the monarch

In the past month, Kayden's body has progressed at an alarming rate. You could already see the muscles bulging around the shirt. However, unfortunately, due to his age and size, he appeared to be just a normal kid.

A month ago, spending 30 minutes in training was a feat; now he was able to get up to 35 without any problems. Well, that depends on whether you consider some injuries and fainting to be no problem. The advantage of the rigorous training was that Kayden was slowly getting used to the pain and managed to maintain greater rationality even though he was injured in several places.

Returning to the subject, Kayden was gathering mana and asking it to light up in his fingers. Very basic spells didn't need words or gestures, it was simply a matter of asking for mana.

After a few minutes passed, one of Kayden's fingers caught fire. It was so fast that he screamed and fell to the ground. As if by instinct, he tried to extinguish the fire with his hand, but it wasn't working. Quickly he panicked and started banging his hand on his shirt and the floor.

Meanwhile, Heimer was reading his book and, upon hearing Kayden's scream, he was faced with a moment that every mage goes through: discovering that he cannot be hurt by his mana. After a few minutes of thrashing and screaming, Kayden calmed down. Heimer approached him with a smile.

"It finally stopped," he chuckled. "Congratulations on making your first spell. Now ask the mana to stop burning, or you'll expend all of your body's mana without realizing it." I could see that Heimer was enjoying this moment.

Kayden followed his friend's advice and managed to stop the burning on the second try. Then he looked at his friend, who hadn't told him everything he needed to do. Heimer quickly made a fool of himself and explained why Kayden wasn't harmed. He also said a little more to divert Kayden's attention.

"Now it just lacks the basic magic of other elements. You were fast; it normally takes the entire second year to learn these things. Let's see how soon you finish." In some ways, Kayden had the upper hand, even with his underpowered body. His hard-working mentality set him apart from most kids his age.

**After 6 months...**

Kayden was in the tenth month of his sophomore year. That was also how long it took him to master all the basic spells. He could fill a glass with water, set his fingers on fire, dig a hole in the earth, and blow a light breeze; there were some other spells as well, but there were too many to describe.

For all his progress, he was still only a month ahead of his peers. This still surprised his teachers. With his talent, it was even hard to imagine that he would reach the second rank, let alone that he would master all the basic magics before his peers.

In those six months, Kayden achieved a chiseled physique. Every inch of him was worked on. It wasn't fully proportionate, as its focus was on efficiency rather than aesthetics. His training time also went from 35 minutes to 60 minutes. This also surprised the coach; it usually takes a year to reach that result, but Kayden worked at least twice as hard as any other student the man ever had.

Even though it wasn't his main focus, his body was slowly taking on Greek proportions. his abdomen was marked by buds, his shoulders proportionate to his waist, which in turn was thin.

Kayden was excused from school and was no longer required to attend for that year. This allowed him to focus on something he had been neglecting lately: his class, or rather his custom class. Lately, he's been visiting the old man's library a lot and reading books about magical animals and plants. He has the thought that the real secret is in nature, as the progress and ability of the beasts were too great to be measured.

Lately, the old man had been letting Kayden lose more and more. Unbeknownst to Kayden, the old man was trying to help him with his desires, as he felt bad that Kayden's talent was so low. One of the biggest shocks was learning of Kayden's excellent performance in learning the basic spells. In his mind, it was clear: Kayden was a genius bound by his body, like a phoenix that could never fly because it had its wings clipped.

Today, Kayden was in the library at the orphanage, reading yet another book about magical beasts. But this one was a little different in that it was written by a scientist named David Nakir. The title was "Heart of Beasts and Heart of Mana".

He put forward a theory that beasts had a heart that pumped mana into their bodies 24 hours a day. However, with the current level of humanity, we weren't able to find it, and we often mistook it for cores. Along with it, there were many vessels separate from normal blood vessels.

That got Kayden's attention. If he could turn his core into an irrigation pump to cultivate his body every second of the day, that would be fantastic. Reading was quick; it was a book from 10 years ago and there wasn't much information.

Over the next few days, Kayden searched like crazy for any information about the mana hearts but found nothing. When he asked the old man, the old man laughed and said that this had been a joke for a long time in the scientific community and that few even believed it.

on this, for it has never been proved. No matter how hard humanity tried, it was labeled a prank.

But the book seemed to be real. Kayden decided to follow his instincts and asked Heimer to help him find the author. Heimer said he had his means, but it would take a few weeks at the very least.

That was something Kayden could handle. Wasn't he waiting for almost 6 years? After talking with Heimer, he headed to the gym along with Ryan. His friend was practically living in the gym, training for his college test.

He would try one in town anyway; he was practically one foot inside the top tier of rank 5, and that would be enough for him to get into a good college of his choice.

Arriving there, they went to greet the master, and as usual, he was losing at the pool. Then Ryan went to train alone and Kayden went to the trainer. The man was performing squats using a barbell loaded with weights. His every movement was of maximum amplitude and felt strange to watch. There were at least 500kg on each side, and the man was crouching down like a paper barbell with weights on it.

"Hello Coach, I'm ready for one more session," Kayden greeted happily. Without a doubt, this was one of the only activities that paid off, and it excited him deeply.

Hearing the boy's voice, the man elegantly lifted the weight from his shoulders and placed it on the ground. Kayden was sure that if the floor wasn't reinforced it would eventually give way and crack. The trainer put on his usual smile and greeted Kayden.

"Hello, Kayden. This time, we're not going to do our usual training. With you approaching the 60-minute mark, there's not much else to do. If you start trying to get past that, I won't be able to heal your body." The man looked embarrassed as he said he was incapable of doing anything. It didn't match his confident demeanor.

This phrase took the boy by surprise and quickly made him sad. He wouldn't go down the path of a knight or a swordsman, so he couldn't put mana into his body to progress physically. The man noticed the boy's sad look and came up with a ready-made solution.

"But I can teach you how to use melee weapons." As he spoke, the man gestured as if he were wielding a sword. "From small weapons to massive ones, I can teach you how to use any of them."

author's note: I'm going away this weekend, so we won't have chapters until Monday