Chapter 3

Episode 3: Shion Kurosaki <2>

──Now that Shion is seventeen years old. Still aiming to be the strongest, he never neglects his daily training.

His daily training starts not in the early morning, but rather in the late hours of the night.

He sleeps only one hour a day, and he always wakes up long before the sun rises. With only one hour of sleep, he spends most of his time honing his magic.

He wakes up, trains in magic, practices during and between classes at the magic academy, and continues training late into the night after returning home.

This is the daily life of Shion Kurosaki.

Long before the sun rises, he wakes up in his dorm room, washes his face, brushes his teeth, and eats breakfast. After breakfast, he downs a fatigue recovery potion and a mana recovery potion.

He uses the beginner recovery magic “Recovery Boost” to make one hour of sleep sufficient for fatigue recovery, but he still supplements the lack with potions.

After that, he changes into his black training gear, packs a sword, a few potions, and some academic books into his bag.

Once dressed and ready, Shion leaves his dorm room with his bag and heads to the always-open C-class training field in the still-dark academy grounds.

After a three-minute walk, he arrives at the training field, places his belongings in a corner, stretches lightly, and immediately begins his training.

Just like during practical exams, he creates a magic circle and fires the beginner fire magic “Fireball” at a target set about eighteen meters away.

One shot, two shots, three shots—he repeats this until the nineteenth shot, when his mana is completely depleted, and he falls into a state called “Mana Exhaustion.”

With a twisted face and ragged breaths, Shion collapses to the ground.

Sweat beads on his forehead, his veins bulge abnormally, and his face turns pale. To recover his depleted mana, he gulps down a mana recovery potion.

The potion he drinks significantly speeds up mana recovery, but it doesn’t instantly restore his mana. So, while waiting for his mana to recover, Shion spends his time reading academic books on magic.

After about five minutes, when his mana is restored, he stops reading, stands up, and fires the beginner water magic “Water Bullet” at the target until his mana is depleted again.

Then he drinks another recovery potion, reads his books while waiting for his mana to recover, and once it’s restored, he repeats the process with beginner wind magic.

After exhausting his mana again, he does the same with earth and lightning magic.

This series of actions is training aimed at familiarizing his body with handling different types of magic and increasing his basic mana capacity.

When a large amount of mana is consumed, the body undergoes “super recovery,” increasing the total mana capacity beyond its original level. Shion uses this mechanism to boost his mana.

To maximize super recovery, Shion repeatedly depletes his mana until it’s completely exhausted.

However, normally, the human body always retains a tiny amount of mana, no matter how much is used. If pushed to the limit, a person falls into a state called “Mana Deficiency.”

In this state, not only is using magic impossible, but even standing becomes difficult due to extreme fatigue and shortness of breath. Attempting to use magic with the remaining mana results in unbearable headaches.

Even in such a state, forcing oneself to use magic until it’s completely depleted leads to “Mana Exhaustion.”

Normally, “Mana Exhaustion” puts immense strain on the body. The first time Shion experienced it, he suffered unimaginable headaches, hyperventilation, and fainted, his vision turning white.

When he woke up, he was in so much pain he couldn’t even scream, and he passed out again. This cycle repeated multiple times.

After more than half a day, when he thought he wouldn’t faint anymore, he was struck by a fever over 40 degrees Celsius, teetering on the brink of death multiple times.

For about three years after he could use magic stably, Shion lived a life of daily “Mana Exhaustion” and fainting. Gradually, he could barely maintain consciousness during exhaustion, and now, seven years after his first experience, he can somewhat endure it.

However, this is abnormal. There’s hardly anyone in the world who repeatedly experiences “Mana Exhaustion” daily until they can endure it.

Repeatedly pushing oneself to “Mana Exhaustion” is akin to suicidal behavior, and no matter how talented a magician is, the risk of death from “Mana Exhaustion” is the same for everyone.

Shion only survived because of the potions his parents desperately gave him and sheer luck.

Ordinary magicians can increase their mana capacity without risking “Mana Exhaustion,” so they wouldn’t take such risks.

If other top magicians knew about his actions, they would pale in fear at his abnormality.

But this isn’t to say that other magicians are compromising in their efforts.

“If you jump off this bottomless cliff, you’ll suffer unbearable pain and have a 90% chance of dying. But if you endure, you’ll become stronger.” Even if such a cliff existed, no one would willingly jump off it. There are plenty of other ways to grow stronger.

Shion Kurosaki is the kind of lunatic who jumps off that cliff daily.

But with great risk comes great reward. The super recovery from “Mana Exhaustion” is incomparable to normal training.

If an ordinary magician trained like him for thirty years, they would undoubtedly become the magician with the highest mana capacity in human history.

Unfortunately, Shion was born with an extremely low mana capacity, and his mana growth rate is less than one-hundredth of an average magician’s.

Thus, even with his insane training, he can barely cling to the C-class at the magic academy.

But he doesn’t despair.

He believes that crying won’t make him grow stronger. Every second spent training brings him closer to his dream of becoming the strongest.

However, while he continues to chase his dream and never spares effort, something strange happened around the age of fourteen. Unbeknownst to him, he became an eccentric who enjoyed acting like a “hidden SSS-class powerhouse” at the academy…

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