1 Transmigration

Opening his eyes, Zack found himself staring at a ceiling he didn't recognize. 'Hold up, unfamiliar ceiling?' He bolted upright, taking in his surroundings.

'Where the heck am I?' Looking at the old creaking bed and dilapidated wardrobe, Zack affirmed, 'Definitely not my room, that's for sure.'

Sitting on the bed, he racked his brain, trying to piece together his last memory. All he could recall was a typical introvert's weekend night – gaming.

He rubbed his eyes, half expecting to wake up from some crazy dream. But when he looked at his arm, something felt off. It looked... younger. Freaked out, he let out a scream, only to realize he sounded like a kid.

Quickly shutting his mouth, he scanned the room and spotted a full-length mirror. With shaky legs, he approached it, dreading what he might see.

Even before he caught sight of his reflection, he had a sinking feeling. His line of sight was way shorter than it used to be. He had a gut feeling about what was happening. But the thought of that was just too inconceivable that he couldn't accept it.

So, after seeing his reflection, he was so surprised that he felt a bit dizzy. Staring back at him was a beautiful kid with silver hair and blue eyes. It was a face wholly unfamiliar to him; his previous appearance had been that of a typical man in his twenties, with dark hair and eyes. Before he could process anything else, a flood of memories rushed into his brain like a freight train.

He clutched his head and held the mirror in front of him for extra support so that he wouldn't stumble. Then, he slowly walked to his bed and barely made it back to bed before passing out. His last thought before blacking out? 'Well, at least I am better looking now'.

Waking up a second time, he checked his arm again, only to be met with disappointment. He was still stuck in this stranger's body. Or was it more accurate to say he was the stranger now? Either way, he had a whole bunch of new memories rattling around in his head.

Turns out, he was some apprentice wizard at a lightning magic tower. And as far as he knew, there weren't any magic towers in his previous world. So, he was pretty sure that he had transmigrated to another world.

Thinking up to this point, he felt a bit excited, 'you know how it goes in these transmigration stories, right? The main character usually gets some kind of special advantage'. So, he started throwing around different buzzwords like "system" and "open system." Then, when he tried "open status," boom! Suddenly, a glowing blue rectangle appeared right in front of him.

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Name: Zack

Age: 10/100

Occupation: Apprentice wizard

Mana: 1/1

Talent: [Limitless Mana Well], [Advanced Mana Manipulation Correction], [Advanced Mana Sensory Correction], [Advanced Intelligence Correction]

System was synchronizing… Status: 80%

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Looking at his status window, he grinned and thought, '"Limitless" and "Advanced"? Those were the real deal, man. You just knew those skills were top-notch just by the sound of 'em, ya know what I mean?' Zack chuckled. In other words, he was a genius!

He was totally ignoring the whole 1/1 mana thing, 'because, probably every newbie wizard started there.'

After celebrating for a while, he suddenly remembered, 'Crap, I was supposed to be cleaning the library in the magic tower, like, right now!' He swiftly put on his robe and bolted out of his room. Relying on his memory, he navigated through the corridors and headed to the library.

Even though his stomach was yelling at him like a hungry bear, he had to suck it up and get moving. 'I had no choice, from the original dude's memory, getting kicked out of the tower was pretty much a one-way ticket to monster chow in the forest.'

Finally, he rolled up to the library and there was this snoozing old geezer on the table at the entrance of the library. He thought inwardly, 'But hey, no biggie, that dude was practically part of the furniture. Must have been some kind of big shot if nobody had the guts to wake him up, though.'

He pushed down that random thought to the back of his head as he focused on reporting to his supervisor. As expected, since he was late, he got some scolding from his supervisor. But thankfully, it looked like the supervisor was afraid of waking up the old dude, so he scolded him in a low voice. 'Not that the words were not hurtful tho,' Zack mused. But, he already had too much going on inside his mind from the whole transmigration thing to get hurt from the scolding. After the scolding, he headed to his usual area with his usual broomstick and started to sweep the area.

As Zack swept up, he browsed his new memories as to how he ended up stuck with this lame job. Turns out, during his aptitude test, they found out his mana was about as small as a gnat's bladder compared to the other apprentices. And his mana sensing skills? Total bust. Probably 'cause the system was still half asleep when they tested him. Tower thought he was garbage and dumped him there. 'Tough break, dude,' Zack sighed.

After lamenting his fate, he continued to review the information about the magic tower. 'Alright, here's the lowdown on how things rolled in this tower. You walked in, they slapped you with a job, and you better believe you had to do it, no questions asked. But hey, it isn't all sweat and tears for nothing! You'll get points as payment. You put in a day tending to the magical garden, you raked in 5 points. Pitched in at the lab? You might score anywhere from 3 to 20 points, depending on how fancy the lab was. But let me tell ya, if you were stuck in the library, you were scraping by with a lousy 1 point a day.

'Now, if it is just the measly points as compensation, being stuck in the library might've been not that bad. 'Cause, see, there was this spot in the tower called the mission hall. Apprentices could get some extra missions there to boost their points during their free time after their main job.

'But here's the rub about the library job: with only a handful of us stuck in there and this place being the size of a small country, cleaning it up ate away most of our day. Left us with next to no time for extra missions. So unless you figured out some nifty spell to speed up the cleaning, you were pretty much stuck there all day, missing out on other missions.' thinking up to this point, Zack had no choice but to rub his forehead lamenting again about his crappy fate. But, this was not the worst part yet.

'Here's the kicker: everything in this tower ran on points. Wanted to sit in on a lecture with one of the big-shot wizards? Points. Needed potions to amp up your mana gathering? Points. Fancy diving into some spell books? You betcha, points. So naturally, everyone was scrambling to rack up those points like it was their lifeline.

'So, being stuck with a main job that barely gave you any points and held you back from stacking up more? Total garbage gig. Now you see why the library was basically a dumpster for those with dumpster-level talents.' Zack let out a long drawn up sigh, getting the attention of his library mate, another poor soul who was stuck in the library job.

Giving a smile to his library mate, he continued pondering, 'But hey, there was a glimmer of hope for library-dwellers—rack up enough points, and you could apply for a different gig. The catch? You had to twiddle your thumbs for a whole six months until the tower started taking in fresh blood again. Because there has to be someone replacing our place in the library. But you bet there's no one, I repeat, not one soul is willing to replace our job in the library. So yeah, library duty was our jam for the foreseeable future.

'Now, it wasn't all gloom and doom in the library. The one tiny silver lining? You got to borrow a book for free once a week. Anything more than that? Well, you had to clock in and grind for 10 days straight before you had enough points to snag even the cheapest read.'

Thinking up to that point, Zack let out another heavy sigh. 'Well at least there's that perk and, for me, there's also this,' Zack sneaked a peek at his status screen and noticed this syncing thing ticking up by 1% every half hour. 'No clue what that was about, but hey, it was something to keep an eye on, right?'

When lunchtime rolled around, he sauntered over to the cafeteria and dug into the free grub. As he was eating, he couldn't help but be grateful to the tower, 'Thank the stars the tower still threw us a bone with free food 'cause, for us library folks, with our measly points, we couldn't afford anything. And hey, it wasn't half bad—your standard veggies and meats.' If he wanted the fancy stuff made from magical beasts? Gotta shell out some serious points.

Still, Zack wasn't complaining. Well, the steak in front of him looked like it had been whipped up by Gordon Ramsay. Heck, you could even order different degrees of doneness for the steak. Sure, magical chow might have given you a mana boost, but for now, Zack was sticking to the basics.

As he scarfed down his meal, Zack's gears started turning. Going by his talent stats, he felt pretty confident about making it as a wizard in this world. Well, he hoped so, at least. He had to put that to the test later. But assuming his skills were the real deal, he had a choice to make: flaunt his genius status and rake in the goodies, or play it cool and build up his powers nice and slow.

So, Zack leaned towards option two—playing it cool suited him better. 'But hey, I have to apologize for the cliché to the readers, 'cause let's be real, sometimes you have to play it safe to make it in this crazy world.' He paused his thought to gulp on the delicious steak.

He wasn't about to stir up any trouble with the other geniuses who had the bigwigs backing them up. Nah, he was gonna keep it chill and let his skills do the talking. With his talents, he was going to hit the big leagues sooner or later. Oh, and he was serious about keeping that low profile, none of that shouting-from-the-rooftops nonsense like some other protagonists.

So, Zack wrapped up his meal and got back to tidying up the library. Once he was done, he headed back to his room and decided to put his talent to the test. Grabbing the basic meditation book he had borrowed earlier, he shut his eyes and followed the instructions to tap into the mana around him. And what did you know? Before long, he sensed this colorful speck of dust floating around him.

Now, according to the book, even if you weren't naturally drawn to a specific element, you could still practice it no problem. But peeping at those mana particles doing their thing and matching up their behavior with what described in the book, Zack let out a sigh. 'Damnit!' Zack was pretty sure that he didn't have any natural knack for any element. Due to his irritation, the colorful speck of dust started flickering, looking like they were about to disappear from his sight.

'Not good, I was about to break from my meditation state,' But soon enough, he calmed down and focused back to meditating. Sure, having an affinity for an element made life easier, but he had other tricks up his sleeve that would put him ahead of the game.

Checking out those mana particles swirling around him, Zack felt pretty pumped. 'I mean, according to the book, most rookies needed like a month of practice before they could even start sensing the mana.' But here he was, picking it up just a split second after giving it a shot! 'If that wasn't some next-level talent, then I didn't know what was.' Zack thought smugly.

With a deep breath, he decided to focus on gathering those volatile blue particles, aka lightning particles, into his mana heart, which was basically his dantian (that's the lower belly for all you non-wizard folks). And why lightning? 'Well, duh, I am in the lightning tower! Lightning spells here are top-notch, fully researched and all that jazz.'

Now, his mission? To level up from rookie level 1 to 2. And to pull that off, he had to gather enough mana to cast a level 0 spell five times. Sounds like a cakewalk, right? Not exactly. He needed to nail down at least one level 0 spell, and that would have to wait 'cause he was short on points to borrow a spell book. His library perks? Already cashed in for that basic meditation book.

The cheapest spell tome he could snag was called [Zap], and it would set him back 10 tower points. This little spell let him fire off a tiny lightning bolt that could zap a regular joe for a few seconds. It wasn't much, but it was a start. And if he could cast [zap] five times, he would be officially considered as a level 2 apprentice wizard.

So, Zack took a break from his meditation to grab some dinner at the cafeteria. Once he was fueled up, he headed back to his room and dove right back into his meditation zone. The next morning rolled around, and he checked his mana—boom, it had gone up by 1! Since he had been at it for 8 hours, that meant he was boosting his mana by 0.125 every hour. Not too shabby, huh?

After tidying up and washing his face, Zack grabbed some breakfast and then headed off to the library.

For the next 10 days, it was like Groundhog Day for Zack—eat, hit the library, meditate, repeat. Good thing meditation could kind of replace sleep, although he still needed to catch some sleep once a week to stay sharp. Anyway, after all that, he had managed to bump up his mana capacity to 10 and rack up enough points to snag [Zap].

But here's the kicker: once he started browsing through the level 0 spells collection, he hit a snag. Turns out, there was another spell that had him seriously intrigued.