Lilliana Roseblood POV
"Nnnnghh, Finally all done."
Lilliana stretched her body and placed her pen on the desk in front of her.
"Ugh, I can't wait to sleep."
Thanks to the upcoming mock duel, she had hardly had any rest over the past week, as she needed to read every one of her students' report sheets and then decide, with the other first-year professors, which student each would be paired against.
Upon tidying all of her work away, she left her office and headed in the direction of the professor's dormitory.
On her way there, as usual, she passed by the magic training grounds.
It was a huge building, one of the biggest in Stellaris Academy, and every time Lilliana saw it, she couldn't help but be brought back to her academy days.
'It's only been a few months.'
Only a few months ago, Lilliana had also been a student of Stellaris, and each time she remembered that, she couldn't help but feel that her current position was surreal.
She smiled as she reminisced about the past, about to walk past the magic training grounds when…
Fwaaaaa—!
She noticed that the door was open and light was leaking out.
'Someone's still using it?'
It had long passed midnight, and most students, being nobles, had very healthy routines, so Lilliana was somewhat surprised to find out that a student was still using the training grounds so late into the night.
Ordinarily, even noticing that, she would have walked past without even paying attention, but today, for some reason, she felt curious as to who was working hard so late into the night.
—Creeaaak
In the middle of the training hall stood a boy with his signature snow-white hair, a boy who at first glance could easily be mistaken for a girl.
It was someone with whom Lilliana herself had started to become familiar over their lunches together this past week.
At first glance, he looked frail, sickly even.
Lilliana had also made that assumption at first, but the boy in front of her seemed anything but that.
His breathing was heavy, and he was drenched in sweat; his effort was apparent.
Lilliana wasn't sure how long he had been here, but it was evident that it was a long time.
The fact that he hadn't noticed Lilliana's presence even now also showed that the boy was deep in concentration.
She couldn't help but smile at the sight before her eyes.
If anyone else had seen that, they would have been shocked, but for the boy before her, it was becoming a frequent occurrence.
She decided that she shouldn't interrupt him and quietly closed the door, continuing on her way back towards her dorm with a faint smile on her face.
'..I'm glad he's doing better now.'
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Soren Arden POV
"I feel like shit."
A week had passed since the Rena Forest incident, meaning the mock duels were now upon him.
Thud
He collapsed onto the floor and called out a somewhat cringy command that was becoming more and more familiar to him as time passed.
"「Status」"
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden (1★)
Age: 18
Race: Human
◈ Stats
Stamina - 0.8 (F+)
Strength - 0.6 (F+)
Agility - 1.0 (E-) [Increased by 0.3]
Mana - 0.9 (F+) [Increased by 0.1]
Divine Power - 0.3 (F)
Charm - 8.7 (S-)
◈ Skills
- Life Magic
- Basic Magic
└ Gaia (E-)
└ Aqua (F+)
└ Ignition (E-)
- Concentration (F)
.
"Finally–!"
Soren cheered at the sight of [Ignition] finally crossing into E-rank territory.
He wiped the sweat off his brow and then finally noticed his state.
"Ew, when did I get so sweaty? 「Clean」"
Within seconds, the sweat and dirt on his body and clothes had evaporated and disappeared.
'Once again, thank god for magic.'
"Well.. tomorrow's the day."
The mock duels—the first major event of TKS—were tomorrow.
It also meant that it had finally been a month since Soren had transmigrated into this world.
He felt slightly emotional at the fact until a translucent window caught his eye, interrupting his thoughts.
Why was he doing something so out of character, like training hard late into the night?
It was because of the window in front of him.
.
▶ Main Quest: First Steps (1) ◀
[Details: Win all three duels.]
[Difficulty: C]
[Reward: Inventory, Hidden Reward.]
[Penalty: -0.5 to all stats.]
.
Initially, he had planned to win the mock duels anyway, which led to the Rena Forest incident, but seeing this quest no longer gave him a choice.
The penalty itself wouldn't affect Soren all that much, but there was no way he would be happy with just accepting such a thing, which had led to his current situation.
That and one other thing.
'A difficulty level of C.'
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱ quest difficulty usually went from F to S.
An F-rank quest was almost always a dialogue-only event, or if it wasn't, it was so much of a cakewalk that you wouldn't even need to think about it.
S-rank, on the other hand, meant that the likelihood of clearing such a quest was so infinitesimally small that it was more likely that you were meant to fail the quest to begin with.
In addition to these lettered rankings, there were also '+' and '-' for each of the ranks, and beyond those normal ratings were additional difficulties, such as 'Personal' and 'Unknown'.
Quest difficulty itself was always based purely on a character's status window.
This meant that if, for example, the player received a quest with a difficulty ranking of C, as Soren had, it would be fairly challenging for his current specifications.
A few days ago, when he first received this quest, it was initially a C+ difficulty, which proved that his training had paid off.
There was also another reason Soren had decided to train.
It was to tire himself out.
Ever since obtaining [Concentration], he had been itching to put it into practice, and now he finally had that opportunity, which led to him being unable to sleep properly.
While practising with [Concentration], Soren did end up worrying, though.
The subject of his worry was Amelia Indras Einhardt.
Due to his now unique way of fighting, Soren had considered the idea that he may become a subject of her interest, but that worry was quickly shaken off when he realised how arrogant a thought it was.
Although his way of fighting may be unique now, that didn't change the fact that his spells and stats were pathetically weak.
There was also the fact that he had only trained with [Concentration] for a total of a week, meaning that even if his fighting style looked unique, it would still be sloppy due to a lack of practice.
And above all, tomorrow was the day when Alex would reveal himself as the hero by using his [Divinity].
'It'll be fun to see such a cool scene from the game in real life.'
Soren raised his head and noticed the moonlight shining down on him through the window.
'It's already this late?'
He decided now was a good time to stop and stood up, preparing to go back to the dorm and get some much-needed rest before the duels began later today.
••✦ ♡ ✦•••
Soren stretched and let out a big yawn before lying down on the bench.
"Did our little hedgehog not get enough sleep?"
"Ugh… just.. shut it. It's too early for this."
Thanks to him going to bed late, Soren had been exhausted ever since he had woken up.
'I should've gone to sleep earlier.'
"So who're your opponents?"
"Ah, right, I should check that."
Soren grabbed his bag from the floor and rummaged through it, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper.
"Uhm, let's see… arcane studies Rank 89 Doron Inenklees and Rank 83 Eugene. Then, for martial studies, Rank 83 Yuli Enron… Huh?"
"Wait, let me see."
Grab
"Hey Soren, aren't you ranked 96 or something?"
"Yeah. I don't know why the hell they've got me fighting people over ten ranks higher."
"It's not even just that, look here."
He pointed to the name 'Yuli Enron.'
"Your final duel is against Rank 83 of martial studies. That's strange."
Soren nodded in agreement.
As far as duels at Stellaris Academy went, the general premise was you fought someone ranked lower, someone around the same rank and then finally someone ranked higher.
Soren's opponent list was bizarre.
It wasn't just the rankings either.
"It's common knowledge that magicians are weaker in one-on-one martial than warriors. That's why this is even weirder. Usually, for arcane studies, the martial studies opponent is the lower-ranked one to make it fairer."
'That explains the difficulty rating.'
"I guess they see me as someone with an incorrect rank?"
"There's no other explanation. Are you gonna be okay, though? Martial studies kids are ruthless against magicians."
Soren found it strange that Felix was genuinely worried about him.
"I should be fine, it's not like I've been sitting on my ass doing nothing. Who are you fighting anyway?"
"Heh, take a look."
Felix handed him a piece of paper with a smug expression.
Upon reading the contents, Soren's eyes widened.
'Rank 25 of martial studies. Rank 21 and 18 of Arcane studies…'
He couldn't help but curse at the unfairness.
"Fuck! Why is human garbage like you so strong? It's unfair! The world is wrong!"
"Hehehe, What can you do? I was just born this way."
"Ugh, I'm gonna puke."
[Rank 96 and 89 of arcane studies come down to the arena.]
'My turn I guess…'
————「❤︎」————