"!!!" Alphonse was surprised to find that Kaya, the girl that the previous Alphonse had attempted to protect, was staying in the same dorm as him.
"What were you doing to be coming back so late anyway?" Kaya asked, "You said you were running?"
"I was exercising," Alphonse explained, "I just felt the need to get my blood flowing for a bit…"
"Exercising? What's that?"
"Eh?" Alphonse realized that it wasn't common for people in this world to exert themselves in this way, "For example, running, lifting weights, and breathing exercises."
"Huh? Isn't that what the students at the Knight Schools do as punishment?" Kaya covered her mouth as she gasped, "Why would you punish yourself like that?"
"Hahah... " Alphonse didn't know whether to laugh or cry, "It's just repetitive motions that place stress on your muscles to slowly break them down and build them back up. It's a way of training the body."
"I see…" Kaya seemed to smile at him acceptingly, but her expression faltered slightly. It was obvious that she hadn't really understood or accepted his explanation fully. "Well, goodnight now, Alphonse! I'm in the same Combat Magic class as you, but I wasn't able to attend today due to some other problems… I'll see you tomorrow though!"
"Ah, alright. Goodnight!" Alphonse waved as she departed back to her room. Her long silver hair flowed elegantly behind her as if it were part of a veil on a wedding dress.
'Hm? What was she doing out here so late?' Alphonse noticed that Kaya was also out past regular student bedtimes.
But he didn't pay much attention to it. His mind was more focused on getting a shower and bath before going to bed.
Today, Alphonse had made sure to jog for about two kilometers, which was the maximum his current body could handle. He took breaks after each half kilometer to do push-ups, sit-ups, squats, and stretches.
Right now, he was dying for a Healing Potion as well as some food, so Alphonse hurried to his room and hopped into the shower.
As it was customary in his previous world, Alphonse chose to use his time in the shower to contemplate various things while the hot shower water rained down on him.
Today's duels had gone quite nicely, but there was still plenty of things to improve on.
For starters, he didn't have a method to immediately deal with the artifact the Halstein brothers had that negated his spells.
He also didn't have a proper rapier as he was still using a basic metal rod.
Fortunately, the twins weren't too strong. But what if he was up against an actual knight that had proper training and anti-magic artifacts as well? Would his current self be enough to deal with such an adversary?
The more he thought about it, the less likely a victory was against the imaginary knights he was comparing himself to.
*Knock Knock*
It appeared that his food and potion had arrived.
Alphonse hopped out of the shower and quickly dried himself before throwing on a shower robe and answering the door to receive the delivery.
"Here's your food, sir!" The server presented him with a tray containing a health potion, a large container of water, a cup, and an order of roast pork with mashed potatoes and roasted veggies, "The tray is extendable if you wish to dine in the bathtub. Simply pull on the handles to extend the tray! As per your guardian's instruction, they will be billed for your expenses, so don't worry about the payment!"
"Ah, alright. Thank you!" Alphonse responded. It appeared as if they would say the same things every time they delivered something. It reminded Alphonse of the convenience stores in his previous world.
Alphonse brought the tray over to his desk and pulled out a notebook as he ate while resuming the thoughts he had in the shower.
He continued to draw a couple of different ideas in this notebook as he ate, taking great care to not spill.
What if a mage had the same artifacts? How would he win then? Wouldn't mages also be able to cast barriers to block attacks?
What if he was up against a large number of enemies? How would he fight them? Today it was just two opponents, but what if he had to take on more?
And how would he fare against monsters? Alphonse had gone through his History textbook and saw how a large number of wars the Kingdom of Aaro had waged against surrounding populations of monsters.
For example, the war against the Goblins. There were over a hundred thousand goblins, while there were only about a hundred royal knights and even fewer mages.
They only managed to scrape out a win due to a number of cunning tactics that the humans would use to fight a battle of attrition, slowly whittling away small branches of the goblin forces.
Although the goblins were great at mobbing and using guerilla warfare, they were no match in open terrain as humans could prepare large spells that would decimate an entire goblin platoon.
So the humans had placed traps all over the forest as well as lighting part of the forest on fire to drive the goblins out from the safety of the trees and into open space where the human mages could freely shoot at them.
But Alphonse wasn't satisfied with that strategy. What if he was alone or with a small team? Would they be able to use this strategy as well? Of course not. This strategy was used hundreds of years ago and there was no way that goblins wouldn't have adapted to this strategy or innovated their own to counter it.
Alphonse thought about it for a bit but ultimately couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Feeling a little down, Alphonse settled for first coming up with a strategy to the first problem: dealing with knights and mages that had methods to block his magic.
Back when he was on earth, there was no answer to defeating an opponent in armor that was armed with a paintball gun. To begin with, even if he could cut down the paintballs, he couldn't pierce the armor.
But now that Alphonse had magic on his side, perhaps things would be different. He resolved to do more research on this later.
Before bed, Alphonse used the Health Monitor once again.
Health: 6/8
Mana: 1588/1588
Hunger: 9/10
Conditions:
- Currently recovering with a Health Potion
- Mental Exhaustion
Recommended treatment:
- Sleep
His health and mana had increased! Alphonse didn't know why, but both stats had increased in just one day!
His Maximum Health had increased by three, and his Maximum Mana had increased by over a hundred!
Satisfied with his surprising growth, Alphonse took the advice of the tablet and crawled into bed for some sleep.
But as soon as he closed his eyes:
"HEY!" Eve shouted.
Alphonse immediately opened his eyes and shot up, only to find himself in the dream world with Eve once again.
"Hahh…" Alphonse sighed in annoyance. He was about to get some sleep but was awoken by the succubus.
"What do you mean 'Hahh', you still haven't fed me since yesterday! I kept the dream room open the entire night last night, and I didn't even get to eat! Hurry up! Give me a mana core!" Eve pouted angrily.
"Okay, okay, here you go" Alphonse quickly conjured up a large mana core and handed it over to Eve, "This should be enough to cover yesterday and today."
"Heheh…" Eve happily received the mana core and scuttled off to begin consuming it, "What are you staring at?"
"Ah, I was just curious about how succubi consume mana," Alphonse stared intently at her, watching her take small nibbles out of the mana core.
"Didn't your parents teach you that it's rude to stare at a lady while she's eating? Shoo! Go practice your magic or something!" Eve waved him away as she continued feasting.
"Alright, I understand." Alphonse promptly gave up. She was nice enough to agree to his deal, so at the very least, he would respect her privacy.
For now, Alphonse would be attempting to create a proper rapier as well as a few other weapons that he would want to use in combat in the future.
To begin with, the rapier would need to house at least two mana cores within it, as Alphonse wanted it to be able to cast a barrier as well as provide a boost forwards when he would lunge forwards for a stab.
Next, he wanted to make his kicks stronger, so he would need to create a pair of boots that could increase his kick's speed with the help of wind magic.
But just blunt damage wasn't enough. There were certain kicks in TaeKwonDo that would benefit from having a blade in the place of his leg, so as to slice instead of simply hammering at his target.
He also wanted to come up with a spell that would deal with the anti-magic artifacts.
And the final thing that Alphonse would want to work on was his inability to deal with multiple opponents. He had several ideas in mind, but all of them seemed out of reach.
Creating his rapier took some time, but with some hard work and effort, he was able to create a rapier about a hundred centimeters in length, with a swept hilt and space for two mana cores within the handle.
In the two mana cores, Alphonse placed one Quick-Deploy barrier that he copied from his textbooks. For the issue of having a boost as he stabbed, Alphonse placed a mana core that would create a small blast of air on the bottom of the hilt that would speed up the thrust.
Creating his boots was much more difficult. He could solve the increase in kick speed with the same spell he used on his sword: the small explosion to increase the speed of a strike. However, he could not solve how he would imitate a blade with his leg.
At first, he thought of launching a wind blade with his boots, but that wasn't the effect that he wanted to achieve. If he wanted to do something like that, it was far more efficient to attach that type of spell to his rapier instead of his boots.
He could create an actual blade made of hardened steel to his boots, but that would be no good either. It would make running difficult and it would also impair some of the other kicks.
"What are you up to?" Eve asked as she licked her lips. She had finished her meal.
Alphonse explained that he was trying to create a blade type spell, but couldn't figure out which element of magic he was going to use for that.
"Huh? Who said that spells needed an element?" Eve asked, confused.