Yesterday, his vitality was at 0.7, but now it showed 0.8. If he remembered correctly, something like this couldn't just happen overnight thanks to some mixture of herbs. But he kept an open mind, as this world had already made it crystal clear that it was different.
Lucian couldn't quite wrap his head around this mysterious phenomenon. Even with the advanced technology of his previous world, they had the ability to artificially increase someone's vitality by 0.1 like Lucian had just experienced, but it was extremely expensive, required very specialised equipment and wasn't just an overnight process. Not to mention some ghastly side effects came with artificially increasing a stat as vital as vitality, such as nausea, frequent vomiting, and consistent unrelenting migraines. However, Lucian had experienced none of those.
Lucian studied the mixture of herbs in his hand, thinking curiously to himself. This place just kept getting more and more mysterious the more he learnt about it and experienced what it had to offer. Even his everyday life provided some surprises, just like this one.
'It seems while quite backwards in some areas, this world has managed to advance quite far in certain fields.' He took note of this, since it could be quite important to know. While he thought this, though, his mind also came to other conclusions.
"Maybe with this, I can catch up to the others with my vitality stat at least, but that would just create an unhealthy imbalance in my stats… What to do? How do I increase my other two stats to the same level? This mixture looks like it might give me another 0.3 or 0.4 vitality points if I use the whole thing up." He thought aloud.
His body was far too weak, unable to compare to the other students near his own age. Although he was the youngest student there by far, only being enrolled earlier than normal thanks to his father's connections, the gap was still far too wide to consider normal.
'This is not adequate…' He was unconvinced, unsatisfied with what he had been given. His weak stats were not a result of his own negligence but of his predecessor's negligence. He wasn't about to let some random kid with no goals in life ruin his future.
Lucian soon began to waft through his inherited memories, but he was still not quite fully assimilated with them, so it wasn't as natural as going through his own memories from his past life.
It was hard to describe, but if he only had to rely on his instincts and subconscious to access his own memories, then it would require a manual effort through his conscious mind to access the memories of the previous Lucian this body belonged to. Over time, the two would eventually blend together, though, making Lucian's two separate sets of memories one and the same.
'What is this…?' Soon, it seemed he found something.
While sifting through his memories, he came across something quite interesting. Something that intrigued him greatly. The memories he accessed came to him like chapters of a book, and he began searching through them like a moth to a flame.
'Every few years, some 'Mages' from outside of the Barren Islands on their mysterious, enchanted ships select a few Prospects for their magic academies. Specifically, they come every three years, and the last time they came over was nearly three years ago… Meaning in the coming weeks they will be coming back.'
His predecessor hadn't known anything about Mages when his teacher spoke about them earlier, so this information greatly surprised him when he recalled it. Either there were still some gaps in his memories, or his predecessor only knew 'of' them but nothing about them. Meaning that this visit from the Mages was common knowledge, at least to the noble houses and the academies.
Lucian's eyebrows perked up when he recalled this, surprised by the great timing of things. It was almost like his death and reincarnation were planned so that he would arrive here in time for this.
But he didn't let it get to his head — he didn't believe in things like fate, or destiny, or even a higher being that presides over everything in the universe. If anything, the only higher power he believed in was the universe itself. He didn't believe that his coming here was planned but was just a set of mere coincidences that caused his soul to cross over into the new Lucian's body.
But, as quickly as his intrigue rose, his face fell into a frown.
'These mages come to the different Knight and scholarly academies across the Barren Islands to recruit these Prospects, whatever 'Prospects' are exactly. My predecessor didn't seem to know — only the name.' He frowned in thought.
This was a big problem for Lucian. Ever since he had heard about Mages and noticed how everyone became fearful and frightened whenever they were mentioned, he was full of a desire to research more about them — only he hadn't found the time to do so, as it had still only been a day since he crossed over.
He fully intended to be selected by these Mages and whatever organisation they were representing; the only problem right now was that he wasn't qualified. The Mages only went to the official Knight and Scholar academies, disregarding the idea of going to the preparatory academies entirely. As a student of the Knight academies, Lucian didn't know exactly what the process of going through the scholarly route was like, but he assumed it was similar to the Knight route.
A certain threshold had to be met to be enrolled into the official academy. And for the Knight Academy, Lucian did not meet this threshold. In fact, he was the student with the lowest prospects of ever meeting this threshold in the entire preparatory academy.
The requirement to enter the Official Knight Academy was to become an Official Knight. Lucian hadn't done much research on the subject of Knights yet, as he just assumed they were skilled fighters and soldiers much like they were back in his previous world, but after finding out about the abnormality of the stats of the people in this world, as well as the existence of Mages, he knew things couldn't be that simple.
And a short search through his memories confirmed it. 'I see, so becoming an Official Knight means passing a set of tests centred around one's vitality, strength, and agility. If it were put in terms of stats, that would be a flat 2.0 across the board.'
"Interesting, so becoming a knight in this world isn't actually about the skill of the individual, but the stats of the individual… While odd, it does make some sense."
It would mean that there were huge disparities between two Official Knights in the same rank. Those who simply held the minimum required stats couldn't ever hold a candle to a Knight who had the skills to match.
Speaking his thoughts aloud again, Lucian realised just how much of a difficult situation he was in if he wanted to be selected by the Mages that were coming over.
He checked the date on the calendar on his wall and saw that there were just over three weeks until the Mages arrived from abroad, and they would spend 5 days touring the Barren Islands past that point to look for 'Prospects'.
That meant that he had just under four weeks to try and become an Official Knight to enter the Official Knight academy, or else he wouldn't meet the deadline and he'd miss this chance, having to wait another three years to receive the opportunity again. Lucian was a patient person, but he wasn't willing to delay his plans for an entire three years.