An unexpected sight

Another day had arrived, and as I was wiggling my way forward across the courtyard, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to cry or laugh. The muscle pain that I had felt yesterday didn't hold a candle to the excruciating pain that I was experiencing today.

Nonetheless, I was still smiling. Because no matter how much I hated feeling like my body might shatter from just a single gust of wind, yesterday had brought with it something so great that I almost felt like it made up for it.

===Status===

Name: Alex Winter

Class: Psion

Level: 6

Strength: 3 ↑

Agility: 4 ↑

Stamina: 4 ↑

Intelligence: 15 ↑

Free stat points: 5 ↑

Mana: 75/75

Skills: [Telekinesis]

Talents: [Mana control - Rank 2]

==========

I had leveled up!

Leveling up in this world wasn't like your traditional roleplaying game where you fought monsters and gained experience. In this world, you leveled up by improving the state of your body and mind.

This was the reason why George was so special in that he got to choose for himself what kind of stats he wanted to increase. Because for everyone else, the training they went through decided what kind of increase in stats they would get.

And this level-up just confirmed my already established suspicions that I would get to do the same, suspicions born from the fact that my status contained a line of text which said 'free stat points'.

After I had leveled up, there were now small arrows next to all of my stats, arrows which I was fairly sure I could press to increase the designated stat by spending my free stat points.

Due to me having found out about this yesterday when I was about to die from fatigue, I had barely been able to stop myself from impulsively spending all of my points on stamina. And the main reason for that, despite knowing that stamina would probably be very valuable, was that my stamina had for some reason increased all by itself.

Having pondered a bit, I had already made a quick conclusion as to what was going on with that. I could increase my stats even without leveling up by putting in the effort. The implication of this was quite clear.

Wouldn't it be stupid to use the free stat points to raise one of my lower stats when one could assume that they would be easier to improve rather than, for example, my intelligence stat that was more than three times as high?

I had no idea if this really was the truth but in my head, it did make a lot of sense. It would be easier for someone to go from being able to lift five pounds to ten, rather than going from 105 to 110 pounds.

Yet, no matter how logical I felt my thesis was, I still didn't have the courage to just spend my stat points without thinking about it for a bit longer.

But I was still happy. Not just for the fact that I would get to choose for myself how to spend my stat points, but because it now finally made sense why my body was so much worse than everyone else's.

Even if I was a mage, did it make sense that I couldn't even bear the warm-up of yesterday's lecture? It didn't, and now I knew why.

If everyone's stats increased by five every time they leveled up, the average total of one's stats would be one's level times five. So, I who was level six would have thirty stat points in total. This was without taking into account the fact that it appeared to be possible to increase one's stats without leveling up as well.

So, if Samantha was level ten, her stats would, without any extra stat points gained by training, be 50. Just that fact would make her stats 60% higher than mine on average. But that wasn't the end of it either.

My stats were obviously incredibly skewed, to the point where I doubted even Eva had such a large disparity between her stats despite her being the magest mage there was. So it wouldn't be surprising if even Samantha, who was a healer, had more than double my strength, stamina, and agility.

In other words, I was currently at a crossroads. I could either choose to further specialize in intelligence while trying to make up for my lower stats through training or even them out by spending free stat points.

There were enough pros and cons to both of these strategies that I wasn't sure what was best for me. Also, I didn't know enough about stats yet, and I also had no idea if the increases in stats gave a static performance boost.

What if there was an exponential increase in performance, meaning that going from 10 to 11 was a much larger step than 1 to 2?

What if it was a logarithmic growth, meaning that the higher a stat was, the less effective it would be to increase it?

"... please try your best to remember all of this as it will be on the test in two weeks. Class dismissed."

'...huh?'

Looking around, I suddenly found myself sitting in a classroom, having no memories of when or how I even got here due to having been completely lost in thought. Worse yet was that I could see that all of my classmates had notebooks filled with scribbles related to whatever lecture we had just had.

When everyone stood up and got ready to leave, our teacher's voice rang out once again as the older man, who I didn't know the name of, strangely hadn't left the room yet.

"Alex was it? Would you mind giving me a moment of your time?"

"Ah... of course, professor."

Ignoring the looks I got from my classmates and Mike's nasty grin, I walked up to the teacher's desk where both I and the gray-haired professor waited for the others to leave the room.

When the last student had left, my teacher's forehead became wrinkled.

"Say, Alex. Are you having trouble following along? I'm not sure, but it looked like you were a bit out of it. I know that mathematics can be quite troublesome for someone who wasn't raised in a noble household, but you need to tell me if you need help."

From the second the a bit more than middle-aged man started speaking, there was no doubt that he was a good teacher. Not only did he choose to talk with me in private, but his first instinct was also to find out if I needed help.

Yet, I couldn't help but smile. Because I had now noticed what was written down behind him on the blackboard. For the first time since I arrived in this world, I finally felt like the being who had sent me here cut me some slack.

Because there was nothing but middle-school-level equations written down on it.

"It's fine, professor! Thank you for worrying about me, but I will be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure. More than sure in fact."

Despite my confidence, the professor still didn't believe me.

"Alex, I understand that you might not want to seem weak or stupid, but there's nothing wrong with..."

"Then, test me."

****

[Samantha's Pov]

As I was walking through the hallway with Suzan and Julia, I suddenly noticed why my arm felt so light.

"I forgot my purse in the classroom..."

"Oh, do you want us to come with you and get it?"

Shaking my head, I waved them off with a smile, "It's fine, I'll meet you guys at the cafeteria in a minute."

"Alright, see you in a bit then."

It didn't take long until I had returned to outside our classroom. But, just as I was about to open the door which was already slightly ajar, I was surprised to hear two voices coming from inside it.

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure. More than sure in fact."

"Alex, I understand that you might not want to seem weak or stupid, but there's nothing wrong with..."

"Then, test me."

Looking through the small gap, I saw Professor Hart sigh before he took hold of a piece of chalk, all the while Alex was simply standing beside him, just waiting for something. It didn't take long for me to realize what was going on though, as Professor Hart quickly noted down an example of what we had talked about during class today before handing Alex the chalk.

Surprisingly, it didn't even take a second before Alex solved the math problem, to which he gave the chalk back to our teacher. A teacher who now seemed to take that as a challenge.

'A quadratic function? That shouldn't be something that a freshman...!'

Yet, Alex easily singled out the missing factor, before once again giving the piece of chalk back to Mr. Hart. Once again, our teacher wrote down a problem on the blackboard, this time involving inverse functions, which Alex, absurdly enough, solved with ease yet again.

'Impossible! I couldn't even find the solution to that!'

At some point, it just looked like a cluster to me, as I couldn't even comprehend what kind of equations they were dealing with. But I didn't care. All I cared about was the fact that our classmate, who had made himself out to be a fool, easily solved everything our professor threw his way.

I didn't even care about my purse anymore as I made my escape from the classroom, not wanting to be found out that I was spying on them. Now there was just one single thought running through my head.

'Who... is he?'