Lucian couldn’t quite wrap his head around this mysterious phenomenon. Even with the advanced technology of his previous world, they had the ability to artificially increase someone’s vitality by 0.1 like Lucian had just experienced, but it was extremely expensive, required very specialised equipment and it wasn’t just an overnight process.
Not to mention some ghastly side effects came with artificially increasing a stat as vital as vitality, such as nausea, frequent vomiting, and consistent unrelenting migraines. However, Lucian had experienced none of those.
Lucian studied the mixture of herbs in his hand, thinking curiously to himself.
‘It seems while quite backwards in some areas, this world has managed to advance quite far in certain fields.’
While he thought this though, his mind also came to other conclusions.
“Maybe with this, I can catch up to the others with my vitality stat at least, but that would just create an unhealthy imbalance in my stats… What to do? How do I increase my other two stats to the same level? This mixture looks like it might give me another 0.3 or 0.4 vitality points if I use the whole thing up.” He spoke his thoughts aloud.
His body was far too weak, unable to compare to the other students near his own age! Although he was the youngest student there by far, only being enrolled earlier than normal thanks to his father’s connections, the gap was still far too wide to consider normal.
‘This is not adequate…’
Lucian began to waft through his inherited memories, but he was still not quite fully assimilated with them, so it wasn’t as natural as going through his own memories from his past life.
It was hard to describe, but if he only had to rely on his instincts and subconscious to access his own memories, then it would require a manual effort through his conscious mind to access the memories of the previous Lucian this body belonged to.
Over time, the two would eventually blend together though, making Lucian’s two separate sets of memories one in the same.
‘What is this…?’
However, while sifting through his memories, he came across something quite interesting. Something that intrigued him greatly. The memories he accessed came to him like chapters of a book.
‘Every few years, some ‘Mages’ from outside of the Barren Islands on their mysterious, enchanted ships to select a few Prospects for their magic academies. Specifically, they come every three years, and the last time they came over was nearly three years ago… Meaning in the coming weeks they will be coming back!’
Lucian’s eyebrows perked up when he recalled this, surprised by the great timing of things. It was almost like his death and reincarnation was planned so that he would arrive here in time for this. But he didn’t let it get to his head — he didn’t believe in things like fate, or destiny, or even a higher being that presides over everything in the universe.
If anything, the only higher power he believed in was the universe itself. He didn’t believe that his coming here was planned, but was just a set of mere coincidences that caused his soul to cross over into the new Lucian’s body.
But, as quickly as his intrigue rose, his face fell into a frown.
‘These mages come to the different Knight and scholarly academies across the Barren Islands to recruit these Prospects, whatever ‘Prospects’ are exactly my predecessor didn’t seem to know — only the name.’
This was a big problem to Lucian. Ever since he had heard about Mages and noticed how everyone became fearful and frightened whenever they were mentioned, he was full of a desire to research more about them — only he hadn’t found the time to do so as it had still only been a day since he crossed over.
He fully intended to be selected by these Mages and whatever organisation they were representing, the only problem right now was that he wasn’t qualified.
The Mages only went to the official Knight and Scholar academies, disregarding the idea of going to the preparatory academies entirely.
As a student of the Knight academies, Lucian didn’t know exactly what the process of going through the scholarly route was like, but he assumed it was similar to the Knight route.
A certain threshold had to be met to be enrolled into the official academy. And for the Knight academy, Lucian did not meet this threshold. In fact, he was the student with the lowest prospects of ever meeting this threshold in the entire preparatory academy!
The requirement to enter the Official Knight academy was to become an Official Knight. Lucian hadn’t done much research on the subject of Knights yet, as he just assumed they were skilled fighters and soldiers much like they were back in his previous world, but after finding out about the abnormality of the stats of the people in this world, as well as the existence of Mages, he knew things couldn’t be that simple.
And a short search through his memories confirmed it. ‘I see, so becoming an Official Knight means to surpass a certain threshold of stats. This threshold being at minimum 2.0 in all physical stats.’
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“Interesting, so becoming a knight in this world isn’t actually about the skill of the individual, but the stats of the individual… While odd, it does make some sense.”
Speaking his thoughts aloud again, Lucian realised just how much of a difficult situation he was in if he wanted to be selected by the Mages that were coming over.
He checked the date on the calendar on his wall, and saw that there were just over three weeks until the Mages arrived from abroad, and they would spend 5 days touring the Barren Islands past that point to look for ‘Prospects’.
That meant that he had just three weeks to try and become an Official Knight to enter the Official Knight academy, or else he wouldn’t meet the deadline and he’d miss this chance, having to wait another three years to receive the opportunity again.
Lucian was a patient person, but he wasn’t willing to delay his plans for an entire three years.
However, this was a huge hurdle for Lucian to cross. Not only was he not an Official Knight yet, but he hadn’t even met the requirements to become an Apprentice Knight!
To become an Apprentice Knight, one had to have at least 1.0 across the board in all his Physical stats. Right now, Lucian was the only student in the entire preparatory academy who had yet to cross this threshold. In fact, most of the other students met this threshold before even enrolling in the place.
‘It’s no wonder my predecessor received so much bullying.’
The constant teasing and harshness towards him made sense to Lucian now. This world operated on the principal of Survival of the Fittest, the strong rule and the weak cower. With this ironclad law in play, the other — stronger — students could do and say what they liked to Lucian without repercussion as long as they didn’t kill him or permanently injure him.
‘This world is much harsher than Earth!’
However, despite all this a devilish smile started to creep its way onto Lucian’s face.
‘But that just makes things so much more interesting!’
***
After finishing up his breakfast in the canteen — ignoring all the scornful and ridiculing stares — Lucian spent the rest of his morning coming up with a plan of action. Today was Sunday, the only day off the people of this world had of the week, so it was perfect for him to devote all his time to researching and devising strategies.
From what he knew, his predecessor really didn’t like the idea of becoming a knight. So much so that he completely neglected his training entirely, which resulted in him becoming so weak in comparison to the other students in the academy. Instead, he chose to focus on fictional stories and books which had no meaning to him whatsoever other than to entertain and distract him from the real world.
Naturally, Lucian found such pitiful and weak behaviour a complete waste of time, and couldn’t help but join the other students in ridicule of the kid. Lucian wouldn’t have had such a big problem with the kid reading books all the time, if they were actually constructive and educational instead of just fantasy and fiction.
In fact, Lucian’s first destination after breakfast was the library. He intended to find out all that he could about Knights and their training methods through the various books available, and considering this place was an academy specifically designed to create Knights en masse, there were quite a few of them.
Books on training methods, books on knights famous in the Barren Islands’ personal experiences in battle, even some books on the history of knights.
Whatever the book, if it had the word knight in the title, Lucian picked it up and skimmed through them page by page, not actually reading more than a couple of words himself from each one.
‘AI, scan the contents of each one of these books and store them all in a file called ‘Official Knight training plan’!’
In the end, by the time lunchtime came around, he had scanned probably over 50 different books, garnering a few confused and curious glances from the librarian and the other students in the library during this time.
But what seemed nonsensical and a waste of time to all of them, was the complete opposite to Lucian.
‘That should do it. There are no more books related to knights in this place — none that are useful at least.’
He put down the final book, returning it back to the same spot on the shelf he took it from, and promptly returned back to the canteen, picking up his lunch and scoffing it down in a heartbeat before immediately running back to his dorm.
Time was of the essence, and even spending a minute longer in places that he didn’t need to could be the difference between spending another three years here or not.
‘If this were my past life, I could probably put myself through some intense and excruciating genetic engineering to bring my stats up, but with no alternative here, I’ll just have to go at it the old fashioned way!’
Lucian’s plan was simple — if he couldn’t rely on methods from his old world to help him essentially boost himself all the way to the level of an Official Knight, then he would follow what this world had to offer.
It clearly worked, as everyone wouldn’t be so absurdly strong otherwise.
‘AI, I have a task for you. Scan the ‘Official Knight training plan’ file for all mentions of training methods, and find as many methods possible to increase my strength in a short amount of time!’
This was the very reason Lucian didn’t bother reading each of the books himself, as that would have taken up the entire three weeks if he wanted to finish all fifty or so of them! On Earth, the idea of ‘forgetfulness’ and diseases such as Alzheimers had long been eradicated, thanks to the invention of the AI implants.
These AI implants essentially housed super powerful, instant access computers that the host could store near limitless amounts of data on across their lifetime, essentially acting as a second brain to store memories in.
It didn’t need to be said how groundbreaking and useful this technology was, as Lucian’s use of it in the library was already example enough.
[Scan complete!]
[Results - 67 training methods found!]
‘That’s quite alot!’
Lucian paused for a second, before speaking to the AI again.
‘Now filter these for those with the most effectiveness, and highest rate of success. Oh, and I also must be able to begin the training immediately!’
[Scan complete!]
[Results - 1 training method found matching the filters!]
‘Send the training method directly to my memory!’
Lucian’s idea was simple but also something this world might have never seen before.
Unlike the other students, he would circumvent the need to go through months of learning and training before becoming efficient with these training methods.
Instead, the AI could send the knowledge to his mind directly.
The moment he sent his request, a pain similar to the one he endured when he first crossed over to this world and took over the previous Lucian’s body assaulted him.
Only it was much more tame this time.
‘Perhaps it has something to do with my 0.1 in the Mind stat, but that’s something to research at another point!’