Opening my heavy eyes, I saw an unfamiliar ceiling. Trying to look around, I found a curtain surrounding me.
"Where am I?" I said aloud in my dazed state.
"Oh? You're awake." The doctor pulled the curtain aside, revealing the room.
"Why am I in a hospital?"
"Student Liam and Ava carried you here unconscious. After checking your vitals, it seems you overconsumed your mana." The doctor showed a clipboard with my status on it, including my mana pool. "Though it's a bit weird that it's showing you have 10,000 max mana; maybe it's a malfunction." The doctor scratched his head.
I silently sighed in relief. Though it wouldn't be world-ending if my mana pool was revealed, it would cause some unwanted attention. Looking out the window, I realized what time it was.
"Does the academy's nursing room operate at night?" I asked.
"Well, with a lot of casualties daily, it's required that every medical place operates 24/7." I could not imagine the life of a doctor who needs to sleep during the day to work at night.
"I see. I'll be careful next time." I got up from my bed.
"You really should. Getting combat experience in dungeons is good, but those experiences will be useless in the afterlife," the doctor joked.
Trying to hold my urge to comment on the bad joke, I said goodbye and exited the nursing room.
On my way to my dorm, I caught a glimpse of someone in the empty practice ground. A student wielding a claymore danced in the starry night. Her blond hair flowed beautifully, and the sound of wind being cut could be heard frequently.
'Ah, Alice, beautiful as ever.' An unconscious thought crossed my mind, but I suddenly realized what I had thought. Trying to leave the scene, the urge to continue watching intensified.
Maybe it is the leftover soul of the previous owner of this body.
Not minding watching a little more, I entered the practice ground. I quietly leaned against one of the practice dummies and continued watching her.
A downward slash followed by a step forward and a horizontal slash. Each attack flowed like a river, yet each slash held power.
After half an hour of practice, Alice finally set down her claymore.
"You know the practice ground is forbidden at night?" I said.
"Ah!" She reacted quickly, pointing her claymore at me. Realizing it was her classmate, she quickly set it down.
"Sorry, I didn't notice you coming in."
"That's fine. You seemed focused, so I didn't want to disturb you." I retrieved a water bottle from my bracelet. "Water?" I offered.
A flash of suspicion appeared in her eyes as she silently watched the water bottle in my hand.
"Don't worry; it's not drugged or anything. See? The cap is still unopened," I pointed out.
Wait? What am I doing? The thing I should do is stay far away from the main characters, yet here I am, interacting and trying to be friendly with them.
Before I could retract the water bottle, Alice grabbed it out of my hand and thanked me. To prevent any more thoughtless actions, I quickly left without a word.
~
Looking at Ethan's departing figure, I stared in confusion as he left without warning. Drinking the water, I felt refreshed.
This kind of situation is unfamiliar to me. In England, I've always been homeschooled, preventing me from interacting with other kids my age. I was hoping I could interact more after moving here and living in the dorms, but I don't have a clue how to casually talk with anyone since I've not interacted with anyone besides adults.
So, I waited for anyone to start a conversation with me, but rarely did anyone seem to want to talk to me and rather watched me from afar with admiration.
Talk to me, damn it! Don't just admire me.
"Sigh," I sighed and returned my sight to Ethan's direction. He was the second student who started talking to me with lustless eyes. The first was Liam, the ace of our class, and now Ethan with the worst potential in history, though one sees me with friendly eyes and the other with cold eyes.
-
Returning to my dorm, a meow distracted me from my current conundrum. A black cat entered my vision.
"Luna," I lifted her from the ground, and we looked at each other at eye level.
This mysterious desire to know Alice has gotten me in deep thought as there are two potentials and both are linked to the previous owner of this body being a fan of Alice.
1. Either a subconscious will of Ethan was left in this body or the one who put me here didn't detect it.
2. It is muscle memory; Ethan's body seems to be accustomed to Ethan's admiration of Alice, to go autopilot once he meets Alice. Though this seemed like a stretch, there is no study case of what will happen if the will of a person is replaced with another, so there is no concrete evidence to deny this theory.
Luna meowed in happiness as I filled her bowl with food and happily chowed down.
Snapping my finger to summon Akashic, I searched the archive for anything that involved soul study and human anatomy, and fortunately, there were a couple of books on those topics.
Instantly transferring all of them to my mind, a feeling of pressure started as a headache began to grow.
"Ugh." I failed to support myself and fell to the floor, and after feeling like an eternity, the pain stopped.
*Drip* Blood started to drip from my nose. "Shit," I quickly rushed to the bathroom to avoid dirtying the floor.
"Do not transfer multiple books at once. Noted." I returned to the living room, sat on my bed, and closed my eyes to fully absorb all the info I obtained. Looking at the content, I realized why. Even the smallest book on soul studies contains 500 pages, which might take a couple of weeks to read normally.
Every book seems fragmented as each study looks at the soul and body from different angles, taking different approaches to theoretically manipulate souls.
This problem seems to be harder to solve than I thought. I need to study these books more, as knowing and understanding are fundamentally different from each other.
~~
A bit sick right now so can't focus on writing as much. Any opinions you have for this novel? I do read your comments and feedback would be lovely.