The Struggle [3] - Failure separates the geniuses from the crowd

"You want to tell me that this orphaned kid deserves a place in my school?" A man that looked like he was in his late 60s laughed while looking over his table and into the eyes of the black-haired boy.

"He's shown the ability to understand everything from complex algebra to aeronautics. He's probably better than all of your student combined!" A man no older than 30 argued before looking at the woman at his side.

"Seth is more than capable of entering your college. He might be an orphan, but even with our limited supplies, he's made the most of it." The woman argued.

"Oh yeah? Alright, kid. Tell me, do you think you're special?" The man asked, making the two adults next to him frown.

"Special?" Seth asked.

"You're a kid that not even his parents wanted. Let me give you some advice, kid. This world is ruthless. Being an orphan won't get you any special privileges, and it won't get you into my college. Do you understand?" The man stood up and walked over to the window before looking outside.

It was a beautiful night illuminated by the moon in the sky. The air was calm, yet anyone could see that it was extremely cold outside, even at a single glance.

"I have hundreds of kids with rich parents trying to get into my college, yet for some reason you think that you're worthy?" The man looked at Seth scornfully.

"Don't flatter yourself. You can be the most intelligent kid in the world and I wouldn't care. You know why?" The man asked while slowly walking back to his chair.

"Because you're nothing... In front of the elites, you're at the bottom of the food chain. And because of that, no matter how clever you are, or how bad your upbringing was, you will never succeed. In front of money and political power, you're talentless."

***

"Talentless..." Silas muttered to himself while rising out of his bed and walking to the front yard.

He didn't really remember that day too well, but he did remember that he hated that man.

Maybe it was one of the reasons he began to work so hard? No... That wasn't it. He always worked hard.

He didn't even bother showering or warming up; he simply took his wooden sword and held it tightly within his grip.

"Talentless?" Silas chuckled to himself.

Do they not think he knew that?

It had been 2 months since he began using the sword, yet there wasn't any change in his mastery.

Actually, after his father taught him how to stand, hold and swing the sword, his mastery dropped significantly.

The closest thing he held to a sword was a knife, and despite being considered a professional chef in his past life, it didn't mean he knew his way around daggers. It just meant he knew how to cut meat and vegetables.

At first, it had been a joke among them that Silas was really bad at the sword. No one really took it seriously, and at best, they thought that he would probably need a lot more practice before getting it right.

Sure, they were surprised at how bad he was initially, especially for someone his age. It looked like he couldn't even pick the sword up, and when he did, he always stumbled on his own feet.

But practice makes perfect, right?

Yet when two months passed, and not a single sign of improvement showed in his technique, the family began to ask the question more literally.

'Is Silas talentless?

His father was getting frustrated, but he tried his best to not show it to Silas. On the other hand, Silas himself was getting frustrated, yet a little bit of magic usually calmed his nerves and made him feel well again.

However, that's when the second problem came in.

Silas was struggling to increase his knowledge and aptitude toward mana and magic.

His main goal before reaching adolescence was to stop using magic circles and start using another method to cast magic.

However, after learning fusion magic, which wasn't really a type of magic at all, his ability to think seemed to have stagnated.

'Am I becoming stupid?' Silas asked himself when he stumbled and fell face-first into the ground for the thousandth time.

While Silas was a little skeptical about learning swordsmanship and toki, his thirst for knowledge flared and allowed him to see several advantages of learning toki and a weapon.

First, swordsmanship would allow him to hone his reflexes, something he can only do with his mana fusion.

He would always be a mage and vowed never to stray from that path. After all, the mage specialization felt almost like it had been created especially for him. However, he still saw the advantages to training his swordsmanship even though he may never hold a sword again.

He also needed to hone his battle instincts, spatial awareness, physical strength, and movement techniques. These were all things that swordsmanship would help him with, but they weren't even his main reason for taking it so seriously.

His father was a master at toki, and Silas wanted to learn toki. Toki had many advantages, and whole Silas still considered it weaker than his fusion magic; he also knew that he had only seen a fraction of what toki had to offer.

Toki was the manipulation of mana outside the body, and even though Silas could manipulate mana to a certain level outside his body, he was quite bad at it.

He has tried coating his body with mana before, but it didn't have any of the same enhancing effects that toki did... He didn't understand what he was doing wrong, but clearly, there was something that he didn't understand yet.

Learning toki would not only significantly increase his battle prowess but also give him a chance to learn how to manipulate mana outside his body to the extent his father is capable of... Well, can you call it manipulating mana when they do it on instinct? Who knew.

Silas had already determined that he would "awaken" when he reached the age of 6, but he realized that he might have to push that back a little, and the problem was his affinity.

Due to his affinity to mana in general, it meant he would absorb all the elements on the runic tablet at once, and Silas had a feeling that learning toki would give him the understanding needed to only absorb one element at a time.

The only thing he needed to think about after that was what element he would like to awaken.

At the same time, if Silas could extract elements from the mana around him, there was a chance it could also give him the inspiration needed to create circle-less spells, but that would probably take much longer due to how complex the magic system was.

'Using elemental fusion would be counter productive. I need to learn how to use toki, so no cheating!' Silas berated himself for his thoughts when he saw his parents looking at him through the window as he continued to stumble.

Even he knew that his footwork was terrible and his talent for the sword was even worse.

It was just that using such a tiny body was a lot harder when you didn't exactly know where everything was.

Using mana fusion made him feel one with his body for the first time in his life, yet after killing those two intruders and deactivating mana fusion, he went back to feeling disconnected from his body.

He was actually a pretty good boxer in his past life. He did it mostly in self-defense since he didn't want to be caught unready when attacked on the street. However, those skills seemed to not transfer to something like swordsmanship.

"He's really trying his best." Lochras sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"He really is." Rhea replied with an ounce of sadness in her voice.

"I just don't get it. He practices all the time and has been going at it for two months now, yet even Syra was doing better than he was when she had just started at the age of three!" Lochras sighed again in frustration as his wife rubbed his shoulders to calm him down.

"You can't show him your anger, disappointment, or frustration. It would crush him to know that his father doesn't believe in him." Rhea advised.

"You're right... I need to calm down." Lochras sighed, and even though they were in the house and behind a sheet of glass, Silas still heard them.

He had simply channeled mana to his ears to hear what they were saying, but Silas wasn't too disheartened.

He wasn't a child. He was a 50-year-old man who had never failed at anything in his entire previous life. Sure, he didn't have much of a childhood in his past life. And sure, this failure was taking a huge toll on his ego and pride, but he would get through it.

He was an adult... He wasn't allowed to throw a tantrum.

'Ugh...' Silas was reminded of the feeling of failure for the second time in 5 years.

It was a horrible feeling... It was the worst feeling he had ever felt in his life...

"Are you sure he's not just talentless?" Keira asked, making the parent duo look down

Keira's words were always harsh, but they were to the point.

However, her words made Silas widen his eyes as a realization hit him.

'Maybe that's why I became stagnant. My magic research and my swordsmanship. Even my evolution blessing hasn't helped me once this entire time despite me training day and night...'

'Life is about mental states... If I feel like a failure, I'll be one for the rest of my life... But how does one stop feeling like a failure?'

Silas pondered that question for a bit.

"Maybe he is..." Rhea muttered under her breath.

*Crack*

The handle of Silas' training sword fractured under Silas' grip. He had unconsciously sent mana to his hand and was unable to retract that mana in time to stop himself from shattering the handle of the sword.

Sighing, Silas through the sword to the right before collapsing to the floor and laying on his back.

He knew that his father would most likely see it and think that he had momentarily tapped into his toki reserves, but he didn't care.

'What am I doing?' He thought while raising his hand into the sky.

When he looked at it, he saw a hand dripping with blood, yet he knew the blood wasn't real.

When he looked up, he saw an orange sky instead of the one he had seen a moment before.

It felt as if there were fires around him... Houses were burning, and subtle screams could be heard in the distance.

People cried for his help, yet he ignored them... After all, those cries weren't real. They were a figment of his imagination...

'Imagination?'

Sitting up, Silas tapped his forehead and began to think.

Swordsmanship wasn't supposed to be overanalyzed; it was supposed to be instinct. But that was for normal people, and Silas wasn't normal.

'I'm not improving because I feel like sh*t... So let me do what I'm best at. What is swordsmanship? It's the mastery of a weapon called the sword. How do you master the weapon?

If I use my father as an example, swordsmanship can flow with the entire body. The reason I'm struggling is because I don't have any flow.

I'm a 50-year-old man in the body of a 5-year-old.

It's only natural that I won't have any flow within my movements, and I only achieve flow when I understand my own body. Whenever I try to move a limb, my limbs lag behind my mind. Mana channeling helps me with that, and water fusion would definitely help the flow of my attacks.

But since I won't be able to improve if I use them, I should use them as an inspiration instead. If my body lags behind my mind, I'll just do what I used to do with my prototype mechas and get used to it. I'll have to think of everything ahead, and I'll have to imagine what my opponents would do next. It'll be hard, but...' Silas began to grin.

'I can do it.' Silas channeled mana to his arms and quickly kicked up off the ground.

Silas closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, sucking mana into his body and quickly highlighting every limb in his body.

Silas' eyes remained closed, yet the world around him began to change.

His mind created a world around him, and even though he no longer had a blade, he didn't need it.

All he needed was to imagine, and it would appear.

Several runes appeared around him. They were big and stationary, yet they glowed far brighter than the abyss around him.

Silas channeled a tiny bit of the water element through his body and swung his sword.

*Swoosh*

Silas' blade sliced through the air and sliced right through the first rune.

Silas shifted his body and turned around to slice the rune behind him before spinning on his heel and stabbing at a particularly high one.

Silas continued like this for the first 5 before deactivating the water fusion and letting out a breath.

'Remember what it felt like.' Silas thought while remembering how his sword moved with the flow of his body, almost like he was the water and it was the river.

He then remembered how his body became quick, while his sword moved with the grace of a waterfall, crashing into the runes and slicing through them.

Standing his ground again, Silas tried to replicate what he felt.

First, he sliced, and then he turned around and sliced at the rune behind him, yet this time, his left leg got caught in his right one, making him fall.

'Again...' Silas thought while getting up and trying the same thing, but failing.

'Again...'

Every 5 rounds, Silas would channel the water element through his body to get a feel for it before going right back to trying to tap into that flow without the use of water fusion.

'Again!'

Silas didn't realize it, but hours passed by as he continued to train.

He was covered in sweat, and his arms and legs were about to give up on him, yet he continued as if he didn't feel a single thing.

But he felt motivated. For once he was extremely had at something, but he felt motivated.

Maybe it was because he wanted to prove his parents wrong? Who knew...

All he knew was that he was improving... No, it wasn't just that. Every time he swung his blade, he felt as if it was just a little stronger than his previous swing.

Every time he sliced through one of the runes, he his speed and flow would increase by a little, but the rate of improvement was terrifying compared to before.

And that rate of improvement only increased the more fatigued he got, yet he didn't stop...

He was in a mod where everything he did had become mechanical. He had become something that resembled a robot...

And that's when he saw it.

For the first time in two months, the green screen appeared before him and said-

[Your are evolving]

Losing his concentration, Silas felt like he had been hit by the mother load of all fatigue trains.

And with that, Silas fell to ground and lost consciousness, not waking up again until the very next day.

{A/N: Sorry this chapter is a little longer than my usual ones.}

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