A sharp thought flashed through his mind, causing Jeremy to suddenly snap his eyes open.
Pushing himself up, he sat up straight, decisively threw off the blanket, and began to reorganize the entire chain of information in his memories.
In the original novel, right after today’s public broken engagement event in front of the whole school, the name Jeremy Valmont completely evaporated from the main storyline.
However, based on the God of Covenant’s warning this afternoon, this world was not a virtual stage, but a living reality with its own cruel rules.
In other words, the destructive war disaster at the end of the novel would definitely strike, and the entire Sylvanor continent along with the empire’s subjects would all have to face a tragedy of eternal massacre.
The original owner bore the identity of the only son of Duke Valmont—the pillar family at the frontlines. In the future, they would inevitably have to stand at the forefront of the main battlefield, and the fate of someone bearing a trash-tier Spirit Covenant like him would probably...
Jeremy’s eyebrow twitched slightly, cutting off the train of thought regarding his future death.
The time from now until graduation was still exactly six years. Setting aside for now whether the plot in that book would repeat its old trajectory or not, just the matter of how to preserve his life in the upcoming turbulent times already forced him to go all out to increase his strength starting right now.
Despite hailing from a family of supreme power, because the original owner’s personality had been gloomy and eccentric since childhood, coupled with a cold arrogance, he was almost completely ignored by his parents. Within the family, Jeremy existed as nothing more than a faint shadow.
In the eyes of his Crown Prince fiancé, having to become life partners with someone bearing a bottom-tier Spirit Covenant was a historical disgrace. Meanwhile, in the eyes of the capital’s aristocracy, Jeremy was framed as a domineering, useless, and mentally unstable young master.
It could be said that the original owner had gathered every element needed to be turned against by the whole world.
The reason the marriage pact with Crown Prince Amber existed was entirely because the Empress wanted to seize Duke Valmont’s military power, thus proactively requesting the Emperor to bestow the marriage even before the original owner was born.
Fortunately, the royal magic regulations still left a way out: If both parties mutually agreed to end the relationship, the marriage contract would be immediately annulled without suffering the punishment of the world’s order.
Over the years, Amber had forced the annulment no less than ten times, but because the original owner always refused, the matter had dragged on until today.
In reality, the original owner had never harbored any romantic feelings for Amber; Jeremy even extremely loathed the man’s conceited demeanor. The sole reason Jeremy clung to this marriage pact was out of fear—fear that once the protective layer of the future Crown Princess title was lost, the family would immediately cut off all resources and discard him like a piece of trash.
A solitary person, both pitiful and extreme in his own sense of insecurity.
But now, Jeremy had personally severed that binding thread. The magical oath connecting the two families officially collapsed.
Once what happened today reached the Duke’s estate, their attitude toward this trash son would undoubtedly plummet to the very bottom of disappointment.
In short, whether to avoid the risk of the family turning him into a low-value political marriage tool after graduation, or to protect his own life in the disastrous great war ten years later, Jeremy had to frantically elevate his combat strength. Any survival plan without absolute power backing it up was merely a joke.
Jeremy decisively turned and stepped out of bed, taking long strides straight toward the desk placed next to the balcony. He pulled out the entire thick stack of documents on magical tactics and magic power adaptation mechanisms that he had borrowed from the library that afternoon, and flicked on the desk lamp.
From this moment onward, in this aristocratic academy, there would be no one capable of competing with his relentless drive.
Jeremy’s ability to absorb knowledge inherently belonged to the heaven-defying ranks. Possessing a photographic memory from just a single glance was only his most ordinary instinct. The ability to logically deduce from a single point to expand into the entire big picture—something ordinary people had to rack their brains just to touch upon—was as natural as breathing to him.
Back on Earth, when forced by his elderly master to practice swordsmanship, Jeremy only needed to glance at the other party executing the moves once to perfectly replicate them without a single deviation. He thought that upon crossing into a magical world with a completely different system of rules, this innate talent would be hindered to some extent, but reality proved he had worried too much.
Five hours later.
Jeremy closed the final document, casually glancing at the towering stack of over fifty sheepskin-bound books that had just been cleanly dealt with. He carefully stacked them neatly, channeled a stream of magic power to store them into his spatial ring, and then stood up, slowly walking toward the library’s storage section.
The ancients had a saying that haste makes waste, but his speed of acquiring knowledge seemed to have transcended the limits of conventional laws.
It wasn’t until three in the morning that Jeremy dragged his somewhat sluggish body out of the library’s oak doors.
The entire foundational knowledge system of magicology along with the mandatory bestiary manual had been completely stored within his brain. Not only that, but he had also taken the opportunity to unearth countless hidden secrets of the Sylvanor continent that the original owner’s memories had never touched upon.
The overall picture of this world and the structural system of St. Aetherwing Academy were considered relatively fully sketched out by him.
Of course, magical knowledge remaining only on paper was like a broken, unsharpened sword. He needed practical combat to verify whether he could control magic power as smoothly as he comprehended it.
Perhaps during tomorrow’s practical classes, he would have the opportunity to test it out a bit.
Jeremy silently calculated this, however...
The next morning.
Inside the spatial secret realm established exclusively for Anima faculty freshmen.
Dry, broken branches let out crisp "crackling" sounds beneath desperate running footsteps. Jeremy, his hair covered in fallen leaf debris, along with his four equally pathetic-looking teammates, were frantically dashing through the dense forest.
Right on their heels was a pack of red-eyed magic beasts, foaming at the mouth just as if they had been injected with a massive dose of stimulants. The beasts’ bloodthirsty roars shook the entire space, causing the forest birds to scatter in panic, blotting out the sky.
Jeremy’s face, which always maintained a cold, nonchalant expression, was now pitch black.
He ran with all his might, the inherently frail physical strength of this body being drained at a terrifying speed. His chest stung painfully as if a fire was blazing inside; even breathing had become arduous.
Recalling his thought of "it probably won’t threaten my life" from last night, Jeremy just wanted to look up and mock his own naivety.
What do you mean not life-threatening?!
This type of training was just one step short of pressing a knife directly to his neck and forcing him to slit his own throat!
What kind of place had a guiding instructor crazy enough to throw students straight into a survival secret realm the very first moment of roll call, and then unleash an entire pack of frenzied magic beasts just for an "entry-level physical test"?
He truly wanted to send his regards to that guy Griffin’s entire family tree!
Putting that aside, the important thing was that he currently only carried a bunch of empty theories in his head, his practical combat experience with magic was zero, and the magic power reserves in his body were depleted. At this moment, he was no different from a frail, ordinary person. Forcing someone like him to use pure physical strength to fend off this entire pack of bloodthirsty beasts was practically a pipe dream!
Truly a bunch of lunatics.