A week had passed since then.
Since discovering his appearance, he had been trying to take better care of himself.
It may have sounded stupid after his worries that his appearance could lead to problems in the future, but Soren didn't care about that anymore.
With a face like this, he realised that it would be a waste if he didn't look after himself.
Thanks to that, the dark circles under his eyes had decreased slightly, making him look somewhat less frail than before.
Of course, that wasn't all that had happened in the last week.
He had also been thinking about the future thanks to the joint lesson he had with Felix.
More specifically, about the upcoming mock duel.
Each semester, there are two mock duel events, one before midterms and another before finals.
For the first mock duel, your opponent is chosen for you based on your rank, skills and other similar factors.
This means that the duels themself usually end up being pretty fair.
The second mock duel of each semester is different; instead, you're given a pair of duel tokens, and whoever you give those tokens to will have to fight you.
There are limitations; however, you can't challenge anybody lower-ranked than you, and you can only participate in a total of 3 duels. It's a first-come, first-served situation.
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱, the first mock duel was a pretty significant event since it was the event in which Alex revealed his [Divinity] to everyone, making it known that he was the hero.
Alex is the reason why this batch of first-year students is known as 'The Generation of Light' to the world.
According to TKS's lore, the Order of Aryn received a prophecy.
– 「When the Demon Lord of Darkness descends, the Hero of Light shall be born and bring about salvation to all.」
As far as fictional prophecies go, it's a pretty generic one, but the important thing was that it told everyone that the hero would be born at the same time the Demon Lord descended on the world.
This prophecy caused all eyes to be on The Generation of Light, and the second they noticed that the identity of the Hero had been revealed, the Order of Aryn instantly started getting to work on unsealing the holy sword [Clockwork].
It's also a key part in starting Amelia Einhardt's questline, because she begins to take an interest in Alex thanks to his golden [Divinity] that he shows off in the mock duel, which is essential, even more so now that this is reality, as she is one of the three main heroines and almost necessary late game due to her top-tier tanking abilities.
Of course, none of this meant anything to Soren.
'I mean, I'm just a gigolo-like 1★ character with my only redeemable stat being A+ rank charm.'
Even if he wanted to take over the protagonist's role, which he doesn't, it wouldn't be possible since he cannot obtain [Divinity].
There was also the fact that even if he wanted to steal Amelia's questline, it would be nigh impossible since the way to start it is by making her interested in you, and the only way to do that is to be absurdly strong or be very unique.
As of now, Soren was neither.
'…Plus, I'm not really interested in NTRing Alex.'
The thought of doing such a thing made him feel disgusted.
Nevertheless, the real reason why Soren was thinking about all of this was for a completely different reason.
"I'm too weak."
Before the joint class with Felix, he had thought that the mock duels would be a cakewalk, hardly even a struggle, but after discovering how truly weak this body of his was, it made him somewhat anxious.
Since Soren was ranked 96th, his opponent was also likely to be weak, but he couldn't help but keep thinking about how embarrassing it would be if he ended up losing as a transmigrator.
"「Status」"
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden (1★)
◈ Stats
Stamina - 0.2 (F)
Strength - 0.3 (F)
Agility - 0.4 (F)
Mana - 0.4 (F) [Increased by 0.1]
Divine Power - 0.0 (F)
Charm - 8.4 (A+)
.
In the weeks since transmigrating, the only stat that's changed was his mana stat, and that was only by a single point.
With stats as low as these, the best he would be able to do in the mock duels is to squeeze by tightly.
'But I don't want that.'
Soren wanted to win.
Luckily, Soren had already come up with a plan to raise the garbage stats in front of him, even if only by a small amount.
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱, there are hidden pieces that you can only find if you are truly insane.
Some of these hidden pieces would require you to kill every enemy in a location to unlock a dungeon that you'd have to clear, then you'd get the reward.
One even required you to have a specific item, a specific character, fight a specific enemy, at a specific time, in a specific location.
'That one was awful…'
For the one he was currently eyeing up, though, you only had to map out the entirety of Rena Forest, located next to Stellaris Academy, then follow the marker you're given to a tiny cave hidden at the edge of the map.
Usually, something like this would be a long and tedious process, but now that TKS was his reality, he would be able to just go straight to the cave since he already knew the location.
The hidden item obtainable this way was [Stella's Apple].
As far as hidden pieces went, it was easily the worst, being only a 5★ item when most of the hidden pieces are 7★ or 8★ at minimum, but it was by far the easiest one to get for Soren at the moment.
[Stella's Apple] increases all stats by 0.3 points, and while that effect itself was good, the other part is what interested Soren the most.
After consuming [Stella's Apple], you gain the title [Stella's Secrets].
This title in-game was mediocre; all it does is boost mana and health recovery rate by 200%, but in TKS, that was worthless since you always have Saintess Olivia as a fixed party member.
The other reason it wasn't great was the fact that there was always a stockpile of items sitting in your inventory to heal mana or health at any given time.
However, in real life, this is quite different.
Items?
They cost money.
Healers?
Not even a question.
They not only need to be paid an exorbitant amount, but they also need to be protected.
Then there was also the fact that mana takes a lot longer to recharge in real life.
During the joint lesson, Soren was able to figure something out about mana.
Using up his entire mana pool and waiting for it to recharge completely took roughly 15 minutes.
That was when his mana stat was 0.3, and ever since raising it to 0.4, it has taken around 25 minutes to recharge.
A mana stat of 0.3 is F-grade, and it only took him about 10 minutes of constantly firing low proficiency basic spells to suffer from mana exhaustion.
Even the worst magician characters had a mana grade of high D to low C, so waiting to recharge them would likely take hours.
But with the title [Stella's Secrets], he could reduce that 15-minute recharge time down to just 5 minutes.
And even if it wasn't nearly as important, being able to heal faster is nice, too.
There was an apparent dilemma with all of this, though: [Stella's Apple] is an item that Alex is meant to take.
But after careful deliberation, Soren concluded that this point was moot.
Why?
Because Alex is stupid.
Alex was the stereotypical happy-go-lucky academy protagonist.
His entire thought process was: Eat → Sleep → Train → Repeat
Even though ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱ was a game with harem elements, there wasn't an ounce of romance simply because the protagonist was too dense and didn't care about anything except getting stronger.
'I remember that pissing a lot of people off as well…'
'I mean, who makes a game with full systems around levelling a character's affinity level and even having the girls fall in love, then just never adding the ability to act on it?'
However, over the past few weeks, there had been a few instances where Soren had shared theory classes with Alex, and every time, he would either sleep or provide answers that were comically wrong when asked by the professor.
For Soren, this was more than enough confirmation that Alex's personality remained unchanged.
This was because in TKS, it was a running gag that Alex would fail his theory exams with the lowest grades in the entire academy, even in his later years.
Because of this, Soren was convinced that Alex would never be able to find the hidden pieces alone without insane luck, no matter how hard he tried.
And for that reason, Soren had decided that he would happily steal the hidden pieces for his goal of having an enjoyable life.
————「❤︎」————