A new day - Chapter 07

No one's POV

Nero could be seen lying in bed, a troubled expression appeared on his face. He seemed to be fighting something, exhaustion and dread coloring his face. Suddenly he quite literally jumped nearly hitting the ceiling. He looked around looking relieved.

Ray's POV

I found myself back in my old life, "Had it all been a dream?" I begrudgingly questioned myself, not wanting to believe it was true. I tried to call the status window several times but it had all been in vain. I found myself roaming around the familiar campus, from the schools to stores everything remained the same. I felt like everything was a vain dream, momentary salvation from this dreary life. I still refused to believe what was laid in front of me. I quickly rushed back to the bookstore, the last place I was at before I was 'killed'. As I made my way through the winding, snow-capped streets I found myself in front of a familiar bookstore that I had visited several dozen times. Before I could enter I noticed something odd. While I didn't notice it at the beginning all the text was contorted, strange, and nearly unreadable. Now I understood this all a dream, a very lucid one. I instinctually felt what I needed to do. Drawing cold air in I managed the strongest possible shout of, "THIS IS A DREAM!!!" Suddenly everything shattered like glass as I was brought back to reality, I jumped out of bed in the literal sense, barely avoiding the ceiling. I took several deep breaths to calm myself down. Suddenly it finally clicked that I did die and was reincarnated. The relief I felt was unfathomable -Unlike most people who'd be in extreme denial- as I slowly filled up with happiness as it was proof that I was truly a part of this world and could accept myself as Nero not as Ray who is just a guest of this world. My alarm rang, and I was suddenly broken out of my happy thoughts. It read 5:30, guess it was time to start training. I silently went down to the basement, careful to not alert my still asleep sister, where the training room was located. My parents use this room often, but since they had to go on a mission a few hours prior I had the place all to myself. I know I will break through E-rank in a couple of weeks because I took the elixir just when I was about to reach F+ rank. I must keep it a secret as two breakthroughs in a few weeks are nearly unheard of. I first start by meditating. I slowly expel mana while simultaneously taking it and storing it in my mana core from the surroundings. I started the process by first cycling mana throughout my body, throughout every blood vessel slowly refining my body before expelling it through my lungs. I repeated this process several times until I was out of mana. After that, I went to the workout area where I was offered a different set of weights. I found out that I could easily rep 4 tons as a bench press, yes 4 tons for reps. I reach my limit at 6 tons of weight. After that, I did a bunch of other muscle exercises before resting a bit. To clarify the seemingly insane strength, G+ rankers are like the literal possible peak of humans -of my world- in all aspects, i.e. can bench 625kgs, can run 64 kilometers in an hour, and have reflexes at 0.1 seconds. So it makes sense that an F+ rank can be that strong. Next, I measured my speed and I hit 140 kmph barely. The increase in speed is lowered compared to strength. As for reflex, I measured 0.07 seconds. These are quite insane and frankly unrealistic parameters but normal in this world. Now that I have measured my physical parameters, I decided to start training in the gravity room, specifically my reflexes. As I entered the gravity room a console appeared before me. In the console were several options from which I chose reflex training. Suddenly six purple, cone-shaped objects appeared before my eyes. Without giving me time to process, they shot at me with incredible speed. I barely dodged them, almost a 4 cm gap between my body and the projectiles. This dodging sequence continued for a few more minutes until a mechanical voice rang out, "First level complete, commencing second level." before I could catch my breath, the number of projectiles increased by two. They kept on bombarding me for around 78 seconds until I was hit by a projectile at my blind spot. The same voice reverberated across the room," Congrats on reaching 87% of level 2." This confirmed my theory about me hitting E-rank soon. To clarify, mental capacity development relies on the mana core development. Since you need reflexes around E-rank to complete level 2 and I am close to completing it. With the happy news out of the way, I shot upstairs, since I had to get cleaned up and send Daisy to school.