MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

Chapter 1828: Playing the Long Game (1)

"..."

"Is that... who I think it is?"

"You’re not dreaming, man. That’s the professor right there."

"It’s the professor! The professor’s finally back!"

"Good morning, Professor Avantis!"

"Greetings, Professor."

"Welcome back, Professor."

Having spent the past couple of weeks away from her research lab without giving anyone a heads-up, Veradine was expecting to be greeted by a series of looks and glares that showed their dissatisfaction.

After all, as a Four-star Scholar and the head of her own private research lab, it was her duty to become an exemplary role model to her fellow Scholars, as well as set an example to her assistants that would one day become Scholars themselves.

Yet, when she instead received a series of passionate greetings from the same people she expected to glare back at her, Veradine was briefly caught off guard, only to then feel warm inside as she was reminded of the bonds she had made with them.

Returning their exuberant greetings with a few smiles and nods, she eventually arrived at her office, only to then ask everyone in the lab to gather at her office to hold an impromptu meeting.

Though the impromptu meeting had caught a number of them off guard, the people in the lab quickly spread her order around, allowing all of the people she wanted to see to appear in front of her in a quarter of an hour.

Sweeping her gaze over her assistants, as well as the fellow Scholars that were working with her at the lab, Veradine took in a deep breath before sharing her thoughts with the others.

"Let me preface this meeting by saying sorry for not showing up at the lab for the past couple of weeks."

Starting off the meeting with an apology, she explained to everyone that the reason why she had been away from the lab this was because she had taken the past couple of weeks to fully adjust to the Heavenly Fruit she consumed.

Seeing that some of them were hearing about it for the first time, she then began them a brief overview of where the Heavenly Fruit had come from, as well as the effects it had on her the moment she consumed it.

Hearing that the Grand Sage had given her the Heavenly Fruit after the award ceremony, some of the people began to look at her like an idol whose fame had reached greater heights.

Though, when they heard that the Heavenly Fruit allowed her to reach the pinnacle Sage-to-be, those looks of admiration and awe immediately turned into curiosity and excitement.

After all, with Veradine now treading the path of a Sage herself, that meant that some of the theories they were researching could now be verified and confirmed to greater accuracy.

Once she had gotten everyone up to speed on the reason behind her disappearance for the past couple weeks, she then shifted the topic of their meeting to what she truly wanted to tell them.

"While I was adjusting myself to the new abilities I got as a Sage-to-be, I took the liberty of spending some of that time to confirm the findings we’ve made in our past articles."

As those words left her mouth, Veradine took out the stack of documents she had brought along with her before distributing it with everyone.

Then, she gave them some time to read through them before continuing where she left off.

"One of the published articles that I decided to test while I was gone was the effectiveness of the modifications we’ve made to the Basic Ether Gathering Technique."

Hearing some of them gasp in response to those words, a faint smile crept up on the edge of her lips as she continued, "Through my semi-rigorous testing, I was able to confirm that the optimizations we’ve made have indeed increased the efficacy of the technique."

"But at the same time, I was also able to find some key areas that we had missed while I was tinkering with the technique."

"Thinking that optimizing and modifying these key areas would help improve the efficacy of the technique even further, I decided to delve a bit into it, writing down a good portion of the data I have gathered from my experiments to create the documents you’re reading at the moment."

"Though I was only able to tackle a couple of the key areas that I found these past couple of weeks, optimizing the technique with these key areas in mind have already boosted the efficacy of the technique by 80%."

"Of course, we’d still need to do rigorous testing to confirm the exact level of improvement compared to the original." She shrugged. "But yeah. To cut things short, I wanted to give everyone a heads-up that this would be the focus of my next article."

"Then, deriving from the data we would gather from it, I would then expand the methodology to try and improve the efficacy of other Ether Gathering Techniques."

"Any questions?"

"..."

For a while after that, the entire room went mostly silent, with some of them muttering under their breaths the feasibility behind her claims.

Yet, as they looked through the document Veradine handed to them one more time, they eventually realized that there was no need for them to think about feasibility.

After all, the Scholar in front of them had already confirmed that it was feasible before she even shared the idea.

Understanding this, looks of awe appeared on many of the people’s faces, only to then turn into excitement and anticipation as they thought about the impact Veradine’s article would have on the entire planet.

"...Professor, do you have any plans in the future to optimize the Basic Ether Gathering Technique even further?" While everyone began to discuss Veradine’s next article in hushed voices, a Two-star Scholar decided to muster up her courage to ask her a question.

Seeing the woman in question raise her eyebrow back at her, the Two-star Scholar continued her train of thought. "Even if we were to exclude the document you gave us, the Basic Ether Gathering Technique we modified already achieves a level of efficacy that puts it on par with Low-grade Class D Ether Gathering Techniques."

"On the other hand, if we were to take the data you gathered and used it to modify the Basic Ether Gathering Technique even further... its efficacy might already be at a level where it rivals Pseudo-Class C Ether Gathering Techniques."

"...What are you trying to say?" asked Veradine after some time.

Feeling a hint of pressure from her response, the Two-star Scholar paused for a bit before regaining her bearings. "Since you’ve already pushed the Basic Ether Gathering Technique to the level of a Pseudo-Class C Ether Gathering Technique..."

"Do you think it’s possible for the technique’s efficacy to be pushed where it would rival a Class S Ether Gathering Technique?"

Hearing the bold claim that left the Two-star Scholar’s mouth, almost everyone looked at the Scholar in silence as the thought began to fester in their minds.

Though, just as they thought that the head of their research lab would reject the idea, Veradine instead let out a chuckle in response to her question.

"From the data I’ve gathered, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort for us to push the Basic Ether Gathering Technique to that extent..."

"But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible."