I left the room, where I had a chat with the pediatrician. He talked about my outstanding results and expressed interest. I showed enthusiasm and agreed to learn more. I am genuinely interested in learning. To progress is my goal, and gaining knowledge is undoubtedly a good way to improve. But the annoying thing is the knowledge overlap. Well, it is just another thing I have to deal with.

After a bit of talking, he arranged for me to be in the accelerated program. From what I could understand, it was a non structured course. Everyone would learn different things at different speeds, so to compensate for that there was no fixed schedule. Students would be given a syllabus for the year and they would have to learn at least 80% to continue to next year. Some topics would be ignored, since a math major has no need for information about gardening, which was a pleasant surprise. There would be a set of teachers assisting us, but we would still share some classes with others to have some social interactions.

But this might be problematic in a way. They are telling us that we are special and saying that to a developing kid is troublesome. Many issues can arise, like excessive pride, egoism, superiority complex and more. If they we, the special kids are not challenged, we grow complacent and never learn patience, persistence and lack the willpower to struggle, when times are tough.

And this isn’t even the end of the list. What if we fail, what if we lose our status as gifted? When someone centers his personality around the fact that he is superior, realizes he in fact isn’t, issues pop up like mushrooms after rain. Their whole world collapses and despair arises in its place. Refusing to see reality and lies start clouding judgment. Suddenly, everyone is against you and such injustices are happening. All teachers must hate you and despise you. Not realizing that this was the world for everyone else. Instead of admitting defeat and seeing the truth, getting a chance to crawl out of the hole they dug themself in, they instead dig deeper and sink further into the abyss of despair.

Well that was morbid. I am interested to see how the school will solve this issue. It is quite serious. Will they show how insignificant we are? How pointless our pride is and how there are people billions of times smarter than us? Who knows. I just hope they don't waste such potential. In any case, I will interfere if it turns out bad. Improper education is a horrific sin and I will not watch idly .

***

I had about 3 weeks left to do whatever. My pool of knowledge was deep enough for the start of the year. So the thing I have been dreaming of has finally come. The library.

With that thought in mind, I ran across the campus to the library section.

Arriving there, I could see thousands of books, detailing a portion of human knowledge. All for me to read.

There were so many choices to pick from. Maybe math? Physics? Astronomy? Biology? History? Mythology? Engineering? Or maybe even geography? There are so many things to choose from yet so little time.

At last, I decided to go with math. After all, it is the fundamental, on which all other sciences are built on. Without it, nothing substantial could exist. The level of math limits the level of the civilisation. It literally describes nature. While this might not sound as important, all other science is just a more specialized version of it. With that thought in mind, I started reading.

***

But I grew to be disappointed. My dreams were shattered. As it so happened, I saw a book about unsolved mathematical dilemmas and started reading it. There were countless issues that should have been solved centuries ago. How are these still unsolved? You can build a building, but you can’t realize the simple math behind it? To be fair, I am looking from a position of hindsight, which these people don’t have. I am also not really aware of the mathematical history and the timelines of discoveries, but this…

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

As I continued reading, I realized why. There was a mathematician living 4 centuries ago that revolutionized math. His name was Alfred Meuler He was far beyond anyone at his time. His contributions alone pushed the understanding of nature by eons. But no one could understand how the things he discovered worked. He left no notes, all of his discoveries seemingly coming out of thin air… And that air smelled of nen.

***

I looked through the library and felt disappointment. There was nothing noteworthy about the natural sciences. Everything was piggybacking on Alfred’s discoveries. How infuriating.

Hoping to improve my mood, I looked into history. Biology would have been better, but it would make me give up everything else. Just one diagram of a dissected magical beast would be enough to occupy me for weeks.

So I searched around and found a book titled ‘History of the entire world’.

It started off by mentioning a few legends. Legends of a world beyond the wildest dreams. Humans supposedly migrated from there. But there were no traces of it anywhere. No matter how hard everyone looked, there simply were no signs of humanity. The earliest signs were 2000 years old and language existed back then. The only thing that remained were legends of a distant place, filled with dangers. But no written records.

If that wasn’t clear enough, nothing would be. It reeked of the dark continent.

But to these people, it was nothing but legends. It was basically this world’s mythology.

It then continued with the introduction of the ages. The dark age, age of empires, age of kingdoms and finally, the current era, the age of countries.

It was strange looking at such history. I was used to my old world, where ancient civilizations started from nothing. Dirt huts and agriculture were relatively recent.

But here, there were already stone buildings from the very start. Languages were already developed, writing existed but no one knows how they evolved.

The rest of the book just mentioned the typical empires. The emperors were typically outstanding individuals, originating from powerful families. Maybe the Zoldycks, Freecs and the Kurta were reminands of them? It would be interesting to see where they originated. Were they the leaders, bringing people here? Or were they just a family with good genes?

History was an interesting read. I don’t know what I expected to find, but this certainly wasn’t it. I had enough for the day. The last time I did any mentionable exercise was two weeks ago. I have to stretch. Sitting inside all day made me feel stuffed.

And so I left the campus and started jogging. Since the school was on the outskirts of the city, the time taken to reach a forest wasn’t too long. I wasn’t tired in the slightest. I would have to sprint for an hour to even start sweating. So the only thing I could do to let all the built up energy loose is [REN].

I did the standard procedure. I sat down first, entered meditation and checked my body for anomalies. With the unknown environment, I had to be careful. Maybe they have some sort of aura detectors at school? Probably not, but there is no reason to reveal my powers. I am far too weak for that.

I stood up, released my [REN] and started walking around. I did some stretches before starting the real exercise. There was nothing with sufficient weight around me. Any strength exercise would be too easy. So I did the only thing I could. I used the only thing strong enough to work. Myself.

I tensed my muscles to work against one another. Any exercise became that more difficult. The only issue was that it only focused on one muscle group. But it would have to do.

After two hours of that, I stopped. I could do this for another 6 hours before collapsing, but it would do no good if I collapsed here. With the light exercise out of the way, I returned.

My dorm room was still empty. I was supposed to be alone until the last weekend before school. I have a sneaking suspicion that the orphanage director had something to do with it. Giving me more time to do my own things.

With a smile on my face, I fell asleep.