Lucian didn't want to rack his brain too much for something as useless as naming a new training method, so he just picked out his last name for it and left it at that. He wasn't expecting it to be anything special anyway. All he wanted was something he could use to become an official knight within a three week time limit.
Past that point he didn't even plan on working on the knight side of things at all. From what he could glean through the small tidbits of information that were actually useful from the library, the difference between Knights and Mages was just that big.
Even a Grand Knight, which is the level above Official Knight, wouldn't be as strong as just a level 1 Apprentice Mage from the tidbits he'd managed to overhear. That was how pitiful Knights and their life force training methods were.
Although, Knights still made up the dominant forces of the backwater places like the Barren Islands and even those surrounding them. The kingdoms of this part of the world, as well as the duchies, counties, and the like, were all made up of Knights and Knight families. It was very rare for Mages to get into contact and involve themselves in the world of the 'commoners'.
To Mages, even Nobility were commoners in their eyes.
Lucian's own family was a Knight family. It wasn't just his father, Robert Verdan, that was a Knight, but also his grandfather, his uncles, and even his grandfather's grandfather was a Knight too when he was alive. His family had a long tradition of being Knights, which was primarily the reason Lucian was sent to the Knight academy despite his young age and complete lack of interest in becoming one.
As long as he could just become an Official Knight, not even a grand knight, his father and grandfather wouldn't have to call him a disgrace to the family tradition. The moment the previous Lucian even mentioned becoming a scholar in passing, he received many lashings from both his father and grandfather.
Right now his family was a minor noble family, with his father being a Baron and his grandfather the same. They all served under the Count their barony was located in and had to come at his beck and call whenever conflicts arose with other nearby counties.
'Whatever, I have no connection to them anyway.'
Even in his old life, Lucian never really felt any attachments to his family. They were just the people that brought him into this world, nothing more in his eyes. His mindset was just like that ever since he first developed his own thoughts and ideas. This was something that wouldn't change even when his soul had crossed worlds and dimensions to land in this new body.
Besides, Lucian didn't ask to be brought into this world anyway — how could two emotionally immature people make that decision for him? Nobody asked to be born.
'AI, show me the details of this new training method.'
Without further ado, Lucian allowed the analysis of this new 'Verdan Method' to appear in his mind.
After seeing what the AI considered the 'best' of the other 68 methods had to offer, he kept his expectations low. He was still expecting an increase in efficiency, though, as he had something valuable that the people of this world didn't. His AI implant.
[Name: Verdan Method.]
[Verdan Method: Forward slash, Piercing attack, Downward slash, Upward slash…]
[Footwork: Dodge, Advance, Counterattack, Sideswipe…]
[Breathing technique: Enter a state of meditation within 60 seconds of activation.]
All of this appeared quickly in Lucian's mind, like a list of ingredients for a recipe. It was all quite new for Lucian, who had never trained in something like this before, which only made it all so much more interesting.
This was the first time he was coming into contact with a training method from this world (one that was actually useful for him…). However, there was one very intriguing aspect of this new training method that wasn't available with any of the other 68 that he had found in the library.
'A breathing technique?'
His mind instantly picked up on this, and he focused entirely on it. None of the other training methods had something like this attached to it, and Lucian wondered just what its use was.
'AI, What is the use of this breathing technique?'
With nothing to reference from the library to provide him an answer, he decided to ask its creator, his AI implant.
[…]
It took a while for the AI to answer.
[Insufficient information available… Additional data had to be collated.]
'Well, that's not much to go off.'
The AI wasn't exactly what could be classified as 'Artificial General Intelligence', which could be summarised as a computer with the capability to think for itself. The AI implants popular back on Earth were more like 'helpers', mini computers that could do calculations and experiments if you were a scientist, but they couldn't really act like a search engine when asked questions.
However, Lucian was a smart man and gleaned what he could from this non-answer the AI had given him.
'My guess is…'
'When simulating each different training method, they all seem fundamentally flawed — they lack something critical. This must be why I felt so disappointed when I first checked the method the AI picked out for me. But with not a single one of the 68 techniques having this flaw fixed, the simulation had to improvise and assimilate information from elsewhere...'
'On Earth there are many martial arts techniques that mention the use of controlling one's breathing while training, and so this was implemented into one of the experiments and resulted in the creation of this breathing technique. This is my best educated guess.'
For the time being, Lucian couldn't get a definitive answer, so this was all he could come up with.
However, considering this technique came from the AI and matched his parameters, Lucian wasn't worried that this brand new training method might be harmful to him.