Admission Exam (1) - 10

<Lich King's POV>

I looked down at the boy that was sleeping peacefully before me, his chest rising and falling ever so calmly.

"That cheeky bastard!"

What was the point of the three wishes if he asked for two things with his last wish?

'Whatever, he'll be my heir anyways, so I guess it's acceptable that I can give him more gifts. Now that I think about it, I should probably give him "that" too before he leaves.'

After confirming that what he was going to do was acceptable, he went back to observing the sleeping boy.

...

3 Weeks Later:

<Akimitsu's POV>

I had spent the remainder of the month in the laboratory, training each of my manuals and arts, whilst absorbing my skills.

Also, my sisters had returned from Raikato.

You might be wondering, "Wait, aren't they just going to report him to the Monarch?"

Well, just as they appeared, the Lich King had used his antimagic to sever the spiritual contract between my sisters and the Monarch, making it so that they were only loyal to me now.

I had received the weapons that I had commissioned with my requested item, which had been a material, and I had also received the skill, "Stealth (S)".

Oh yeah, to explain, my sisters had had a spiritual contract with me and the Monarch which basically stated that they would serve me for the rest of their life, but the Monarch's orders took priority.

Usually, a spiritual contract would be unbreakable, as it was made by a combination of mana and spiritual energy used to connect two or more souls, so that if one or more souls broke the contract, their souls would be erased from existence.

Of course, as there was mana in this process, the Lich King's antimagic was a perfect loophole to the system of contracts that I could really exploit in the future when I had greater control over my antimagic.

So now, with my sisters back in their respective earrings, and with my weapons wrapped in layers of cloth and tied onto my back, I left the catacombs as they crumbled behind me, heading for the train station in Leonor.

As I was running, I reviewed what I had done for the past 3 weeks in the catacombs.

I had mercilessly beaten down my own body, and trained it to its limits every single day. This was only possible due to the fact that my body now had the perfect genes, meaning I recovered much faster than other people, taking only four hours to recover everyday when I slept.

Due to this hard work, and because I had the OCD art, I had been able to reach 2 star mastery in the sound technique manual, 3 star mastery in my weapon manual, and what could be considered a 1 star mastery in the use of antimagic.

(I talked about the antimagic manual differently because it was a different type of manual than the other two. As it had nothing to do with stigmas, it couldn't be absorbed into the body, making it so that I had to learn it from looking at the texts and drawings in the book.)

If you were wondering why I read the other two manuals before absorbing them, it was only due to the fact that I was still mentally affected by my reading addiction because it had been something that was so regular to do in my past life, so that was why I still read everything that I could get my hands on.

As I absorbed the manuals, I had been able to see the exact forms being performed in my mind, making it a lot easier for me to learn the two manuals rather than the antimagic one.

So now, I had 3 manuals, 2 arts, and 2 skills instead of the 4 manuals, 1 art, and 2 skill books that I had planned on getting when I first transmigrated here, but it was fine as honestly, my setup now was better than the original setup that I had planned.

Also, I now had a peculiar watch hanging on my left wrist.

Well, it wasn't that peculiar to me as it looked like a simple watch that told the time and had a pop up face, but, what was normal for me was super old fashioned in this world.

You see, watches were now the main form of communication for most people, replacing phones as they just hung on your wrist, so they couldn't get lost, and they weren't as heavy as phones and didn't tend to fall out of your pocket when you sat down.

Of course, the watches now looked completely different from the watches in my past life. They had completely smooth touchscreens that covered about a quarter of the area between a person's elbow and wrist. To me, it just seemed like someone had taken a smartphone and had just wrapped it around a person's arm.

But, even with all of this advancement, the original purposes were still the same, to call, to text, and to keep up on the news. I guess that was still all humanity desired.

On the other hand, the watch on my wrist was a traditional watch, with gears and moving hands that pointed at numbers.

The special thing about this watch, was that the Lich King had modified it.

First, he had given it all the capabilities of the latest smart watches.

If I touched the crystal with two fingers, I would unlock the watch like a phone and a tiny projector inside the face would project the interface of a regular smartwatch on the crystal.

I could then use the crystal as a touchscreen to do what I needed to do, although when I needed to type, the projector would expand even more, projecting a keyboard in front of me in thin air, so that I could type easier as the crystal was too small of a surface.

I could actually use the whole interface in this expanded version too, but I didn't, as using a small screen would help me raise the proficiency of my "Handy" art.

To put it simply, the "Handy" art was an art that improved my hand eye coordination to the extremes when I reached the higher star ranks of it.

At first, I hadn't thought that I would need this, but after remembering that antimagic was activated using hand signs as it wasn't really magic and couldn't be casted, I realized that the handy art was needed, as it would let me learn both antimagic and the other manuals faster, complimenting the OCD art.

Now, the second modification that the Lich King had made on the watch, was that he had embedded a soul gem into it.

Remember when I was talking about how there was a special type of crystal that could show a person their stats? Well, the soul gem was that crystal.

Soul gems were also separated into ranks, from (E-) to (SS).

This was due to the fact that not only did soul gems show a user their stats, they also provided an extra-dimensional space for users to store items.

You can see where this is going, the higher the rating of the soul gem, the more space it had in its extra-dimensional storage.

And, if you had read enough novels, then you could also probably figure out that the higher the rank, the rarer it was.

The specific soul gem that I had in my watch right now was an (A+) ranked stone, boasting a storage space of 2500 meters cubed.

And now that I had the stone with me, I could finally check my stats.

{Name: Kurayami Akimitsu

Gender: Male?

Race: Human (Mixed Blood)

Job: ???

Rank: (E+)

Strength: (D-)

Stamina: (D-)

Agility: (D)

Spiritual Power (Mana): (D)

Intelligence: (D+)

Charm: (F+)

Luck: (E-)

---------------------------------------------------

Manuals:

["The Sound that Resonated with the World" - 2 star - Potential: 10 star]

...

["A Whisper in the Night" - 3 star - Potential: 8 star]

...

---------------------------------------------------

Arts:

[OCD - 5 star - Potential: 5 star]

...

[Handy - 1 star - Potential: 6 star]

...

---------------------------------------------------

Skills:

[Concealment (SS)]

...

[Quick Draw (A)]

...

[Stealth (S)]

...}

'Why the fuck is my gender "Male" with a question mark?'

It was probably because this body had been made artificially, which confused the makers of the status window, and I did look like a girl on the outside with my long hair and underdeveloped 13-year-old figure.

"Sigh, this is gonna be a problem, isn't it?"

I decided to focus on other things for now.

Seeing all the information about my body organized for the first time, I couldn't help but smile happily at how far I had grown.

True, my rank was only (E+) and my mastery in my manuals was pretty low compared to kids who had received their manuals when they were young, but, I was confidant that I could still beat all the other academy recruits.

First off, my rank was only (E+) due to my charm stat, which was expectedly low as I had changed my facial features after all, from that of a handsome young man into one of a extremely plain boy. Probably, the only reason I got a "+" next to the "F" was due to my extremely piercing hair and eye colors.

Secondly, even if I had a lower mastery in my manuals, I had practiced all the beginner forms to almost near perfection (due to my OCD), which as best said by Bruce Lee, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times".

That was why I was now standing confidently in front of the admission table for the academy.

You see, there were two ways to get into the admissions test.

The first was to get a letter, which was the way that the original owner of this body would have gone and it was also the way that the protagonist would get into the admissions test.

The second way was to just be a walk-in.

And that was exactly what I was going to do.

As I stood there, I couldn't help but think that this could be either the worst or best decision in my life, after all, I was initiating a plan that was a dangerous and extremely risky gamble that would decide the course of my entire quest for survival.

"Sigh, I can only hope that things go my way."