'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 68 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 were completed, making his body feel slightly better, the AI finally finished its task and responded.
'Name the technique, you say? Hmm… I'll choose…'
'The Verdan Method.'