I’m in my room, lying in the dark since it’s already late. My roommate, in fact, has been breathing heavily for a while now, clearly fast asleep. I should be using this time to open the system interface, calmly read through my notifications, and assign my stat point from leveling up. But my mind can’t stop racing, restless.

  There’s Ronan’s situation, of course. Vincent promised us that as soon as dinner was over, he’d go check where they’d locked him up, make sure he was being treated well, and that they’d given him something to eat. I wanted to go with him, and Mary did too, but he insisted it would be simpler if he went alone—or with Theodore.

  I get it. Theodore doesn’t just outrank us as the heir to the marquisate where the academy is located, but he’s also incredibly calm. Like a lake on a windless day. I think his high affinity for water magic suits him perfectly.

  With Theodore, Vincent doesn’t run the risk of his companion losing their temper and yelling at the guards—something I might very well do if I got too heated—or turning pale, bursting into tears, or worse, fainting, which I imagine could easily happen to Mary in a moment of crisis.

  Yes, Vincent is a good leader. He has an excellent sense for judging people and knows how to surround himself with the right individuals for every situation. It’s a shame he won’t inherit the kingdom.

  I can rest easy leaving Ronan’s detention in his hands for tonight. I can try to silence that guilty little voice in my head telling me that if I’d been more perceptive, I could have anticipated Sol’s attack on Ronan and prevented all this.

  So, I should sleep and rest, right?

  Wrong. First, because I can’t stop feeling guilty. And second, because as a former citizen of Earth, I’m all too familiar with the silent monster known as stress—an enemy you can’t defeat with a flaming sword. So here I am, tossing and turning in bed, trying to relax while all the pending tasks I have to do clamor for attention in my head:

  Rescue Ronan.

  Talk to Ronan. Did he really grab his roommate by the neck? Honestly, I wouldn’t blame him if he did—the guy seems like a total jerk.

  Confront Sol and give that viper a piece of my mind.

  Keep resisting the urge to punch Sol with an earth-imbued arm.

  Sort out Mary’s dress for the ball.

  Find a dress for myself, because if my parents are coming, I can’t just hide in my room.

  Figure out how to interact with my supposed parents, who still don’t suspect that their daughter isn’t in this body.

  Decide who to go to the ball with. Nope! Don’t even go there.

  Deal with the goblins’ request list.

  Oh, my gosh, I need to level up the goblin village so I can manage it from its interface…

  Level up and turn off my combat notifications! Yes, I’ll do that now.

  Train with the bow, learn how to use it, and try imbuing either the bow or the quiver with fire magic.

  Improve my spells—I want to do something as impressive as Theodore’s water jet. There’s got to be something similar in fire magic, like a torrent of flames I can unleash as long as I have mana to sustain it, like a flamethrower.

  Stop procrastinating and level up my other schools of magic, or my earth and fire magic will stay stuck. Because my earth control already is…

  I’m not procrastinating—it’s just that I didn’t think I’d run into these limitations.

  Okay, stop arguing with myself and do something.

  Create new spells? I supposedly have a magic no one’s seen before; I should experiment and invent new spells.

  Figure out what I’m forgetting, because I’m sure there are more important things I need to do, but I can’t remember them right now.

  Study more? Pass exams? Hide the fact that I’m the future Demon King? Build an empire? Help my count father rise in rank and gain more lands? Go back to Earth?

  Help!

  I grab my pillow by the side that isn’t under my head and sandwich my face with it. Breathe. Isn’t stress supposed to be the disease of the 21st century? Well, this is a medieval world with magic. Relax, Bianca. Little by little, day by day. Remember: this is fun. You have magic.

  Those last three words make me smile. That’s right. I have magic. That fixes everything.

  I take the pillow off my face and glance at my roommate. She’s still asleep.

  Perfect: time to stop spiraling and focus on the positives. There were two things I loved about gaming: opening chests and leveling up.

  Let’s do this!

  First, I dig through the system for more than twenty minutes—it’s not exactly user-friendly—but I eventually find the notification settings and disable them for combat. I should have done this ages ago.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Great. Now, let’s check the notifications I’ve received:

  Congratulations. Your Minor Earth Wall spell has leveled up. It is now Low Earth Wall.

  Your Earth Control spell cannot level up due to the limitations of your Aetherblade specialization. To maintain balance, you must first improve your basic air and water spells before advancing Earth Control to a higher level.

  Magical resistance to attack: Insufficient skill level.

  Magical resistance to attack: Insufficient skill level.

  Congratulations. You have leveled up. You are now Level 8 and have one free stat point to allocate.

  Congratulations. Your skill Channeling with the Earth Element has leveled up. It has progressed from Low to Intermediate.

  Oh, I leveled up earth channeling? That makes sense since I used it to defeat a strong boss—the golem. But I don’t remember seeing the notification. It must have appeared alongside the level-up message, the one I dismissed without reading, meaning I probably closed two pop-ups at once.

  Let’s see what it does now:

  Channeling with the Earth Element costs two mana points and lasts three minutes. The applicable area remains unchanged.

  Interesting. The duration for fire channeling increased at the low level. Yet, each element seems to offer different bonuses as you level them up. I’ll have to figure out what I get with the other two.

  Too bad I can’t channel light.

  Because I can’t, right?

  My heart starts racing.

  My character profile doesn’t list light among the channeling elements, so I assumed it wasn’t possible. But what if I try? What if attempting it unlocks it in the profile?

  Excited by the thought, I focus and try to channel light into my right hand.

  Nothing.

  It doesn’t work, and I don’t even get a system notification saying something like "insufficient level."

  I try a couple more times, even with the pillow, but the results are the same.

  What a shame—it would’ve been amazing to have a sword that heals on contact or something like that.

  No matter. Time to assign my stat point.

  Then I realize something. Yesterday, after the bear hunt, I forgot to assign my point from leveling up to seven… Well, I won’t say it’s fine since more mana or magical damage would have been helpful in the dungeon, but I’ll handle it now.

  How careless of me…

  What should I increase? Ever since unlocking Aetherblade, I no longer see agility or strength as bad choices. But I need mana to sustain channeling, so one point to wisdom is a must. As for the other, my intelligence is currently at 6.

  I carefully get out of bed, making as little noise as possible, and grab my magic textbook. According to the tables, with my high spirit affinity, minor channeling does two points of damage for intelligence levels 5 to 8. At intermediate level, where my earth channeling now stands, it’s 5 to 7. This means raising my intelligence to 8 would increase the damage to three points.

  Of course, as the professor explained, these damage points are just a generic way to measure spell power. For instance, if I imbue my sword with fire, every strike adds two extra points of fire channeling damage on top of the weapon’s base damage. But it does more than that—like letting me cut through armor or thick hide that my current strength wouldn’t manage otherwise. Or protecting me if I apply earth channeling to myself. These secondary effects also scale. So if earth channeling currently offers two units of protection (so to speak), it would increase to three with intelligence 8 or if I upgraded the spell to advanced, where even with intelligence 6, the damage becomes three.

  High magical affinity for the element.

  Hmm… Looking at it this way, raising strength or agility might make more sense, considering I intend to fight with a fire-imbued sword.

  But… I don’t see it as a mid-term solution.

  The reason is that the scholar mastery primarily boosts wisdom—and intelligence too, but only at much higher levels of mastery. My routine involves attending classes, training with tutors in the afternoons, doing some self-study, and sleeping. This setup will let me increase strength through sword mastery and agility once I pick up archery. At some point, studying will give me another wisdom point. But there’s no intelligence gain unless I devote myself entirely to studying to max out the scholar mastery.

  The professors say there’s a mastery that grants significant intelligence, related to solving complex logical problems. Not exactly easy to acquire.

  Decision made.

  Intelligence.

  Or maybe not?

  Because in the otome game, and as confirmed by the professors, wisdom 10 reduces the time needed to fully recover mana and health from 24 hours to just 20. Eating and sleeping requirements remain, though. If I put both points into wisdom, I’d hit 10 now.

  I sigh.

  I’m overthinking this. I have meditation, the puppy’s lick, and mana potions handed out during private lessons. Wisdom will increase naturally with the scholar mastery.

  Done. Intelligence it is.

  One point to intelligence and one to wisdom—because even if it’s easy to restore mana, the total amount I have is also crucial, especially for maintaining the shadow wolf summon.

  As for intelligence, I’ll aim to boost it again with my next level-up.

  (And yes, I know I didn’t use meditation in the dungeon, but when I needed mana, it wasn’t the time to sit down and meditate—it was time to take a lick from the pup or ask Mary for a potion. Meditation would’ve helped if the monsters in that secret area had given us a break instead of coming all at once.)