Episode 2
Before setting a course of action for the future, there was something I needed to confirm.
That was the current state of my body. They say that knowing yourself and your enemy will lead to a hundred victories, and I knew quite a bit about my enemy from reading the original work. So now, all that was left was to know myself.
It was important to know the true abilities of Raphael Isaac, not just a superficial introduction.
The Isaac family valued martial arts, as can be seen from their emphasis on swordsmanship as the greatest virtue of a noble.
It was natural for there to be a large training ground in the house. I went out to the training ground to stretch and move my body lightly.
“Brother, what are you doing?”
At that moment, my younger brother appeared. To be precise, Raphael’s younger brother. His name was Jericho and his surname was Isaac, just like Raphael. Jericho had a face similar to Raphael’s, but he looked a bit rougher. If Raphael had a thug-like face, Jericho had a gangster-like face.
He tried to look more manly and tough, and growing muscles was one of his methods.
With his large build and roughly grown hair, he gave off an impression more like a mercenary leader than a nobleman.
“What are you doing, coming to exercise?”
“Haha, is that what you call it, brother?”
“Yeah. I’m a noble, but I need to train from time to time.”
“Now? It doesn’t seem to have much meaning. Why don’t you just give up?”
Jericho was strong. He had fallen for the third brother’s instigation that if he could beat Raphael in a fight, he could take the position of the noble, and had spent all day swinging his sword.
His skills easily surpassed those of ordinary knights. It was difficult to say a word to him, even if he subtly put me down.
But if I get hit once, it’ll hurt. I need to be careful for now.
After scanning me up and down, Jericho nodded and walked out of the training ground, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. I breathed a sigh of relief after confirming that he had left.
“Phew…”
Why does he look so fierce?
If things go well, I might not have to, but if they go wrong, I’ll have to fight him for the position of the noble.
Oh well. I guess I’ll have to work hard.
First, I checked the state of my body. I lifted the iron lump in the training ground and ran a few laps. I quickly checked my strength, muscular endurance, lung capacity, and so on.
“Huff! Huff!”
Gasping for breath with his chin raised to the sky, Raphael’s body was in a sorry state. Breathing was difficult.
Nevertheless, there was a setting that he had trained hard when he was young, so there was some expectation. But to his dismay, there was no difference from an ordinary person.
Even lifting a weight that wasn’t much seemed to slip through his fingers, and running for a short distance made it feel like his lungs were about to burst.
“But I still have to do it in advance.”
Going to the academy could lead to rapid growth in many ways.
But there was one exception, and that was stamina.
It developed as much as the time invested and the days of training with sweat. Whether he worked hard here or at the academy, the efficiency was similar.
So, he had to do it in advance.
The time spent at the academy was more precious than the time here.
He endured the pain.
There are several pieces of advice given when starting exercise. The most common one is to take it easy. It was said that it gives the neuromuscular system time to adapt, and at the beginning of exercise, there is severe muscle pain and various other reasons.
“Hack! Hack!”
He overdid it from the first day. I gritted my teeth and endured the pain. I might have to fight that guy later and lose the position of the noble. But where was the luxury to take it easy?
His belly was filled with air like a balloon, and he was worried that it might burst. Sweat dripped. The sensation of wet clothes sticking to his skin was unpleasant.
I wanted to give up, but I endured. I have to suffer now to suffer less later. I stopped after running for a while. It was too much now. Looking at Jericho’s face, I felt a sense of crisis and ran excessively.
I have to run the same tomorrow, but running more here will be detrimental. It’s time to stop pushing my body to the limit.
That was the limit of my physical ability.
The next thing to check was how to develop mana with this body.
I washed my sweaty body and asked Coromang for a few small mana stones.
I received a few mana stones, which serve as batteries supplying mana to the magic tools in the mansion.
I had to cultivate mana. Whatever I did at the academy, mana was useful.
Talent for mana was divided into three categories:
- Innate mana capacity.
- Cognitive ability for mana.
- Control over owned mana.
Depending on each innate talent, the career of a mana user changed, and cognitive ability was crucial for manifesting mana. In fact, mana capacity always increased with diligent training, and control was similar. It was proportional to the time spent training mana.
However, cognitive ability was different.
Innate talent was important. In other words, it was a field that was difficult to improve through effort alone.
Usually, cognitive ability determined one’s talent for mana. It was often cited as a reason for giving up on cultivating mana if one lacked cognitive ability. If it wasn’t innate, it was considered a dead end.
“Right now, it seems like I can’t do anything with this body.”
Unfortunately, the novel did not mention Raphael’s mana cognitive ability.
In other words, it could be assumed that Raphael’s body in this novel had no magical talent.
However, knowing the rough setting of this novel, I knew how to develop cognitive ability.
Thud!
With my eyes closed, I playfully tossed the mana stones in my hand into the air.
Mana stones the size of a fingertip spread in all directions. Then, I stood still and waited for 5 seconds.
I took a deep breath. I took a deep breath.
After confirming that my breathing filled the room, I began my training.
With my eyes closed, I detected the extremely subtle vibrations of the mana in the floor.
Mana flowed throughout my entire body, but my fingertips were particularly sensitive. Holding my breath, I gently touched the floor with my fingertips, feeling the vibrations emitted by the mana in the stones.
Slowly, like a snail crawling, I moved along the floor.
It wasn’t just blindly groping the floor to find the stones; it was an activity of sensing the stones and moving in their direction.
With my eyes closed, I didn’t rejoice in finding the stones. What mattered was the process of detecting the stones.
I moved my finger very slowly. Right after that, something touched the tip of my finger. When I opened my eyes, the stone was clenched in my hand.
“Huh?”
I was prepared for at least 30 minutes on my first attempt. I thought I might spend over two hours in vain. Even if I couldn’t detect the stones and didn’t even make an attempt, I promised not to be disappointed.
However, somehow, within less than three minutes, I grabbed the stone.
I wondered if I accidentally threw the stone nearby, but before three minutes passed again, I found the stone.
This was strange. A novice who couldn’t even manifest mana had achieved something like this.
“Is this… possible?”
In my previous life, I didn’t learn magic, let alone manipulate mana. Well, because I lived in the modern world.
After spending my entire life like that, I opened my eyes to find myself in Raphael’s body. So, I assumed that everyone else would be at a similar level, but that wasn’t the case.
Raphael’s body contained a considerable amount of mana.
Moreover, the fact that I immediately found the stone meant that I had a talent for mana perception.
Since this guy probably didn’t diligently practice mana, it was purely an innate talent.
Faintly, a path seemed to unfold.
****
Jericho Isaac was the second in the noble family. And this meant he inherited nothing from the family.
If his biological father had left a will or something, he might have received a share of the estate, but his father died at the hands of some dark sorcerer.
Nothing was left in his hands.
Just a pauper.
At that time, my younger sister, Evelyn Isaac, said,
“If you fight and win against Raphael, you can have it all. I’ll help you. Let’s take everything together.”
In Jericho’s eyes, Evelyn was a charming yet lazy girl. She wouldn’t reach out for an impossible tree. Her saying this meant it was worth a try.
The position of the family was promised to Jericho, while the actual power was promised to Evelyn.
It was possible because they wanted different things. So, they made a pact to share the family’s power, and together, they devoured the household. Jericho had his own talent for swordsmanship, and Evelyn was intimate with the family’s personnel.
Jericho honed his sword skills.
Many in the family supported Evelyn.
Now, even if Jericho joined hands with Evelyn and challenged Raphael for the family’s position, there wouldn’t be much opposition.
“But now, what are you going to do?”
This morning, Jericho encountered Raphael in the training ground.
Encountering him in the training ground was a first since childhood had passed.
Back then, both he and Raphael trained hard. It was because his father regulated the training enough not to be too harsh.
However, as time passed, the time came to endure pain to grow further. Despite not wanting to, he had to do it, endure it even if it was tough. Raphael ran away at that time, and Jericho stayed until the end.
The seeds sown back then grew into a tree.
Raphael was at best mediocre. No, judging solely by sword skills, he might not even be third-rate at that time. In contrast, Jericho was now a respectable knight.
If they were to fight right now, he was confident he could finish it in less than five minutes. Yet, he endured quietly because of Evelyn’s opposition.
She said the real battle involved dragging everyone in and would happen later. She asked him to wait a little longer.
How much longer now? Even generously estimating, it wouldn’t be more than a year.
“Do you sense anything?”
He realized that the plan might have leaked, but Jericho chuckled. What could that scoundrel Raphael do? The only surprising thing was that he felt restless.
Raphael lacked patience to the point of being nonexistent.
At the slightest difficulty, he would throw away his sword, and a little suffering would make him rush out of the training ground. It was a surprise that such a guy changed in just one day. Even though it was hard and painful, he trained his body.
“No, there’s nothing to worry about. He’ll give up soon.”
Even if he sincerely changed his mind, it was too late. There was nothing Raphael could do.
