A week had passed since then.
Since discovering what he looked like, Soren had started taking better care of himself, which sounded almost comical considering how much he had spiralled over his appearance at first, but once the shock dulled, practicality took over, quiet and stubborn, because with a face like this it really would have been a waste to let himself look half-dead out of spite.
Still, the first few mornings had come with a strange hesitation, the kind that made his hand pause over a comb, fingers hovering near his hair as if the motion itself was something he had to justify, because looking presentable wasn't just "getting ready", it was a statement, it was proof that he was functioning, that he was fine, and some part of him reacted to that like it was obscene.
It reminded him too much of a feeling he carried from Earth.
A reflex that flared whenever he tried to make himself look "better".
As if being tidy, clean, and almost pretty meant he was allowed to move on, allowed to be comfortable, allowed to be seen, and there was a deep, wordless resistance to that, the same one that tightened his chest when he caught himself laughing at something and immediately wondered who didn't get to laugh anymore.
He didn't chase the thought far, he couldn't, not without the edge of that familiar pressure behind his eyes, the spiral that came whenever he went near certain memories, so he kept it simple.
He treated it like a routine and nothing else, washed properly, ran water through his hair, made sure it didn't sit in knots, and told himself, firmly, that this was maintenance, not celebration.
Thanks to that, the dark circles under his eyes had faded a little, and he looked less frail than before, less like a sickly rumour drifting through the academy halls, and more like someone who belonged here, even if he still felt a prickle of discomfort every time he saw his reflection.
Of course, that wasn't all that had happened in the last week.
Ever since the joint class with Felix, Soren had been thinking seriously about the future, specifically, the upcoming mock duel.
At Stellaris Academy, there were two days dedicated to mock duels each semester, one before midterms and one before finals, and while students treated them like a mixture of spectacle and sport, the academy treated them like an evaluation, a clean way to measure growth and put names to potential.
The first duel was automatic, your opponent was assigned based on rank, skill, and whatever other criteria the academy used to pretend it was fair.
The second was free-form, students received two duel tickets and could challenge whoever they wanted, as long as the person was ranked higher, which meant it was less about fairness and more about ambition, grudges, and social theatre.
Each student could participate in only three duels in total, and it was first-come, first-served, so the moment tickets entered the equation, the academy turned into a polite feeding frenzy.
In ❰The Knight of Stellaris❱, the first mock duel was a significant event, not because the fights themself were interesting, but because it was the moment the protagonist, Alex, revealed his unique power, [Divinity], to the world.
That single duel cemented his identity as the Hero of Light, the saviour prophesied to fight the Demon Lord, and the story, which had been quietly building tension in the background, suddenly snapped into place like a trap closing.
According to the game's lore, the Order of Aryn had received a divine message:
— [When the Demon Lord of Darkness descends, the Hero of Light shall be born and bring salvation to all.]
Generic prophecy or not, it drew the entire world's attention to this generation, soon to be known as the "Generation of Light", and once that phrase existed, people started forcing meaning into everything, because humans loved nothing more than being told their lives were part of a narrative.
When Alex displayed his golden [Divinity] during the mock duel, the prophecy seemed fulfilled overnight, and the Order of Aryn immediately began preparations to unseal the holy sword, Clockwork, as if the world had been waiting for an excuse to set the next war in motion.
That duel also signalled the start of one of the heroines' questlines.
After witnessing Alex's [Divinity], Amelia, the beastkin princess and one of the three main heroines, began to take an interest in him, and in-game her questline was nearly essential, since her tanking abilities were unmatched in the latter half of the game.
Of course, none of this really mattered to Soren.
'I mean, I'm just some extra with a high Charm stat, I'm not even in the same league.'
Even if he wanted to replace Alex, which he didn't, he would never be able to, because [Divinity] was a power granted by the gods, it wasn't something you could earn, grind, or steal with cleverness.
He also couldn't steal Amelia's questline, since the only ways to attract her interest was to be exceptionally strong or utterly unique, and he was neither, he was simply a Class F nobody with a pathetic mana pool and a crude tongue.
'…And honestly, I'm not interested in NTRing the protagonist anyway.'
The idea made his stomach twist.
He had always enjoyed reading about the scenes where the heroines crushed on Alex, each in their own cute ways, the awkward jealousy, the stubborn devotion, the moments of softness that only existed because Alex was exactly the kind of person the world could rally behind.
To ruin that felt inhumane, like stepping on something fragile just because you could.
Still, he wasn't thinking about any of this because he wanted fame or glory.
He was thinking about it because of one simple, glaring problem.
"I'm too weak."
The words left his mouth quietly in his dorm room, more a diagnosis than a complaint.
Before fighting Felix, he had assumed the mock duels would be easy, a warm-up at best, because some part of his mind still viewed his surroundings as a game, as numbers and categories that could be understood and exploited, but that assumption had shattered the moment he saw how pitiful his abilities really were in practice.
He had no offensive magic worth mentioning, no defensive magic, not even body that could keep up.
At best he could stall slightly, and stalling meant nothing if he couldn't actually defeat his opponent.
As the 96th-ranked student, he would probably be assigned weak opponents too, but the idea of losing as a transmigrator was unbearable, not because the world would punish him, but because he would, because pride was irrational like that, and once it latched onto a point, it refused to let go.
Soren didn't want to be that pitiful.
He opened his status window.
"「Status」"
.
[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
◈ Stats
Stamina - 0.2 (F)
Strength - 0.3 (F)
Agility - 0.4 (F)
Mana - 0.3 (F) → 0.4 (F)
Divine Power - 0.0 (F)
Charm - 8.4 (A+)
.
In the time since transmigrating, the only stat that had changed was his mana, and even that had only moved by a single decimal point, a tiny increase that somehow still felt like an achievement because everything else was stubbornly stuck at the bottom.
With stats as low as these, the best he would be able to do in the mock duels was squeeze by tightly, scrape through with tricks, timing and knowledge, and yes, if he put his mind to it, he could probably find ways to deal with opponents without much strength or skill, because he had an immense amount of knowledge about this world and its mechanics.
But that rubbed him the wrong way.
He didn't want to merely survive a duel, he wanted to win, clearly, so clearly that it was always obvious who the winner was going to be, and it was a thought that directly contradicted his earlier plan of staying quiet, but pride was a hard thing to shake off once it took hold, and humiliation had a way of sharpening it into something almost obsessive.
So he made a plan.
In TKS, hidden secrets were scattered all over the world, obscure items or quests that only the most obsessive players ever found, and the developers clearly enjoyed rewarding people who treated exploration like a job.
Some were brutally complicated.
One required you to kill every monster in a specific area, unlock a hidden dungeon, then clear it in one go for the reward.
Another demanded the perfect combination of character, item, timing, and location, the kind of sequence that made players question whether the reward was worth the mental breakdown.
'That one was particularly dogshit…'
But the one Soren wanted now was simple, or at least, simple for someone who already knew where it was.
It was hidden in Rena Forest, right beside the academy.
Usually, players had to spend hours mapping out every inch of the forest before receiving a quest marker that led to a small cave at the edge of the map, a cave so forgettable most players walked past it a dozen times without noticing.
But Soren didn't need to map anything.
He already knew the cave's location by heart.
And inside that cave was a hidden item: Starfruit.
As hidden pieces went, it wasn't amazing, just mediocre while most of the famous ones were build defining, but it was something Soren could realistically get his hands on, which mattered more than prestige.
Eating the Starfruit permanently increased all stats by 0.3 points.
That alone made it worthwhile, but there was more.
Consuming it also granted the title [Stella's Secrets].
In-game, the title was mediocre at best, it tripled HP, SP and MP recovery, and most players shrugged because why care about recovery when you always had Saintess Olivia and an inventory that could solve problems with the press of a button.
But this wasn't a game anymore.
Here, items cost money.
What about healers?
Even more expensive, and they needed protection too, which meant relying on them was never as simple as "bring one along."
Most importantly, mana recovery was painfully slow in reality, and Soren knew that because he had tested it himself, quietly, stubbornly, through trial and error, timing the way his body refilled after he drained his pool.
When his mana stat was 0.3, it took roughly fifteen minutes to fully recover after draining his pool.
After increasing it to 0.4, the recovery time jumped to about twenty-five minutes, which was absurd on paper until you remembered that a bigger pool took longer to refill, and the world didn't care that you were impatient.
If even that tiny increase made such a difference, higher-ranked mages with C or D-rank mana probably needed hours to recharge naturally, which meant every spell cast was a decision with weight behind it, not a throwaway action.
There were ways around it, of course, skilled mages could recover faster by drawing in the surrounding mana, but that was a wall Soren couldn't even peer at currently.
[Stella's Secrets], however, could cut that recovery time enormously.
And even though faster healing or stamina recovery weren't his priority, they were still a nice bonus, because being able to recover from injury without bleeding out on the forest floor was, objectively, a good thing, same with being able to decrease the amount of time resting.
'In other words,' Soren thought, letting his shoulders loosen slightly for the first time all day, 'it's perfect for me.'
There was only one catch with all of this, though.
Starfruit was an item that Alex was meant to take.
But after careful deliberation, Soren concluded that this point was moot.
Why?
Because Alex was… well, Alex.
The world's densest protagonist, a happy-go-lucky idiot who lived by a four-step routine: eat, sleep, train, repeat, and if you tried to insert romance into that cycle, it bounced off him like a rubber ball.
TKS had romance, affinity metres, and date events, but none of them ever went anywhere because Alex was too focused on training to notice, and half the playerbase had developed genuine resentment about it, not because they wanted Alex to be a flirt, but because it was infuriating to watch a man stand in front of a heroine's obvious feelings and respond with the emotional intelligence of a brick.
'I remember how mad people got about that, all that time wasted just for the guy to stupidly say "training is more important than love,"' Soren thought, a smirk pulling faintly at his mouth despite himself.
And from what Soren had seen these past weeks, that personality had not changed.
They had shared a few theory classes here and there, and every single time Alex either slept through the lecture or gave answers so wrong that even the professors looked like they were debating whether it was worth correcting him, which was almost impressive in its own way.
In-game, it had been a running joke that Alex always scored the lowest on written exams, no matter how strong he got, and seeing it in person didn't ruin the joke, it just made it feel more real, like the world itself was committed to the bit.
'So yeah, he's not finding any hidden pieces on his own,' Soren decided, nodding once as if sealing the conclusion.
Which meant Soren could take them, guilt-free.
If Alex never found them, it wouldn't affect the story at all.
They were optional, after all.
The kind of content most players only touched on completionist runs, and even then, only if they were stubborn enough.
And if Soren did find them…
He would finally be strong enough to live the life he wanted.
Free, safe, and comfortable, a quiet existence where he didn't have to walk into the spotlight, where he could pick his battles instead of being dragged into them, where he could breathe without feeling like fate had its hands on his throat.
That was all he wished for.
All he needed.
He smiled faintly, the expression small, almost fragile, because it wasn't excitement, it was relief taking shape before it had even happened.
'Sorry, Alex, but I need these. You'll understand, right?'
————「❤︎」————