When Adam opened his eyes, for a long moment, he didn't move.
The sunlight hadn't breached his curtains yet. The world was still dim, bluish, chilled with the silence that came before dawn. His body lay sprawled on the cold floor, half-coiled like a dying animal, his mouth dry, drool dried at the corner of his lip. But something was different.
His limbs didn't feel like stone. His breath wasn't labored. His head wasn't fogged.
For the first time in years—no, in this lifetime—he didn't feel heavy.
He blinked once, then slowly sat up. He expected the creaking in his joints, the dull throbbing behind his eyes, the aching in his spine that had been his morning companions since he reincarnated into this fat, cursed body.
But… nothing.
No lethargy.
No bone-deep fatigue.
No brain fog.
"...What the hell?" he muttered to himself.
He turned toward the cracked mirror beside his bed, pulling himself to his feet and bracing his hand against the desk. What he saw was still a far cry from anything heroic. The same bloated face stared back at him, black hair tousled, cheeks plump, dark eyes ringed with exhaustion—but something had changed.
His skin.
It was… clearer.
No acne. Not a single blemish. His complexion, once a battlefield of boils and red splotches, was now smooth, if a little pale.
A beat passed.
Then—
[Quest Completed]
➤ Help Your Eldest Sister Achieve a Breakthrough in Her Flame Magic
Reward Unlocked: Choose one energy path – [Mana] or [Aura]
Selection: [Mana]
[Processing…]
[Congratulations! You are now the second male in recorded history capable of wielding mana]
A second window appeared immediately after, casting faint blue light into the room.
[Status Update]
Strength: 10
Physique: 10
Speed: 10
Endurance: 10
Wisdom: 10
Charm: 10
Aura: — Locked
Mana: 10
The number stared back at him from the glowing status screen like the answer to a question he hadn't dared ask aloud.
Ten.
That was it. Just ten. Not one more, not one less. Ten mana—barely a fraction of what any average village woman carried in her body without ever even glancing at a spellbook. A newborn girl's first breath would register ten mana on the average. Any farmer's wife with no magical inclination, no bloodline, no ambition could boast a mana pool of one hundred or more simply by virtue of existing in this world with the right body. Ten was pathetic. Laughable. A statistical error. It was the number people used in jokes when describing how empty their mana reserves were. And yet, as Adam stared at that pitiful number, he felt a strange weight press into his chest—not disappointment, not bitterness, but something dangerously close to reverence.
Because it was real.
Because it existed.
Because for the first time in his entire miserable, sloth-cursed, half-dead life, he had mana.
To the world, ten meant nothing. To a man like him, it meant everything.
A choked laugh almost escaped his throat, but it was swallowed when his eyes drifted down to a new line that hadn't been there before. His breath hitched. The words shimmered faintly, understated but undeniable.
[School of Magic: Color Magic]
His heart lurched once in his chest. He stared. Blinked. Then, hands trembling, he reached out and tapped the line. The familiar system chime rang in his ears like a bell from a higher realm, and the message unfolded before him.
[Affinity Detected – Core School: Color Magic]
Congratulations! You possess innate talent for one of the Three Primal Schools used by the Archmage Sodom.
Further details accessible upon progression.
Adam's knees nearly buckled.
Of course he knew what this was. Of course he remembered. He had played this game—lived in it—long enough to know every scrap of lore, every breadcrumb dropped by its obsessive developers. Color Magic was not just some visually appealing spell branch with rainbow flares and disco-light fireballs. No, that was the decoy. That was the shallow understanding most players fell for. Real Color Magic—the version Sodom used—was a language of seven colors, each one rooted in primal metaphysical laws.
Red for raw strength, violent and explosive.
Green for regeneration and healing, drawn from nature's own resilience.
Blue for support, buffs, barriers, blessings—the quiet power behind a team's rise.
Brown for scouting and terrain manipulation, the magic of movement, strategy, and control.
Yellow for agility, reflexes, speed incarnate.
White for light, protection, and clarity.
Black for destruction, decay, and oblivion.
Sodom had used them all, weaving color into war like an artist slashing the world apart with a palette of chaos. And now, somehow, impossibly, Adam had access to that same core. A tremor ran through his hands. His fingers itched to try. Just one spell. Just one flicker of flame or glimmer of light. Something.
He turned to the desk. Raised his hand.
And then stopped.
Ten mana. That was all he had.
He remembered all too well what happened in the game when mana dropped below zero—Mana Poisoning. A brutal condition where the body turned on itself: hallucinations, fever, vertigo, sometimes death. No, he couldn't waste it. He had to be careful. He had to be smart.
He clenched his fist, forcing the hunger down. First things first. He had to understand the foundation. He had to start with the truth behind the myth—the reason men weren't supposed to wield mana at all. Because there were two reasons.
One was commonly known, the other forgotten. The first was the barrier: men lacked mana channels. The magical equivalent of blood vessels or nerves, these invisible pathways existed in women from birth. They were conduits, routes through which mana flowed in harmony with the user's will. Men were simply born without them. They could store mana, sure—bodies rich with it, in fact—but the energy would stagnate, swirling without direction, unable to move, to gather, to be used. That was the law. That was the decree handed down from the first age by the game's so-called gods.
But there was a second reason.
And that… that changed everything.
Adam took a breath, then slowly closed his eyes. He pulled his awareness inward, not toward his body but into something deeper—the spiritual reflection of himself. The inner world that mirrored his soul.
There it was.
A vast darkness, speckled with dim light. One hundred points. One hundred gates. One hundred sealed nodes stretched across the body like a galaxy of closed stars. He could see them—dim, dormant, cold. These were his mana channels. Not destroyed. Not missing. Sealed.
Just like Sodom's had once been.
And just like Sodom, Adam leaned in to examine them. He searched the first point, the one near his solar plexus, and saw it—a crack. A hairline fracture. Not wide enough for mana to pass through, not yet, but real. Enough for something—someone—to force their way in.
That was the difference.
That was the secret.
With calm precision, Adam brought his spiritual hand to the gate. He gathered what little mana he could feel swirling inside him—dense, heavy, old—and pushed. Gently. Carefully. Not with brute force, but with patience and belief and sheer goddamn desperation.
The gate shuddered.
Then, with a ripple of light, it opened.
His eyes snapped open. The physical world rushed back in.
A sudden pressure exploded in his lungs. The air tore through his throat as he gasped like a man pulled from drowning. His entire body jolted back, arms wide, as if pulled by invisible strings. Mana surged through his veins like fire and wind and lightning all at once. He could feel it now—truly feel it—like the world itself had been made of something he was only now aware of. The system flared in front of him, cold and triumphant.
[Mana Gate Opened – 1/100]
Mana Capacity: 100
+10 to all Base Stats (Assimilation in Progress – Full Effect in 24 Hours)
He stumbled backward, fell to his knees. His body pulsed with something sharp, something clear. The tingling in his fingertips. The lightness in his chest. The clarity in his mind. He was vibrating. Thrumming.
He could feel mana in the air.
He could taste it on his tongue.
It was like biting into sunlight and swallowing stars.
He turned to the mirror.
Still fat. Still soft in all the wrong places. But less so. His face had begun to reshape. His cheeks weren't just round now—they had the beginning of structure. His eyes looked clearer. His skin glowed, faintly. He touched his belly. Still plush, but firming underneath. Something was changing.
This was it.
This was the truth behind Sodom's legend.
He hadn't been strong despite being a man.
He had been strong because he was a man.
Because men's bodies, denied magic, did not waste mana. They refined it. Stored it. Compressed it into purity over time. Decades. Generations. Women had channels, but they also had waste. Their bodies expended mana constantly—on spells, on maintenance, on everything. Men? They hoarded it. Without outlet, they became walking mana batteries, pressure cookers of raw potential.
If you could open those gates…
If you could control that storm…
You wouldn't just be a magician.
You would be a god.
Sodom had done it first.
And now Adam was the second.
But before he could celebrate, the pain came.
Sudden. Total. Unforgiving.
It started in his gut, like his organs were twisting. Then his spine arched backward, his muscles locking. His limbs jerked. His eyes rolled back. He slammed onto the floor, mouth open in a silent scream as pain surged through every nerve in his body like molten nails. His thoughts fractured.
The system chimed again. Indifferent. Clinical.
[Warning – Mana Gate Reactivation Side Effect: Neural Backlash]
Your mana gate has not been used since birth.
Your body will undergo an hour of paralyzing pain to adjust.
Caution: Opening additional gates will increase intensity and duration.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't move.
All he could do was lie there, convulsing, drool pooling beneath him, vision fractured and swirling, while one thought echoed over and over like a hymn inside the temple of his breaking mind.
It worked.
It worked.
It fucking worked.