When Zack opened his eyes, he found himself staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. His groggy eyes snapped open once he realized this. He sat up and looked around. Old creaky bed, old wardrobe, old table—he was damn sure he wasn't in his own room.
Rubbing his temples, Zack tried to remember what happened. He recalled enjoying his long-awaited weekend by gaming, but everything after that was a blur. The next thing he knew, he was in this strange room.
He rubbed his eyes, half expecting to wake up from some crazy dream. But when he looked at his arm, something felt off. It looked... younger. Freaked out, he let out a scream, only to realize he sounded like a kid.
Quickly shutting his mouth, he scanned the room and spotted a full-length mirror. With shaky legs, he approached it, dreading what he might see.
He had a gut feeling about what was happening. His line of sight was way lower than it used to be, but the thought was too wild to accept.
When he finally saw his reflection, he felt dizzy. Staring back at him was a beautiful kid with silver hair and blue eyes. The face was completely unfamiliar; he used to be a typical guy in his twenties, with dark hair and eyes. Before he could process anything else, a flood of memories rushed into his brain like a freight train.
He clutched his head and held the mirror for support so he wouldn't stumble. Slowly, he made his way back to the bed, barely collapsing onto it before passing out. His last thought before blacking out? "Well, at least I'm better looking now."
Waking up a second time, he checked his arm again, only to be disappointed. He was still stuck in this stranger's body. Or was it more accurate to say he was the stranger now? Either way, he had a whole bunch of new memories rattling around in his head.
According to these new memories, he was an apprentice wizard at a lightning magic tower. And as far as he knew, there weren't any magic towers in his previous world. So, he was pretty sure he had transmigrated to another world.
Despite his fear, he felt a bit excited. In these kinds of transmigration stories, the main character usually got some kind of cheat ability. One common cheat ability was having a system. So, he started throwing around different buzzwords like "system" and "open system." Then, when he tried "open status," boom! Suddenly, a glowing blue rectangle appeared right in front of him.
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Name: Zack
Age: 10/100
Occupation: Apprentice wizard
Mana: 1/1
Talent: [Limitless Mana Well], [Advanced Mana Manipulation Correction], [Advanced Mana Sensory Correction], [Advanced Intelligence Correction]
System was synchronizing… Status: 80%
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Looking at his status window, Zack grinned. Just by the sound of skills like "Limitless" and "Advanced," he knew they were top-notch. "Hehehe," Zack chuckled. In other words, he was a genius!
After celebrating for a while, he suddenly remembered, "Crap, I was supposed to be cleaning the library in the magic tower, like, right now!" He quickly put on his robe and bolted out of his room. Relying on his new memories, he navigated through the corridors and headed to the library.
Even though his stomach was rumbling with hunger, he had to suck it up and keep moving. According to his new memories, missing his main job could get him kicked out of the tower. And that was pretty much a one-way ticket to becoming a magic beast's dinner in the forest surrounding the tower.
As he arrived in front of the library door, he couldn't help but admire how massive it was—so wide and tall that he couldn't even see the top. "What the heck? Are these doors for giants? What's the point of making them so big?" His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone snoring.
Turning his head, he spotted a table and a chair near the library's door, where an old geezer was leaning back, fast asleep. The snoring sound came from him. Zack found it odd that this guy could sleep here every day without getting in trouble. After all, he saw this old man every time he went to the library.
Ignoring the old geezer, Zack went to the reception table of the library. Peeking around, he noticed that his supervisor wasn't there. Zack sighed in relief and quickly tapped his badge to a magical device to clock in. Just as he was wiping the sweat off his brow and reaching for a broom to start cleaning, a hand suddenly clasped his shoulder.
"KYAAAAA!" Zack yelped in surprise, his face going pale. He turned his head, trembling, to find his furious supervisor glaring at him. Zack forced an ugly smile, one that was closer to crying than smiling.
As expected, he got a scolding for being late. Fortunately, the supervisor seemed afraid of waking up the old dude, so he kept his voice low. "Not that the words weren't hurtful," Zack mused. But he had too much on his mind with the whole transmigration thing to get hurt by the scolding. Afterward, he headed to his usual area with his usual broomstick and started sweeping.
On the way, he met John, a fellow library member who was also sweeping the floor. John had joined the tower in the same batch as Zack. Seeing Zack's listless state, John couldn't help but pat his shoulder. "Man, that must have been brutal," he said. Then, after looking around to make sure no one was listening, he whispered to Zack, "Don't worry, we can actually be late once in a while. I heard from our seniors that the supervisor doesn't care that much. He just makes an example out of someone early on so the rest of us don't slack off."
John patted Zack's shoulder again. "So, you're just unlucky, and…" he hesitated, looking at Zack's face, "cheer up. The library job isn't that bad, and it's not like we can't change jobs later, so hold on until then."
Listening to John, Zack was surprised. John must've misunderstood his gloomy expression, thinking Zack was upset about being late and stuck with a library job. But Zack's gloominess came from being suddenly thrown into a new world without a chance to sort anything out.
"Thanks, man," Zack said gratefully before continuing to his area. Once he reached his spot, he started sweeping the floor, thinking back to John's words.
As John implied, working in the library wasn't a lucrative job. According to his new memories, it was where apprentices with trash talents ended up.
Every apprentice in the tower was assigned a main job that they had to do. Even newly recruited apprentices got a job assignment when they first entered the tower. The assignment depended on the apprentice's talent, wealth, or connections.
For example, if an apprentice had money—or mana stones in this case—they could bribe the tower staff to get a better job. If they had connections, they could pull some strings. Or, if they had good talent, the tower staff might invest in them or build a good relationship by assigning them to a prime position.
If they didn't have any of that, they would be assigned to the library. The thing about the library job was that an apprentice would only get paid one tower point a day, the tower's currency. Compared to other jobs, like maintaining the magic garden which paid five points a day, the library job was way less lucrative.
To make matters worse, library members couldn't easily earn extra tower points by taking on missions from the mission hall. Due to the limited number of apprentices assigned to the library and its sheer size, each library member had to clean a large area every day. Unless they knew a spell to help, they spent most of their day cleaning, cutting off their only other path to earning extra income.
In a tower where everything ran on tower points, every apprentice tried to avoid being assigned to the library like the plague.
"Haah," Zack sighed. He could guess how he ended up here. He must have had a shitty talent because, at the time of the talent assessment, his system hadn't activated. But not all hope was lost. Like John said, he could get out of the library by applying for a different job, though it would cost tower points.
However, he would have to wait another six months until the tower started recruiting apprentices again. To apply for a different job, he needed to prepare for another apprentice to replace him. Given how undesirable the library job was, no one would willingly replace him. So, he was stuck as a library member for the next six months.
"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh," Zack sighed an even longer sigh, catching the attention of his library mate, another poor soul stuck in the same crappy job.
He gave his fellow library mate a smile and continued pondering. 'Well, it's not like there aren't any perks to being a library member.'
Library members had the privilege of borrowing one book for free each week.
'Hmm... that's one good thing. And then there's this,' Zack thought as he sneaked a peek at his status screen. He noticed a syncing progress that ticked up by 1% every half hour. 'No clue what that's about, but it's something to keep an eye on.'
When lunchtime rolled around, he sauntered over to the cafeteria and dug into the free grub. As he was eating, he couldn't help but be grateful to the tower, 'Thank the stars the tower still threw us a bone with free food 'cause, for us library folks, with our measly points, we couldn't afford anything. And hey, it wasn't half bad—your standard veggies and meats.' If he wanted the fancy stuff made from magical beasts? Gotta shell out some serious points.
Still, Zack wasn't complaining. Well, the steak in front of him looked like it had been whipped up by Gordon Ramsay. Heck, you could even order different degrees of doneness for the steak. Sure, magical chow might have given you a mana boost, but for now, Zack was sticking to the basics.
As he scarfed down his meal, Zack's gears started turning. Going by his talent stats, he felt pretty confident about making it as a wizard in this world. Well, he hoped so, at least. He had to put that to the test later. But assuming his skills were the real deal, he had a choice to make: flaunt his genius status and rake in the goodies, or play it cool and build up his powers nice and slow.
So, Zack leaned towards option two—playing it cool suited him better. 'you have to play it safe to make it in this crazy world.' He paused his thought to gulp on the delicious steak.
He wasn't about to stir up any trouble with the other geniuses who had the bigwigs backing them up. Nah, he was gonna keep it chill and let his skills do the talking. With his talents, he was going to hit the big leagues sooner or later. Oh, and he was serious about keeping that low profile, none of that shouting-from-the-rooftops nonsense like some other novel's protagonists.
So, Zack wrapped up his meal and got back to tidying up the library. Once he was done, he headed back to his room and decided to put his talent to the test. Grabbing the basic meditation book he had borrowed earlier, he shut his eyes and followed the instructions to tap into the mana around him. Before long, he sensed colorful specks of dust floating around him.
Now, according to the book, even if you weren't naturally drawn to a specific element, you could still practice it no problem. But peeping at those mana particles doing their thing and matching up their behavior with what described in the book, Zack let out a sigh. 'Damnit!' Zack was pretty sure that he didn't have any natural knack for any element. Due to his irritation, the colorful speck of dust started flickering, looking like they were about to disappear from his sight.
'Not good, I was about to break from my meditation state,' But soon enough, he calmed down and focused back to meditating. Sure, having an affinity for an element made life easier, but he had other tricks up his sleeve that would put him ahead of the game.
Checking out those mana particles swirling around him, Zack felt pretty pumped. 'According to the book, most rookies needed like a month of practice before they could even start sensing the mana.' But here he was, picking it up just a split second after giving it a shot! 'If that wasn't some next-level talent, then I didn't know what was.' Zack thought smugly.
With a deep breath, he decided to focus on gathering those volatile blue particles, aka lightning particles, into his mana heart, which was basically his dantian (that's the lower belly for all you non-wizard folks). And why lightning? 'Well, duh, I am in the lightning tower! Lightning spells here are top-notch, fully researched and all that jazz.'
Now, his mission? To level up from rookie level 1 to 2. And to pull that off, he had to gather enough mana to cast a level 0 spell five times. Sounds like a cakewalk, right? Not exactly. He needed to nail down at least one level 0 spell, and that would have to wait 'cause he was short on points to borrow a spell book. His library perks? Already cashed in for that basic meditation book.
The cheapest spell tome he could snag was called [Zap], and it would set him back 10 tower points. This little spell let him fire off a tiny lightning bolt that could zap a regular joe for a few seconds. It wasn't much, but it was a start. And if he could cast [zap] five times, he would be officially considered as a level 2 apprentice wizard.
So, Zack took a break from his meditation to grab some dinner at the cafeteria. Once he was fueled up, he headed back to his room and dove right back into his meditation zone. The next morning rolled around, and he checked his mana—boom, it had gone up by 1! Since he had been at it for 8 hours, that meant he was boosting his mana by 0.125 every hour. Not too shabby, huh?
After tidying up and washing his face, Zack grabbed some breakfast and then headed off to the library.
For the next 7 days, it was like Groundhog Day for Zack—eat, hit the library, meditate, repeat. Good thing meditation could kind of replace sleep, although he still needed to catch some sleep once a week to stay sharp. Anyway, after all that, he had managed to bump up his mana capacity to 10.
As soon as his library privilege was refreshed, Zack immediately tried to borrow [Zap]. But, when he tried to borrow the book, there was an accident.