Levi let out a pleasant hum as he sipped at his tea.

  He wanted to say it was due to the warmth and taste, but honestly there was a decent chance he was just addicted to the caffeine. Hmm. That was some food for thought. Could addictions survive reincarnation to another world? He’d have to add that to the growing list of things Death hadn’t bothered to explain to him.

  That list was growing pretty long, for the record.

  Couldn’t Death have at least provided a cheat sheet for him? Some expositional context for the sake of convenience?

  Levi recalled once having had to spend hours filling out paperwork after one exceptionally catastrophic mission had required Death to step in and perform a localized temporal shuffle to prevent a timeline collapse. The paperwork had technically been Death's responsibility, but Death had taken one look at the stack of forms and proceeded to solemnly inform Levi, ‘Death does not do paperwork’. Levi had spent the entire day stuck with the task of forging Death’s signature on documents he couldn’t even physically perceive.

  Surely after that debacle, Death could’ve returned the favor and prepared a file on the new world for him. But no, here Levi was, tossed into another dimension with the increasingly uncomfortable realization that this world’s magic was vastly different from his own.

  The food was free, thankfully. Levi had been confused at first since there were no serving stations in the dining hall, but he understood quickly after observing some of the other students. There were menus laid out on every table, and a student had to just say what dish they wanted out loud and it’d appear on the table a few seconds later.

  Scanning the menu, Levi had seen pages upon pages of exotic dishes and luxurious ingredients with names he couldn’t even pronounce. Once upon a time, he would’ve been thrilled – he’d always been hungry growing up as a street orphan, and even eating fresh meat had been a wild luxury. But since then… He didn’t really enjoy eating food anymore. It served as fuel, but that was about it.

  Levi much preferred drinking tea.

  However, he needed the nutrition, especially considering how gaunt this new body was. As such, he ordered a rich bone broth with shredded chicken and root vegetables, plus bread for dipping and nuts for dessert. Simple, but calorically dense. He’d scarfed it down in record time.

  It was only after he’d begun drinking his cup of tea that he finally looked up at Andevar, who was sitting across from him and looking like he was about two seconds away from bursting. The entire time, Andevar had been silent. His meal sat in front of him, untouched.

  Levi sighed. “Alright, what is it?”

  “Did you sell your soul?” Andevar instantly blurted out. His eyes widened afterward, clearly not having intended for that to slip out. “I mean – that is to say–”

  Levi watched him flounder with some bemusement. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Where did you get that idea from?”

  Selling your soul was one of the worst mistakes you could possibly make, right up there with asking ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ and mistaking laxatives for candy. Two out of three wasn't so bad, but Levi would be damned if he made the third. Not that he even knew how much his soul was worth these days. It was a little… compromised, to say the least.

  “Oh I don’t know, maybe something to do with your fight against Winthrop? You’ve never lasted longer than seven seconds against him – nine if he stopped to yawn. But this time, not only did you survive against him, but you even managed to get past his guard and touch him! How?”

  Levi shrugged. “Beginner’s luck?”

  “... you're supposed to be a beginner?”

  “Hmm. Fair point,” Levi acknowledged. “Maybe he just went easy on me. Didn’t you hear what the others were saying about him fixing the match?”

  Andevar pinned him with a hard look. “I’m not blind, Levi. I’m ranked third in our year for a reason. I’ve fought against Winthrop multiple times before in our combat classes. The others might not have been able to tell he was holding back, but I could. He was definitely going all-out against you, Levi.”

  Huh. Andevar was third in their year? That was impressive of him. Levi supposed there had been a reason why the previous Levi had Andevar do his homework for him, aside from being a commoner that he could bully around.

  “So you came to the natural conclusion that I sold my soul to someone?”

  Andevar flushed. “Okay, that might have been a little outlandish. But something must’ve happened. Did you get your hands on some magical artifacts? Enchanted items?” He paused. “You aren’t taking illegal performance-enhancement potions, are you? Because you do know those come with some very unpleasant side effects, right…”

  “I am not taking illegal performance-enhancement potions,” Levi said before pausing. “Hold on, side effects?”

  “Though I guess since you’re already disinherited, there’s no longer a need for you to be able to produce an heir,” Andevar muttered under his breath.

  Levi stared at him.

  Andevar stared back.

  “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

  Levi nodded slowly.

  “...”

  “...”

  “Anyhow,” Andevar coughed, “moving on, what are you going to do about Winthrop? There’s no way he’ll leave you alone after what you just did. It’s almost guaranteed that he’ll come after you again.”

  Levi hummed. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  While his typical modus operandi for dealing with arrogant nobles was giving them a humiliating thrashing (or, in some particularly corrupt or morally bankrupt cases, a swift defenestration), he had chosen to forego that method with Winthrop.

  Winthrop’s plan had been crude, misguided, even cruel, but Levi wouldn’t go so far as to call it completely unwarranted. Even if he disagreed with the way Winthrop had gone about it, he could understand the desire to uphold one’s principles, even if one had to dirty their hands in the process.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Levi had seen far too many deaths caused by blatant incompetence on the battlefield, after all.

  As a result, Levi had decided to simply clasp Winthrop’s shoulder as both a token of truce and a warning to back off. He had a feeling Winthrop had received the message – both of them, judging by how he could sense Winthrop tossing him wary glances when he thought Levi wasn’t looking from where he was sitting in the dining hall.

  It felt a little odd, honestly, not resorting to violence. His tasks for Death had typically always ended with someone, or something, dying in some way. He supposed it was nice to not have to worry about a grudge or blood feud forming, for once. Not to mention how it kept his remaining enemies underestimating him.

  Judging by the dirty looks the rest of the dining hall were throwing at him, he had plenty of those left.

  Andevar looked at him skeptically. “Your funeral, I guess.”

  “I appreciate your concern.” With that, Levi tapped his bowl and cup and intoned, “Meal finished.” His dirty dishes disappeared a second later. His lips curved slightly. That was rather convenient. Levi didn’t even want to think about how complicated the enchantments must’ve been to automate such a mundane procedure.

  Then again, the Institute of Ascension seemed to be primarily populated with the upper class of society – nobility, merchant, military, and adventurer lines. It made sense they’d spend on wanton luxuries such as these.

  Andevar didn’t seem to have anything more to say, so Levi went back to thinking about the blackboard homework problem in Heimler’s class. It was a tricky one, surprisingly complex for a homework assignment. Though, if Levi wasn’t mistaken, it theoretically shouldn’t be all that difficult to solve. It was less a matter of deriving the right equation and more about approaching the problem from the wrong angle, one that violated every natural law in the book–

  Pain suddenly surged through him. Levi tensed up, suppressing the urge to cry out. He clambered to his feet, gripping the edge of the table as wave after wave of increasing pain pulsed through him. “Pardon me for a moment.”

  “Huh? Where are you going?”

  Levi ignored Andevar, quickly making for the dining hall exit. He ignored the students who turned to stare at him as he walked past – he saw quite a few angry stares directed toward him. They probably blamed him for the money they’d lost. Thankfully, they didn’t accost him; it seemed that they were unwilling to make a move without Winthrop spearheading the charge.

  For that matter, he also ignored Winthrop, whose head had snapped up in alarm the moment Levi got within ten meters of his table, his entire body tensing up. Perhaps Levi had traumatized him a little more than he’d thought. Which was a new record, really, considering how Levi hadn’t landed even a single hit on him. But he digressed.

  Levi quickly rushed out of the dining hall and sped through the corridors. He remembered seeing the lavatories on his way to the dining hall – earlier, he had half-expected Winthrop to try to drag him there and push his head down the toilets – and fortunately, his memory didn’t fail him now.

  He practically staggered into the restrooms. Again, it was the very image of luxury, with gleaming marble taps and crystal sinks. More importantly, the restroom was empty.

  Levi quickly shut himself in a stall and immediately bent over, hands on knees, dry heaving into the toilet as he desperately struggled not to vomit.

  What the fuck was happening? It felt like his body was breaking apart…

  Oh. Oh shit.

  Even after the fight had finished, Levi had continued keeping his reinforcement magic active. He preferred it that way; he had always kept it running in his old body, and old habits had kicked in.

  However, if his hypothesis was correct…

  Levi drew in a deep breath, braced himself, then released his reinforcement magic.

  For one deceptively sweet moment, the waves of pain disappeared. Levi didn’t let out a sigh of relief. He knew what was coming next.

  It slammed into him all at once. Levi let out a gasp as pain exploded across and within his body. Everything hurt. His eyes hurt. His muscles hurt. His bones hurt.

  Fuck. Levi let out a torrent of vile curses in several languages, most of which were not human. If a particularly linguistically-gifted sailor were standing nearby, they’d probably be pretty impressed.

  His hypothesis was confirmed.

  Magical overburn.

  It was the result of channeling more mana than the body could safely handle. During the fight, Levi must’ve pushed his body too far, from both the reinforcement magic as well as the vector nullification spell he’d used to defend against Winthrop’s final punch.

  Levi had felt magical overburn before when he’d pushed himself, but never to this degree. The intensity of the magical backlash was completely unexpected. Though to be fair, he’d never been reincarnated into a magic-less body before, so it wasn’t as if he had any reference points to help prepare him for the experience.

  He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the black spots appearing before his eyes, fighting to stay conscious as the pain threatened to overwhelm him.

  Okay, yeah. This was bad.

  Levi’s pain tolerance was high. He had been injured too many times to count in his past. He had been stabbed, shot, speared, dismembered, disemboweled, and disarticulated. He had been tortured more than once: his bones had been crushed to fine paste, his spleen had seen sunlight, and on one especially memorable occasion, his skin had been flayed from the bone, forcibly regenerated, then flayed again. His old body had been little more than a haphazard patchwork of scar tissue and tattered bones, held together only by constant magical reinforcement and sheer fucking will.

  But he digressed. The point was, though he very much wished otherwise, Levi was no stranger to pain.

  This still fucking hurt like hells though.

  Levi gritted his teeth, running through several breathing exercises and trying to stabilize himself. After a few minutes, the pain finally reduced to manageable levels, though he still felt a constant ache in pretty much every cell of his body.

  When he was finally certain he wasn’t going to fall over, he slowly straightened up again. Alright. He should be good.

  Finally lucid enough to give his surroundings a proper examination, Levi looked around the inside of the bathroom stall. It was sparkling clean, with not a speck of dirt to be seen anywhere. Probably some self-cleaning enchantments. And…

  Wait.

  Holy fuck. Where was the toilet paper?

  He shuddered. Did these toilets have enchantments inscribed to automatically conjure toilet paper and wipe the ass of the user? Were nobles truly this depraved? No, there was no way. It was probably just a magical bidet feature–

  Ping!

  Levi tensed up. The noise had come from inside his head. That was never a good sign. He was already halfway into casting an exorcism spell on himself when a screen suddenly appeared in front of him.

  He’d like to say he handled the sudden intrusion with poise and dignity, but the truth was he let out a strangled yelp and leapt backward so hard he nearly cracked his skull on the quartz stall wall. His hands snapped upward in a flash, a spell already forming, but he paused when nothing else came forth.

  Carefully, Levi examined the screen. It hovered in the air around his head level and was semi-transparent, the quartz wall visible behind. It was clearly a magical construct, but it didn’t feel magical at all. He activated his True Sight, and…

  Huh. That was interesting.

  The screen existed, but only in the surface layer of reality. In the layers beneath, threads connected from the screen to… somewhere. Levi tried to trace the threads, but they seemed to continually shift and coil into themselves, its unravelings so convoluted and impenetrable he couldn’t perceive it all the way. The screen appeared to be woven into the fabrics of the world itself, if that was even possible; something fundamental to this reality.

  Once he judged he wasn’t likely in any imminent danger, Levi deactivated his True Sight and lowered his hands, though he still remained on his guard.

  There was writing on the screen, he belatedly noticed. He read it quickly:

  *****

  [System Notification: Through intensive mana channeling, you have gained +10 MAG]

  [System Warning: Failed to increase MAG attribute due to restricted account status]

  *****

  Levi stared at the screen.

  Well. That was new.