Stop Writing! [Magical Academy Litrpg]

Two days after his tests inside the infirmary, Alec decided that it was time for him to start his plans. The more time he spent min-maxing his growth by manual training, the more he felt uncomfortable.

Something was brewing under the academy’s calm surface, and Alec could almost smell it. His instincts as a web novel author told him that he wouldn’t spend his years dilly-dallying around with superpowered college students.

‘The unfortunate thing is, I still can’t figure out what’s happening,’ he thought. Although the uncomfortable feeling was there, any clues that might point towards the sinister reality of this academy seemed to be completely absent from his mind. Almost like that feeling of confusion when you knew you forgot something, but couldn’t remember it no matter how hard you tried.

“Hey, these days...” Alec muttered as he scratched his cheek with The Author’s Pen. Since he had transmigrated into this world, he had started feeling a strong sense of disdain toward any other pen than The Author’s Pen, which fortunately had the ability to write just like any other pen. “Have you noticed something weird these days?”

Hearing his question, Evan stopped doodling on the surface of his desk out of boredom and turned to look at him. There was a bitter expression on his face, which caused Alec to raise his brow.

“What..?” he asked.

“Nothing! Nothing...” Evan muttered in response. He slowly turned back to his doodle before continuing. “No, there’s nothing weird at all! Everything is perfectly fine and dandy,” he mumbled before stealing some glances in Alec’s direction. “You... You want some coffee? You know... To take the edge off? Get the day going. Something like that...“

“Uh-huh...” Alec reluctantly nodded. Seeing Evan’s confused and weird state, Alec decided not to push his chances any further. ”Sure! Coffee is great, you know. Makes you energetic... Or something.”

“Yeah...”

“...”

“On second thought,” Alec said. He couldn’t bear the awkward atmosphere inside the room anymore. “I would rather go do some training. See you guys later.”

After Alec dashed out of the room, everyone sighed deeply and dropped their endeavors one by one.

“You guys think he is going to..?” Thomas muttered.

“Yeah...” Alexei answered quietly. However, suddenly, Evan slammed his desk and got up, toppling the chair he was sitting on in the meantime.

“I am going to follow him. Who is coming with me?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door and left the room. Thomas also seemed interested, as he pushed aside his notebooks and got up before following Evan out.

“Guys! We have to do this assignm— Never mind...” he sighed, unenthusiastically following along. In an instant, the dorm room was left completely empty...

***

“A private room, please,” Alec requested before handing over his student ID card. No matter how much his heart hurt for it, money was made to be spent, and he had no intentions of sneaking into the infirmary anymore.

“There you go,” the clerk said before placing Alec’s ID card on a rectangular glass surface. The surface shone with a green light before the man gave him the card back. “You can use your card to enter one of the unoccupied rooms.”

“Thanks.”

After walking through the corridor that facilitated the private rooms, most of which had red lights blaring on top of their doors, indicating that they were occupied, Alec found an empty one and entered.

The insides were simple. There were a couple of different training dummies on one side of the room, piled up like a bunch of logs. In the middle of the room was a separating, reinforced glass. There was a metal door embedded into that glass, which faced a neutral training dummy standing right in the middle of the training chamber.

‘Huh. I guess if you want to change the dummy, you have to change it by hand,’ he thought before walking up to a bunch of crystals.

These crystals were used to switch between and adjust training modes, most of which Alec had no intention of using for now.

Settling on a chair, Alec took out The Author’s Pen and started readying his potions. His mana was back to full, and he had a very low mana regeneration potion going, which would help him create these new potions.

[Very Low Strength Upgrade Potion]

[Very Low Agility Upgrade Potion]

[Very Low Health Upgrade Potion]

[Very Low Mind Upgrade Potion]

[Very Low Mana Upgrade Potion]

Immediately, Alec’s mana dipped down to a fifth of his mana pool, making him stumble in place. Funnily enough, this was a kind of training too. The mage would suddenly unleash their mana into the atmosphere to get used to the effects of quick expenditure. Although it was an unpleasant feeling, there was no way to guarantee that he wouldn’t need to do the same in a real fight.

Seeing the respectively purple, green, red, turquoise, and blue potions side by side, Alec felt emotional. He had been waiting for this moment since the time he had arrived in this world. That sweet moment of finally grabbing the low-hanging fruits of his training had finally come.

First, Alec brought up his system’s only working panel.

[Name: Alec Greenwood

Strength: 22

Agility: 20

Health: 23

Mind: 23

Mana: 27]

After doing more extensive research, Alec finally managed to get his hands on some information about the system.

Apparently, almost everyone other than himself had access to levels and skills in this world.

There were different ways of gaining experience. These ways included: training, studying, killing other beings, overcoming emotional trauma, and pretty much anything that would help a human develop in certain ways. Obviously, after accumulating a certain amount of EXP, the person would level up, granting them 2 stat points for every level.

The average adult male would have 10 in each of their stats without any outside enhancements. However, this was without those level-ups. Usually, the average citizen would be around levels 5 to 10, granting them some amount of enhancement in their chosen ability.

Each country had its own regulations about the distribution of points. This was particularly interesting, as no one could see another person’s system panels. Even then, some countries with strict rules would test their citizen’s capabilities to get a picture of their stat distributions.

A farmer, for example, would be forced to split their points between their strength and health stats to make them better at what they were doing. And if they fell below a certain measure in these categories, they would be executed to be made an example of.

Still, things were different for middle and upper-class citizens. People could spend their attributes on whatever they wanted. This freedom brought with it the concept of classes to the societies of this world. People who focused their points mainly on strength and health were called warriors, for example, while people who mainly spent points on mind and mana were called mages. Obviously, as these classifications were arbitrary, there would be tons of variations in them.

When it came to the mages, or any other classes with methodical education systems, people would be readied to specialize in those classes from childhood. Even if they weren’t taught magic, they would be forced to hold off their stat points until they peaked in their natural growth, and would only be allowed to allocate after the age of 18. Alec’s friends were this way too. Most people would reach somewhere around 15 on each of their stats through practice before they allocated their points.

According to some surveys done in the past, the average academy student would be around level 15. Still, these surveys were mostly flawed, as nobody could exactly confirm the data given by the students.

Apparently, level 100 was sort of a boundary in this world. Any person who reached level 100 would be regarded as a legend and would be awarded a title, abandoning their surnames in the process.

Alec could genuinely see it. As far as he understood, the stats didn’t work linearly. Rather, they were exponential. Having a hundred points in a certain stat would probably be a few times better than having 99.

The leveling system would give people the ability heavily to specialize in their own areas, making them incredibly strong. Thus, jack-of-all-trades types of builds weren’t really a thing. Most of the time, someone who had 40 in all of their stats would get the shit beaten out of them by a person who had 160 in one stat and 10 in all the others.

“Then still,” Alec muttered to himself. “I don’t have this particular problem. Which means I’ll have to construct my development plan from zero. A path that is different from everyone else's.”

“But for now, I should focus on what’s in front of me.”

Placing the newly formed potions down, Alec walked up to the training chamber.

“Now that I think about it, why don’t I try these for a little bit? They should help me measure my capabilities...”