Haruto Akiyama didn't just excel; he optimized. At seventeen, he had already mastered fluid dynamics and broken school track records, not through raw talent, but by calculating the exact physics of his own stride. His life was a series of solved equations—until the truck.
The calculation was simple: the child's mass was negligible, the truck's velocity was 60 km/h, and Haruto's reaction time was 0.15 seconds. He didn't think; he performed the kinetic transfer. He shoved the kid clear, felt the catastrophic crunch of steel against bone, and then—absolute zero.
Haruto blinked. The smell of asphalt was gone, replaced by the scent of damp moss and iron-rich rot. He wasn't dead. He wasn't even wounded. He was lying in a forest of gargantuan, gnarled trees that blocked out a sickly, pale sun.
Suddenly, a translucent, crystalline HUD flickered across his retinas.
------
[SYSTEM INITIALIZED]
[USER: HARUTO AKIYAMA]
[STATUS: ANCIENT SOUL DETECTED - AXIOM TYPE]
[MISSION: CODIFY THE UNKNOWN]
[CURRENT POINTS: 0]
------
"Isekai," Haruto whispered, his voice steady. A normal student would have panicked, but Haruto's brain immediately began categorizing data. "Environmental analysis: High humidity, non-Earth flora, atmospheric pressure slightly higher than 1 atm. Source: Extradimensional displacement."
He looked at his hands. They were his, yet they felt... heavier. More "present."
------
[NOTIFICATION: NEW ENVIRONMENT DETECTED]
[OBJECTIVE: CREATE A TOOL FOR SURVIVAL]
[REWARD: 50 POINTS / KNOWLEDGE: BASIC METALLURGY]
------
Haruto didn't mourn his old life. If the universe had shifted his coordinates, he would simply solve for 'X' in this new plane. "The supernatural is just science without a textbook," he muttered, standing up. "If I'm here to guide this world, I'll do it through the only thing that never lies: The Law."
He reached for a sharp piece of flint and a sturdy branch. He wasn't just building a spear; he was drafting the first blueprint for a new era. He would become a Scientific Polymath, and this world—no matter how dark—would be made to make sense.
Haruto moved through the undergrowth with the mechanical precision of a seasoned hunter, though his only weapon was a crude flint-tipped spear he'd fashioned to satisfy the System's first prompt.
------
[NOTIFICATION: PRIMITIVE TOOL CREATED]
[REWARD: 50 POINTS]
[KNOWLEDGE UNLOCKED: REFRACTIVE OPTICS & BASIC METALLURGY]
------
The data flooded his mind—not as a magical "spell," but as a series of chemical formulas and crystalline structures. He didn't have time to process it before he stumbled into a clearing that defied every biological law he knew.
In the center sat a Ritual Circle of Gro-goroth, etched into the dirt with a substance that looked like oxidized copper but smelled of fresh iron. Inside the circle lay a Wolf, its body a grotesque map of Sylvian's influence. The creature was bursting with extra limbs, its ribs visible through translucent, pulsating skin that fused with the very roots of the trees.
"Anatomical anomaly," Haruto whispered, his pulse quickening. "The cellular division rate in this organism is... infinite. It's a biological runaway."
As he stepped closer, the wolf's multiple eyes snapped open. It let out a sound like grinding stone—a cry of pure, entropic agony.
------
[SYSTEM MISSION: RESOLVE THE ANOMALY]
[HYPOTHESIS: KINETIC DISCHARGE OR BIOLOGICAL RESTRUCTURING?]
------
Haruto didn't hesitate. He saw the "magic" for what it was: Improperly Channeled Energy. He used his spear to bridge the gap between the wolf's heart and the ritual circle's outer rim, effectively "grounding" the excess biological charge.
The wolf shivered once and dissolved into a puddle of grey ash. The ritual circle's glow died instantly.
------
[NOTIFICATION: DUAL VINDICATION ACHIEVED]
[LAW OF CONSERVATION OF MASS (GRO-GOROTH) – RECOGNIZED]
[LAW OF CELLULAR COHESION (SYLVIAN) – RECOGNIZED]
[AFFINITY GAINED: UNKNOWN ENTITY ALPHA & BETA]
------
A sudden, overwhelming sensation washed over Haruto. It wasn't a "feeling" of holiness or horror. It was HD Perception. Suddenly, the forest wasn't just green; he could see the thermal currents rising from the soil. He could feel the molecular vibrations of the air hitting his skin. He felt more alive, more human, as if a layer of cataracts had been stripped from his soul.
"My sensory range... it just doubled," Haruto muttered, staring at his hands. They were steady, glowing with a faint, imperceptible light. "The world isn't haunted. It's just... louder."
He checked his System.
------
[CURRENT POINTS: 550]
[UPGRADE AVAILABLE: INTERNAL COMBUSTION THEORY OR ADVANCED SURGERY]
------
Haruto looked toward the horizon, where the jagged spires of a distant city—Rondon—broke the treeline. He had no idea he had just "vindicated" the two most feared entities in existence. To him, he had simply solved a messy equation.
"I need a laboratory," he decided. "And a way to explain this to the locals."
******
The outskirts of Rondon were a tapestry of misery, a sprawling camp of canvas tents and mud where the air hung heavy with the sweet, cloying stench of the dying. Men in black robes and bird-like masks moved like vultures through the fog, their gloved hands clutching useless charms and smoking incense. To them, the plague was a divine shadow; to Haruto Akiyama, it was a biological equation waiting to be balanced.
------
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[OBJECTIVE: MITIGATE LARGE-SCALE BIOLOGICAL COLLAPSE]
[CURRENT POINT BALANCE: 550]
------
"Stop." Haruto's voice was steady, cutting through the wet coughs of the infirmary tent. He stepped into the dim light, his eyes tracking the tremors in a patient's hand. "You are applying heat to buboes. You're only accelerating the rupture and ensuring the infection reaches the bloodstream."
A senior doctor turned, his glass goggles reflecting Haruto's calm, youthful face. "The Black Death is the breath of the Old Gods, boy. Back away before the curse claims you too."
"It is not a curse," Haruto said, his Ancient Soul radiating an unspoken authority that made the doctor's hand tremble. "It is a micro-organism. A parasitic lifeform. If you want to save them, you must trust me. Bring me blue mould from your cellars, snake venom, and the black fungus that clings to the rotting timber. Not mushrooms—the shelf growth."
Baffled and driven by a strange compulsion they could not name, the doctors obeyed. Haruto did not pray. He did not chant. He worked with a cold, terrifying precision, using the System's knowledge of metallurgy to fashion a copper centrifuge over a small flame.
He isolated the essence of the mould, tempering the aggressive neuro-toxins of the venom to act as a delivery system. As he worked, a soft, green shimmer began to bleed into the air around him—a hue that felt like the pulse of the earth itself.
------
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[VINDICATION ACHIEVED: THE LAW OF BIOLOGICAL ANTAGONISM]
[AFFINITY INCREASED: SYLVIAN]
[REWARD: 1200 POINTS / KNOWLEDGE UNLOCKED: PATHOLOGY & ANATOMY]
------
He administered the solution. Within hours, the death-sweats stopped. The grey pallor of the skin retreated. Haruto felt a strange, deep vibration in his chest, a sense of being anchored to the very heartbeat of the people he had touched.
"They are cured," Haruto told the lead doctor, his expression clinical. "But their natural resistance is gone. If they do not eat properly and rest for two weeks, their bodies will fail again. Do not release them until then."
The doctors bowed, their eyes wide with a reverence that bordered on fear. Haruto did not stay to hear their thanks. He walked out of the tent and toward the towering gates of Rondon, unaware that he had just rewritten the fate of a kingdom. He had proven a Law, and the world had shifted to accommodate him.