Roderick didn't move. He didn't even breathe. The blue window stayed there, hovering exactly three feet in front of his face, drifting slightly as he moved his head.
"Is this... a joke?" he whispered. His voice sounded thin in the quiet room.
He looked at the door. Was Caspian standing out in the hallway with a high-end illusion artifact? It was the kind of thing his brother would do - spend a week's allowance on a prank just to watch Roderick scramble in fear.
But as he looked at the stick-figure standing in the middle of the rug, the theory fell apart. Illusions didn't leave wet charcoal footprints. They didn't smell like cheap ink and damp parchment.
The stick-man twitched. It took another step toward him, its paper-thin body vibrating with every movement.
Roderick's eyes darted back to the blue screen. Under the greeting, a few options had appeared in smaller text.
[STORE]
[SUMMON]***
[INVENTORY]
[SKILLS]
The stick-man lunged. It wasn't fast, but it moved with a jerky, unnatural momentum that sent Roderick into a panic.
He didn't have a weapon. He didn't have magic. He had a paperweight.
"Get back!" he yelled, swinging the glass weight. At the same time, his finger - shaking uncontrollably - slammed into the word [STORE] on the floating screen.
The stick-man didn't slow down.
It jumped, its charcoal limbs outstretched, flying straight for Roderick's chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the impact of cold, wet ink.
Nothing happened.
There was no impact. No weight. He felt a slight breeze, like a fan being turned on for a split second, and then silence.
Roderick opened one eye. The room was empty. The stick-man was gone. Only the wet smudge on the floor remained as proof that it had ever existed.
"What?"
He looked at the screen again. The [INVENTORY] tab was glowing with a soft, pulsing light. He tapped it.
A new window slid open. Inside a small grey square was a tiny, simplified icon of the stick-man he had just painted.
[Item: Charcoal Sentry (Incomplete)]
[Grade: F-tier]
[Description: A crudely drawn humanoid. It lacks a soul, a brain, and most of its limbs are structurally unsound. It is remarkably flammable.]
Roderick stared at the description. Remarkably flammable.
"F-tier," he muttered. "Great. Even my hallucinations think I'm a failure."
But the realization hit him a second later. He hadn't just hallucinated it. He had stored it. He looked at the empty canvas on his easel. He looked at his ink-stained hands.
He had made that. Not with mana, not with a chant, but with a brush.
A sudden, frantic energy seized him. He didn't care about the bath he'd just taken or the clean clothes he'd put on. He grabbed a fresh sheet of thick parchment and slammed it onto his desk. He reached for his charcoal sticks, his mind racing.
If he could bring a stick-man to life, what else could he make?
He thought of Caspian's pendant - the one his brother had been whining about. It was a silver disk engraved with the Vale family crest, a stylized mountain peak.
It was a mana-conduit, a common but expensive tool for mages to stabilize their output.
"I can do this," Roderick muttered.
He started to draw. He tried to remember the exact curve of the silver, the way the mountain peak sat in the center.
But his hands were stiff. His lines were jagged where they should have been smooth. He tried to shade the edges to give it a metallic sheen, but it just looked like a grey, lumpy potato.
He spent forty minutes on it. By the time he was done, he was sweating. The drawing was objectively terrible. It looked more like a sentient rock with a dent in the middle than a piece of fine jewelry.
He stepped back. "Come on. Work."
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the ink began to shimmer. The lumpy rock-pendant started to rise from the paper, gaining thickness. It made a wet, heavy plop as it fell onto the desk.
Roderick picked it up. It felt cold. It felt solid. But it was ugly. The silver was dull and grey, and the engraving looked like a child had scratched it with a nail.
He tapped the [STORE] button.
[Item: Failed Mana Pendant]
[Grade: F-tier]
[Description: A lump of solidified ink and intent. It provides a negligible boost to mana stability, assuming the user doesn't mind looking like they are wearing a piece of gravel.]
Roderick groaned, throwing his head back. "F-tier again."
He didn't stop. He grabbed another piece of paper. He needed money. If he could draw gold, he wouldn't have to deal with his father's "allowance" or Caspian's condescension. He drew a circle. Then another. He filled them with yellow paint, trying to make them look shiny.
Ten minutes later, three yellow, coin-shaped rocks were sitting on his desk.
[Item: Yellow Stones]
[Grade: F-tier]
[Description: These are not gold. They are rocks. They aren't even very good rocks.]
Roderick slammed his fist onto the desk, rattling his jars of paint.
"Useless!" he shouted. "It's completely useless!"
He paced the room, his frustration boiling over.
The universe had finally given him a gift - a way to stand out, a way to be a "mage" in his own right - and it was tied to the one thing he was absolutely terrible at. It was a cruel, cosmic joke.
"I have the power to create anything," he whispered, looking at his hands. "And all I can make is trash."
A chime echoed from downstairs. The dinner bell.
Roderick wiped his face with his sleeve.
He considered staying in his room, but the hunger in his stomach was starting to outweigh the bitterness in his heart. Besides, he couldn't hide forever.
He took a deep breath, closed the system windows with a flick of his wrist, and headed downstairs.
The dining hall of the Vale estate was a monument to gravity magic.
The massive chandelier didn't hang from a chain; it was suspended in mid-air by a permanent enchantment.
Even the chairs felt slightly heavier than they should, a subtle reminder of the family's power.
His father, Benedict, sat at the head of the long table.
He was a mountain of a man with salt-and-pepper hair and eyes that looked like they were made of cold flint. He didn't look up when Roderick entered. He was cutting a piece of steak with the precision of a surgeon.
Caspian was already eating, looking bored. Petra sat to the side, her expression worried as she watched Roderick take his seat.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the clink of silver against porcelain.
"Find your pendant, Caspian?" Benedict asked, his voice deep and vibrating.
"No," Caspian said, casting a sideways glance at Roderick. "The servants are still looking. Though I suspect some 'hobbies' might be getting more expensive, and someone needed to fund them."
Roderick's grip tightened on his fork. He didn't say anything.
"Roderick doesn't need to steal from you, Caspian," Petra said softly. "I give him plenty for his supplies."
"And look what we get for the investment," Caspian gestured vaguely upstairs. "More sticks and smudges. Honestly, Father, how long are we going to keep this up? He's eighteen. At eighteen, you were already a C-rank. I was a D-rank by fifteen. He's... a painter who can't paint."
Benedict didn't look up. He didn't even acknowledge the comment. He just kept eating, his silence more cutting than anything Caspian could have said. It was the silence of a man who had long ago written off a bad investment.
Roderick looked at the roast beef on his plate. He thought about the stick-man in his inventory. He thought about the "Failed Mana Pendant."
He wasn't like them. He would never be a gravity mage. He could sit here for another fifty years, and he would still be the magicless failure of the Vale family. Unless he changed the game entirely.
The system was trash because he was trash. But the system could grow. If he got better, the summons would get better. And he wasn't going to get better sitting in this room, listening to his brother's insults and his father's silence.
Roderick pushed his chair back. The screech of the wood against the stone floor was loud, intentional.
Every head at the table turned. Even the servants standing by the sideboard froze.
"I've made a decision," Roderick said. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but his voice was steady.
Caspian smirked. "Oh? Decided to switch to watercolors? They're less messy."
Roderick ignored him. He looked directly at his father.
"I'm going to join the Magic Academy. The entrance exams are in two weeks. I'm going to enroll."
The silence that followed was different from the one before. This was a heavy, suffocating silence.
One of the maids dropped a spoon. It clattered on the floor like a gunshot.
Petra looked at him, her eyes wide with horror. "Roderick... honey, the Academy is... it's for mages. You know the requirements. They test for mana capacity. You'll be humiliated."
"He won't even get past the gate," Caspian laughed, leaning back and crossing his arms. "The guard will feel his lack of mana and point him toward the nearest bakery. Maybe you can paint the signs for them, Roddy."
Benedict stopped eating. He laid his knife and fork down with agonizing slowness. He finally looked up, his flint-grey eyes pinning Roderick to his seat.
The pressure in the room shifted. Roderick felt the familiar weight of his father's gravity magic pressing down on his shoulders—not enough to hurt, but enough to remind him who he was.
"The Academy," Benedict repeated.
"Yes," Roderick said, leaning into the pressure.
"You have no mana," Benedict said.
It wasn't an insult; it was a statement of fact. "You would be the first 'Null' to ever attempt the trial in the history of the Gildenfell Academy. Do you understand the shame you would bring to this house when you inevitably fail?"
"I won't fail," Roderick said.
Caspian snorted. "Based on what? Your ability to smudge charcoal? You're going to draw your way through the combat trials? You're going to paint a picture of a firebolt and hope the proctors have a sense of humor?"
Roderick didn't look at his brother. He kept his eyes on his father. "I'm going. With or without your blessing. But I'm a Vale. I'm going to take the trial."
Benedict stared at him for a long time. The pressure in the room increased until the water in the glasses began to ripple. Then, abruptly, it vanished.
Benedict picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth.
"Fine," the patriarch said.
Petra gasped. "Benedict, you can't be serious!"
"If he wishes to be humiliated, let him," Benedict said, his voice cold and final. "In two weeks, he will either be an Academy student, or he will finally understand his place in this world. Either way, the matter will be settled."
He looked back at his plate.
"You have my approval."