To make things worse, the original owner of his body spent an entire year in a prestigious academy. He came out of it with nothing but a trash-tier light orb.
Still, he is the son of that insanely powerful Duke. He has got to have some kind of hidden talent, right? No way he is actually that weak.
But even so, he knows he will never reach the protagonist crew's level in this crazy world. They call her the god's chosen, completely out of reach for any normal person out there. Take Celia, for example. She got divine authority from some cold goddess, and she has just been growing non-stop ever since. And honestly, that kind of absolute power is not something you can beat with hard work alone.
Then you look at Ariel, who ends up being blessed by incredibly gorgeous elemental spirits. Not just one, but over ten of them. Such a miserable life.
What is really miserable here is his own situation. It does not matter how hard he trains, there is zero chance he surpasses her. But that does not mean he will just sit around either. At the absolute minimum, he needs to be strong enough to defend his own life, especially if Ariel ever decides to come after him.
On the bright side, though, it really looks like he might unlock brand new talents.
He snaps his fingers and the black book appears, smacking him straight in the crotch. He yells at the damn thing to stop showing up and hitting him like that.
Then he hears a strange whistling noise, and the book opens itself up and starts rapidly flipping pages. It is literally retelling everything from the past few days, and he is pretty annoyed, because the descriptions are way too detailed. The way it is written makes him sound like some shady creep about to do something absolutely awful to that poor girl.
But that is exactly when he spots something weird. The word assassin, right there in the text, is glowing bright red.
Out of nowhere, a weird energy surrounds him completely. He yells out, "Give me a warning next time."
And now he is standing in a totally different room. He looks around. It hits him fast. This is definitely not the same dungeon as before. Maybe it is some other dimension inside the book.
But before he can even process that, footsteps creep up right behind him. He spins around. It is her again. The exact same girl who chopped him in the neck earlier.
Wham. Zero time to react. Lights out completely.
He wakes up right back in his bed. The poor guy barely had a split second to understand anything before getting dropped. One single hit.
The book flutters open. He checks it out. Dagger combat is at one percent, while that new shadow step is sitting at half a percent.
Finally, he actually found his real combat stats in this messed-up reality. He gets totally fired up. He knows for sure this little cheat code is going to be incredibly overpowered.
Later that night, he just lies in bed muttering about barely surviving. He honestly lasted a grand total of three seconds in there. He decides to check on that proficiency growth. Yep, he gained one percent across the board.
Now it clicks. His skills actually are entirely broken. Any ability from an enemy he fights just gets recorded straight into the book for him to learn. Or maybe it is just skills he observes with his own eyes. Hard to say. If it works by sight, he really should have copied that ice ability from the girl earlier. Then again, maybe not, because that magic came from a literal goddess.
What he does know right now is that he is eyeing a massive skill to copy next. A seriously heavy hitter. He gets giddy, whispering to himself that it is just a matter of time before that power and those dagger moves become his. He does not quite know how to level up fast, but he is definitely about to find out.
The book literally smacks him right across the face.
Boom. A brutal kick to the skull, a clean slash straight across his chest, and he ends up completely shredded again.
Meanwhile, right outside his door, Anne gives a soft knock and calls his name. Stepping inside, she spots him hiding under the covers and seems a bit confused. She chuckles gently. It is pretty funny. He still sleeps the exact same way he did as a little kid. So cute.
She casts a quick heat-preserving spell over the bed. She whispers that she will not wake him up quite yet.
Honestly, at this point you can only wait for the massive twist where Anne turns into some absolute demon boss, because there is no way a smile that sweet is actually genuine.
But the second she shuts the door, he pops straight out from the blankets, grumbling that the cursed book smacked him right in the groin again. Or maybe he is just falling for some incredibly cheap tricks. Either way, he remains determined to jump right back into that dream until he finally beats her.
The sun rises, and by then he has already tried one hundred and eighty-five times.
Talk about insane mental resilience. He dies during every single run, but now he is actually lasting thirty full seconds. A massive wave of exhaustion hits him hard. He bumps his tea, knocks the cup over, and crashes onto the floor, completely drained.
But he finally found a real way to get stronger. The only massive problem is that the pain of dying inside that illusion feels incredibly real. He honestly thought he could game the system, just re-enter the exact moment he died and completely ignore the fear. But nope, that is just impossible.
And now, after a grueling night of effort, it is time to check the results of all that brutal grinding. His dagger technique hit level two, and shadow step sits at eleven percent. Sure, that is nowhere near true assassin level yet, but just knowing he can evolve like this is an absolutely huge deal.
He is excited to test it out. So he activates shadow step and instantly dashes across the room. The guy is practically leaving smoke trails. Entirely hyped, until he suddenly winces in sharp pain.
Turns out his foot got completely scorched.
Now he is wondering how that assassin girl who attacked Celia managed to use this skill without even flinching, and then it hits him. Of course. These techniques are way too advanced for a basic tier one fighter like him. Back at the academy, he learned that handling these moves means channeling ki through your whole body to reinforce it and cut down on the insane recoil. But only level two warriors can actually pull that off.
So the current game plan is finding a proper teacher, preferably a hot one, obviously. He immediately starts daydreaming about Saint Maria from the academy.
The only real issue here is that while he knows tons of crazy powerful mages, he barely knows any decent warriors. And that is simply because in this world, magic is so completely broken that nobody even bothers with martial arts. Why train kicks and punches just to eat a massive fireball straight to the face?
Then it clicks. There is one warrior, probably the absolute strongest in this entire story. Actually, scratch that. Definitely the strongest.
His own dad.
How on earth did he forget the final boss lives in his house? Over the last century, absolutely no warrior has left a bigger mark on the world than him. At fifteen he made royal guard. By twenty he was crushing rebel forces. At twenty-seven, a marshal of the Empire. And by thirty-two he earned the legendary title, Lionheart Kane. He has literally never lost a fight. This guy is the real deal.
Our boy is honestly thinking the original Moon deserved that absolutely tragic ending he got. The guy had everything handed to him. A flawless life. A dad who could have taught him everything, and he completely blew it.