Chapter 35: Volume II – Chapter 1: After One Month

When I became more aware of my weaknesses, I just decided to train even harder.

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Congratulations! As a result of your hard work, your Endurance statistic has improved to F grade!

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“Harder!”

I made a mistake, I was scolded by the professor. At times my muscles cried out in pain, but I didn’t care.

Well… I tried not to care.

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Congratulations! As a result of your hard work, your Strength statistic has improved to an F grade!

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“You’re directing the wind wrong. If you do that, the force decreases. Be gentler, and don’t harsh. Don’t bend it directly. Just guide it.”

I failed many times trying to learn magic from Sith, but I never doubted myself. I did my best to improve my mastery.

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Congratulations! As a result of your hard work, your mana capacity has increased slightly!

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So what happened in a month of this intense routine? What happened to my stats?

Since I came to this world, my stamina, vitality, strength, mana efficiency and magic power stats have each increased by one grade as a result of my training. Even my general level is now F+.

But how strong does that mean I am?

Well… Even though my stats are still low, and I still don’t know how to use mana properly, my mana capacity has increased a lot lately. Add to that my passive skill, and I think I can say that I’m at least an average F+ to E- grade mage. If someone at this level can be called a ‘mage’.

But as long as my opponent underestimates me for being weak and is not far stronger than me, I believe I have a chance to somehow win against them. And that’s enough for now for the upcoming main mission.

I took a deep breath and stood up. My body was covered in sweat from the previous duel.

“How am I doing, professor?”

Professor Calvin was looking at me about three meters in front of me, sword in hand, and I must say he had a genuine smile on his face.

“At first I thought you were one of those geniuses who learn fast, but your progress is not yet comparable to theirs… When you realize your mistakes, you analyze them and make sure you don’t make them twice. So as long as you keep practicing, you will definitely improve. You might even become a swordsman of some renown as long as you realize all your mistakes, refine them, and keep practicing hard.”

Well… So I’m not a genius, but I felt happy to receive praise.

After wiping my sweat with a towel, I sheathed my sword and smiled. I had been practicing for about three hours and my daily practice with the professor had come to an end.

“See you tomorrow, professor.”

The professor smiled back at me, shouted after me to keep up with my exercises and I quickly left the training room as usual.

In fact, given my schedule for the past month, I would normally be on my way to practice wind magic right now. But when I made my way straight to the dorms, a flash of teal suddenly appeared in front of me. Then Sith, with his green hair and eyes, appeared.

‘Aren’t you going to practice magic?’

He looked me in the eye with his arms crossed and his brows furrowed.

“No, I’m meeting Adrian and Julian today.”

After all, today is one of the most important days for our study group to meet.

‘Meh… Boring.’

Unsatisfied with my answer, Sith hovered around me, watching the surroundings.

Actually, thinking about it… he adapted to me and the situation very quickly. I guess a century is really nothing for him.

When I finally entered my dorm room, I quickly changed and stood in front of the mirror.

I had the appearance of a rather ordinary young man in a rather ordinary black long-sleeve, a pair of plain trousers that were not too fancy, and a navy-blue cardigan.

Of course, my old skinny body had gotten a little more toned as a result of the hard work I had done this month, although it still looked a little too thin.

In short, I looked pretty good.

‘I didn’t know you enjoyed watching yourself.’

After Sith’s comment, I finally let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t enjoy it.”

Without waiting for him to reply, I took my tablet with me and quickly left the room.

I ignored the young people around me as I entered the karaoke place, which was our usual meeting point since we could have a room all to ourselves. I approached our regular meeting place and knocked on the door. After a short while, Julian opened the door for me.

“There you are.”

He had a very bored look on his face. Apparently, they had been waiting for me for a long time.

Out of curiosity, I checked my watch and saw that I was about half an hour late.

Well… I’m sorry.

“Practice ran a little long. Sorry.”

I walked in to find Adrian sitting on the couch in the corner, looking at his tablet. Curious to see what he was looking at, I approached him and when I saw a math question on the screen, he turned to me curiously.

“Do you know what the answer to that is?”

He pointed his finger at a question related to the last subject we had covered.

I took the tablet from his hand and typed a few formulas on the screen, then put the formulas in a sequence and handed it back to him.

Adrian looked at the tablet for a while, then placed the values given in the question into the formulas and sighed slightly when he succeeded after about half a minute of effort.

“It looks so easy when you do it…”

“The last subject is all about using formulas correctly, so as long as you memorize them, you should be fine.”

Adrian switched to another question on his tablet, this time focusing on it. So I turned back to Julian.

“Let’s gather around and look at the subjects, the first exams start tomorrow. This will be our last study before them.”

Julian obediently stood in front of Adrian and took out his own tablet. Then the two boys looked into my eyes at the same time.

“Where shall we start?”

“Physics.”

They both gave the same answer at the same time. So I smiled, and together we chose a subject in physics that they were struggling with and I started explaining it to them.

Honestly, for the past month, I’ve been on good terms with them. I’d gotten them used to me, to the point where they didn’t feel uncomfortable hanging out with me, and they had both improved considerably, both in their studies and in their behavior.

The biggest improvement was definitely Julian. After a month of hanging out with him, I made him realize some things. The fact that I could stand up to him, even though I wasn’t physically strong, opened a new door in his mind.

He still hangs out with his own group of bullies, but his behavior has gotten better. For example, instead of crushing all the weak people he sees, he just stares at them as if he is annoyed.

He still doesn’t react much when his group beats some of them ‘for no reason’, but I think it’s a big improvement that he doesn’t get involved personally anymore.

He’ll eventually learn the right way to behave as time goes on.

“Can you repeat that?”

And he seems to really want to get good grades… Anyway, I don’t have much of a problem with what he does as long as he keeps on good terms with me and Adrian.

That way, I lectured them for about three hours, answering their questions and preparing them for the exams, and I had fun, in a weird way, to be honest.

So even studying is fun as long as you do it with your friends… I really learn something new every day.

“Aiden, just wondering but… I’ve never seen you study. How do you keep all this stuff in your head?”

Julian’s ocean-blue eyes were fixed on me right after I solved a really difficult question.

Well, the classes here are not that different from the classes I took in my previous world. I would even say it’s simpler, after all, educational institutions value strength more than theoretical intelligence… No educational institution would want strong people to fall behind just because they did badly in the written exams.

“I’m studying, you just don’t see because I’m doing it alone.”

Julian looked at me with raised eyebrows. I looked back at him without moving a muscle.

He sighed, stood up, and stretched slightly.

“It’s late, I’ll leave now, but one last question… How do you think we’re doing?”

With that question, Adrian also fixed his gaze on me.

I took a deep breath, thinking.

“Well… I guess you can easily get into the first hundred. Of course, if you’ve studied seriously, top fifty shouldn’t be impossible.”

A smile appeared on Julian’s face and his eyes twinkled.

“Top fifty…”

He said it several times, so much so that I couldn’t help thinking he was going crazy.

“Okay, thanks for the help.”

And with that, Julian was the first to leave the karaoke room with excitement clearly visible in his eyes, leaving me alone with Adrian.

Seriously… I wonder why he is so obsessed with getting high grades.

“I’ll go as well then…”

Adrian stood up and headed for the door, but before he left he turned to me one last time. He tried to smile a little, then spoke sincerely.

“Thank you, Aiden, not just for the lectures. For everything.”

He still hadn’t gotten used to smiling, so he had a strange look on his face.

I giggled involuntarily at the sight.

“No problem.”

After my answer, he nodded, left the room and I was left alone in this room just like always.

Well… I wasn’t alone.

‘I wonder why you put so much effort into these things. We should forget about them and go to the dungeons! We should fight creatures and make our blood boil! That way you can gain more experience and get stronger faster!’

Sith flew around me excitedly while saying these things. He was always looking for fun, I could never satisfy him.

“Don’t worry, you will have fun soon.”

Normally I would have ignored him. But this time when I answered like that, Sith suddenly paused.

‘What? Soon? Really?!’

Instead of answering, I simply nodded and headed for the door. Sith bombarded me with questions, but I told him that it would be more fun to watch a movie than to find out the ending right away.

Well… First, he asked me what a movie was. So my plan backfired a bit, but in the end, I managed to shut him up. Finally, I went to my house and got myself into bed.

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