Book [1]

-Ding -Dong!

"Coming!"

Hurriedly putting on my pants, I made my way towards the door.

Opening the door, a man with a blue jacket held onto a large package.

"Rank 1750, Ren Dover, package delivery."

Handing over the large package, the man held out his tablet and I swiftly signed it.

-Clack!

Closing the door, I curiously pulled the tape off the box.

The first thing I saw was a white letter that was neatly nested on top of the other items.

Opening the letter I quickly went through the contents

===

Hi Ren!

How is school? Have you made any friends yet? When are you coming back home?

Come visit us often, your little sister is waiting for you.

By the way, I sent some things that you might need.

Kiss, Kiss your one and only beautiful mother.

P.S

Daddy also misses you, so work hard! [heart emoji][Heart emoji][Heart emoji]

===

Ah.

Yes, I in fact did reincarnate to overly protective parents.

During the time I was in Clayton ridge, I would occasionally receive texts from them, and whenever I texted back, the response would always come within seconds.

Most of the time they would just randomly text me the weirdest thing or nag about how I should train more so that I would one day take over the guild.

I can't say I hated this feeling though.

As my family left me early in my previous life, I had long lost familial warmth. Now that I have it back, I don't want to part ways with it.

Opening the box, I quickly separated things into two piles.

Useless and Useful.

Although I have only known my family for a week, I can already tell from what I've seen so far that they've definitely sent junk.

And I was exactly right.

The first thing I pulled was a large shirt that said 'Mama's boy' on it.

Like hell, I'm wearing this!

Throwing the shirt at the useless pile, I quickly checked the rest of the content.

There were many things packed inside, from bags to clothes and other useful things that could be of use to me later on.

Slowly I separated the useful and useless stuff, that my mom sent.

"Phew... That should be it"

Wiping off the sweat that had accumulated on my forehead, I stood up and lazily stretched my arms.

"Huh"

Just as I was about to leave, I caught a glimpse of something inside the box from the corner of my eye.

"A book?"

Looking at the last thing inside of the box, I couldn't help but be confused. It was a red book with no cover or illustration on the front.

From what I've observed so far, whomever Ren Dover was before I took over, was definitely not a book lover.

In fact, it seemed that he hated reading, as my new mother seemed to have been really surprised when I asked her for some books.

She wanted to send me a congratulatory gift for managing to enroll in the lock, and as I don't necessarily know them that well I only asked them for a couple of books as a gift.

Flipping through the book, I was left speechless as there was nothing written in the book. It was completely blank.

"Perhaps it's a diary"

I thought as I threw the book into the useless pile.

Makes more sense now.

Glancing around the room, I checked the time. It was around six in the afternoon.

-Gurgle.

"I guess I'll head to the canteen first, and then I'll go to the gym after that"

Seeing how my stomach was growling in hunger, I decided to go to the canteen to eat some food before heading to the gym.

Packing up my bag, I took the keys and swiftly left the room.

-Click.

With a click, the door closed, and I left for the canteen.

As I left, inside of the room, engravings started to appear on an inconspicuous red book that sat on top of a pile of junk in the corner of the room.

'The luminescent swordsman'

...

I gotta say, the food in the canteen was amazing.

I only spent 15 U and I got a meal that would've made it into the Michelin list back in my world.

It was that good.

After indulging myself a bit more, I quickly made my way towards the training ground.

As I arrived at the training grounds, I couldn't help but once again be impressed by the facility. Even though I had already been here today, because I was too tired, I didn't really have a good look at the facility.

"Just how much did they spend on this?"

I couldn't even fathom how much money was poured into creating this facility. The amount of money needed to create such an environment would be well over a couple of billion U.

The gravity room itself cost around 50 million U, and here they have a whopping 5 of them.

In hindsight, it is sort of understandable as to why they would invest so much in this facility. Although they were teenagers, they were all future pillars that would help protect humanity from the demon invasion. Why wouldn't humanity invest in them?

If they wanted to maximize their speed of progress, such a facility was needed.

It was around 19:00 and the facility was mostly empty.

But just because the facility was empty, it didn't mean that it was always going to be like this.

In the future, there will be lots more people using the training facility. It was just because today was the first day that barely anyone was present in the facility. Most of them were hanging out with their new buddies they made today or were just too tired to train.

Because of my relatively low ranking, not a lot of people wanted to associate with me, hence why I have nothing better to do than just train.

Well, I couldn't complain, as I liked being by myself.

-Clang! -Clang! -Clang!

As I was stretching, In the corner of the room I could hear the sound of metal clashing against metal.

Without even needing to look I knew who it was

"Kevin"

Like all protagonists, he was a training fanatic and trained more than 8 hours a day.

Just seeing his work ethic, made me speechless. How in the world am I gonna catch up to him when he's constantly training every day.

Letting out a sigh I took out my katana and started practicing.

Swish! Swish!

...

Walking along the corridor Donna checked the time on her tablet.

She just got off a meeting and was quite tired. Thinking back at the meeting that she had just attended, Donna couldn't help but slightly curse at those old foxes for continuously wasting her time with those pointless meetings.

Most of the meeting time was wasted in discussions regarding the budget allocation and which subject should have their budget increased and which one should have it lowered.

After one hour of pointless arguing, Donna couldn't take it anymore and excused herself.

As she was walking, she briefly glanced at the window which directly faced the training ground.

The first thing that caught her sight was the figure of a handsome boy gracefully sparring against one of the training dolls.

It was truly a mesmerizing sight.

Even Donna got lost in the sight for a couple of seconds before snapping out of it.

"How interesting"

She couldn't explain why, but whenever she saw that boy's swordplay she would occasionally get mesmerized.

Since the first time she laid eyes on him, she started paying close attention to him. She could tell from a glance that he was going to make it big in the future.

Swiping the card that led to the training facility, she entered.

It was only after she entered the training facility that she noticed another student practicing his swings.

At first, she was delighted.

As a teacher who doesn't like it when their student works hard?

But as she saw his weird movements, she was reminded of the boy she saw at the training session today.

"He's still wasting time doing that nonsense?"

Shaking her head, she moved to where Kevin was.

"I have to say, whenever I see your swordsmanship I can't help but get mesmerized by it"

Startled, Kevin stopped what he was doing and looked at the enchanting figure that was gracefully walking towards his direction.

"Miss Donna? Why are you here?"

"Why can't I be here?"

Tilting her head sideways, she teasingly looked at Kevin who was sweating all over.

"You know, it's good that you're practicing against the dolls, but you should stop that for now."

"Sorry?"

Looking at Donna in confusion, Kevin lowered his sword.

"From what I observed your body can't keep up with your brain."

Taking out her tablet, she quickly swiped up and a holographic image of the dummy appeared before her.

"When you were sparring, I observed, that your body has a hard time following where your eyes look. Here have a look at this."

Using her tablet she quickly tapped on the practice dummy before her, instantly several red spots appeared on the holographic image, with numbers hovering above them.

"These dummies not only are extremely durable but they also have state-of-the-art technology installed in them. They can measure the amount of strength you exert, how fast your blows are, and how accurate they are. Truly an amazing piece of engineering!"

Pointing directly at the numbers above the red dots, Donna looked at Kevin.

"You see this? This number tells you how accurate your blows are. Right now your highest number is 85%. Although the 15% you missed may be as small as a millimeter, it could dictate whether you kill your enemy or not."

Swiping to the right, a small detailed table appeared in front of Kevin. Several numbers were displayed before him revealing how much power he used when he attacked the dummy, and how consistent he was every time.

"Using state-of-the-art eye-tracking software, we can directly predict where you will hit. Not only does it take your line of sight into consideration, but it also reads your body language such as which direction your body is facing, the angle at which you are swinging and many other considerable factors that can accurately determine where you will hit. The numbers that are currently displayed measure the level of accuracy your hits have when taking into account all those factors previously mentioned"

Staring at the table for a while, Kevin let out a long breath and looked at Donna.

"Than what should I do?"

"What should you do? It's actually not that difficult of a problem"

Pointing at the Gravity room on the other side of the training facility she said

"I recommend you tamper your body inside of the gravity room so that your body can keep up with your brain."

"Understood!"

Wiping off the sweat that had accumulated on his body, he thanked Donna for her advice and quickly made his way towards the gravity room.

Seeing how determined Kevin was, Donna couldn't help but let out a satisfied smile.

"Now it's the problem child's turn"

Turning her head, her sight quickly drifted towards the boy who was mindlessly sheathing and unsheathing his katana.

"Hey, you!"

Seeing how he was mindlessly doing the same thing, Donna couldn't take it anymore and made her way towards him.

"?"

Tilting his head sideways, the young boy looked in the direction of where the voice came.

Immediately his whole body froze, as beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

Looking at him, Donna actually found the scene rather funny.

Glancing at the boy up and down, Donna scrutinized the boy before her. Jet black hair, crystal blue eyes, and well-defined features. His body was on the skinnier side, but he was definitely not ugly.

Well, as she looked at him, she couldn't help but recall Jin and Kevin which made her bitterly smile.

There was simply no comparison.

"Tell me what you're doing?"

"Miss Donna, I am practicing"

"You call that practicing?"

Sighing, she looked at the boy and said in an annoyed tone

"Look, mindlessly sheathing and unsheathing the sword like that is utterly stupid. What can you hope to achieve by doing that?"

Scratching his head embarrassedly, the boy's eyes shifted to the side as he spoke in a barely audible voice.

"You see, whenever I try to pull out my katana it would always get stuck inside my scabbard, and it happens quite often so..."

As Donna was a superhuman blessed with mana, it wasn't hard for her to make out what the boy was saying. But when she heard what he said, she wished she hadn't.

Sword stuck inside of the scabbard?

How can you make such a stupid mistake?

No. In the first place, how can someone who can't even pull out a katana from the scabbard be able to enroll in the lock?

Millions of questions emerged in her mind as she speechlessly looked at the boy before her.

"Haaa. Just get a better scabbard or change sword. Stop wasting your time like this okay?"

"Okay"

Feeling like she would get a massive headache if she stayed any longer, she turned around and left.

Just as she was about to leave the facility, she took a quick peek behind her.

She was left speechless once again.

"Is he deaf or something?"

The same boy she just talked to was doing the same thing again! It was like her advice never entered his ears!

"Fine suit yourself, if that's how you want to play I'm fine with it"

It's not like it was her duty to personally supervise him. He was already 16 years old, his life was his responsibility. She had already taken her time off work to give him advice, but he decided to ignore it. Her job was to guide students, and if those students ignored her guidance it was up to them not her.

As she left, she directly put Ren on her blacklist.