Chapter 5 The Secret Training of a Jobless Soul

Rudy closed his bedroom door and pushed the heavy iron latch into place. He leaned his back against the thick wood, letting out a long, shaky breath. He walked over to his desk and sat down. With a single thought, he called for the system.

The air rippled, and the yellowed parchment appeared, floating quietly in front of his face.

"Show me how to use magic," Rudy muttered under his breath.

The text on the page shifted. New words began to crawl across the surface in dark ink:

To channel mana, a mage must recite the sacred verses of the elements, allowing the energy to spill from the soul into the physical world. The process requires loud, clear incantations to shape the raw force.

Rudy frowned as he read the lines. "Loud words? That makes no sense. It sounds completely wasteful."

In his past life, he had studied basic science. He knew how energy worked. Here, mages screamed to throw a fireball, losing most of their power through heat and sound. It was inefficient.

He closed his eyes and searched inward for the spark the book mentioned. For a long time, there was nothing. Then, he felt a cold pool of fluid energy sitting near his heart.

Rudy guided a tiny drop down his arm to his palm. He refused to chant. Instead, he pictured a modern engine, compressing the energy tighter and tighter into a tiny point so no heat or sound could escape.

"Just a spark," he whispered, opening his eyes.

He held his palm upward. The air above his skin began to twist. A tiny, blue speck of light appeared. It didn't make a sound. It didn't flash brightly. It was just a perfectly condensed ball of pure power, completely stable.

Rudy smiled. He was achieving total efficiency. By skipping the chanting, he wasn't wasting a single bit of mana.

But his smile did not last long.

The moment he tried to pull the blue speck back into his body, the energy resisted. The compressed force became incredibly heavy, like trying to hold back a rushing river with a small piece of wood. The tiny spark began to shake violently.

"Wait," Rudy gasped.

A sudden, blinding heat rushed up his arm. The cold pool near his heart instantly turned into boiling water. He felt a sharp, agonizing pressure build up behind his eyes. His vision blurred, and the small veins in his neck and wrists began to swell, turning a dark, angry purple.

The balance was breaking. The compressed energy was trying to burst out of his physical body all at once.

"Let go!" Rudy thought in a panic.

He tried to throw the spark away from his hand, but his fingers were frozen. The pressure in his chest grew so intense that he couldn't even draw air into his lungs. He was literally suffocating on his own magic. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He realized, with a strike of pure terror, that he was about to blow himself up in his own bedroom.

With the very last bit of his strength, he slammed his palm down against the top of the desk, forcing the compressed ball to discharge into the solid wood.

BOOM!

A silent wave of heat erupted from his hand. There was no loud explosion, but a circle of black soot blasted outward, instantly scorching the desk and sending his papers flying into the air. The black mark spread across the floorboards, stopping just inches away from his bed.

Rudy fell out of his chair, crashing heavily onto the ground. He lay there on his side, gasping for air, his chest rising and falling rapidly. A single line of dark red blood trickled from his nose, staining his lip. His entire body was shaking, his muscles completely weak from the shock.

He lay on the floor for several minutes, simply listening to the sound of his own ragged breathing. He had never been that close to dying before, not even when the lights of that car had rushed toward him on the dark road in his past life.

Slowly, the door handle rattled.

Rudy froze. He forced his weak limbs to move, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He quickly wiped the blood from his nose with the sleeve of his nightshirt.

"Rudeus?"

It was Bella’s voice. She was standing right outside the door. She must have felt the sudden shift in the air or heard the faint thud of his body hitting the floor.

"Rudeus, open the door," she demanded. Her voice wasn't filled with worry; it was tight with that same deep suspicion from earlier. "I smelled something burning. What are you doing in there?"

Rudy stood up, his legs feeling like jelly. He walked to the door, took a deep breath to steady his voice, and pulled the latch back. He opened the door just a few inches, blocking her view of the scorched desk and the ruined floor.

Bella was standing there, holding a small basket of clean linens. Her sharp eyes immediately went to his face. She noticed the slight paleness of his skin and the way his fingers gripped the edge of the door a little too tightly.

"Rudeus?"

It was Bella’s voice outside the door. "I smelled something burning. What are you doing in there?"

Rudy stood up on shaky legs. He walked to the door and opened it just a few inches, blocking her view of the scorched desk.

Bella stood there holding clean linens. Her sharp eyes immediately went to his pale face, then to his hand gripping the door too tightly.

"What happened?" she asked, trying to look past his shoulder. "Did you burn something?"

"It is none of your business, Bella," Rudy said, forcing his voice to sound lazy and arrogant. "I was just playing with some incense. Don't you have chores to do?"

Bella didn't back down. She stepped closer, her gaze locking onto the red stain on his sleeve.

"You are a terrible liar," she said quietly. "You look like you just saw a ghost. And your hand is shaking."

Rudy let out a cold, dry chuckle. "If I want to burn my own room down, I will. Go back to the kitchen, Bella."

Bella stared at him for a long, silent moment, trying to read the truth behind his sudden change.

"The tailors arrived," she said finally, her voice dropping to a flat tone. "Father wants me to try on the dresses for the banquet."

"Good," Rudy said, his voice softening for a split second. "Make sure you pick something that won't make the family look bad. Now get lost."

Bella gave him one last look, turned, and walked away.

Rudy closed the door and locked it. He looked down at his trembling hands, then at the black circle on the wood. The training had almost killed him, but he knew he had found something unique.