It had been two years since Shion enrolled in the Magic Academy. In that time, the children his age, who had started learning magic much later than he did, had quickly improved their skills.
Despite all his efforts over those two years, Shion could never catch up to his peers. In fact, the gap between them only widened.
“Maybe Shion will finally realize he has no talent for magic,”
his parents thought, wondering daily how they would comfort their son when his dreams were shattered by reality.
But Shion’s passion never cooled, and the opportunity to console him never came.
Before they knew it, three years had passed since Shion started at the Magic Academy.
When Shion turned ten, the other children his age could at least cast basic spells, like creating a “fireball” the size of an apple.
Around that time, Shion finally managed to perform magic for the first time in his life.
The spell was called “Ignition,” the most basic fire spell.
The small flame he conjured was no bigger than a candlelight and flickered out almost immediately.
It was a clumsy spell that his peers had mastered long before.
Still, Shion was overjoyed to finally succeed in casting magic and eagerly reported it to his parents.
His parents praised him, saying, “That’s amazing!” and “Good job!” But deep down, they were troubled, thinking, “Doesn’t he realize yet that he has no talent for magic?”
Despite starting to learn magic earlier than anyone else and working harder than anyone, Shion still couldn’t even come close to the others. Yet he still believed he could become a magician.
As they thought about this, Shion turned to his parents and said,
“I may not have talent like everyone else, but I’ll definitely become a magician. If everyone is ten times better than me, I’ll work a hundred times harder. I’m going to become the strongest magician!”
Ten-year-old Shion said this with a determined smile.
He had long understood that he had no talent for magic.
The textbooks clearly explained that magic talent and power were inherited from one’s parents.
Even knowing this—facing the stark difference in talent between himself and others—he kept working hard.
He never thought of his efforts as wasted; he believed he would reach his dream no matter what.
Seeing their son like this, his parents regretted that they couldn’t give birth to him in a family of magicians.
They felt ashamed for underestimating their son and shed tears.
They cursed the cruel fate that had given such a hard-working child no talent for magic.
And then they realized that Shion had smiled so strongly to ensure they wouldn’t feel guilty.
From that day on, his parents made a firm decision: “We will dedicate everything we have to supporting our son’s dream.”
And so, up to the present day, his parents have worked tirelessly, giving him anything that might enhance his magic, from magical-enhancing items to academic books on magic.
Responding to his parents’ support, Shion continues to work hard every day.
One day, to become the strongest…
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Time passed, and now Shion is seventeen. Still aiming to be the strongest, he never skips his daily training.
His daily training starts very early in the morning… or rather, at a time that’s more like the middle of the night.
He only sleeps for one hour a day, always waking up long before sunrise. Except for that one hour of sleep, he spends almost every waking moment honing his magic skills.
He practices magic when he wakes up, continues during classes and breaks at the Magic Academy, and then trains again until late at night back at his dorm.
This is the daily routine of Shion Ichinose.
Before the sun rises, he wakes up in his dorm room, washes his face, brushes his teeth, and eats breakfast. After that, he drinks a potion to recover his fatigue and another to restore his magic power.
Using a basic recovery spell, “Recovery Promotion,” Shion can recover enough from just one hour of sleep, but he supplements what’s lacking with potions.
Afterward, he changes into his black training clothes, packs a sword, several potions, and academic books into his bag.
With his bag in hand, Shion leaves his dorm room, walks across the still-dark academy grounds, and heads to the always-open training grounds for C-class students.
After about a three-minute walk, Shion arrives at the training grounds. He places his bag in a corner, stretches lightly to warm up his body, and immediately begins his training.
Just as in the practical exams, he sets up a magic circle aimed at a target about eighteen meters away and fires a basic fire spell, “Fireball.”
He fires once, twice, three times, and on the nineteenth shot, his magic power is completely drained, and he falls into a state called “magic depletion.”
With his face twisted in pain and his breath labored, Shion collapses to the ground.
His veins bulged blue across his sweaty forehead, and his face turned pale as if all the blood had drained from it. To recover his depleted magic power, Shion gulped down a magic recovery potion.
The potion he drank rapidly accelerates magic recovery, but it doesn’t immediately restore his magic power. So, while waiting for his magic power to recover, Shion spends his time studying his magic textbooks.
After about five minutes, Shion stops reading as his magic power has sufficiently recovered. He stands up and, this time, casts a basic water spell, “Water Bullet,” repeatedly until his magic power is drained again.
Then, he drinks another recovery potion, reads his textbook while waiting for his magic to recover, and when it does, he switches to basic wind magic, repeating the process until his magic power is drained.
After exhausting his magic power again, he repeats the same training with earth and lightning magic.
This entire process is meant to ingrain the handling of each type of magic into his body and to increase his basic magic capacity.
When a large amount of magic power is consumed during magic use, the magic power in the body undergoes a “super recovery,” increasing the amount of magic power the body can hold. This training aims to promote that increase in magic capacity.
To trigger a more significant super recovery, Shion keeps using his magic until his internal magic is completely depleted.
However, typically, the human body retains a small amount of magic power even when heavily used, so if one pushes their magic usage to the limit, they enter a state called “magic deficiency.”
When someone falls into “magic deficiency,” they suffer extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, severe headaches, and can barely stand, let alone use magic. The more they try to use magic with what little power they have left, the worse their condition becomes.
Forcing oneself to use up all their remaining magic power under such conditions leads to the phenomenon known as “magic depletion.”
Normally, “magic depletion” puts such a strain on the body that it can be life-threatening. When Shion first experienced it, he suffered unimaginable headaches and hyperventilation, lost his vision, and fainted.
When he woke up, the pain was so intense that he couldn’t even cry out, and he passed out again. This cycle of waking and fainting repeated multiple times.
It took over half a day before he could stop fainting, only to be struck by a high fever exceeding forty degrees, pushing him to the brink of death multiple times.
For about three years after he became able to use magic steadily, Shion would faint every day from magic depletion. However, over time, he managed to remain conscious even during magic depletion, and now, seven years since his first experience, he has developed a certain tolerance to it.
However, this is an abnormal condition. It’s almost impossible to find someone who repeatedly experiences magic depletion until their body builds a tolerance.
Continuously depleting one’s magic power is like a suicidal act; the risk of death is the same regardless of one’s magical talent.
In Shion’s case, it’s only thanks to the potions his parents desperately provided and his sheer luck that he miraculously survived.
Normally, a magician’s magic power would increase with regular training without the need to deplete their magic, so they wouldn’t take such deadly risks.
If anyone knew what Shion was doing, even the most elite magicians would turn pale at the sheer abnormality of it and feel a deep sense of fear.
But this doesn’t mean that other magicians are making half-hearted efforts.
“If you jump off this bottomless cliff, you’ll experience unimaginable pain that you can’t survive, and there’s a 90% chance you’ll die. But if you endure, you’ll become stronger.” Even if such a cliff existed, no one would jump off it. There are plenty of other ways to become stronger.
Shion Ichinose is the one who keeps jumping off that cliff without hesitation, and he’s an abnormality that can’t simply be described as a hard worker.
However, because of the risks, the super recovery of magic power after depletion is extraordinary.
If an ordinary magician were to train like Shion for thirty years, they would undoubtedly become the most powerful magician in human history.
Unfortunately, Shion was born with such a small amount of magic power that even with this extreme training, he could barely manage to stay in the C-class of the Magic Academy.
Despite repeating this extreme training, Shion could barely manage to stay in the C-Class at the Magic Academy.
However, he never felt discouraged.
He believed that shedding tears over an unfulfilled reality wouldn’t lead to growth. Instead of wasting time on sorrow, he thought it was better to use every minute, every second, to train and get closer to his dream.
…But, despite his relentless pursuit of becoming the strongest and his continued daily efforts, something changed around the time he turned fourteen. Gradually, Shion’s behavior became odd, and before long, he had turned into an eccentric who found joy in pretending that “he was actually an SSS-rank magician hiding his true abilities from everyone at the academy…”
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