REY SILVESTER POV
The life of an extra is hard, being troubled by choices and their possible repercussions in the future.
I too wanted to be like those extras in novels who start to become overpowered by stealing cheats from all around the world using their 'omnipotent' novel knowledge, which will give them an item that will give them limitless potential or something, unfortunately, the world I was in didn't have any such thing, or if it did well the novel did not mention it.
While I am not completely oblivious to the presence of items and resources that will help me or my family grow, unfortunately, most of them are useless or out of reach for the current me.
You see the basic requirement to grow in power is that first you have to go through an awakening ceremony which is generally done at about the age of 12 as awakening mana before that age is deemed very dangerous for the fragile human body and it might lead to disastrous consequences.
And me currently being too young to awaken mana could not use any resources related to it, while most of the useful artefacts and the like exist in places that are deemed as dangerous or locations, which judging by the strength of our family knights, I have deemed currently impossible to obtain.
While I figured out my dad and mom might be much stronger than the knights I do not want them to put their lives in danger for some stuff that might not be very useful as most of them are tailor-made for the protagonist.
So instead of focusing on things that were out of reach, I decided to focus on what I could do and invest all my effort to build a lab to develop advanced technology that will give me an edge in the future.
I decided that my main focus would be building an advanced lab that I could use after I awaken my mana to merge mana techniques of the current world with my technical capabilities of the previous world as I am unsure of what level of talent I might awaken.
Given that I am an extra from a baron family, my talent could be on the lower end of the spectrum so I decided to prepare a back-route to become a magi-tech mogul in the future.
I decided to start my plan by building my lab and learning more about runes, arrays, formations and wards as they are called from what I learned about till now.
A few months passed as my dad spent a vast amount of our estate's fortune on the construction of my lab and finally, 6 months after my request my dad informed me that the construction of the lab was complete.
While I spent the last six months learning more about runes and formations from the books in our library which according to my novel knowledge is quite extensive for a mere baron's house, which I am thankful(and slightly suspicious) for.
I spent the next 6 months cooped up in my lab tinkering with various stuff like magic cores, minerals, artefacts and the likes until one day my peaceful immersion in research was halted by a revelation from my father who called for me, which made me face a problem I had never encountered before.
As I reached my father's study and knocked on the door I said
"Dad, it's me, Rey."
"Come in." came my father's exhausted voice.
"Good afternoon, dad." I greeted him but instead of replying to me with a normal greeting, he gave me a forlorn look, released a sigh~, and gestured me to sit down making me have a bad feeling.
"I have unfortunate news for you, Rey." my dad said as if confirming my bad feelings, coupled with his exhausted looks made me wonder what had happened.
.
"What happened, Dad?" I asked him.
My father released another sigh and spoke, "You will be receiving no more resources for your lab as during the last 6 months you have burnt away about half of our estate's accumulated fortune. If I allow you to continue at this pace within another 6 months we will reach a situation where the barony will no longer be able to function properly."
"No way!" (Rey)
"Unfortunately, son. We don't have a choice." Dad said that he had felt heartbroken due to the look of disappointment I had on my face at that time, but he had his duties as a lord of the Barony to fulfil and the look on his face conveyed his dilemma to me.
The words of my father brought me face to face with a problem I had never faced before - Running low on a research budget -. You see the labs I worked in my previous life were mostly backed by were funded by national budget so I never faced the situation of running low on research funds.
If I were born as the son of a duke like the protagonist of the novel, I would have no such problems as running low on budget, unfortunately, I have the fate of an extra.
Don't get me wrong, I love my family more than just a stupid title but at times like this, I can't help but wish I had that too.
Anyway, now I need to do something to earn enough money and not attract bad attention towards our family to keep my research ongoing.
As I realised that I had just turned 8 a while ago I realised that I still had 4 years left before I was of age to awaken mana and I decided to seclude myself in my lab to look for a solution for my predicament.
I realised I had a long journey filled with troubles ahead of me.
As I dove into my memories and possibilities of what I could utilise to make money, yet not cause trouble for my family. Engrossed in my thoughts I made my way to the lab to look for low-key moneymaking ideas, without disturbing the novel's plot as much as possible to maintain my strategic advantage.