However, while he fully intended to achieve this, it 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’!’ He issued a command, one that left him feeling quite happy that he had the AI to assist him.
Others would have to spend hours reading a book, making sure their entire focus and concentration were on it the whole time if they wished to actually add the knowledge inside of it to their brains. But not Lucian — he could have the AI do all of the heavy lifting for him, and when he needed some specific information, he could just ask the AI and it would provide it straight to his mind! It was all very efficient.
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 noted.
Lucian 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!’ He seemed determined to go through with this.
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.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
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!’
After the minor pain died down from the memory transfer, Lucian quickly began to understand what a Knight was exactly. It turned out that in this world, there existed mysterious forces and energy that would be unexplainable with his previous world’s science.
There were two main forces though, and the common people — aka those from the Barren Islands with little contact with the outside world — mainly knew about one of them.
Inner force! Also known as life energy, or life force. Whatever one called it, it existed within each and every living person, and it was what enabled people to live long, healthy lives.
However, if every person had this life force, then what differentiated Knights from normal people one might wonder? Well, the answer to that was simple. Knights are the equivalent of soldiers from his previous world, going through rigorous training to temper both their bodies and their minds to specialise them for combat situations. In essence, in this world Knights were people who trained and trained until they had activated their life force, which is the very thing that boosted people’s stats so abnormally despite their normal looking physiques and young ages.
Of course, it wasn’t just life force that could do this, but external items could too. Lucian’s mixture of herbs was the perfect example — as it turned out, plants, animals and various sorts of fauna existed in this world that had natural healing and strengthening effects on the body, far more effective than were available on a planet like Earth.
Lucian found out this was because of the other energy that also happened to be the most powerful and mysterious. It was known as Mana, and it was what Mages primarily researched and used. Not much was known about Mana from what Lucian could learn from the library’s books, but that wasn’t just because this was a Knight’s academy and not a scholarly or mage academy, but because not much information about it was available to the public at all!
All he could find out about it was that it was in everything, living and non living, in the world. It was everywhere, but people couldn’t interact with it as easily as they could their life force.
‘This is probably another drawback of being transmigrated to a place as empty as the Barren Islands… I can see where they get their name from now.’
Lucian was unsatisfied with the amount of information he could gleam about this energy source ‘Mana’. But he was happy to learn that Mana enabled the use of abilities and strength that almost seemed impossible to achieve, but was in fact very real.
It was said that Mages could spit fireballs from their hands with but a single chant of a spell, or even summon great gusts of winds that could sweep even an elephant off its feet! The kinds of stories that were spread about Mages were in the realm of fiction and imagination, it was almost hard to fathom that they were all actually real!
Despite the lack of information about them, Lucian was extremely pleased with what he found, and even more determined to strengthen himself to become an official knight in time for the selection.
However there was one thing that worried Lucian slightly. To be a Mage it required more than just hard work and training like becoming a Knight did — it required a special kind of talent, one that only one out of maybe a thousand or so people could claim to have — The ability to detect Mana. Lucian wasn’t quite sure if he had this ability or not, but for the time being he could only dampen his feelings on this and focus on actually being able to qualify for the selection.
‘It turns out I was wrong in my assumption earlier — Knights aren’t just brutes with strong bodies, they actually do have some fine tuned talents with weaponry. Though, this is only natural to happen when their training methods combine both skills training and body training.’ Lucian could admit when he was wrong.
Going through the memories sent to him by the AI, Lucian quickly became accustomed with the training techniques of the Knights. And to be honest he was quite… disappointed.
‘This was the best they could offer?’
Out of 67 total training methods he had scanned from the countless books he read in the library, the AI had deduced this one to be the best suited and most efficient for him. But from just a quick glance over the materials in his memory, Lucian himself could pick out many flaws in the methods.
If he relied on the method the AI had picked out for him, let alone three weeks — he wouldn’t even be able to become an Official Knight in two months! And that was with constant training every day.
‘I wonder… Could I make use of my AI for this?’
An idea quickly popped into Lucian’s mind after finding out how lackluster his training method was.
‘AI, is it possible for you to compile the best bits of each training method to create an entirely new one? One that better matches my requirements?’
[… Simulating experiments…]
The AI quickly responded to him, beginning a multitude of simulations which probably involved a virtual version of Lucian practising each of the 67 training methods at an accelerated pace in a virtual space, and analysing the data outputted by each one of them.
Contrary to all the other times he had tasked the AI with something, he received no response even after 5 whole minutes had passed by.
With nothing else to do while waiting, Lucian decided to do some basic stretches he had learned from his previous world. These were just some Pilates and yoga techniques he took upon himself in his spare time to keep his body in good shape.
It was important to maintain a healthy body if he wanted to keep up with his experiments after all.
[Experiments complete!]
[Results: New unnamed Knight training method - Please choose a name for this method!]
After another 5 minutes passed and some stretches completed, making his body feel slightly better, the AI finally finished its task and responded.
‘Name the technique you say? Hmm… I’ll choose…’