Yvette’s daily life was not significantly impacted by giving Dugrabi foundational lessons in runes.
For one, the knowledge she imparted required time to digest, and Dugrabi’s memorization skills were notoriously poor; even merely remembering commonly used runes would take him many months, if not years.
Secondly, she didn’t feel a pressing urgency to do anything in her daily life. She maintained a rigid schedule of meditation, reviewing “Detailed Analysis of Spell Architecture Engines” and “Exploration of Spatial Runes” every few days, and during the remaining time, she found herself often sleeping rather than reading or engaging in any other activities.
Yet she felt no guilt about this sleep; in her mind, it was more of a practice than laziness.
This was not a matter of sophistry; rather, through her long observations, she had concluded that the production speed of soul runes in the brain accelerated during sleep.
If this were in the age of the Origin Civilization, it would be considered an epic discovery.
—In fact, perhaps this had already been discovered, but humans lived too briefly, and natural mages were few; that meager increase in sleep-associated soul runes, even if discovered, would likely remain overlooked.
But for Yvette, this was a different situation.
Soul runes were synonymous with mental strength, both concerning a natural mage’s control over spells and regarding the efficacy of a runic hacker in deciphering a spell. They also pertained to an ordinary person’s vitality and even their sleep quality.
The other was the natural production of soul runes by a biological brain.
In the past, Yvette primarily relied on meditation. The principle was straightforward; meditation tightened the entire of one’s mental muscles, increasing the density of soul runes and triggering the “rune siphoning effect,” letting her gain opportunities to absorb external soul runes and achieve enhancement. This was the method through which natural mages could amplify their magical power.
How should one put it? It was a simple operational mechanism, with no substitutes or alternatives available. However, the drawback was that over time, it could lead to soul body deterioration, which, while recoverable, was quite uncomfortable.
In contrast, sleep had a whole different set of benefits.
During sleep, the biological brain’s production of soul runes accelerated, enhancing mental strength while keeping the soul body comfortable. She felt revitalized after waking, allowing her to comfortably engage in various learning and training activities. It was almost like a natural gift for someone like her, a long-lived being.
As long as she desired, she could continue sleeping. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩·𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢·𝔫𝔢𝔱
She could potentially cultivate a top-tier soul body, becoming an unparalleled master of mental strength.
Although this required an extended sleep period, she had secretly resolved to treat it as her lifelong career and path of practice.
Thus, in summary, it wouldn’t be fair to merely consider it an act of laziness.
Time flew, and another year swiftly passed, with grass growing and warblers singing in February.
This marked the sixth year since Yvette and her companions had arrived in Cookes. As the chilly spring air persisted, Copper Skin, the village chief, led the villagers in constructing a fireplace to mimic the human behavior of wintering, allowing them to keep warm during the coldest spells.
This development even gave rise to the activity of “chopping firewood.” Thanks to its novelty, it garnered much popularity, leading to an abundance of firewood stored in the kingdom’s hall. At times, there was so much that Dugrabi had to use dragon fire to burn some off.
Dugrabi found this absurd; a group of alchemical beings didn’t need warmth. Apart from him and Yvette, everyone else would likely never know what it felt like to be cold in their lifetime.
But upon reminding himself of the even more absurd practices of human cultivation, it felt at ease, resigning to a mentality of “what more could I say if you’re all doing this?”
Sometimes he would advise familiar faces, like Jasmine or Ice Rain, suggesting that instead of aiming to become human, they should aim for something loftier—directly striving to be “dragons” instead so that he, as a living dragon, could provide some guidance.
However, the mechanical beings did not appreciate this advice; after receiving a cold shoulder, Dugrabi gave up, continuing with his daily efforts to learn the foundational knowledge of runes. However, he would inevitably fall asleep while studying, often awakening to an array of terrifying and intricate runes swirling before his eyes, almost becoming a nightmare.
On Yvette’s side, there was indeed one area in which she had made substantial progress: practical combat skills.
Since her encounter with the Spider Woman in Cookes two years ago, she had made it a routine to take stealth missions into Cookes every couple of months, primarily to spar with the Spider Woman.
During this time, she had set herself a somewhat vague goal for improvement, which was to see how many minutes into the battle she could gain the upper hand and sustain pressure on the Spider Woman.
Initially, this took about ten minutes to achieve, leaving them at a stalemate—at least in her view, she and the Spider Woman were quite evenly matched, making for a suitable sparring partner.
Fast forward to the present day, that number had dropped to five minutes—this was undoubtedly a vast improvement, and she felt proud, reminiscent of a player who transitioned from merely focusing on stats to becoming more adept at technique.
However, the Spider Woman had not fared as well; she reported the information about this mysterious intruder to her Commander but was still unsure of the rival’s allegiance or why they consistently disrupted the territory of the King of the Sky and Sea.
Moreover, since the assailant never seemed to deal any serious blows to the Spider Woman, but merely wore her down until she was on the brink of exhaustion before abruptly retreating, it left the Mountain Whale and Fish Man—those two lords—feeling frustrated at their slow response, akin to the police arriving late in a monster movie.
This led the Spider Woman to develop a dreadful suspicion: that the intruder was deliberately attempting to wear down Cookes’ defensive forces through this prolonged struggle, waiting for the day when everyone would become complacent, only for that mysterious silver-haired girl to make her move.
With such thoughts weighing on her, the Spider Woman finally reached her limit. She resolved that as soon as that important event concluded, she would immediately ask to leave, to avoid living in perpetual fear.
In June of the same year, the rainy season arrived.
However, in Cookes, there wasn’t quite the same understanding; June’s temperatures stayed low, consistently below 10 degrees, with the climate cold and dry. While lush green grass had already covered the mountains, the distant snow-capped peaks still stood steadfast, never melting.
On one of those slightly chilly mornings, after finishing a quiz on the basics of runes with Dugrabi, Yvette finally decided to introduce him to more advanced knowledge and prepare a bit of direction for his future studies.
In the warehouse, after knocking on the nearby board, Yvette announced, “I have several different specialties I can teach you; let’s see what you’d like to learn. Your senior sister, Rosalyn Sion, dabbled in a bit of everything, but I suggest you not follow her path. For one, you don’t have her passion for rune studies, and for another, her grasp of those topics is quite shallow. In the context of the knowledge disseminated across the Glimmering Continent, much of what she learned was likely self-derived later on.”
“Alright!” Dugrabi exclaimed, excitement lighting up his expression; he immediately adopted a posture of eager attentiveness.
“First… I can teach you the techniques of rune hacking. Once you master this skill, as long as you’re quick enough, you can hijack spells before they hit you, repaying in kind.” Yvette introduced. “However, the downside is that rune hacking has many prerequisites. You need to be proficient in foundational rune studies and the corresponding compilation techniques, understand rune security technologies, and grasp architecture, encryption technologies, database knowledge, and vulnerability practice…”
Listening to her list an array of knowledge fields he had never heard of, the spark of enthusiasm in Dugrabi’s eyes dimmed almost instantly.
Wait, spell hijacking sounded more powerful than any legendary forbidden spell, but the amount to learn was far too daunting, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t this just intentionally making things difficult for him?
The more he listened, the dizzier he became, and he quickly interrupted her, saying, “Can you just tell me how long it’ll take to learn?”
Yvette hesitated slightly, “Given your current learning efficiency and our rudimentary study conditions… it may take at least two hundred years…”
Dugrabi’s jaw dropped in shock. Two hundred years of hard study for a single skill? He might not even be around in this world by then!
He quickly blurted, “Next, next one!”
“I can teach you magical engineering. Mastering this technology enables you to create some simple magical devices. While you won’t be able to manufacture cutting-edge items like elemental chips, you should be able to become a top-notch master alchemist given the develop standard of magical equipment in the Glimmering Continent…” Yvette indicated, “Of course, this also requires mastering many topics, like the basics of magical engineering, the etching of magical circuits, mathematics, physics, and mechanical foundations…”
Heavens above, mathematics! Dugrabi felt a chill in its heart and quickly shook his head again, “No, no, no, please don’t go on!”
“I can teach you rune compilation as well, which is also a prerequisite for rune hacking. You’ll be able to design custom spells tailored to your needs. Although, in the human world, spells exceeding too complex may become unmanageable, generally limited to 200 runes, understanding runes means understanding our world. You must have studied the foundational rune books for long enough to recognize this…” Yvette continued.
“No, no, no! I believe I’ve mastered the commonly used runes enough already; I don’t need to learn all the less common ones…” Upon discussing rune studies, Dugrabi became even more terrified, various nightmares flashing through its mind as it shook its head repeatedly, “Next! Next!”
“Then how about agricultural and natural skills? While they won’t directly enhance your combat power, employing magical techniques to influence plant growth could be incredibly significant for the overall development of Dragonland, enough to secure your place in history. All you need to do is understand nature magic, crop science, soil science, and agricultural meteorology; additionally…”
“Um, Teacher, I don’t want to farm, nor do I want to get involved in the management of Dragonland… but let’s skip to the next topic!” Dugrabi interrupted again.
“That’s alright, I can teach you rune medicine. In terms of potions, it can cure diseases; rune elixirs can produce unique effects that provide various enhancements. However, due to differing materials, upon returning to the Glimmering Continent, you’ll likely have to start by studying the properties and classification of medicinal materials first, so my initial lessons will focus on…”
“Teacher, I also don’t want to become a doctor. Please, let’s just move on to the next topic…” Dugrabi pleaded.
Thus, they rapidly moved through several different specialized fields, but due to various prerequisites, Dugrabi remained unable to make a decision; it seemed it held no interest in any of the areas suggested.
This caused Yvette to genuinely grow a bit angry. She reached out her hand and sharply knocked on the top of the black dragon’s head three times.
You little brat, not wanting to learn this or that, what exactly do you want to study?