EPISODE 2: A New Life

On Earth — the blue planet Ursilium had chosen — not every inch of its surface was claimed by sprawling metropolises. Far from the noise and congestion of major cities, hidden behind ranges of mountains that cut across continents, lay regions that still held tightly to ancient traditions and the lingering remnants of the old world's magic.

It was to one such place that the father, Brunt Blanco, and his still-exhausted wife, Mirida, brought their baby boy home. They gave him a name: Zenoda Blanco.

The Blanco family were neither nobles nor wealthy merchants. They were a modest, unassuming household, settled in a coastal community known as Kaigan Village.

Kaigan was a place that seemed to resist the passage of time. Situated at the boundary between a vast expanse of open ocean and untamed wilderness, the village had built for itself a uniquely self-sufficient way of life. The air in Kaigan always carried the crisp scent of sea salt, mingled with the smell of woodsmoke curling from stone chimneys.

The villagers made their living in ways as varied as the tides, forming a harmony of livelihoods that felt almost perfectly balanced. Most of the residents were farmers who worked wheat fields on the hillside slopes, while others were hardened fishermen who sailed out into rough waters and returned with hauls abundant enough to feed the whole community. Along the cobblestone streets, the ringing of hammers from blacksmiths forging metal rang through the air, answering the rhythmic clatter of manual sewing machines as tailors worked busily on heavy winter garments.

The village had only two routes connecting it to the outside world. The first was a harbor dock where wooden ships anchored — a place where coastal merchants and traders regularly conducted business, exporting Kaigan's agricultural goods and dried fish while importing spices and cloth from towns across the sea. The second route was far more dangerous: an overland road that carved straight through the Wrathwood, a dense and treacherous forest home to fearsome beasts and mysterious plants. Because of the dangers of that land route, Kaigan regularly attracted adventurers — bold-spirited individuals who made their living hunting forest monsters or seeking out rare medicinal flora.

It was within this community — tough and demanding, yet genuinely warm — that Zenoda spent the earliest years of his life.

The first four years of Zenoda's life passed entirely without incident. Perhaps even a little too quietly.

Little Zenoda was not a fussy child. He rarely cried from hunger or from taking a tumble. More often than not, he could be found sitting on the wooden veranda of their home, gazing out at the open sea with eyes that held far too much depth for a toddler — as though he were studying the underlying order of the universe, rather than simply watching the seagulls wheel and dive.

Mirida, his mother, whose brown hair was as soft as silk, often embraced him with all the warmth she had. "Our boy is so quiet, Brunt. Do you think he's alright?" she asked one afternoon, gently stroking Zenoda's head as he stared blankly into the orange-streaked sky.

Brunt — a solidly built man with sun-bronzed skin and a small scar on his arm from his hunting days — laughed softly. "He's just a calm child, Mirida. At least he doesn't cause the sort of chaos that the neighbor's kids did when they knocked over the merchant's entire barrel collection yesterday. He'll grow up to be a strong man."

But that quiet, peaceful happiness shattered into something far beyond ordinary surprise the year Zenoda turned five.

That day, a fairly strong wind was blowing in off the sea. Winter was drawing near, and Brunt was busy chopping firewood in the backyard to stock up for the cold months. Several enormous logs of oak — each weighing well over a hundred kilograms — lay scattered across the grassy ground.

Brunt stepped inside briefly to fetch his whetstone. When he returned to the backyard, the sight that greeted him nearly launched his heart clean out of his chest.

One of the massive oak logs had rolled loose down the slight slope of the ground, and it was rolling directly toward Zenoda, who was crouched low, completely absorbed in watching a beetle make its way across a patch of dirt.

"Zeno! Watch out!" Brunt screamed in a panic, breaking into a dead sprint. But he was too far away. By every measure of human logic, the child's legs were about to be crushed beneath several hundred kilograms of solid wood.

Instead of dodging or shrieking in fear, however, the five-year-old simply stood up.

Without so much as a change in his expression, Zenoda raised one small hand and stopped the rolling log.

Thud.

The massive piece of wood halted instantly, as though it had struck an invisible steel wall. Not satisfied with merely stopping it, Zenoda — with the casual ease of someone picking up a bed pillow — grabbed the bark with one hand and hoisted the entire oak log high above his head with a single arm.

"Hmph. Heavy," the five-year-old muttered in a flat tone, then tossed the enormous log to the side. It hit the ground with a thunderous crash that sent a visible tremor through the earth.

The axe in Brunt's hand hit the ground with a pitiful clang.

The man stood completely still, jaw hanging open, staring at his son — a boy who barely reached his hip — who had already returned to crouching down to check on whether his beetle had survived the ordeal.

That was the moment when Brunt and Mirida understood: their child was not an ordinary human being.

Ursilium's cosmic seals did indeed lock away his divine memories and power — but Zenoda's physical body was continuously adapting to the absolute soul that dwelled within it. Without anyone's awareness, the boy's body had evolved beyond the limits of the human species.

Alarmed by the anomaly, Brunt and Mirida scooped Zenoda up that very same day and rushed to the center of the village. They went straight to the wooden clinic of the village healer — an old physician who usually tended to the wounds of passing adventurers. The healer examined Zenoda thoroughly, pressing muscles, checking bone structure, and listening to his heartbeat.

After nearly half an hour of cold sweats, the healer shook his head, thoroughly baffled. "Brunt, Mirida... your boy is genuinely healthy. Exceptionally healthy, even. His bones are extraordinarily dense, but his muscle structure is entirely consistent with that of an ordinary five-year-old. There is no magical anomaly, no curse anywhere in his body. Medically speaking, it is simply impossible for him to have lifted that kind of weight."

The diagnosis did nothing to ease Mirida's worry. As a mother, her instincts told her that something beyond the reach of medicine was at work in her child. She gripped her husband's hand tightly.

"Brunt... medicine can't answer this," Mirida whispered, her face pale. "What if we take him to the church? Sister Niyana might be able to see what ordinary eyes cannot."

In Kaigan Village, as in many parts of the world that still held to the old traditions, the church was far more than a place of prayer. The priests and clergy within possessed a form of spiritual sight — the ability to perceive the flow of Mana (the energy of life) and to read the innate gifts a person was born with.

Brunt nodded firmly. Following his wife's counsel, the family walked up a gentle hill at the edge of the village toward a building of clean white limestone with beautiful stained-glass windows — the Kaigan Church.

Inside the cool, incense-scented hall, they were greeted by Niyana, the village's Sister. She was an elegant figure with pale blonde hair braided neatly, dressed in a white robe embroidered with golden thread. Her eyes were closed — yet everyone in the village knew that Sister Niyana saw the world with far greater clarity than anyone whose eyes were open.

"The Blanco family," Niyana's gentle voice echoed through the empty nave. "I can feel a dense aura of confusion and fear radiating from both of you. And between you... there is an existence that is very... extraordinary."

Brunt stepped forward, guiding Zenoda, who was happily eating a piece of dry bread. "Sister Niyana, we need your help. Our son, Zenoda... today he lifted a massive oak log with one hand. The healer says he's normal, but we know something is wrong."

Niyana smiled reassuringly. She knelt down in front of Zenoda, bringing her face level with the boy's. "Hello, little one. May I touch your forehead?"

Zenoda simply looked at her with his black eyes — those eyes that held the hidden shimmer of stars — then gave a slow nod, still chewing his bread.

Niyana raised her right hand, which emitted a faint glow of holy light, and pressed her index and middle fingers to Zenoda's forehead. The Sister intended to delve into the flow of energy within the child's soul — to read what gifts the gods had bestowed upon him at birth.

The irony, of course, was that she was touching the soul of a god himself.

The first second, Niyana smiled. The second second, her brow furrowed. The third second, the color drained entirely from Sister Niyana's face, leaving it white as parchment. Cold sweat broke out in heavy beads at her temples. Her mouth fell open as though to scream — but no sound came.

Inside the spiritual dimension of Zenoda's soul, Niyana did not see the gentle flow of energy moving like a small, clear stream — the way it did in any ordinary child. What she saw instead was an ocean of absolute cosmic energy so vast it exceeded all imagination, bound in place by millions of enormous, terrifying sealing chains. Only the tiniest mote of dust from that energy was leaking through into his physical body — yet even that single mote was enough to pulverize a mountain.

Gasping for breath, Niyana wrenched her hand away and collapsed onto the stone floor of the church. The beating of her heart lurched and swung wildly in her chest.

"Sister Niyana!" Brunt and Mirida rushed to help her to her feet. "What happened?! Is our son cursed?!"

"N-no... not a curse..." Niyana struggled to calm her racing heart. She looked at Zenoda with an expression caught somewhere between profound awe and deep, instinctive dread. The boy was looking back at her with an expression that seemed to ask, 'What's the matter with this lady?'

"This child... Zenoda," Niyana's voice trembled as she addressed his parents. "He is exceptional. Something that perhaps only comes into the world once every thousand years. Within his soul, I saw absolute potential. He does not possess merely one gift... he is destined to inherit the Three Primary Gifts."

Brunt and Mirida went pale. In this world, a person born with even a single magical or physical gift was virtually guaranteed to be recruited by a kingdom or a prestigious academy. Two gifts was the mark of a hero. Three?

That was the stuff of living legend.

"Th-three gifts?" Brunt breathed, barely able to form the words.

"Yes," Niyana nodded slowly, wiping the sweat from her brow. "For now, the seals within his soul are opening gradually, and the first gift to emerge is Transcendent Physical Strength. His body will continuously absorb the energy of the natural world and convert it into muscle density and physical resilience that lies beyond all human comprehension. That is why he was able to lift that weight."

The two parents exchanged a long look. There was a flicker of relief that their child was not ill, accompanied by an unmistakable surge of pride — but deep beneath both of those feelings, a far larger, far colder fear began to take root.

Niyana fixed Brunt with a gaze that had suddenly turned sharp and serious. "Listen to me carefully, Brunt. Mirida. Both of you need to understand something. In this harsh world, an extraordinary gift is not a blessing. A gift is a Pandora's Box."

Brunt swallowed. "A Pandora's Box?"

"Precisely. Once opened, it may bring fortune — or it may trigger a disaster that destroys everything," the Sister explained. "If the dark guilds, the corrupt kingdoms, or the military factions of the central continent learn that a child from a remote village carries three legendary gifts, they will come hunting for him. Zenoda will be turned into a military weapon, brainwashed, or worse — handed over to dark sorcerers who want to steal his gifts for themselves. You must train him to conceal his power until he is old enough to protect himself."

That stark warning dissolved every last trace of pride from Brunt and Mirida, replacing it entirely with the fierce, absolute instinct of parents who would do anything to protect their child. They thanked Sister Niyana, swore on their lives to guard the secret, and rushed Zenoda home.

From that day forward, Zenoda's life was governed by one absolute rule, laid down by his father: Never use your full strength in front of outsiders.

Years passed. Life in Kaigan Village continued its slow, familiar rhythm.

Zenoda grew into a healthy, handsome boy with eyes that were always calm. He learned not to break the wooden doors of their home, to calibrate exactly how tightly he gripped a glass so it wouldn't shatter, and to pretend he was struggling when he helped his mother carry the laundry basket.

But trying to contain the potential of a former Cosmic God was like trying to wrap fire in a single sheet of thin paper. That power would always find a way out.

The second incident occurred when Zenoda was nine years old.

That afternoon, Zenoda sat alone at the edge of a cliff that looked directly out over the open sea. He watched the waves crash against the rocks below. Without his awareness, the second layer of seals within his soul had gradually loosened as his body continued to grow.

Suddenly, he felt a strange warmth rise from somewhere near his navel, spreading outward through his veins to the tips of his fingers. It was not physical strength — it was the pure energy of the world itself. Mana.

For an ordinary person, opening one's mana circuit required months of dedicated meditation and the guidance of an expensive magic tutor. Zenoda accomplished it by sitting on a cliff and daydreaming about the sea.

The nine-year-old raised his right hand toward the ocean. Rather than feeling any confusion, his body responded automatically — drawing on the sealed muscle memory of a god.

Whoosh.

A spinning mass of water the size of a giant boulder tore itself from the ocean's surface, rose against gravity, and flew toward him. Zenoda flicked his index finger, and the enormous water sphere split itself into thousands of tiny water arrows that hung suspended in the air all around him, perfectly still.

"Oh... this is interesting," he murmured flatly.

He could feel it — the water would do whatever he wished. This was Elemental Magic Manipulation.

Then he raised his left hand.

The sea breeze that had been blowing in gently reversed course in an instant. Wind surged and spun violently around his body, forming a protective mini-tornado centered entirely on him.

Water and Wind. Two elemental affinities, mastered simultaneously in a single breath, without so much as a single incantation.

Unfortunately, that entire scene was witnessed by his mother, Mirida, who had just arrived to bring him a packed lunch of bread. The basket in her hands hit the ground and scattered everywhere.

"Z-Zenoda?!" his mother shrieked, half out of her mind.

The mini-tornado vanished in an instant. The suspended water arrows plummeted and soaked the clifftop like a sudden rainstorm. Zenoda looked over with an expression of complete innocence. "Yes, Mother? I was just playing with the water."

That night, Brunt and Mirida very nearly fainted from sheer stress.

Sister Niyana's warning rang out again in their heads, louder than ever. Their child was not only a human being with the physical strength of a monster — he was now a dual-element magical anomaly as well. They reinforced the rules with far greater severity, and Brunt even had a pair of thick leather gloves specially made for Zenoda, on the logic that the boy would be less likely to accidentally discharge elemental magic in the middle of the crowded village.

Time moved quickly. Kaigan Village continued to receive its steady stream of trading ships and wandering adventurers who stopped at the local taverns for rest and drink.

Zenoda, now twelve years old, had begun to take a genuine interest in what the village guards and hired adventurers did.

Every afternoon, in the dusty training ground behind the blacksmith's forge, adult men sparred with wooden swords, spears, and shields — maintaining their combat skills so they would be ready to face whatever came crawling out of the Wrathwood.

Zenoda often sat on the wooden fence and watched the swings of their blades.

To his dark, star-flecked eyes, the movements of those grown men felt... incredibly slow. Far too many wasted motions, weight distribution that was all over the place, and defensive openings wide enough to walk through. The combat instincts of Ursilium — who had observed trillions of wars across countless galaxies — translated every one of those physical exchanges into simple equations inside Zenoda's head.

One day, a veteran adventurer with a thick beard named Garrick was putting his swordsmanship on display and challenging anyone brave enough to step up. Without quite meaning to, Zenoda dropped down from the fence and picked up a spare wooden sword lying in the dirt.

Garrick burst out laughing at the sight of a twelve-year-old walking into the center of the training ground. "Hey, kid! Go home and drink your mother's milk! A sword isn't a toy for—"

Garrick never finished his sentence.

In the span of a single blink, Zenoda had crossed five meters of open ground like a shadow. He used none of his transcendent physical strength. He used none of his wind mana. He used nothing but pure, refined technique.

Zenoda rotated his body with flawless efficiency, deflecting Garrick's wooden blade from a blind angle, shifting the big man's center of gravity with a precise placement of his foot, and with one controlled flick of his wrist — the tip of Zenoda's wooden sword came to rest against Garrick's throat. The grown man's sword spun through the air and buried itself in the dusty ground.

Every person in the training ground held their breath. Complete silence fell. Even the ringing of the blacksmith's anvil stopped.

The twelve-year-old looked into Garrick's wide, stunned eyes, then slowly lowered his wooden sword.

"I'm sorry, sir," Zenoda said in a polite but utterly expressionless tone. "Your stance just now was far too open on the left flank, and your grip was too rigid. Against a real enemy, you would have been dead before you could blink."

Zenoda set the wooden sword down and walked home as though he had done nothing more notable than pick up a fallen leaf — leaving every adventurer and village guard behind him in a state of profound, collective shock.

At the age of twelve, Zenoda Blanco's mastery of armed combat had already surpassed the skill ceiling of any adult fighter or even the most accomplished royal knight.

The Pandora's Box that his family had feared could no longer be kept shut.

In the small village of Kaigan, a rumor had begun to travel quietly from mouth to mouth — a rumor about a miraculous child with unmatched, inexplicable power. And before long, the wind carrying that rumor would cross the sea, reaching the ears of people the Blanco family had never wanted to know they existed.

Without Zenoda realizing it, his quiet life as a mortal youth was about to invite a storm — one that could not be resolved simply by lifting a tree.