Yooo, I’m back people, it’s my POV—miss me?

{Why do you have to default to talking to yourself like you’re in a movie?}

It’s a reflection of who I am. Don’t disturb me, I’m doing a mental recap, bitch.

So after the interruption of the best collection of fools in my life, I should get to telling you what happened in the past month.

It’s been a hell of a training montage.

Let’s get it.

...

On the first day, after Nox had teleported me without so much as a map or a warning, I found myself in a grand library. Very grand. And as we all know, I have a limited vocabulary, so I can’t give you a composite description.

{ You have Knowledge of All Mundane Things }

Zero’s voice carried the particular smugness of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment.

{ Certainly English falls under the mundane }

"Shut the fuck up and let me talk."

{ Heh }

Is it composite? I don’t really care, to be honest.

Back to the recap.

When I appeared, I was completely lost—standing in the middle of a space that stretched further than any building had a right to, shelves climbing toward a ceiling I couldn’t make out, books packed spine-to-spine in every direction. No guide. No orientation. No Nox.

Fuck you, Nox.

It’s like when it comes to me, everyone abandons common sense at the door. I’m lazy, not stupid. How exactly were you expecting me to find the basics of magic in a room the size of a continent?

Well. I did.

When I stopped complaining long enough to actually look, I found the shelves had tags. A section marked Magic, with subsections below it—Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Master, Grandmaster—arranged in clean, descending rows like the library had been built by someone who genuinely believed in me.

No spoilers, but each shelf held its own distinct knowledge. Different material, different spells, different expectations from the reader.

{ Obviously. }

Ignore.

Not just theory, either—each level came with free trial spells. Practical applications you could begin working through at whatever point you found yourself.

I love this place.

Past tense, since I’m doing a recap. But still.

After finding the magic section, I explored a little further and found the other fields branching off in every direction. The ones that caught my attention were swordsmanship—which reminded me, with some irritation, of Enel—and martial arts, which reminded me of the one principle I’ve always followed:

Fist beats rock.

{ The sign for rock is a fist, so— }

Ignore.

I had a plethora of books waiting. And it turns out my core personality, whatever was preserved through the transmigration, genuinely loves reading.

I could not pull myself away.

There’s something about gaining knowledge that feels clean. Satisfying in a way that doesn’t cost anything afterward.

Especially when there’s no exam waiting at the end.

...

A week later I returned to the house. Michael had arranged the materials I needed, so I carved time out of my admittedly sparse schedule to build the devices.

Three days, start to finish.

When the job was done, I dipped.

{ So we’re not going to address how you barely spoke to anyone the entire time? }

I made jokes. You were simply too slow to catch them.

{ They touched something, didn’t they. And instead of saying so, you went quiet and called it focus. }

I talked to them. I was focused on the task. Don’t interrupt the recap—I’ll get there.

Where was I?

Right. Yeon had returned by the time I came back to build the machines. I gave her one before heading straight back to work.

I had a responsibility. A good professor shows up.

...

I should probably include what I actually learned. It’s good to bounce knowledge back at yourself—facilitates growth, keeps things sharp.

So. Magic.

As I’d begun to understand before, magic differs from abilities in one fundamental way: versatility. In the system’s interface, magic is classified as a skill, but the ceiling on what you can do with it is considerably higher than what most abilities allow.

The trade-off is damage output.

A fire-based ability—say, a fireball—has a higher mana conversion rate than the equivalent fireball spell. If you and a mage both spend a hundred units of magic power on fire, the ability user hits harder. But the mage can shape that fire. Redirect it. Adjust it mid-flight. The ability user is locked into whatever the ability was designed to do.

More power, less room to move. More flexibility, lower ceiling.

Do you understand?

{ No, they don’t. }

Bah.

Now—magic circuits. Every person has one, separate from the circuits that handle abilities, skills, and traits. All the magic you learn feeds into that single circuit. What you can do with it depends entirely on your talent.

The good news: unlike innate abilities and traits, everything else can be replaced. Skills, magic, even non-innate abilities. Before—when the group first encountered runestones and it was essentially a gacha draw—you’d have to delete something and hope the replacement was worth it.

But I found out there’s a newer class of runestones. Fixed output. You know exactly what you’re getting before you use it. No gamble. You simply substitute whatever slot you’ve outgrown.

Talent in the Tower is valued accordingly. Anything below C-rank isn’t accepted into the academy. Below that threshold, the circuit simply can’t sustain what the Tower demands.

Now—inevitably—you might be wondering where my limit lies.

{ Nobody asked that, brother. }

I simply have no limit.

It’s to be expected. I’m Zeke. Limits would be strange on me. And I do have something of a cheat system running alongside everything else.

{ Something of a cheat system? }

Lesson for young padawans: when you’re being ignored, stay ignored.

{He is not talking about me.}

"I am."

Forgive the interruption. I had to sneeze.

...

By the third week, I had finished everything I came for. Every shelf in the sections I’d chosen—magic, swordsmanship, martial arts, a detour through crafting and alchemy—cleared.

I don’t have a dedicated crafting trait, and I’m not planning to build one. I could brute-force it on natural talent, but the effort-to-reward ratio doesn’t hold. I don’t need potions. I don’t need weapons in any traditional sense.

I might dabble in bladework eventually. There are abilities that cover weapon creation from a specific element—Jude’s flame weaponry is still the cleanest example—and that’s a ceiling I’d like to surpass on pure swordsmanship alone.

Which is why, past the mandatory reading, I started pulling books from fields I had no immediate use for. Alchemy. Metallurgy. Comparative weapon theory. I have the Master of Arms trait, which makes me proficient with any weapon I pick up, but proficiency isn’t the same as understanding. I want the knowledge underneath the technique.

I want my natural talent to eventually make Enel’s Sword Monarch trait bow to me, Zeke Vaughn.

{ That is impossible. You already have a trait covering weapons mastery. }

’Master of Arms makes me proficient with any weapon I hold. It doesn’t make me a swordsman—it makes me a weapons master. There’s still room to grow into something Enel can’t claim.’

{ Touché. }

I did also respond in the group chat Zero won’t bother to mention.

{ You had me reply on your behalf. You personally only spoke to Yeon. }

’Yeon is part of the boys. Same thing.’

"Oh—she sent a sticker."

I straightened slightly, eyes tracking the interface Zero had pulled up.

"Zero. Find a better one. We have to win the sticker war."

If you’re wondering how I send messages without a phone screen—I use Zero’s interface. Physical screens are a distraction.

{ You just hate typing. }

’Why type when I have an assistant?’

{ You’ve been unusually close with Yeon lately. }

’Like items attract.’

{ That’s not how that works. }

’My world, my rules. Physics can take the day off.’

We have something loosely resembling a semi-date planned somewhere in this medieval fantasy world. I’ve read everything I came to read, built what I came to build, and now it’s time to actually be present with the people who are, against all reasonable expectations, my people.

{ The ones you haven’t properly spoken to in a month? }

’Friendships pass the test of time.’

{ You have a terrible character. }

’I know. And I don’t care.’

’In that context—what did you expect me to do? Tell them I’m a reincarnated person from another world dropped here with an advanced AI? Taking their questions as a wound and making a scene would only make them feel guilty for asking. They’d avoid the topic entirely going forward. Which is the intended outcome.’

’Cardinal rule of transmigration: never tell anyone you’re a transmigrator.’

{ The manipulator has awakened. }

’I’ve never needed to manipulate anyone before. And this isn’t manipulation—it’s protecting them from information that would change how they see everything, including me.’

{ You do know reincarnation and transmigration are fairly common in the Tower. }

’I know. But it doesn’t happen outside it. People reincarnated into the Tower come in as NPCs and claw their way up from nothing. What happened to me is different, and they don’t need that particular complication.’

{ So you do pay attention in class. }

’Anton told me. You were useless as usual.’

I pushed back from the reading table, the chair scraping softly against the stone floor, and rolled my neck until something cracked.

"Old man Nox. I’m out of here."

Shimmer.

—