It was another morning, and this time the last day he could call himself a healthy student. Tomorrow, he would return to class as usual.
He looked around: another single compact chamber, roughly 3 meters by 4 meters, small enough for one man, a squeaky pine floorboard, a small rectangular window with a rusted steel grille.
His room. As Lucian woke up from his narrow iron-frame bed, he took in the heavy old writing desk beneath the window, the small oil lamp, the iron stove, the wardrobe, and the storage crate.
"Sigh..." Lucian sighed, looking back at the room. "So this is the rumored West Annex Dormitory." His ash-gray eyes looked through the window, filled with complicated feelings.
The West Annex Dormitory. What people called the Ghost Wing. A dormitory for bankrupt nobles and their kind, according to the original story. The original MC, Arthur, had never set foot in this place, which meant it basically didn't exist in the narrative, and yet here it was, real and standing before him.
Now, faced with the unfamiliar room, the unfamiliar body, the unfamiliar things surrounding him, it all felt unreal, especially when he thought back on everything that had happened so far.
He untied his white cotton undershirt and refocused his attention, revealing the stab wound on his chest, pale pink and not fully closed.
"And she really stabbed me." He clicked his tongue. Thanks to his Toxic Immunity passive skill, his recovery had sped up, and he could use this last free day to improve himself.
Right then, in the quiet of that relaxed morning, his phone buzzed and vibrated, screen lighting up. Lucian stood up and picked it off the table.
"Rest well, darling. I will ensure nobody disturbs your recovery."
Of course it was his beloved fiancée. The corner of his mouth twitched. "You only replied a whole day later? And 'rest well'?" He snorted. Clearly Seraphina had not forgotten his warning about why he had let a stranger in and allowed the situation to spiral.
But what could he do? She was the student council president. Even if he reported Derrick and blamed Seraphina, the committee would just call him in, verify the facts, and go through other useless procedures that wasted his time.
"Tsk, let's just not think about that." Lucian shook his head and put his phone down. He would use this free time wisely.
"First, thanks to the system, I have some backup powers right now." He glanced at the hovering transparent screen: four passive skills, which was a great start, of course. That was exactly why, the moment he understood how the system worked, he had moved fast to press that advantage. But it wasn't enough.
"Now, as far as I remember, the first major event would be..."
A vein bulged at his temple as he dug through his memory of the original novel. It described a Low-Sector Surge, a weather-shock event that would cause a dormant chasm to collapse and release a pack of monsters, roughly rank 2.
"Beyond my rank." Lucian muttered. It was set to happen around 2 to 3 weeks from the current "Day 1" in the story. As for where the original protagonist, Arthur, would be by then...
"From what I remember, at this chapter he was still a rising noble commoner who had found success in the class-rank mock battles?" Lucian tilted his head and rubbed his temple. Around this same time, Arthur had also caught the attention of Lucian's beloved fiancée, Seraphina, who saw him as a future pawn.
Which meant that to prepare for the incoming disaster, besides picking up passive skills, he also needed to train and build his strength.
"That should be doable." He pushed himself up, then started recalling the foundational training routine Arthur used in the early chapters: the Three Pillars of Iron.
A physical conditioning routine Arthur himself had developed for Aura Knights. Unlike the standard Academy curriculum of meditation, mana control, aura projection, and combat sparring, Arthur's method focused on stability, balance, explosive movement, and force delivery.
"That technique is incredible, letting him catch up with nobles who had trained since age six." Lucian said, then shoved the bed and wardrobe against the west wall to clear a 2-meter square space on the bare floor.
He lit a single candle on the desk to cast a dim, sharp shadow so he could watch his own alignment. First things first: the warm-up.
He paused, remembering how lucky he had been against Karin's sneak attack. "That was really lucky it was just a casual swing." Karin was a Rank 3 Aura Knight. Even with his passive skill, he would have had no chance against her if she hadn't been holding back.
Back to the task. Looking at the empty space, Lucian took a deep breath and started: 200 jumping jacks, 50 deep squats.
"Haa... Haa..." He was sweating hard, his whole vision bouncing with every jumping jack. He stopped a few times and pushed through again. A few minutes later, his breathing was loud and ragged, his face flushed deep red.
"Ha... Ha... It's just a warm-up..." His words cut off. Now for the real training.
The first pillar was the Grounded Center Practice, a foundational method for re-aligning body mass into an unshakable base that couldn't be knocked over by blunt force.
Lucian steadied his breathing, then set the timer: 5 minutes. Only then did he set his feet shoulder-width apart, toes angled slightly inward, knees bent outward as if sitting back into a posterior chain position, tailbone tucked, chin pulled in.
He held the deep flat-backed squat in 3-minute intervals.
His whole body trembled. Eyes closed, he focused entirely on the pressure points in his feet. "Woah..." He wobbled, caught himself, and sank back down into position.
He could feel the burn, but he refused to let the tension bleed into his upper body. That would just be wasted energy.
RING!
Five minutes. The moment the alarm went off, Lucian's whole body gave out. His breathing was ragged, his eyes wide, the muscles in his thighs twitching on their own as he collapsed on the floor. His legs felt like wet rubber and fire, refusing to answer him at all.
"Unbelievable. Arthur does this every day?" He gasped for air. He could feel the involuntary spasms in his quadriceps. And worst of all, this was only the first pillar. Two more to go.