Stop Writing! [Magical Academy Litrpg]

As his training session came to an end, Alec looked out of the window of his room to see the moon hanging about 50 degrees above the horizon. The outside of the infirmary’s window was blocked tightly by a batch of maple trees, stopping him from scouting his surroundings by eye. A gentle wind made its way inside, waving around the curtains like the waves on an ocean.

He was currently lying down on the ground, trying to gather his breath.

Using the pen, he created the potion 2 more times to repeat his workout 7 times in total. Technically, this workout would be equivalent to 7 days of progression. However, as he didn’t know how the stamina potion worked, Alec didn’t know the actual effectiveness.

Lying in his bed with his hands joined together behind his head, Alec watched the ceiling. His mana was running pretty low, a little less than two-fifths of his resources remained.

‘Before my mana runs out, I want to try one more thing,’ he monologued internally. He wasn’t aware of how mana-efficient his ability was, and he didn’t know if he could infinite mana loop himself into godhood. However, he highly doubted that. The usage conditions of The Author’s Pen had been pretty balanced up until now.

Taking out The Pen, he wrote another potion into existence.

[Very Low Mana Regeneration Potion]

According to his expectations, this potion would cost him a small amount of mana, about one-fifth of his mana pool. However, it would help him get back to maximum faster.

‘I just hope that this doesn’t interfere with the mana juice they are giving me,’ he thought. ‘Mana regeneration shouldn’t be a potion that directly infuses me with mana, that would just be called a mana potion. This should instead help me ramp up my natural regeneration speed.’

Gulping down the potion, Alec’s throat burned with blueberry flavor. The potion’s thickness was like that of a milkshake, making it quite relaxing to drink.

‘I’ve been trying a lot of new flavors because of these potions lately,’ he thought before trying to feel the changes in his body. Unfortunately, he couldn’t feel anything. ‘My mana sense or whatever might be weak.’

Alec didn’t worry, as the pen hadn’t disappointed him so far. It was truly a good special ability for an author like him.

‘This must be what that book meant by my soul gifting me my golden spoon...’

Closing his eyes, Alec sunk into a deep sleep.

***

As another morning passed, Alec noticed something strange about his situation.

‘Why am I still being held in this infirmary?’ was his question. He had already healed perfectly yesterday. He felt as healthy as he could get, full of mana and energy... However, he was still being held in the infirmary. Even when the doctor came for a check-up, he didn’t seem to have any comments on his health.

‘Are they keeping me here just in case? I wonder why the doctor didn’t answer when I asked why I was still being held here,’ he thought. During the morning check-up, he utilized his broken Toalqeshi (which he had learned to be the name of the language.), to ask the doctor. However, the doctor didn’t pay him any attention at all, not even looking his way.

‘There’s something very fishy about this. What would be the reason for them to keep a student like me under control? Was Alec a troublemaker? Did he offend someone outside the acad- inside the academy?

Scratching the back of his head, Alec cursed silently. Unfortunately, he hadn’t learned any curse words yet, as he wouldn’t be able to let Ariel dirty her divine mouth with curs-

‘Fuck. Is this how it feels to be in love? It’s so unnervingly restrictive!’ Alec thought. He scratched his left arm unknowingly and winced in pain.

However, the next moment, the door of the infirmary creaked open. It seemed that whoever was oiling it had abandoned their duties.

“Hi, Alec,” Ariel said with a bright smile on her face. Seeing Alec move around seemed to make her happy.

“Good morn,” Alec said, pronouncing the word “good” ever so slightly better than yesterday.

“You still make short that word,” Ariel said with a frown on her face. She had previously gotten angry at him because he was constantly shortening the word for morning.

Alec’s reasoning for this was, that it was hard to pronounce the second part, so he just dropped it.

“Hey,” Alec said. His previous thoughts weren’t getting him anywhere, and he had to figure out what was going on. “Were we... unity before?” He asked. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to say “lovers”, so he had to switch to another word.

Hearing his words, Ariel blushed for a second. She facepalmed and opened her lips quickly.

“??? ??? ??? Don’t say it that way. That mean something else. ‘lovers’...” she explained. Alec noted down the blunder he had made but didn’t fluster over it. He waited for an answer to his question without saying anything. “Yes. We were.”

‘Oh shit... It seems like the previous Alec has left some serious baggage over to me...’ Alec thought. He didn’t like having such a connection with someone he barely knew. Although he didn't feel any wariness toward Ariel because of his condition, he couldn’t just start liking her as if he were the same person. ‘Not to mention, I’m technically not even Alec. I genuinely find it repulsing to take over a relationship from someone else.’

“Let’s do learning,” Alec said while pointing at the book in Ariel’s hand, changing the topic. Seeing his way of changing the topic, Ariel’s brows seemed to furrow bitterly. However, she quickly regained the composure of an experienced lecturer.

“I want, learn uh...” he started another sentence, however, he couldn’t find a way to describe the word ‘numbers’. Bringing his hand up, he lifted his fingers one by one. Fortunately, Ariel was a smart girl. She quickly picked up on his intentions and started riffling through the book. As if she was the one who had written them there, she found the page where the numbers were shown and started teaching.

‘Hopefully, by the end of this session, I’ll finally be able to read my basic stats...’

***

Another two weeks passed by quickly. By that point, Alec felt pretty comfortable with the language. He could leave this infirmary right now and start talking to people, learn new things, and most importantly, figure out what mistake he was supposed to fix in this world.

However, a huge roadblock had hit him. He was not being let out. The only people he could contact were Ariel, the doctor, and the nurses. None of which seemed to answer his questions about anything other than his health or his studies. The only person who seemed somewhat conflicted about keeping him in the dark was Ariel, however, she also didn’t cave in to his questions.

His attempts at leaving the infirmary to go around wandering were also met with failure, as there were guardsmen watching the exit of the infirmary at all times, keeping him from leaving.

“This sucks...” He muttered to himself before switching to thinking. ‘There must be something going on for them to be holding me captive like this. I wonder if Ariel is lying about being Alec’s lover, or is she simply incapable of doing anything about the situation...’

However, even amidst all this, he hadn’t been sitting around like a chicken all this time. After all, he had a reality-altering soul artifact called The Author’s Pen, and he had been abusing it to the best of his ability.

Initially, he could only do 7 workouts every day, which was good but not enough in Alec’s mind. After some much-needed optimization and a seemingly increasing mana pool, he had managed to increase the amount to 15 workouts every day, which would take him about 7 and a half hours every day.

By now, his body had already bulked with strength. He didn’t actually know how strong he was compared to a normal human, which made him reluctant to try anything out of pocket. However, after studying with Ariel, he managed to get a hold of the information he wanted.

[Name: Alec Greenwood

Strength: 21

Agility: 19

Health: 22

Mind: 20

Mana: 25]

According to what Ariel had said, the average adult male without any enhancements would be around 10 in all of these stats. The first time he was able to read the status screen, Alec noted his stats to be overall better than the average human male by about fifty to seventy percent. Which made him wonder what the previous Alec had done to become like this. The only outliers were his mind and mana stats. While the former was 12, which was pretty low compared to his other stats, the latter was 22, probably putting him closer to the right end of the bell curve.

‘Huh... My mind stat has also risen a lot... Why is that? Is it because of Ariel’s spell?’ Alec contemplated. Then his thoughts shifted away.

The increase in his physical stats allowed him to notice the efficiency of the [very low stamina potion].

Already, he could do some pretty acrobatic moves that he couldn’t even think of doing in his previous life. After the last training session, he had even managed to do a one-handed hand-stand pushup, which he wasn’t sure was possible for any human to do back on Earth. If he were to put it into numbers, he had technically worked out for less than half a year, which was nowhere near enough to become this strong.

This also made him wonder if the effectiveness of the stats was exponential rather than linear. 21 strength didn’t seem that strong. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t just two times stronger than the average man.

‘I wish I could get more information from Ariel before doing this, but there is no other choice,’ he thought to himself. Getting up from his bed, he walked up to the window and looked outside. The full moon hung above the horizon at a 50-degree angle, again.

“Let’s see,” he muttered in English before readying himself.