thought, a small, confident smile touching his lips. The Prodigy of Method.
The Grimoire Tower for their region was a dusty, ancient thing. Lencar stood in the crowd, a calm island in a sea of nervous, chattering teenagers.
"Ahem! Welcome, young hopefuls!" The tower master, a doddering old man, began his speech. "Today, you will be granted your grimoires..."
Lencar tuned him out, his heart beginning to pound, his discipline finally cracking under the sheer anticipation. This is it. Fire. Water. Earth. Lightning. I don't care. Just give me something to work with. Give me a tool to put in this weapon-rack of a body.
"And now... the granting!"
Light exploded from the walls. Grimoires shot through the air. And then, the pillar. A brilliant, blinding golden light.
Right on schedule, Lencar thought, shielding his eyes. The four-leaf clover. Yuno's destiny. It lowered itself into the prodigy's hand.
The room was silent, awestruck. The light faded. The last of the grimoires settled.
And Lencar's hands were still empty.
He stared at them. A cold, sharp, unplanned dread pierced his disciplined mind. What?
He looked over. Asta, too, was empty-handed, and was already shouting about it. The crowd was snickering, pointing.
No. This isn't right. Lencar frantically searched his own mana. It was there, small but present. I have mana! I'm not Asta! I've been training for a decade! Why...?
For the first time in fifteen years, Kenji Tanaka's panic completely overwhelmed Lencar Abarame's control.
Thud.
It wasn't a zip. It wasn't a flash of light.
It was the sound of a heavy, neglected object falling from a high shelf, bouncing off a railing, and landing with a dusty whump at his feet.
The room, which had been focused on Asta, went silent again. Everyone turned.
Lencar looked down. It was... nothing. A book, bound in plain, unadorned, slightly scuffed brown leather. No clover. No emblem. No glow. A perfect, smooth, blank slate.
"W-what is that?"
"He's worse than the loud one! He got a blank book!"
His hands shaking, Lencar bent down and picked it up. The moment his fingers touched the leather, the panic evaporated, replaced by a jolt not of magic, but of potential. It felt... hungry. Empty.
He heard the tower master's dismissive scoff. He heard the fresh wave of laughter. He was "Blank Book." Asta was "No Book." The two jokes of the ceremony.
Lencar clutched the book to his chest. He ignored them all. He stared at the blank cover, a slow, dawning realization—a hypothesis—forming in his analytical mind. It's a vessel. It's empty because I'm supposed to fill it.
As the crowd began to disperse, he felt the stares. He needed a disguise for his grimoire. Hide.
He focused, pushing his small mana pool into the blank cover. Look normal. Look like everyone else.
A simple, two-leaf clover, faint as a watermark, slowly faded into view on the brown leather. It was weak, pathetic, and utterly unconvincing. But it was something. It was control.
My grimoire... it's for Replica Magic.
The realization was electrifying. He looked up, and his eyes locked on Yuno, who was walking past, the golden four-leaf clover held at his side.
Lencar's analytical mind raced. Test it. Test it now.
He stumbled forward, "accidentally" tripping. "Woah!"
He slammed into Yuno's side, his own blank grimoire slapping flat against the cover of the four-leaf clover. It was a perfect, cover-to-cover contact for less than half a second.
"Ah, sorry!" Lencar gasped, pushing himself off. "Incredible grimoire, man. Congrats. Don't trip on your way out like I did."
Yuno gave him a strange, neutral look, then nodded and walked on.
Lencar leaned against the wall, his heart hammering from the sheer audacity of the gamble. He waited until the tower was empty, then opened his grimoire.
The first page was still blank. He almost despaired, until he felt it.
It started as a trickle, then a stream, then a roaring, deafening tsunami. A boundless, bottomless ocean of mana flooded his body. It was vast, powerful, and utterly serene. It was Yuno's mana.
His own small, flickering mana pool didn't just grow; it was eclipsed, replaced by a new, massive capacity that felt as wide as the sky.
He almost passed out from the sensory overload.
Gasping, Lencar looked at his grimoire. A new section had appeared, titled "Wind Magic." He turned the page. There, in perfect, elegant script, was a single spell: [Towering TORNADO].
He stared, his mind finally grasping the rules.
He had Yuno's mana capacity.
He had one of Yuno's spells.
He could feel, instinctively, that he couldn't change the spell. He could cast it, but he couldn't shape it or use the wind flexibly. It was a replica, a perfect but inflexible copy.
As Asta's distant shouting echoed from outside, Lencar clutched his grimoire. His small, two-leaf clover disguise had faded, leaving the cover blank once more.
He had no magic of his own. But now, he had the potential for all of it.