Zane moved swiftly to stop the alarm; he had forgotten to put it in vibration mode. Looking around, he felt relieved after not seeing any reproachful gazes. By now, even Tom Nguyen had already left, leaving only a few individuals in the library. Packing up his staff, Zane then used his soul crest to sign out a few books before leaving.
It was inconvenient for him to carry his books and magic staff to the training area, so he quickly returned to his dorm to place the items before heading out. No one was around, which saved Zane from any small talk and wasted precious time. The journey to the training hall was a good twenty-minute walk, which left Zane with time to do something else; he opted to check out the student forum, trying to gather valuable information.
Most of it was pure nonsense, with hundreds of people having different conversations, most of which had nothing to do with magic. "It's only the first day, and these students have already started using the student forum as a form of social media," Zane thought. Human ingenuity is something to praise; the school doesn't provide the full internet experience, and these students immediately found a way to recreate it.
As he scrolled down, Zane finally found a post that intrigued him slightly. Someone had posted how, as a regular mage with no specialization, they felt awkward introducing themselves. All their roommates were Fire Mages or Light Mages, but she was just a regular mage. Feeling that unspecialized mages needed to have a cool introductory title, the poster recommended that they all group together to come up with a cool name.
As soon as the student posted her thoughts, numerous people immediately suggested titles. The focus seemed to be on the fact that non-specialized mages can master all types of magic, so the most popular names were things such as All-Purpose Mage, True Mage, Omni-Mage, and others of that nature. However, over the course of this debate, three titles stood out: General Mage, Arcane Mage, and Mystic Mage.
"Don't these people have anything better to do?" Zane thought, preparing to check other articles on the student board. However, he instantly realized that he shouldn't dismiss this conversation so quickly. If this conversation becomes widespread enough, it will form a trend, which will blend into reality. In a few days, it wouldn't surprise him if students began to adapt these names.
With this mindset, he continued scrolling. Comments after comments of people debating the name, everyone arguing for their chosen side. After more than a hundred of them, Zane saw the trend begin to shift for the name [Arcane Mage], and it seemed a winner was about to be decided. Then, one comment settled everything.
[Professor Wyll Lamen (Official Account): Hello, Earthlings, your argument has been brought up to the tower's notice, and they've sent me to remind you that the official title for mages without a specific affinity is Arcane Mage. I hope you have a blessed day.]
As soon as those comments appeared, even more people began commenting on the board. Based on a few calculations, Zane concluded the traffic had tripled in just half an hour. The debate was over, and the victor wanted to parade the loser's corpse to display their might. Zane found the entire thing absurd, but he was glad it was settled. So, after shaking his head, he continued checking out other articles on the board.
Nothing of interest piqued his interest, except for an article by someone who claimed they had found a hidden bar. Zane did not believe them at first until more people corroborated the story, and he learned that the bar would be open next week, but only on Sundays.
"Interesting. It seems the orientation did not cover everything in this campus," Zane thought. It makes sense given how large this academy is; the tower probably only showed the students the essentials and then left them to explore everything else on their own.
Zane suddenly noticed the training hall a few meters away; he didn't even notice that he was so close to his destination. Without wasting another second, he closed his screen and quickened his pace. All school facilities used the soul crest as a key, so he had no issue entering the hall. Looking around, he was still captivated by how vast this training hall was. It wasn't just a gym, but a complete facility with an Olympic-size running track, basketball court, football stadium, and many other earth sports areas. And those were just the facilities for Earth-type training. Things such as the gravity room were the truly valuable areas of this hall.
After once again marveling at the wonders of magic, Zane headed to his first destination: the mediation room. "A little intimidating," Zane instinctively thought. A cushion lay in the middle of this dimly lit room, with no sounds coming from anywhere — anyone who saw this would be slightly creeped out.
"The concentration of mana is at least 50% higher than on Earth," Zane thought. This was good news for him and all mages. After all, a higher concentration of mana means a more effective meditation. With a gentle smile, Zane sat down before retrieving the dim magic crystal from his pocket. He then closed his eyes and visualized the meditation rune. Time was meaningless during meditation because of the intense focus required. Zane's awareness of the outside world is quite dangerous. Luckily for him, this was a safe environment.
A sensation of pain suddenly overwhelmed Zane's mind, and he knew his time was up: his soul could no longer bear it. So, he opened his eyes and muttered, "What a wonderful meditation session. His improvement was drastically greater than normal, leaving him feeling satisfied. The idea that he could enjoy this treatment for the next year put a smile on Zane's face. As he normally does, Zane retrieved his phone to check the time.
"Hmm? The mediation session was ten minutes longer than usual?" Zane noticed. Usually, the session lasts exactly one hour, but today, there seems to be an extra ten minutes. At first, Zane thought this was the effect of the magic food, but soon ruled them out. The Earth Boar increased life force and mana; the Cocyrox fruit juice removed mental fatigue and cleared the mind, and lastly, the dessert improved focus and the agility of the mind.
"Is this the effect of the school's meditation ward?" Zane asked himself. After eliminating all possibilities, what remains is the truth. Zane hadn't improved in such a short period, meaning the only explanation was the environment.
"A ten minutes might not seem much, but considering that I meditate twice a day, that's an extra 20 minutes of meditation a day, 140 minutes a week, and the school year is a year, meaning 7280 additional minutes of meditation or 5 extra days."
Zane would not waste the slightest advantage, so he had decided that from now on, he would always meditate in the training room. Although that will require him to make two trips here a day, the growth of his mana is worth putting in such effort. "I wonder if I could build such a special meditation room for myself on Earth?" Zane thought.
There is a high possibility that the school teaches such a class, but probably not during this course. Regardless, Zane decided to check some basic information during the school year; it's not a bad thing to prepare for the future. Raising his left hand, he activated his soul imprint. During his meditation, he had received an email, but the imprint only warned him after awakening his consciousness.
"School will start the day after tomorrow? Not tomorrow? Well, that's fine," Zane nodded, not minding the delay. Scrolling down the email, he saw a link that directed him to his class schedule and information about his professor. To Zane's surprise, he had only two teachers: one for the theory class and one for the training class. The schedule also divides classes into two sections: Monday to Wednesday are for theory classes, and Thursday to Saturday are for training. Sundays are for rest.
"The good news is the earliest class is at 10 AM," Zane thought. Although he has developed the discipline to wake up early, he still doesn't like early classes.
The email also included a calendar for students to track the days. The tower did a wonderful job. With all the time-manipulating shenanigans going on, it's easy for most students to lose track of the days when they need to go to school. Now, with a calendar and a time-tracking system, everything will be much easier.
Standing up to stretch his body, Zane headed directly to the gym, not for a workout but to test out how much he can deadlift with his current mana channeling. Looking around, Zane realized there weren't that many people around, which was understandable, given the late hour. So, after a few minutes of stretching, he walked to the designated area and began placing 100 kgs plates into the barbell.
Taking a deep breath, Zane closed his eyes to concentrate his mental energy before activating the mana channeling. With a bit of a challenge, Zane lifted the more than 460kg (1013lbs) barbell to his knees. "There is still some room for improvement, so let's see my limit," Zane thought. He gradually added weight to test his limit, and the result was 515kg, 5kg higher than the world record. Curiosity suddenly tickled Zane's mind, so he tried other records such as overhead lift, squat, bench, etc.
"Without any training, I've surpassed all human records by a small margin in just two weeks," Zane thought to himself, thinking how absurd that was. The difference between ordinary people and the extraordinary is too vast. Right now, all the recruits are at their weakest, yet they have already exceeded the best among ordinary individuals.
"Wealth, status, birthplace, and skin color have already been used to differentiate people. And now, individual power will be added to the mix," Zane thought as he wiped the sweat with his towel. The cultural change the tower will bring to the planet might not be positive. Shaking his head to remove all these thoughts, Zane retrieved his magic staff before heading to the spell training room.
Xi'Ke had already taught them how to utilize the training room, so Zane registered with his soul crest and controlled things with the hologram screen in front of him. First, he chose the normal mode. The back of the room opened, and an all-black, metallic shooting dummy with only a torso attached to a mechanical pole appeared.
Zane raised his staff, and for the next twenty minutes, he adapted to utilizing it. With the staff's ability to project mana, Zane's spell improved drastically, bordering on the two-second mark. Unfortunately, it's impossible to break that barrier as long as he has to use the incantation.
Accepting this limitation, Zane changed the training mode to moving target. The shooting dummy starts moving sideways, forward, and backward. Zane observed the enemy's movement before releasing a magic bullet; he had missed. Unwilling to accept this result, he kept firing, and the result was abysmal: only three shots out of more than a dozen hit the mark. And even those that hit the target were not due to his accuracy, but because there was one target, and his spell fired bullets like an automatic weapon. The most embarrassing part is that he was training in the lowest speed mode.
"It seems luck played a bigger role in killing the wind tiger than I'd like to admit," Zane thought.