The moment the pain was gone, I immediately rang the bell on my bedside table madly for a few seconds until Luna came kicking down the door.
"What's wro-"
"Waterrrrr…" I groaned, cutting off Luna's voice.
"And iceee…" I added after some struggle.
"Alright. I'll be right back." Luna said after a moment of observing me with a suspicious gaze.
Not long after, I opened my system panel.
[(Intermediate) area-sense] , [(Mastery) physical enhancement+] , [(Specialty) accelerate] , [(Intermediate) Imperial swordsmanship] > Honestly I surprised myself when I thought about how all my skills were at least intermediate just by training with my mother for an hour every day. I guessed either the system was helping or maybe I had a bit of talent in the sword. Either way, my basic attributes were now off the charts compared to the normal adult man's 1 to 4 points. For testing purposes I grabbed the metal cup on my bedside table from who knows where before crushing it in my hand without effort. 'Yup, definitely way stronger.' I thought to myself as Luna returned carrying a jug of water with ice. I didn't waste any time chugging the whole thing of cold water as my insides felt like they were about to wither and die. Once I was done though, Luna kept staring at me intently. "Is something wrong?" I asked, seeing her gaze. A moment later, Luna came to my side and grabbed my arm, I didn't resist as she rolled up my sleeve and started feeling my arm, squeezing and poking my muscles. "Luna?" "Master… Is there something different about you?" She asked suspiciously. "In what way?" "Your muscles are way tougher than they were before. Your skin also seems tighter." She explained. "... Is stalking me the only thing you know???" I asked annoyedly. "..." "…" And so I got Luna off my case… … [(Intermediate) area-sense] , [(Mastery) physical enhancement+] , [(Specialty) accelerate] , [(Intermediate) Imperial swordsmanship] > A week ago, my sister turned 16 and thus became an adult by this world's standards. As was usual for powerful nations, upon coming of age, noble children or sponsored commoners would attend the royal academy. I understood it was a cliche plot for a medieval fantasy world, but it is what it is I guessed. Either way, the world should be on the verge of or at the beginning of the industrial revolution. It made sense that standardized education was starting to come into play. Though I guessed that the bigger reason was to find powerful knights and mages. The kind who could destroy armies of ordinary people with ease. At least according to my father. Wars with large numbers of people were scarce. Most of the time it would be battles between the powerhouses of each nation as ordinary soldiers wouldn't even make good cannon fodder for such people. This was also the basis of the world's power system, at least for the empire. Anyone who could defeat a hundred ordinary people was a rank-1 apprentice knight or mage. Anyone who could defeat a hundred apprentice knights or mages was a rank-2 Knight or magician. The pattern repeated, going rank-3 master, rank-4 grandmaster, rank-5 archmage or archknight and finally rank-6 demigod. It was a pretty rudimentary system, but I guess it worked. There wasn't any rank above demigod though since there apparently weren't enough demigods for anyone to try. Or so I had heard. So long as the state gave you a rank, or you earned it yourself, you could be considered a powerhouse. The key to achieving strength, whether you were a knight or a mage, was your core. Since nobles had a 90% or so chance of activating their core between 10 and 16 compared to commoners' meager 0.01% chance, it made sense that the nation had a school for nobles. That way, they could gather and train their future powerhouses. "Dammit! Your elder sister won't be seeing you for 1 or 2 years and you refuse to even have a spar with her!? I'll just drag your ass to the training grounds then!" My elder sister yelled as two guard knights held her by the arms, dragging her into the train cart set for the Orlain dukedom which would then lead to the capital. There were still 4 months until her friend from the neighboring barony turned 16 and so they would miss the current academy semester and join next year, else they would have met here and gone together. "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Similarly, you can drag me to the training grounds but you can't make me fight you seriously." I spoke wisely. Despite my elder sister seemingly having become calmer and more patient over the years, she still got heated whenever it came to having a spar with me. Though I had no idea why. "Bye big sister!" My younger sister waved as the train doors were closed and it started moving. "I won't miss you! Have fun!" I called out in tandem with my younger sister. Soon enough, the train left our sightline. I was just about to turn and leave but my shoulder was grabbed. "And where do you think you're going, young man?" My mothers voice rang out behind me. "To my room?" I said. "Well, I'll give you two choices. The first is that you spend another hour training with me in the mornings. The second is that you take over your elder sister's habit of tutoring your youngest sister." My mother proposed. However both involved an effort I was completely unwilling to put in. "I volunteer Luna to help teach Aerial… Alright goodby-" I tried to escape but the grip on my shoulder tightened and I couldn't escape. 'Dammit how high are your attributes! I'm like 12 times stronger than a strong healthy adult male!' I wanted to yell at my mother, whose physical strength without using her core to enhance herself was already off the dam charts despite all my attributes being over 30. After asking my father a few days earlier during dinner I learned my mother was a rank-5 arch-knight. Meanwhile my sister didn't even make rank-1 apprentice since she could only take on 5 or 6 of the estates guards who didn't have cores. Of the guards who did have cores, only 3 of 16 were considered rank-1 apprentices, while my father himself was only a rank-3 knight master. As for mages, our family didn't have any. Not officially at least. As lazy and ignorant as I was, I still noticed that both Luna and my little sister, Aerial, had interests in magecraft. If all went well in the future they could both become powerful mages. As for me? I was happy so long as "Luna already spends time teaching Aerial while studying herself. You should take after her more and join in on their study session. As an elder brother it surely isn't much effort to help your little sister and attendant." My mother tried to goad me by using my pride as the oldest of the trio. "I won't be easily provoked." I said flatly. "What about threats? We can extend the daily hour of training to 4 hours, or even 6." My mother responded equally flatly. "I suddenly feel that I should aid in my juniors studies." I said, not daring to refute while my father and Luna both walked past us. 'Traitors!' I cursed the two in my mind.