Practice

Nervously, I stepped inside the training room that I had booked, still unsure whether or not this was a good idea. After yesterday, I was more than hesitant to practice my abilities out in the open, and the only practical solution I found to this was to use a practice room. Mostly due to the fact that my room at the dormitory wasn't large enough.

The reason why I felt nervous was that I couldn't help but get a bit paranoid about practicing in here as well. Who was there to say there wasn't some kind of magical surveillance system inside of it, watching my every move?

Thankfully, my rational mind quickly got rid of such thoughts when I inspected the room. Because no matter how I looked at it, it was just a normal room, with nothing in it except for a couple of dumbbells on the side, and a training dummy.

The floor was made out of some sort of rubber-like texture, sort of similar to the track we ran on previously, and the walls were a solid white with nothing on them. There was not a single sign of anything weird going on in the room, which made me able to convince myself that I would be fine.

After all, when the only other option was to practice in my small room in the boys' dormitory, it wasn't hard to justify my decision. Judging from the fact that the dormitory contained nothing but a very limited lounge space and the students' small rooms, it was obvious that the academy didn't want us to spend a lot of time there from the start.

In fact, I had barely seen anyone at the dorm at all since I came here, other than occasionally passing a student when leaving and entering the building, as well as

'Come to think of it... I haven't actually spent time with anyone at the academy, have I?'

Aside from tricking George into saving Robert and having lunch with Samantha once, I hadn't even talked to any of my classmates. Not even once.

'...am I a loner?'

Now, it wasn't as if I was actively trying to find friends, as there was truly no reason for me to do so. At least not for now. However, I still couldn't help but feel as if I was missing out. Not that how I felt mattered much.

The reality was that even if I wanted to get along with everyone, most of them would probably avoid me simply because I was a commoner. Not taking Samantha into account, as she appeared to be an outlier in more ways than one, I doubted that Thomas, Eva, or Lya would want to hang out with a commoner, even if they weren't noble supremacists like Mike.

'Though I suppose Samantha also only invited me for lunch to find out if I was working for her brother.'

With a sad sigh, I decided to not think about such depressing things anymore and instead brought out my status panel, taking yet another look at my new skill and talent.

===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], [Mind Spike]

Talents: [Mana control - Rank 2], [Mental Magic - Rank 1]

==========

Just like with telekinesis, I unconsciously already kind of knew how my new skill worked, as well as the effect of mental magic talent, which simply increased my affinity for mental magic. Which included all of the skills that were connected to my class.

It wasn't all that interesting, to be honest.

Mind Spike, on the other hand, was very interesting to me.

It was a skill where you could shock the mind of someone and depending on their sturdiness, as well as the strength of their mind, the results would vary greatly. This was probably the skill that the Psions that I read about had used to make their victims fall into a coma.

Of course, I would probably not be able to do such a thing, yet at least, unless I used it on an infant or a very, very weak monster. But I was pretty sure that I could at least create a situation where my enemy would get stunned for a moment, creating openings for me to take advantage of.

Now, the only problem was that I had no way of actually practicing it, as it obviously couldn't be used against the wooden dummy in front of me. Unfortunately for it, I was still not going to spare it.

Opening up my bag, I took out the five rocks that I had brought with me to the training room. After lining them up on the floor, standing a few feet away from the dummy, I took a deep breath. A second later, I was ready to begin.

'Rise.'

This time, it didn't even take a second before I felt them becoming part of me, quickly following my command and floating up in the air, reaching just about my chest level. This was the first part of the sequence in which I had begun to use a standard for practicing telekinesis.

Keeping them in the air, I could feel my strength slowly waning as I focused on trying to keep them as steady as possible, minimizing as much movement as possible. The next step was to move them around while making sure I didn't lose control of them.

'Left up, middle down, right up.'

*Thud!*

The rock furthest to the left started to slowly rise, while the one in the middle began to fall a bit. However, when it came to the one furthest to the right, the last one that I was trying to control, it went free-falling as a result of me losing my connection to it, quickly hitting the floor.

Stabilizing the four rocks I had left, I reset the motion while taking control of the rock that had fallen again, making it float to its geological brethren once more.

Over and over, I practiced my control of the rocks, but it was still impossible for me not to lose control of one or two of them every now and then. Finally, when my head started hurting due to my mana running low, it was time for the last part of the sequence.

'Pierce!'

All five rocks were launched forward toward the dummy.

*Bam, bam, bam!*

Only three of the rocks managed to make contact with the wooden dummy, as my control was not good enough to accurate launch all five of them at the same time.

'Not good enough...'

Sitting down, closed my eyes, and started to feel the flow of mana throughout the air, a common practice that increased the rate at which one's mana recovered. Once my mana had recovered enough, I would do the whole sequence all over again. And I would repeat this until my body was too weary to recover mana.

==========

My head felt heavy when I walked out of the martial arts building, as that was where the practice rooms were located. This was one of the many symptoms of mana depletion, a state where one had used mana to the point where one's body's magical recovery was greatly reduced.

Even then, I knew that I couldn't allow it to stop me from going on with my day. I was still planning on going to the library to do as much research as time allowed me to, as soon as I had gotten something to fill my stomach with.

Yet, it was hard to find motivation for something so dull when other students around me were enjoying their time in the sun, smiling and laughing together on this beautiful day. Like the students in front of me, who were currently... surrounding a young girl?

'Wait... isn't that Lya?'

After taking a second look at it, I could now see that Lya was surrounded by four unknown guys, of which one took a step closer to my black-haired classmate as if to show that he was the leader of the bunch.

Seeing his bright brown hair and athletic body, I just couldn't remember any characters like him from the novel, which could only mean that he wasn't that important. So, even though I could see his very angry face, I knew it wasn't something I needed to care about.

"What did you say to me, bitch?! Do you think you are something just because you are the daughter of an Viscount?!"

"I... didn't say that. I just said that I wasn't interested in you. And it's not like that will change if you suddenly throw a tantrum."

Even from a bit further away, Lya's trembling fists made it pretty clear that she was just putting up a tough façade. But I kept walking, pretending as if I didn't see anything. Because this wasn't the kind of thing someone like me was suited for anyway.

Saving a damsel in distress was the job of a hero, not the job of someone who couldn't even complete a simple warm-up during PE.

Despite that, I couldn't help but slow down a bit as I had a feeling that...

*Bing!*