“Huff~”

‘Step to the right, jump up. Tilt your body slightly to the left,’ Alec thought. Three fireballs in order, one passing by his left side, the other under him, and the final one grazing his chest by an inch. Finally, the training room cooled down as the fireball magic circles stopped appearing.

“Phew… That was… Something,” Alec muttered before wiping his sweat off with a towel. The training room had a few modes, but the one that attracted Alec the most was the volley training.

The walls of the training room would shoot fireballs at the student and the student would try to not get hit.

‘If I had to guess, this training should be more about using effective and fast magic to counteract the fireballs. Not dodge them. A mage wouldn’t be able to make movements like me,’ Alec contemplated. He had managed to overcome the second level of the training without getting hit. ‘Maybe, if I cast dash magic on myself… Never mind. I’m not here for this.’

After leaving the training chamber, Alec walked up to the potions he had left on the table and picked up the purple strength upgrade potion.

‘My current strength is 22. I wonder how much it will increase,’ Alec thought. Without further ado, he downed the potion in one go and started waiting for the changes.

At first, nothing strange happened. His breathing and heartbeat were steady. For a moment, he worried that his assumptions were wrong and that training manually before drinking the potions was completely useless.

However, the next moment, a strong seizure hit Alec. He toppled over and started shaking on the ground, his back arching upwards while his muscles started shifting under his skin. He tried to scream but as soon as he opened his mouth, white bubbles poured out.

This miserable state continued for another minute before Alec could gather his bearings. His back had been covered in dust and the white foam pouring out of his mouth had clumped together to form a tiny mound, looking like a small cloud descended to the ground.

Wiping away his mouth with the hem of his shirt, and getting up, Alec cursed at the potion internally. On one hand, the severe reaction gave him a clue that the potion had worked. On the other hand, there wasn’t a need to be this harsh, was there?

Bringing up his status panel, Alec checked his strength stat once again. This time, it had ticked up to 24.

‘Two points straight out the start? That’s pretty effective,’ Alec thought. He had readied himself to take the potion a few times to increase his stats by one. Especially on a higher stat like strength. ‘There is no way my mana also goes up by 2 with just one potion.’

Still, Alec felt a jolt of electricity pulse through his veins. It felt good to dream, and Alec was one hell of a dreamer.

Stashing away the now empty potion bottle, he picked up the mana potion and started drinking it. This time more carefully and slowly. Now that he had tried it, he felt the importance of the potions more. He didn’t want to risk choking on the thing and spitting it out all over the place.

This time, the reactions in his body weren’t as strong as the last potion. Some mild pain, some cramps, and a nasty bloating-like feeling in his abdominal cavity. However, that went away pretty quickly, the next moment, he gained another point in mana.

‘It’s just that easy, huh?’ Alec thought. Presumably, people spent years increasing their levels. A single level up was significant for any young mage. And Alec had gotten one and a half level-ups worth of stat points from these potions. ‘And if I keep taking them, I should be able to gather a few more points.’

Taking one last look at his stat screen, Alec drank the rest of the potions and waited for the aftermath to pass. No matter how agonizing, the psychological feeling of safety was better to have.

When he was done, Alec brought up his status screen once again.

[Name: Alec Greenwood

Strength: 24

Stolen story; please report.

Agility: 22

Health: 25

Mind: 23

Mana: 28]

‘That’s grea— huh?’ Alec’s rejoice was stopped before he could formulate it. His stats had gone up by a great deal. 7 stat points, equaling three and a half levels worth of stats. If he were to put it into perspective, he had 72 extra stats in total, making him about as stat-rich as the average 30-level man.

‘But why didn’t my mind stat go up?’ he thought. ‘If it was something about it being high, my mana stat is higher. If one of my stats wasn’t going to increase, it should have been mana…’

‘Well, maybe the mind stat is harder to increase than the other ones. The best solution to problems like these is to brute force. I should stack up on mana and create two Low-grade mind upgrade potions,’ Alec formulated a plan in his head. If he were to try it right now, he might be able to pass the third level of the training using dash magic to aid himself.

‘It would probably be good practice, both to get used to the increased stats and to train my dash magic. I have the mana for it anyway.’

As the training chamber’s metal door creaked open, the magical circuits energizing its mechanisms buzzed to life. Alec had already increased the difficulty to level 3. This was the first time he had seen these training rooms, so naturally, he had no idea how the average student would fare against level 3 volley training. However, according to his assumptions, someone like Iris or Zac would be able to deal with this level. Someone like Edward, on the other hand, might even be able to surpass level 3 and go on to the higher ones.

When the magical circuits of the training chamber had heated up enough, Alec was given an auditory signal to prepare himself.

The next three minutes went by in an almost trance-like state. Alec’s body was slowly getting accustomed to the non-lethal fireballs that were almost always one centimeter off from hitting him.

As the training chamber calmed down, Alec found himself out of breath and nauseous. From his condition, it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to deal with level 4, which indicated that he had hit the ceiling for his current skill level.

‘Even still, I wonder if this is worth trading with the ability to gain skills,’ Alec thought. He had experienced firsthand how hard it was to cast spells without skills, and skills weren’t just limited to spells. There was a plethora of skills that aided humans in their daily lives. Each class would train in their respective fields, and they would be rewarded with skills for their training.

A swordsman, for example, could do mana-enhanced downward swings and would get the strong strike skill after some time.

In its essence, none of these skills were what you would call ‘active’ skills. They all enhanced people’s actions in some way. A person couldn’t get the flying skill by throwing themselves off of a cliff repeatedly. However, whenever someone constantly repeated a certain action, they would gain a skill for that, which immediately enhanced their proficiency. After that, every level up in that skill would grant the wielder another proficiency boost. The system-automated spellcasting was actually this. An aide in remembering and manifesting the necessary magic circles. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally done with his tests and the first day of his power-up, Alec gathered his equipment, cleaned the training room as best as he could, and left.

However, as he walked out and away, he didn’t notice the gazes stuck to his back.

As Alec slowly disappeared from vision, his friends came out of their hiding place.

“I’m sorry but this is the biggest waste of time I have ever seen,” Alexei said after crossing his arms. “We’ve been waiting here for about an hour. We could have already finished our assignments and started playing Magikards.”

Thomas and Evan looked at him with furrowed brows.

“If we can, we have to save Alec from this addiction,” Evan said. Thomas nodded in agreement. Clicking his tongue, Alexei walked up to the door of the training room Alec had just left.

“You guys will have to buy me extra meals for this,” he said before taking out a white card from his pocket. This card was completely non-descript. There was nothing visible on both of its surfaces, which made it look more like a piece of paper rather than a card.

When he brought it up to the token detector, the door opened with an angry creak.

“It’s not like you are spending money,” Evan retorted.

“It’s dangerous to use this device. If we are caught, they will take it away and make me pay double the room’s fee.”

“Whatever…” Evan muttered before walking past him and entering the room.

“Everything seems…”

“Normal? Alec has always been clean,” Evan said. Then for a brief moment, his nostrils flared. “But not clean enough… Come here.”

“What..?” Alexei asked. However, before Evan could answer, he saw white stains on the ground. “Is that..?”

“Yes. Vomit,” Evan said before he crouched and brought his nose closer to the ground. “And a huge amount of vomit. Mixed with… I don’t know. But something. He must have emptied everything he ate. The fact that it smells this much after he cleaned it…”

“This is really bad… Shouldn’t we talk to the teacher?” Thomas asked with a low voice. Evan shook his head.

“No. We can’t let the authorities learn about this. Drug abuse will become a terrible stain on Alec’s record,” Evan answered. The three all sighed at the same time and looked at the ground for a few seconds. However, Thomas’ eyes caught onto something interesting.

“Hey… Look at that,” he said as he pointed toward the training adjustment crystals.

“Isn’t that… Level 3 volley training?” Alexei asked in confusion. When Evan turned around to look, he also noticed the absurdity of the situation.

“He was training with that?” He muttered to himself. Knowing that the question was him thinking out loud, the other two didn’t answer.

“Alec’s drug addiction might have more to it than it meets the eye,” Alexei said.

“Yes. We have to learn more.”