Chapter 49

For several decades, the military had always allocated Mind Division and Mind Enhancement to scientists and engineers to speed up technological progress, so it was easy to understand why they weren’t very happy to learn about Mind Division’s newfound use. After all, the Grand Lich took a month to respawn, meaning the Innate Dimension only produced 12 Mind Division and Mind Enhancement skill gems a year.

With the gateway to the Grandsky Realm opening in less than three months, how was the military supposed to arm their top mages with Mind Division and Mind Enhancement? It was simply impossible.

Over a thousand mages in the military were qualified to receive Mind Division and Mind Enhancement, yet there weren’t enough skill gems to go around. While the military’s upper echelon sighed with regret at the missed opportunity, the mages ended up deeply depressed. Interestingly, a military data analyst noticed a drastic increase in mental health spending over the following period.

Meanwhile, Keith took two days to recuperate from his duel with Rhea. He subconsciously avoided thinking of asking Elora to heal him up with a quick poke and regenerated Health the old-fashioned way. It was probably because of trauma or something.

While recuperating, Keith browsed the magic network and maintained his farm. Over the past three years, Keith found the most success growing ingredients for elixers, as they were always in high demand. Nowadays, the Farming Simulator made Keith over a million gold a week in pure profit.

Unfortunately, the Farming Simulator had hit a bottleneck. The upgrades were simply too expensive. It was more beneficial for Keith to invest in himself rather than continue to upgrade the farm, for the time being at least.

On the second day of recuperating, Keith woke up and checked the Rift Simulator. The Rift Simulator continuously generated loot, and Keith could cash out whenever he wanted, though he preferred to cash out when he woke up for the day. It was similar to drinking coffee or doing some drugs to kickstart the day.

Keith liked to read the detailed summary of what dropped before withdrawing his earnings. Today though, he noticed that the quantity of loot seemed much bigger than normal. He earned almost five times as much compared to yesterday. It was startling.

“Weird,” Keith muttered as he fell into thought. Keith knew that his equipment, stats, and skill levels determined the Rift Simulator clone’s efficiency, but nothing had changed compared to yesterday, so why did he earn so much more?

After thinking of several possibilities, Keith felt that his newfound understanding of Mind Division was the cause. He found it somewhat odd. Keith didn’t acquire a piece of godly equipment or crazily raise his stats or skills, yet his clone’s efficiency had increased by around five times just from learning how to use a skill differently.

That had a profound implication.

The Rift Simulator seemed to measure Keith’s combat strength after considering every aspect of his being. Keith found that revelation a little scary. It wasn’t like you could look at someone and see a number representing their power level, right?

Keith realized that he could measure his growth if the efficiency of his Rift Simulator clone increased. Although he couldn’t compare his growth rate to other people, it was enough. Sometimes it was hard to see if you were making progress, which led to a lack of motivation. Now, Keith could simply look at his clone’s efficiency and see if there were any changes.

When Keith fully recovered his Health, he left home and found a secluded place in the wilderness. It was time to run some tests. Cracking a silly smile, Keith enhanced and divided his mind to his limits, then summoned 29 fireballs and sent them forward.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After the dust cleared, 29 small holes appeared in front of Keith. Pausing for a second, Keith twirled around before pointing a finger. 29 Mana Bolts shot into the distance. Whistling, Keith decided to crank things up and abruptly pointed all ten fingers ahead of him. “Take this!”

Zzzzzzzzzt!

Chain Lightning shot out from his fingers, causing lightning to bounce from tree to tree. They appeared and vanished in an instant. Cackling madly, Keith continuously cast Chain Lightning from his fingers until he ran out of mana. The feeling of multicasting was too damn good.

Keith suddenly had a crazy idea. He looked around and made sure nobody was around before withdrawing Mana from his Grimoire. Then, he cast Small Meteor. Not once, not twice, but a total of 15 times. Keith’s mana instantly dropped from full to empty.

Looking up, Keith spotted 15 dots in the sky. His smile faltered as the dots grew bigger. Perhaps, maybe, this wasn’t such a good idea. Keith hesitated for just a second before turning and running.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A massive explosion rang out from behind a few moments later. Curious, Keith looked over his shoulder just in time to see a barrage of rocks from the fallout blasting his way.

“Crap!” Keith yelped as he quickly withdrew more Mana and cast Blink repeatedly to teleport to safety.

A minute later, the dust eventually settled, allowing Keith to see a massive crater a hundred feet across, with fallen trees everywhere. Gobsmacked, he muttered, “I did this?”

It was hard for lower leveled people to cause such destruction. The scene before him made Keith recall Ska’dur’s painting of Yara fighting Sloth. Each of their attacks leveled mountains. While Keith wasn’t nearly close to that level, he had made a big step forward.

For some reason, Keith’s power left him a little scared and, at the same time, proud. It was a complicated feeling.