Fifteen days. That's all I had left before the trip to the Valthryon border, northeast, in Leon Duchy's lands, where the big trade talks with Elvian Empire's envoy would happen.
The outcome of those talks decides whether I get to meet the fancy Elvian merchant guild or get politely ignored like a background character in a drama.
So yeah, no pressure.
Naturally, that meant my schedule had to be tighter than a noblewoman's corset.
My day now started at the beautiful, soul-crushing hour of 4:30 AM. First thing on the list? Practicing mana circulation.
From 6:00 to 8:00 AM, Clara joins me and teaches me how to not embarrass myself while handling mana.
Then breakfast, aka the only part of the day I don't feel like a lab rat. Right after that, it's off to the training hall where Clara and I practice co-cultivation.
I still don't fully get how it works, but hey, I haven't passed out yet, so I must be improving.
After that I was forced to run laps in the scorching heat like a mad dog suffering from rabies. She called it endurance training.
Post-lunch is strategy time in the duchy study with the usual gang: Gaveric, Sylvia, Orion, and yours truly.
We talk numbers, routes, backup plans, and occasionally try not to kill each other with subtle insults disguised as noble conversation.
Once the brain workout ends, it's back to the training grounds for physical pain... 'ahem', combined training.
Clara oversees it like some kind of goddess of discipline, while Sylvia, of course, tries to murder me elegantly.
According to Clara, these sparring sessions help awaken that mysterious "instinct of familiarity," the thing Juli apparently unlocked that turns your body into a combat cheat sheet.
Finally, when the day's trials are over and I've soaked in a tub like a limp vegetable, I sit down with a pile of books I pre-ordered from the duchy librarian.
Because what's a better bedtime routine than reading about ancient trade policies and Elvian etiquette?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I'm slowly turning into a functioning adult....Which I actually am.
Of course, reading trade policy books before bed is fun and all, if your definition of fun is slow death by boredom, so I naturally slipped in a few from my guilty pleasure pile.
Specifically, more works by the legendary Great Sage Isolde. That woman really knew how to make mana theory sound like something even an idiot like me could grasp.
She used analogies. Most mages wrote like they were competing for who could fit the most Latin-sounding gibberish in a sentence, but not her.
Water. Everything in her theory boiled down to water. Aura pressure, mana density..stuff even I could visualize. Honestly, I might have a scholarly crush.
Anyway, after reading a few of her joint research notes with elves, back when humans and elves didn't want to stab each other, I had one of those rare lightbulb moments. And I mean the real ones, not the kind you fake to end a conversation.
You see, Inspect is different. Most people "feel" changes in their body. You get faster? You notice. You get stronger? Your punch hits harder. But Inspect? It gives me raw numbers. Cold, emotionless data. Strength 52. Combat Power 53. Mana Control 41. Stuff like that. Now, here's where it gets fun, and my theory kicks in.
Let's take Combat Power 53 as an example. It turns out, that exact number can mean two different grades. You heard me. Same number. Different tiers. At 53, someone could be either D- or D. That number's the line in the sand. I call it the breakthrough number.
So if you're at 50 with a D- grade, you can train and slowly grind your way up to 51, then 52, then 53. All good. Your body changes with it. But when you hit 53? Boom. Everything stalls. No more changes. No more improvements.
You can train until your arms fall off, but your stats won't budge. That's because at that point, you're not training to increase the number, you're training to break through the rank itself.
And once you do? That same 53, now marked as a D rank, is way stronger than the D- version. Like, ridiculously stronger. The difference between 53 D- and 53 D is bigger than between 50 D- and 53 D-. Why? Because the system isn't tracking quantity anymore. It's waiting for a state change.
I got to this conclusion through Sage Isolde's analogy reference: water.
When you heat water, the temperature rises, 90°C, 95°C, 99°C. Then it hits 100°C… and just stays there. You keep adding heat, but the temp doesn't budge. Why? Because now, all that energy goes into transforming the water into steam.
The state change phenomenon, heat energy you supply doesn't change temperature but is stored as latent heat, which is called the latent heat of vap- 'ahem'.
And guess what? Steam at 100°C is a lot more dangerous than water at 100°C. It scalds, it burns, it moves engines. It's volatile. That's exactly what happens with tiers. You push and push to get from 53 D- to 53 D, and when the shift happens? Boom. Just like steam. Lethal and terrifying.
Of course, my theory is not perfect. It's way harder to raise your stat number when you're at D than when you're at D-. But steam is apparently easier to heat than water, so… yeah. I'm no Sage Isolde, okay?
Still, if I'm right and Inspect hasn't betrayed me yet, then identifying these breakthrough points is the key.
I don't have to waste time wondering if I'm doing something wrong. If I'm stuck at 53 for two weeks straight? It's not failure. It's a warning. The pot's boiling, and the system's waiting for me to change.
And when I do? Someone's gonna get burned.
.
Fifteen days.
Just fifteen measly days.
And yet, somehow, those fifteen days have been longer than my entire miserable reincarnated life combined.
It's funny. You'd think time would fly when you're training with a beautiful maid, getting sparred to death by a scary genius girl, and studying mana theory till your eyeballs feel like dried grapes. But no. Each day stretched longer than a noble's title at a family banquet.
And what do I have to show for it?
Let's see. I've learned a ridiculous number of combat techniques from Clara. Most of which involve either flipping someone or getting flipped myself. We've been grinding through my mana circuits so hard, I think even my liver is humming.
My mana control finally broke through several bottlenecks. Currently sitting at a very smug 48%. Great, right?
Wrong.
Because while mana's been having a great time leveling up, my combat power has taken the scenic route through the mud.
My initial goal was to at least reach D rank by now. I know it's unreasonable, but considering I've been sweating blood every single day, I expected that much.
But instead, After all this grind, bloodshed, near-death dodging, and Clara glaring at me with those judgmental eyes when I fail a form, all I managed was to scrape past E+ and crawl my way to 51 D-.
One can say I'm not even remotely close to D as there's a bottleneck waiting at 53.
It's like trying to climb a mountain and realizing you've been scaling the decorative rocks outside a noble's garden instead.
Turns out, Inspect, my big cheat skill, doesn't catalyze combat power like it does mana.
That's right, it's a psychological skill, not a physical steroid.
Its combat catalyzing power is Probably on par with a B rank combat skill at best. Which is like saying you brought a wine bottle to a sword fight.
Clara, on the other hand, has been glowing. Literally. Her mana mastery has climbed to 57% and is currently squatting stubbornly at a bottleneck, refusing to budge.
Kind of like a cat who's made a throne out of your laundry pile. Whether she breaks through or not is a mystery even she pretends not to care about, though her occasional sighs during co-cultivation sessions say otherwise.
As for combat? Thanks to Clara drilling me with every known technique in her private collection and Sylvia pounding those techniques into me until my bones learned to react faster than my brain, I can now hold my own against Sylvia for almost thirty full minutes of sparring.
Let that sink in. Thirty minutes.
That's a full episode of drama, minus the commercial breaks. It's honestly a miracle I haven't coughed up a lung yet.
The endurance I've built is the one good news I can report, both my mind and body last longer in battle now, meaning I can enhance myself with mana for extended periods without passing out like a wilted daisy.
Still… it's not enough.
Sylvia's D+ laughs at my D- like it's a joke written by a drunk bard.
No matter how long I hang on, I can't land a winning blow. Not yet. But hey, I can feel the difference. My body reacts faster. My breath doesn't wheeze out of me like I've swallowed a flute. That counts, right?
Even so, disappointment is a clingy little thing. I didn't reach D rank. My goal sits just out of reach, wagging its finger like a smug professor.
But time, the ever-so-patient tyrant, doesn't care about goals unmet.
The time for my departure has come.
Ready or not.