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Phew, finally no more heavy info dump. There will be gradual buildup about the world. Also for the first 3 days (which includes today), there will be double update. After that, one chapter update every day for next four days.
Feel free to comment and give your impression, and early it might be, any guess how the story will move?
One month— the time It took me to confirm my abilities. With this, I had 2 months before the entrance exam, and considering the time it would take to travel to the royal capital, I effectively had around one month left.
In this one month, I had more or less gained an understanding of my abilities that were affected by my awakening.
To summarise all the verification I went through, there weren't any obvious changes anywhere except in my intellect and character.
I mean, yeah, I had more or less intuitively understood that my only cheat was my reincarnation. I didn't receive any deus ex machina-like power.
Depressed? Very. I didn't think this even needed to be asked.
Though unexpectedly, my brain had been strengthened to quite a degree. The sole merit of awakening. Like, it didn't simply enhance my intellect, it essentially made it easier for me to exhibit the best of my brain capability in the field of my interest.
Also, there was the fact that I reincarnated into the fantasy world of sword and magic which I had always yearned for. For 'Allen', it was the normal world that he perceived as 'well, this is what it is' in a corner of his mind. However, the 'awakened me' was different as I was now deeply intrigued by my current world.
I also wanted to try late-night magic practice— one of the standard templates at the beginning of reincarnation stories, though with no knowledge I didn't know where to start.
So I started learning, craving for knowledge about magic theory, information about monsters, and the geography of the kingdom.
There was one more aspect that I found changes in. It was just my hunch, but I think the superimposition of memories had physically enhanced my brain capabilities. 'Allen' originally had a much sharper mind than the 'previous me'.
'Allen' was just lacking when it came to memorization ability, otherwise, the speed and depth of thought were on a different level. Now, after awakening, the same abilities had gone up by one or two notches. Even in my previous life, I knew that the human brain could be trained and improved the more it was used.
For instance, reading a lot directly impacted language skills, logical reasoning, and vocabulary. One could easily filter out the idiots who didn't read books. Another example would be children who had been learning mental maths from a young age could become unbelievably fast in mental calculation.
These cognitive abilities were at their most flexible and developed rapidly during childhood.
In my case, the experience of 36 years from my previous life plus the 12 years in this world was loaded in the young brain of a 12-year-old. It was pretty much like cramming the time forcefully.
Normally, no matter how efficiently you crammed in knowledge, it was impossible. After all, time was impartial.
I was sure my brain right now must be full of creases after undergoing about four times the load at the age of 12. It was still a conjecture at best, and there was no definitive conclusion so I decided to accept it as it was.
Moving on to the athletic abilities, unfortunately, I didn't see any visible changes. In fact, I was slightly worried that my already bad reflexes would be further impaired in the act of averaging them out as well. Honestly, I was glad that it didn't come true.
My aptitude for magic, too, didn't show any significant changes.
The magic 'Allen' used was simply body-strengthening magic which enhanced one's physical abilities by manipulating the mana stored in the mana organ within the body.
It was a magic anyone could learn, or to put it in another way, it was an extremely convenient magic that was used by commoners and nobles alike.
For example, it boosted productivity in tasks like farmwork and carrying heavy loads.
That being said, the height one could reach in Body-Strengthening magic depended on the individual's aptitude.
Two crucial factors influenced one's aptitude for Body Enhancement Magic: the vessel that kept the mana within the body, in other words, mana capacity, and the mana manipulation technique to freely control that stored mana.
Mana capacity was the product of one's base ability to store mana— which was said to grow until the age of 12— and the mana compression rate.
Basically, the base capacity was dependent on talent, while it seemed like the mana compression rate could be improved gradually with hard work.
Naturally, the bigger your mana capacity was, the more mana you could use to fuel your magic for a longer duration.
The ability to manipulate mana was kind of like intuition. Of course, it was possible to improve it through training to some extent, but it mostly inherently depended on natural aptitude.
'Allen' was said to be blessed with a higher mana capacity compared to the average person, but his aptitude to manipulate mana was in a league of its own.
I couldn't test it out so it was hard for me to say how my 'senses' fared in this world, but if the words of my martial arts instructor who taught practical skills were to be believed, my mana manipulation ability alone would have been enough to grant me access to Class A, the place where the creme de la creme of the students were assembled even for Royal Academy standards.
I just hoped this was not him mindlessly bootlicking.
Anyway, it seemed like my awakening didn't affect my mana capacity and mana manipulation ability in any way at all.
One's mana capacity could be measured by a magic device, and after testing myself, I found no changes after awakening.
On average, including regular people, the basic magical power capacity was around 100. In my case, it was about 2000. However, I could absorb around 1.2 times the amount of mana through mana compression, so it roughly translated to 2400 as my maximum mana capacity.
Speaking of which, the average mana capacity of successful applicants was 2000, while the cutoff threshold was 1000 (although the cutoff just happened to be unusually high, 1500, during my elder sister's time). The leading candidate's capacity exceeded 10,000 each year.
The best score in the entrance exam to the Royal Academy, which boasted a history of over a thousand years, was a record of 57000 from about 300 years ago. It was apparently achieved by a great magician, who was later hailed as the restorer of clinical magic, at the age of 12. Incidentally, and contrary to one's assumption, he didn't pass the entrance exam.
Apparently, he wasn't fond of studying so he failed to reach the cutoff threshold for theoretical knowledge.
The god of exams has no chill no matter the world, huh?
This incident became the anecdote that symbolized the unwavering stance of the Royal Academy for theoretical knowledge. No matter how much one excelled in the practical exams, they would never compromise on the other aspects.
It was also shaped into a moral tale told to children who made light of theoretical knowledge, and naturally, there wasn't a time when the study-hating 'Allen' before the awakening hadn't been preached about that story.
On the flip side, it was hard to quantify one's ability to manipulate mana. Simple exercises that were easily quantifiable, like the physical fitness tests from my previous life, were heavily influenced by natural body coordination and there were many cases where mana capacity played a vital role here.
However, a trained eye could easily tell the difference between the mana manipulation aptitude of different people. They looked at aspects that were difficult to put into words or numbers such as instantaneous power when utilizing magic, integration of body movement, or chanting.
Of course, if there were significant changes in my magical manipulation ability, I would be able to sense it intuitively.
In conclusion, there were no changes in my existing abilities except for the brain department.
Well, it wasn't like there was really nothing apart from that. I did sense one huge change in me this month. Mainly in my vitality.
It's hard to describe in words, but vitality was like a life force or the driving energy that helped overcome difficulties. It was abundantly present within me, and it was something I never felt in my previous life or even as 'Allen'.
It was just my intuitive feeling, but perhaps it was because my soul was twice as big compared to others.
So this past month, I was verifying something to see if I could make full use of my exceptional vitality. What was it, you ask? It was, of course,
"Go~ Fireball!!!"
Whump!!
......I tried testing if maybe I could do it now.
I mean, I reincarnated into a world with magic. Who wouldn't want to do that? Wasn't that the romance of every man? I was undoubtedly from the sage clique.
......But this test only served to further reinforce the fact that I absolutely sucked at emission magic.