The liquid was thick, warm, and smelled of iron and bitter herbs.
Ryuu floated in the darkness of the pool, the black water covering him up to his chin. The "Pain Nullification" skill was still active, turning the agony of his wounds into a simple, cold, distant data readout. A frantic tingling pulsed beneath his skin, as if thousands of tiny ants were stitching his flesh back together.
He opened his eyes. The cavern was illuminated only by luminescent fungi growing on the rock walls, bathing everything in a sickly greenish hue.
*Ding.*
The familiar sound of the system resonated in his mind.
[Environmental Effect Detected: High-Grade Alchemical Regeneration Solution.][Health Recovery Speed increased by 500%.]
Ryuu watched the health bar on his interface. It was hypnotic.
[HP: 15% -> 18% -> 24%...]
The numbers climbed at a dizzying speed. In *Eternal Online*, a high-grade potion took seconds to heal such an amount of damage. Here, the liquid seemed to be forcing his cells to multiply at an unnatural rate.
He looked at his arm. The deep lacerations caused by the whip were closing before his eyes. Pink, new flesh covered the exposed muscle, and then pale skin formed over it, leaving not even a scar.
"Miraculous." His voice sounded hoarse, but no longer weak.
The health bar kept climbing. 40%. 60%. 75%.
And then, it stopped.
[HP: 80% / 80% (Current Temporary Maximum)]
The flow of healing energy diminished until it became a useless residual heat. The liquid was still there, potent, but his body refused to continue healing.
"Why?" he asked the air.
[Analysis: Deep Structural Damage.][The host body has suffered chronic malnutrition and atrophy of the mana meridians for eight years. Complete physical regeneration is impossible without repairing the internal foundations.][Status Penalty: "Broken Constitution" (Max Health reduced to 80%).]
Ryuu leaned back against the rough stone edge, letting the information settle.
That body was a cracked vessel. The original Ryuu hadn't just fled training out of fear; his physical constitution likely wasn't even capable of enduring it.
"'Broken Constitution'..." he repeated, testing the words on his tongue. In the game, this would be a death sentence for an assassin build. A glass assassin who can't maximize their health is useless in the endgame.
But a twisted smile crossed his face.
"Perfect."
He hated easy. In his previous life, Kaito had completed *Eternal Online* with the most absurd challenges: no armor, only rusty daggers, no potions. A broken body was just another "hard mode" to overcome. If the system said his meridians were atrophied, then he would find a way to force them open.
He stood up from the pool. The black liquid slid off his skin like oil. As he stepped out, his body felt light, renewed. The paralyzing weakness was gone, replaced by a nervous energy.
He dressed in the clean clothes someone had left folded on a rock: a simple gray yukata, without the clan emblem. Servant's clothes, or for someone who doesn't deserve to carry the surname.
He didn't care.
He walked toward the cavern exit. A long stone tunnel ascended toward the surface.
Upon exiting, sunlight hit him for the first time. He squinted, shielding himself with his forearm. He was in an inner courtyard, surrounded by high walls of black stone and curved roofs of ancient oriental architecture. The sky was an intense blue, too vivid, crossed by clouds moving faster than normal.
"...Is he alive?"
Ryuu lowered his arm.
A few meters away, two maids were sweeping the leaves of a red maple. They had stopped their work and were staring at him. There was no relief in their eyes. There was disgust. Fear.
"I heard the Lord broke all his bones yesterday," one whispered, loud enough for him to hear. "He should have died. It would be better for everyone."
"Shh. Don't look him in the eyes. They say his cowardice is contagious. He is the shame of the Oboro Clan."
Ryuu observed them for a second. The system didn't mark their levels, which meant they were non-combatant civilians, or their level was so low it wasn't worth showing.
He ignored them and kept walking.
"Hey!" The first maid, emboldened by his silence, took a step forward. "Where do you think you're going? The Lord said you had to go train tomorrow. You should go back to your cell... I mean, your room."
Ryuu stopped. He turned his head slowly.
He simply looked at her. A gaze that saw her as a level 1 obstacle.
The maid paled. The air caught in her throat. She took a step back, tripping over her own broom, and fell to the ground sitting.
Ryuu looked forward again and continued his path.
He didn't need a map to know where to go. The muscle memory of the old Ryuu, driven by the fear of being punished for entering forbidden places, screamed at him which zones to avoid. And one of those "boring and forbidden for physical training" zones was his target.
The Library.
He crossed hallways of polished wood, ignoring the guards who looked at him with disdain and the other servants who moved away as if he had the plague.
He arrived in front of double doors of solid wood, reinforced with iron. He pushed. The doors were heavy, designed for adults, but he used all his weight and managed to open a crack wide enough to slip inside.
The smell of old paper, dust, and dry ink hit him. It was the perfume of knowledge.
The library was immense. Shelves two stories high covered the walls, filled with volumes bound in the leather of different beasts. Dust danced in the beams of light entering through the tall windows.
It was empty. In a family of assassins obsessed with physique and martial technique, few seemed interested in theory.
"Good." He took a step toward the first row of shelves.
Just before entering the rows of bookshelves, Ryuu paused. In a corner swallowed by shadows, behind a solid mahogany desk, sat an old man. He wore an ash-gray kimono that seemed to blend with the dust in the air. His eyes were closed, and his skin was so wrinkled it resembled old parchment.
It was said that Jiro, the librarian, was blind from birth.
Despite the fact that the man kept his eyes closed, the pressure emanating from him weighed on Ryuu's shoulders; it was a scrutiny much sharper than simple sight.
"An observer for my Father," Ryuu thought coldly. "A watchdog disguised as a relic."
He ignored him and headed to the geography and history section. He needed to understand the game board before he started moving his pieces.
He dragged a pile of books to a low table and began to read. His reading speed was monstrous, a remnant skill from processing thousands of lines of quest text in seconds.
He opened a world map. His eyes widened slightly.
It wasn't Earth. The continents were vast masses of fractured land, separated by stormy oceans that cartographers had marked with "Leviabeast" warnings. The scale was wrong; if the map's scale was real, this planet was at least three times larger than Earth.
He searched for his location.
The Oboro Clan.
He found it on the eastern continent of "Yashima". A red dot marked on a black mountain range called "The Dragon's Maw".
"'Peak of Silence'," Ryuu read. "Ancestral home of the Oboro Clan. Altitude: 8,000 meters above sea level. Surrounded by currents of cutting wind and Rank B beasts."
The text continued describing the family.
*"The Oboro. The Emperor's shadow sword. Undisputedly recognized as the number one assassin family in the world. It is said that if a name is whispered on the Peak of Silence, the person dies before the sun sets, no matter where on the continent they hide."*
Ryuu closed the book with a sharp thud.
Number one assassins. They lived in a natural fortress unthinkable for normal humans. Not even mid-level martial arts practitioners could climb that mountain without freezing to death or being devoured.
A weak child like the original Ryuu constituted an unforgivable stain in such a lineage of monsters.
"Charming family." The sarcasm was lost in the silence of the library.
He pushed the history book away and took another, one with a deep blue leather cover that seemed to vibrate under his fingers.
*Compendium of Basic Mana: The Breath of the World.*
He opened it. Diagrams of energy flows, magic circles, and theories on the manipulation of elemental particles filled the pages.
His eyes shone.
In *Eternal Online*, he was a pure assassin. Physical, poisons, shadows. But here... here he could learn magic.
"If my meridians are broken..." Ryuu ran his fingers over a diagram showing the mana network in the human body. "Maybe I don't need to repair them. Maybe I can rewire them."
The system blinked.
[Potential Skill Detected: Magic Understanding.][Do you wish to attempt to learn "Basic Mana Meditation"?]
Ryuu smiled. A predatory smile on the face of an eight-year-old boy. In the solitude of the library, surrounded by dust and silence, the number one player had just found his first exploit.
"Teach me everything."