Jonah's lungs burned. His thighs screamed. Every impact of foot against pavement sent jolts through joints that remembered enhanced durability but possessed none.

  Three miles in, his body threatened mutiny.

  He forced it forward.

  The warehouse district materialized through his sweat-blurred vision. Industrial buildings squatted against the skyline, most abandoned when the manufacturing jobs dried up. Chain-link fences. Cracked parking lots. The kind of place people avoided after dark.

  The kind of place the System would designate as a tutorial zone entrance point.

  Jonah slowed to a walk, chest heaving. His muscles trembled. Forty-nine years of magical enhancement had made him forget how much baseline human bodies hurt.

  This was going to be worth it.

  He studied the buildings with the tactical assessment that had kept him alive through thirty-three floors. The warehouse on the corner, the one with the faded "Bergman Industrial Supply" painted across the brick, would become the spawn point for roughly two hundred people. The System calculated based on population density and geographic distribution. This sector of the city would consolidate here.

  More importantly, three blocks north, hidden in the basement of a collapsed textile factory, a cache would spawn. Not System-generated loot, nothing that obvious. The Tower worked on older rules, remnants from races that had climbed and fallen thousands of years before humanity's turn. Ancient stashes left behind, forgotten until someone with knowledge stumbled across them.

  Jonah had stumbled across that particular cache on his third week in the tutorial and found a basic mana cultivation manual that had accelerated his early development.

  This time, he'd claim it in the first hour.

  But the cache wasn't why he'd run seven miles on a body that could barely handle two.

  Jonah approached the warehouse's side entrance. The lock hung broken, had been broken for months based on the rust. He slipped inside.

  Darkness swallowed him. Thin light filtered through high windows, illuminating dust motes and the skeletal remains of industrial shelving. The smell hit next: mildew and old concrete and something organic that had died in a corner.

  His footsteps echoed around him.

  Memory overlaid present sight. Forty-nine years forward, this warehouse had been his first real battleground. A pack of evolved goblins had nested in the upper floors. Jonah and five other survivors had assaulted it, desperate for the territory control it offered.

  Two of those survivors hadn't made it out.

  Jonah had survived because he'd hung back, let others take point, conserved his mana for the killing blow. Tactical. Smart. The right choice for staying alive.

  Also cowardice dressed in strategic clothing.

  He'd carried that approach forward. Calculated risks. Controlled engagements. Never the first through the door, always the one who made it out. It had kept him alive long enough to become powerful, but it had also built habits that made him a brilliant tactician and a mediocre champion for humanity.

  The WyrmKin had exploited that weakness. Closed distance while Jonah burned through mana trying to maintain range. His spells were devastating at fifty meters. At one meter and past his guard, with claws punching through his ribs, they'd meant nothing.

  This warehouse would teach him different lessons this time.

  Jonah dropped his gym bag. Rolled his shoulders. His body was weak, slow, pathetic by the standards he'd grown accustomed to. But it was what he had.

  He started with footwork.

  The pattern did not come back like he had imagined it to. This was not muscle memory, but knowledge stored within his mind that his body did not match anymore. But that was something he could use and build off of. Jonah worked without hesitation.

  Slide step, pivot, redirect. The forms he'd learned from a Bladedancer on floor 18, after watching three mages die because they couldn't avoid basic melee attacks.

  His feet tangled. He stumbled, caught himself on a support beam.

  Again! Again, Jonah! You can't be a glass cannon anymore!

  The movements felt wrong. His center of gravity sat different, his limbs extended to different lengths without the stat bonuses he'd accumulated. Eighty-three points in Dexterity, fifty-seven in Strength, enough to make him superhuman by baseline standards, though much weaker than anyone focused on them.

  All gone now.

  He practiced anyway.

  Slide step. Pivot. His ankle rolled and he dropped, pain spiking. He gritted through it and prevented a hiss from escaping his lips.

  Redirect. Duck. His thighs burned from the earlier run, threatening to cramp or worse, give up entirely.

  He forced himself to keep going because the System would arrive and dump him into a tutorial zone where goblins would try to kill him soon enough. All of this exhaustion would vanish once system initialization finally occurred. To give them the best possible chance. In his first life, he'd hidden behind others and slung basic spells from safety, surviving through caution.

  That approach wouldn't forge the greatest mage to ever exist.

  The greatest archmage couldn't be a glass cannon.

  Sweat soaked through his shirt. His breathing came ragged again, but different from the run. This was controlled exertion, deliberate stress on muscle groups that needed to remember what he had been capable of.

  Jonah transitioned into strike patterns. Empty-handed, no weapon, just the fundamental mechanics. Thrust, retract, guard position, parrying, blocking, and more. The basics a Titanforged weapons master had drilled into him after he'd nearly died because he couldn't defend himself when his mana ran dry, a lesson he had clearly not learned and caused his first death. If only he had taken those lessons past the first couple floors.

  That had been floors 22. Twenty-two floors of climbing before he'd tried to address the weakness.

  Unacceptable.

  His fist snapped out, technique sloppy but present. Chamber. Strike. Dodge and then recover.

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  The warehouse's shadows deepened as morning burned toward afternoon. Jonah worked through the patterns until his muscles screamed, then pushed further. He was not trying to build strength. The plan was to familiarize his body with the movements and hopefully unlock them during the tutorial, teaching his body to move like a fighter instead of a scholar who'd learned combat as an afterthought.

  When his legs finally gave out, he collapsed against the concrete floor, chest heaving. His hands shook and legs cramped. Everything hurt.

  Good. Remember this feeling, Jonah, and get used to it.

  Pain meant adaptation now.

  The body breaking down so it could rebuild stronger.

  With System assistance, that process would accelerate dramatically, but it needed the foundation.

  Jonah forced himself upright after ten minutes. Dug through his gym bag for the water bottle he'd filled. Drained half of it, the liquid cutting through the dust coating his throat. Then the next phase needed to start as well.

  He closed his eyes, settled into a meditation pose he'd learned on floor 9. A technique from the Celestial cultivation methods, simplified for human neurology. Wouldn't build mana capacity without the System's framework, but it would prepare his body for the potential of mana within him.

  Mana circulation followed specific routes through the body. Channels that existed in potential until System initialization activated them. Most people developed those channels haphazardly, following instinct and fumbling through trial and error. Jonah knew the optimal meridian and mana vessel paths after years of testing and learning. He had memorized it all.

  He visualized the flow. Core formation in the chest, primary channels extending to extremities, secondary networks supporting enhanced cognition and sensory processing. The structure of a proper mana system, one that would support tier fifteen spellcasting instead of plateauing at the ninth as he had during that fight.

  A mana system he could advance later on too.

  His previous build had been good. Excellent by human standards. He'd managed ninth-tier spells at his peak, pushed to tenth for brief periods when burning through consumables. Yet, it had proven that it was not good enough at the end. Jonah could not have that anymore. The need to reach beyond the grandest dreams of humanity was his driving for now. It would sustain his energy and motivation.

  The Void Striders operated at sixteenth-tier baseline. Celestials supposedly worked at twenty-seventh.

  The System supported up to thirtieth-tier, according to documentation he'd uncovered, though nobody he'd met had actually witnessed it.

  Jonah intended to reach it.

  That meant perfect foundation. No shortcuts or compromises. Every decision optimized from the first moment System integration began.

  He breathed, visualized, prepared mental grooves for mana to flow through, and a pseudo core for them to rest in once gathered. Hours slipped past. The warehouse's shadows rotated across the floor as the sun tracked overhead.

  His stomach growled, but he ignored it.

  Food, comfort, and the good of life could wait. Everything could wait except preparation and training his bones until they could no longer keep going.

  The memory of how Jonah had survived the tutorial through luck and caution still appeared in his mind and he hated it. He'd claimed basic rewards, made safe choices, built a foundation that was merely good, and worked on gathering for himself food and tools rather than prepare for skills and power. He wasted the first four floors doing bullshit instead of growing with power.

  What good would military biscuits do for him when a goblin was trying to bash his skull in, or worse, an elite hobgoblin was attempting to cut his throat out with a sharp sword and shaman blasting fire at him in the next floor.

  That approach had carried him to floor 33 and gotten him killed.

  The greatest mage to ever exist wouldn't settle for merely good.

  Jonah opened his eyes as afternoon light painted the warehouse's interior in amber tones. His muscles had stiffened during meditation. He stretched, working through the soreness, then returned to combat drills.

  Different patterns this time. Defensive stances from a Guardian he'd fought beside on floor 15. The man had been able to hold a chokepoint against a dozen attackers that were stronger than him, redirecting force and maintaining position through technique rather than raw power.

  Jonah's attempt was clumsy. His weight distribution was wrong, his guard position left openings a child could exploit.

  He practiced anyway.

  Repetition built competence. Competence built mastery. He didn't need mastery before the System arrived, just familiarity. Enough that his body would recognize the movements when stats enhanced them.

  The sun dipped toward the horizon. Orange light slanted through the high windows, painting everything in shades of amber and shadow.

  Jonah transitioned into a different exercise. Visualization of spell structures. Couldn't cast without mana, but he could trace the mental architecture. Memorize the precise geometries that transformed intention into effect.

  Basic spells first. Mana Bolt, the starter attack everyone learned. Simple structure, low efficiency, but foundational. Understanding Mana Bolt properly led to understanding Mana Lance, which led to Mana Detonation, which eventually scaled into ninth-tier annihilation effects.

  Elements could be added to it for additional effect.

  Mana bolt turned into Ice Bullets and Fire Sparks.

  Which in turn transitioned into hundreds of different other types of attacks including Ice Spears and Fire Ball as an example. All the other elements applied to this to form lightning, water, gravity, magma, and even light itself.

  Some even combined them.

  All built upon the foundation of Mana Bolt.

  He traced the pattern in his mind. Energy gathering, compression, directional release. The formula was elegant in its simplicity, which was why most people never looked deeper.

  Jonah looked deeper.

  The compression phase could be optimized. Instead of simple densification, he could introduce rotational spin. That technique came from a Void Strider he'd observed on floor 29, watching how they wove dimensional forces into basic attacks. Applied to Mana Bolt, it wouldn't add much, but the principle would scale.

  He visualized the modification. Felt where it would strain the basic structure. Adjusted, compensated, reinforced weak points.

  Theoretical work, but valuable. When the System arrived and granted him mana, he'd already have optimized casting patterns ready and would facilitate all the skills to unlock.

  From mana skills to the melee skills he had been practicing.

  Hours dissolved. Jonah moved between physical drills and mental exercises, pushing his baseline body to its limits while preparing for transcendence beyond those limits.

  Dusk faded into night. The warehouse went dark except for streetlight bleeding through the windows. Jonah's stomach had progressed from growling to actively cramping. His water bottle sat empty. His muscles felt like they'd been tenderized.

  He kept working.

  One more defensive sequence. One more spell structure visualization. One more repetition of footwork that would save his life when things went wrong.

  Because things would go wrong. The Tower guaranteed it. Preparation mitigated disaster, but never eliminated it.

  Jonah finally stopped when his body simply refused further cooperation. He slumped against the wall, every muscle screaming, and checked his phone.

  11:51 PM.

  Less than seven hours until initialization.

  He should eat and hydrate properly. He should also rest so his body could recover enough to function when the tutorial started.

  Yes, the system would put him in peak physical condition, but it did not erase the mental strain.

  Instead, he took a moment to recall all the information Information he'd experienced and recorded, in his previous life, when details were fresh. Locations of caches, spawn patterns for valuable monsters, hidden quest triggers that most people missed.

  The Perfect Clarity shard on floor 4, hidden in a cave system behind a minor dungeon. Claiming it early would grant enhanced mana sensitivity, a passive bonus that scaled forever.

  The Titan's Gauntlet on floor 11, buried in ruins everyone avoided because the area seemed picked clean. A strength-enhancing artifact that could be upgraded through higher floor.

  The Voidtouched Grimoire on floor 19, locked in a puzzle chamber that required specific solutions most people couldn't figure out.

  All tools he'd claimed before, but later than optimal. The shard he'd found at floor 7, the gauntlet at floor 15, the grimoire at floor 23.

  This time, he'd claim them at first opportunity.

  His phone's battery warning flashed. 10% remaining. Jonah powered it down. Wouldn't need it after initialization anyway. The System provided its own interface, its own communication methods.

  He leaned his head back against the cold concrete wall. Exhaustion pulled at him, the kind of bone-deep weariness that came from pushing an untrained body past all reasonable limits.

  Sleep would be smart. A few hours of rest, wake up fresh for the tutorial.

  Jonah's eyes drifted shut despite his intentions.

  Just for a moment. Just to rest them...

  ...

  ...

  The blue screen materialized in his vision, jolting him awake.

  [System Initialization Commencing]

  [Welcome to the Galactic Tower]

  [Prepare for Integration]

  Jonah's heart hammered. He checked his phone's dark screen, but he knew what the time would show.

  6:47 AM.

  The plan had been just a couple hours and yet...

  He'd lost six whole hours to exhausted sleep.

  The warehouse dissolved around him, reality fracturing into cascading light as the System pulled him into the tutorial zone.

  His last thought before transportation was simple.

  Here we go.