Regardless of what Lucian wanted to know about Mages, he suppressed his desires and made his way back to his dorm, exhausted and wanting nothing more than a good night's rest to recuperate after such a tiring sparring session. His path back to his room was much less eventful than he expected it to be, though, as the students who would usually heckle him and throw some shade and ridicule his way were unusually quiet this time around.
'It seems word has spread quickly of my spar with Sofia.' He mused to himself. This could be the only reason why things were so normal for him at the moment. Other than that, he couldn't think of any other reason.
It seemed the news of him not only accepting Sofia's 'request' to spar but also taking it seriously and not cowering like nearly all of the student populace expected him to was enough for him to slightly improve their image of him. While it was a small improvement, for the time being it was better than nothing.
Lucian couldn't care less for the sudden changes in the way he was treated — it only reminded him of the hypocrisy that plagued this place and most of the rest of the world, in fact. The way people's opinions could change so quickly and easily over something as small as this only made it clearer to Lucian that he could rely on nobody but himself.
In a way it was similar to the way society worked back in his previous life. The people on Earth at least pretended to hide their selfishness behind good deeds or false pretences, but deep down everyone knew that if an opportunity presented itself, with the catch of having to throw someone else under the bus, the large majority of people would accept it in a heartbeat.
That was much like this new world Lucian found himself in, only the people of this place didn't even try to hide it. Strength ruled all, so Lucian showing just a modicum of potential and change in his behaviour and temperament was enough for other people to start judging him differently.
Soon enough, he found himself back within the confines of his dorm, allowing him to at least relax a little after that exhausting spar with Sofia. He removed his clothing and threw it into his bathtub before collapsing onto his stiff bed, taking a quick glance at the clock on the wall.
'Oh? It turns out our little training session lasted longer than I originally thought. A whole hour has passed.' Lucian was surprised to find that his fight with Sofia didn't last 5 minutes or so like he originally thought, but much longer. Realising this, he was curious to find out whether he had actually gained anything from it or not. Originally, thinking it was just 5 minutes, he didn't expect to even see a single budge in his stats, but with it actually being much longer, his expectations were raised a little.
Without much further consideration, he checked his stats.
[Name: Lucian Verdan. Age: 12. Sex: Male. Vitality: 1.02, Agility: 0.7, Strength: 0.61, Mind: 0.1. Status: Body is in need of rest.]
'They actually rose!' Lucian's keen eyes spotted the changes instantly, recognising that all three of his physical stats had risen by 0.01 each. While only a minor increase, it came from just 1 hour of sparring with Sofia! The ratio of gains from training this way was much, much better than when he trained his footwork or even cultivated his breathing technique!
He hadn't even seen a single increase from his two hours of footwork practice, and he only really saw gains of a similar level from cultivating his breathing technique. Knowing this information, Lucian could only hope for more students to approach him for some sparring sessions in the future, but he didn't make any changes to his training plans to accommodate it. He would only accept the requests of others to spar; he wouldn't go out of his own way to find other people to spar with.
Knowing this information, Lucian fell into a deep sleep with a slight grin on his face.
'Everything is going according to plan…'
***
A week soon passed, and a lot had happened. Firstly, Sofia didn't turn up at the grassy field a second time. Lucian was a little surprised to see the field empty after glancing over it the following day, since Sofia had made it abundantly clear that she had claimed it as her training spot. However, seeing such a good place being unused, he naturally had to take the chance to get some more sword technique training in. Even after 7 days, Sofia didn't show back up at the place for whatever reason. But Lucian didn't really care to know either.
Secondly, Lucian had kept to his training regimen diligently during this time. He spent every morning after waking up cultivating his breathing technique, following the same movements he had been told to do by the AI. He took things slow, not wanting to commit any mistakes or blunders that could affect his progression in any way, shape, or form.
Following the previous pattern that seemed to be working for him, Lucian focused his efforts on smaller parts of his body and over the last 7 days had worked through all of his toes and had moved onto his fingers. Within the next two days, he would be finished with his fingers as well, leaving him with the difficult choice of what to move onto next. However, this decision was for the future Lucian in two days' time to make; right now, he had other things on his mind.
The last 7 days had been quite fruitful for him. The increases to his stats from his breathing technique had steadied out, decreasing slightly from the first two revolutions he made with it. In total, he received a clean distribution of 0.04 in each physical stat after 1 successful revolution, a total increase of 0.12 overall. This was a little lower than the 0.14 total he had received from his first two revolutions, but Lucian had been expecting this ever since his AI had warned him about the effectiveness of his breathing technique decreasing after each successful revolution.
However, he had also gained some insights and experience over the last week. His instincts told him that if he focused on bigger targets when cultivating, he would see higher gains when completing a revolution. As an example, if he focused his concentration on circulating the life force accumulated in his entire hand, rather than just each individual finger, he speculated the gains from that would be much more worthwhile. But with each increase in rewards came greater risks.