Chapter 2 – Aligning University/Academy

Still feeling a bit weak, Reno started to open his eyelids.

“Sir Brody! Patient Mochizuki has started to wake up, come see him immediately!”

Reno looked to his left and saw a girl in a fully white school uniform with a sky blue tie on who seemed to be calling someone.

She came over to him and then started to reassure him. “The academy’s healer will be coming soon, make sure to answer his questions.”

“Also remember to thank the person that carried you here when sir Brody is finished with you, they’re waiting outside the room.”

Reno clutched his head seemed to be going around the place, partially from waking up, partially from being tired, and partially from the amount of information he was taking in before he passed out.

After around 2 more minutes, a person clothed in full white but with a purple tie came and sat beside Reno. The person had dark eye bags under his eyes and didn’t stop yawning.

“Reno is your name, right?”

Reno started sitting up in his hospital bed. “That would be me, sir”

‘What kind of healer is this? The guy doesn’t even remember my name that the lady called out a while ago’

Brody did a couple more yawns. “Sorry that I don’t remember your name, there are lots of kids to deal with due to the entrance exams and all."

"Aside from that though, I’ve been up even before that so I’m exhausted.”

Reno stretched a bit. “Yeah, I can see that.”

‘The entrance exams… For the first years of Aligning University/Academy, this would be considered the time to make your debut.”

'Even though this academy was considered the backup for most ‘Noble’ ie. Spoiled Privileged kids, the better someone did on the entrance exams, the more the academy would pay attention to them and help them out.'

'The original Reno knew this and did his best in the entrance exams but only made it to the 2nd of 5 rounds in the entrance exam, a little above average if anything'

'To add on and make the entrance exams even more important, other academies usually came and watched for any seeds that might have gone by unnoticed and try recruiting them, making these exams that much more important'

After flipping a bit on a clipboard, Brody then started writing down some stuff.

“Answer me truthfully, this information goes to the heads after all. How did you end up like this? There was a cut through your chest and heart, and to make it worse, your vital core that’s used for controlling the mana that flows around your body has been fully corroded.”

“What!? My Vital Core!?”

‘The vital core is something that not everyone had, and had different shapes, sizes, and grades depending on how much of one someone had’

‘Some were shaped more like a stick and was more useful for circulating mana onto objects and the body itself while others were spherical and were most useful for creating phenomena that people referred to as magic’

‘They also had different grades, using the spherical vital core as an example, if it was 1/4th of a sphere it would be fourth grade, which was considered good and could increase up to a full vital core or go down to the lowest which would be a 1/10 or tenth-grade vital core.’

‘Reno’s body had a 1/8th of a stick-shaped vital core and was deemed to be 8th grade’

Brody started tapping his leg on the ground.

“Yes, your vital core, it’s fully corroded, luckily you were found in time or else you’d have ended up being paralyzed below the waist too, as the corrosion started from your abdomen and started leaking below, It didn’t reach far though as we could stop it and your leg function was saved too”

“I’ll ask again, what the hell happened to you? we have to report this to the schoolboard after all”

Reno then started thinking if he should try dodging the question to avoid the Lena girl and her luck but decided against it due to two reasons, one reason being that it would be hard to consider the severity of the situation, while the other was that he wasn’t the type to stay silent.

‘I’m not sure if they’ll even keep their word and if anything happens to me then the academy will know who did what’

After thinking it over, Reno detailed the entire scenario to Brody not missing out on even a small detail.

Brody then started to scratch his head.

“I see, I’ll report this as soon as possible. They’ll deal with this problem. For now, I’d advise you to stay lowkey and not get entangled with them. If this happened for something so minor then we don’t want to see a major incident”

After saying this, Brody got up, extended his arm and a sort of blue mist-like thing seemed to come out of his arm.

“Apart from your Vital Core being destroyed, everything seems to be okay though. You’re good to go, just make sure to sign out on the way out and be sure to thank the person who found you”

After saying this, Brody left the room.

When Brody left, Reno let out a sigh.

‘I’ve just arrived and not only do I not get a good start but a terrible one. From the memories I have now, I know that life for the coreless is one of the hardest’

‘Without a Vital Core, not only is someone’s future growth severely limited but the chances of an academy accepting you is slim.'

'Luckily this happened while my parents had already paid for all of my academy fees, or else I’d be screwed.'

A perk with Aligning University/Academy being a backup one was that it was mostly run on money and no matter how poor someone’s talent was, all that was needed was money to talk for them and money was the one thing Reno was least likely to ever run out of.

Reno’s family was rich, not because his dad or mom was amazing or anything but just because his dad and mom could be titled the children of fortune and no one they knew would argue against it.

At age 16, his dad bought some weird online coin and it made him millions, after that, he invested in some obscure company and made millions onto those millions all while his mom was winning lotteries at age 15.

Sadly money no longer equals authority in the time that Reno was in, everyone was more focused on combat strength while money would come after.

After stretching a bit, Reno got up out of the hospital bed and then tapped on the smartwatch on his wrist.