Lucian knew he wasn't yet ready to move onto attempting his luck with larger accumulations of life force. Instead, after he finished with his fingers in the next two days, he would find himself at a roadblock in his breathing technique cultivation. His fingers and toes were the smallest clusters of life force in his body, and the next item slightly above them at the bottom of this list was his hands and feet.
However, he had already established that he wasn't ready to move onto them yet, so how else was he supposed to proceed with his breathing technique cultivation? Well, quite frankly, Lucian didn't know either. Whether he liked it or not, he would have to unwillingly put a pause on training his breathing technique until he figured out the solution to this problem, though he suspected the answer could be something as simple as becoming stronger.
'This just shows that I can't fully trust everything the AI says, as it is just as new to this world and its customs as I am. It is bound to make mistakes every now and then. The only thing that matters is whether it can learn from them or not.'
However, he had thought about this enough. Instead, it was time for him to check his stats. He had been holding off on doing this ever since his spar with Sofia. He wanted to surprise himself a little, only asking the AI to feed him the data on what he had gained from each cultivation session but not actually seeing how his actual stats themselves had increased.
There was no particular reason for this; he just wanted something to look forward to after a long week of painstaking training, and while seeing immediate results after each training session would be satisfying, seeing those results all collected together at the end of the week and the new level his body would be at would feel much more satisfying.
He only just waited until he had finished his final sword technique training session of the week before the big reveal.
'AI, show me my stats.'
[Name: Lucian Verdan. Age: 12. Sex: Male. Vitality: 1.75, Agility: 1.36, Strength: 1.27, Mind: 0.1. Status: Body is in need of rest.]
'So I'm officially an Apprentice Knight now.' Lucian didn't know what he was expecting to see when he opened up his stats, but his expression remained rather indifferent. His emotions were unperturbed.
Something deep inside of him was half expecting to experience some sort of 'breakthrough' phenomenon the moment his lowest physical stat, his strength, approached that major milestone of 1.0. But no such thing had occurred actually. Lucian was pretty sure he would have noticed such a thing earlier in the day. Instead, it seemed the title of Apprentice Knight was actually more of a formality than an actual rank, like how Mages were separated.
'Perhaps you only really experience such a thing when becoming an Official Knight?' He considered it but didn't really pry more into it. The academy didn't really tell them much about what really entailed becoming an official Knight, and they especially didn't teach them anything about becoming an Apprentice Knight either, considering everyone there was already one before even entering the academy.
Lucian could go and ask one of the few students who were already Official Knights for some insights, but he wasn't close enough with any of them to bother going through such a thing; he especially wouldn't even give a second thought to asking Sofia. Just because she had forced him into a spar didn't make them close enough to have any meaningful conversation past that point. He suspected he'd find out himself when he approached the 2.0 mark in his stats anyway.
Other than that, Lucian started running some calculations through his head.
'Discarding the 0.56 I've received in each stat over the last 7 days from my breathing technique cultivation, that leaves an increase of 0.1 from my other training and an extra 0.07 in my vitality from the remainder of the herbal mixture, which has sadly run out now. Hmmm, not bad, I guess.'
Lucian didn't really know whether this was good or bad, as he didn't really have a second set of data to compare his own to. But one thing he did know was that if the other students—or even teachers—found out about his speed or progression, they would be incredibly shocked. His time over the past 7 days wasn't just spent idling around and training, but he had also gleaned a few facts that he found interesting.
Firstly, it seemed either the students were unaware of their Knight training methods lacking a crucial factor (a breathing technique). Otherwise, most of the students there would already be near to or have already surpassed the threshold to be an official Knight, with Sofia being the only exception. Lucian suspected she was also aware of this missing element. This was something Lucian didn't quite understand at first, but it made sense when factoring in this new information.
The teachers and professors might know a thing or two about it, as they were the ones in charge of supplying these training methods to the library, but for some unknown reason it seemed they were keeping very tight lipped about it. Either they were just as unaware as the students, or there was some secret that Lucian had stumbled upon.
Lucian was convinced of this fact, as he himself could now be considered a part of the middle ranks with his stats. He was already stronger than many of the students there, who were far ahead of him only a week prior. Their slow rates of progress made sense when realising they only had their footwork and weapon techniques to train with and increase their stats.
A rate of 0.1 per week was abysmal compared to what Lucian had achieved with his breathing technique. Alone, it was nearly 6x as fast as their training, but since Lucian was also keeping up with his footwork and his sword techniques, he was closer to 7x as fast as the rest of the student populace. In fact, that figure was likely higher, as he was using an improved version created by his AI, so they might be seeing lower increases to their stats compared to him.
In fact, he'd already started to suspect just how easy it was for him to come across this missing flaw. How had his AI been able to deduce and substitute the missing breathing technique that even the other students, who were more knowledgeable than him a few days ago, were unaware of. This was naturally something he had to explore when he had the time.