We'd been stuck in seal safety lectures for a week straight.
Something I had never seen before—a middle-aged shinobi with half a mustache and zero imagination—was in charge of the fūinjutsu elective. His idea of teaching was reading from a scroll, pointing at danger signs, and repeating, "Do not activate seals without supervision."
Yeah. Sure, buddy. Real inspiring.
But today, finally, we made our first seals. Basic ones. Storage tags, dummy tags, flash tags without chakra in them. Just ink on paper. Useless until activated, but hey—fūinjutsu is one of the few things in this world that doesn't require chakra… at least not to create. Which makes it one of the few skills I can actually touch.
Still useless without chakra.
The class had quickly ended and finally released the tired pupils
The once-crowded Academy emptied fast. Most kids practically teleported out the door. A few stragglers stayed behind—teachers, loners, kids trying to finish homework.
Ravi and Lee usually waited for me, but their classes must've ended earlier today. They'd probably already gone home. Probably.
Didn't matter.
Walking the main road down from the Academy, I got the usual treatment.
Glares. Judging stares. Disgust. Superiority complex from people who probably couldn't even do long division.
I used to care. Now? Whatever.
They could think what they wanted. I had bigger issues—like the inevitable doom awaiting us all.
And unlike those idiot protagonists in novels, I wasn't gonna pretend I didn't know. I wasn't gonna "avoid interfering." What a waste of knowledge. Of course I was going to use every scrap of meta-knowledge I had. Why else transmigrate if you're just gonna LARP being clueless?
****
"Aye, lad. You seem a bit troubled," came a gruff voice to my right.
I turned and saw a man who looked like someone's discarded NPC quest-giver. Ragged robe, dirt-streaked sleeves, half-blind in one eye, sitting behind a crooked table covered in junk. Literal junk. Trinkets. Ribbons. Bent kunai. A cracked music box.
But his tone changed the second I made eye contact.
"I think I got just the thing for you," he said, leaning in. "Perfect for solving… yeah. Remedies."
I raised an eyebrow. Gave the smallest possible smirk.
"No thanks," I said, all cool and aloof. "I don't have much money on me anyway."
God, I sounded so cool. Just like those xianxia protagonists—casual rejection, hint of mystery, zero actual funds.
But the man didn't miss a beat.
"Aye, no no, trust me lad. It's not expensive. Look here."
He picked up a ring—black, metal, shaped like a grinning skull. Its eye sockets were hollow, but finely etched with tiny markings. Seals. Real ones. Old style.
"This ring," he continued, "was made by the best jewelers of old. A great ninja wore it during the Warring States period. Made of chakra metal. Takes all that hate of yours—" he tapped his chest, "—and turns it into power."
My eyes flicked to the band. Chakra metal. Not just a story. The way the ring felt—not cold like normal steel, but faintly reactive. Like iron near a lightning storm.
"How much?" I asked, casual. Calculating. "I ain't paying more than fifteen ryō."
"Deal."
Suspicious. But I was already pulling out the money.
****
Having finally made it back home, I took a shower. Cold, of course.
Not because I wanted to build willpower like those Daoist cultivators who bathe under waterfalls—but because we can't afford to fix the boiler. No hot water. No heating when winter comes. Cold showers are just our daily lifestyle now. Call it "unintentional asceticism."
The apartment's walls were thin. I could hear Ravi in the next room, scribbling in a notebook and muttering to himself while his phone played a university biomedical lecture on loop. Something his cousin sent him. His focus was scary. He'd taken the medical ninjutsu elective—already way ahead of the other kids. Got a scroll for the Mystic Palm Technique, too. Not that we could use it. Chakra, remember? We don't have any.
Still. He was learning. Preparing. That was the kind of guy Ravi was. I admired that about him, in a deeply bitter way.
After awkwardly asking where the dinner was—leftover miso soup and some rice crackers—I retreated to my own little cave.
My room's barely more than a box. Four walls, covered in dark grey, slightly peeling wallpaper that reminded me of dried blood and mildew. The atmosphere? Perfect for obsessive study. My single bed was jammed into the right corner, and directly across from the door stood my wobbly secondhand study desk. The closet held exactly five outfits—washed until the colors had run out. All bought on clearance. We're living off refugee assistance funds. It is what it is.
I dropped into the rickety chair and pulled out the half-used scroll paper. Time to work.
I started with storage seals. Simple stuff. Safe, for people with no chakra. I traced the same formations again and again, correcting tiny flaws. I didn't need chakra to make these, just ink, patience, and the tiniest sense of flow. And tonight, finally, something clicked.
It was close to 10 PM when I sat back, squinting down at my tenth attempt.
Three-part formula:
Consumption structure — represents where energy is pulled from (hypothetical, in my case).
Function matrix — defines the purpose (storage, detonation, whatever).
Activation clause — usually a trigger like touch, chakra input, or a word.
The hardest part is the function piece. It's like trying to write code in a language that's missing half the alphabet. But if you look at enough of them, read enough theory, the patterns show themselves. And effort—plain, blind effort—goes a long way.
"Well, now to the exciting part," I muttered to no one.
Except me. And maybe you.
My dear, deranged, imaginary friend.
Yeah. I know I'm a few screws short of a toolbox.
"Wtf man, why am I talking to myself?" I groaned, dragging a hand through my damp hair. "Shit."
Still, my enthusiasm was catching up to my paranoia.
I grabbed my phone. iPhone 13. Blew all my birthday money on it. Totally worth it. It held everything. My backup brain. All the PDFs, forums, wikis, and rips from long-dead websites. Between me and Ravi, we were supposed to study at Liberty University. Got laptops too, but those need solar charging, and we still don't have a working setup yet.
Scrolling through the mess of files, I finally found what I was looking for.
"Meridians 101."
A stitched-together monstrosity of data from ancient Chinese medicine, wuxia novels, actual medical research papers, scanned acupuncture charts, and one very convincing Reddit post by an online "doctor" who claimed this was the most accurate model.
Guess what? It was still better than nothing.
I laid out my tools like a surgeon preparing for forbidden surgery.
The Academy kept their senbon under lock and key. Supposedly. I may have… borrowed one. Temporarily. For research. It was just sitting there in the supply room locker. No name on it. Basically a donation to science.
I pulled off my shirt and sat cross-legged in the center of the room, tracing the diagrams on my phone.
There were so many variations. One map said to start at the lower dantian, under the navel. Another said to pierce the point near the heart. One had twelve nodes. Another had 361. How the hell was I supposed to know which was legit?
I chose the one that seemed most backed by overlapping data: three meridian points just below the belly, supposedly safe for acupuncture-style stimulation. I disinfected the needle. Deep breath.
"Alright," I whispered. "Cultivation, baby."
And then I jabbed the senbon in.
Not hard. Not deep. Just enough.
I hissed. My eyes watered. My stomach muscles spasmed.
Nothing happened.
No golden light. No burst of inner energy. No sudden enlightenment.
I waited a full minute. Still nothing.
"Ugh—damn it." I tossed the senbon down and flopped back onto the bed, pressing the phone to my chest. "Stupid fantasy physiology…"