MMORPG: Rise of the Primordial Godsmith

Chapter 1832: The Path Forward

"...Looks good."

Sitting behind her office desk, Veradine looked through all the documents her fellow Scholar gave her.

"You were able to fully confirm that modifying the second node in the third set increases the circulation speed of ether within the body by 8%, right?"

"We’re yet to test this modification of technique through sub-ether microanalysis, but we’ve already run it through most of the major tests," said the Scholar in front of her after finding the right words to say.

Veradine slightly raised her eyebrow at those words. "Did all of the major tests yield the same outcome?"

"There was a deviation of around 5% between the tests, but overall, the improvement the change brings is indeed around 8%, Professor Avantis."

"How about the minor tests I told your group to run? What are their results?"

"Their results all support the claims of the major tests, Professor Avantis."

"I see." Hearing those words of confirmation, it was only then did Veradine put the stack of documents down on her desk.

Looking at her colleague with a smile, she then told him, "I presume that only testing the modification through sub-ether microanalysis remains. Since that’s the case, you can delegate this task to Group D while your group works on verifying the next modification."

"Understood." The Scholar nodded in understanding. "Should we continue off the third set or...?"

"Continue." The former nodded in return. "Having your group change to another set all of a sudden would just make us waste more time in the long run."

"Plus, with how much time and effort your group has already put into understanding the third set, I’m sure you’d obtain results out of it far faster than the other groups could," she added as she let out a slight chuckle.

Feeling both pride and confidence surge within him the moment he heard those words, the Scholar took in a deep breath before giving Veradine a kind smile.

"You flatter us too much, Professor," he said with a slight shake of the head. "Though that may be the case, if not for the information you’ve given us, we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place."

Sharing a few more words on how the research for the current article should be handled after that, the Scholar eventually left Veradine’s office, leaving the latter to her own devices once more.

"...Phew."

Letting out a soft sigh of relief as she rubbed her temples, Veradine took another look at the new set of documents that had been sent to her.

"I already knew verifying these modifications would hurt my head like hell... but why does the second pass hurt my head more than the first one?"

Spending a bit of time tending to her headache, Veradine eventually let out a soft exhale the moment she felt the pain gradually subside.

"This pain kind of reminds me of the day I first became a Sage," she muttered with a chuckle, only to feel her temples throb in pain once more.

Tending to it yet again, she emptied her mind of any unnecessary thoughts for the meantime as she took a glance out the window.

"Time really does fly," she said to herself, a faint reminiscing smile adorning her face. "To think over half a year has already passed since I’ve stepped onto the path of a Sage."

Indeed.

After Veradine had made up her mind on what her next steps were, half a year had already passed since then.

Of course, as a Scholar, most of that time was spent at her private research lab, coordinating with her assistants and her fellow Scholars on obtaining the data that was necessary for her next article.

Then again, even though her next article was all about the further improvements she had made to the Basic Ether Gathering Technique’s efficacy, she had tasked a couple of groups in her lab to focus on her article after that.

The reason why she had done this was partly to establish a foundation of understanding among her and her fellow colleagues. After all, their experience with Ether Gathering Techniques thus far was purely the Basic Ether Gathering Technique.

However, the actual reason why she had done this was because she wanted to use the information the groups obtained on various Ether Gathering Technique to further her progress on her own Ether Gathering Technique.

Sure, she spent the majority of her days working at the lab alongside her assistants and fellow Scholars in the hopes that their research would further increase the knowledge of the masses.

Yet, even with that taking up a great portion of the day, she still allocated a portion of her time to researching everything she needed to create her own brand new Ether Gathering Technique.

Of course, as a Sage-to-be herself, she also spared some time in the day to gather ether.

Though, unlike her first two weeks where she spent half a day just on that singular task, she had reduced that time down to just six hours, replacing her usual time for rest with it.

But even with her time for ether gathering cut in half, thanks to her monstrous aptitude, as well as her further optimized Basic Ether Gathering Technique, she was still able to accumulate over 3.5 million ether strands over the past half year.

Combined with the quarter of a million or so strands she had gathered during the first couple of weeks, the number of ether strands she currently had was now almost four times the amount she would have originally gotten from the Purple Star Citron.

’Because I’ve been spending most of my time working on the article instead of the technique I was planning to make, I have not made any further optimizations to the Basic Ether Gathering Technique.’

Sitting back on her chair, Veradine took in a deep breath as she closed her eyes.

Then, focusing her senses inward, she began to gather ether from the surroundings through her greatly optimized Basic Ether Gathering Technique.

’Hmm...’

Feeling an ether strand enter her body almost every passing second, a pensive expression appeared on Veradine’s face as she examined how the technique operated from within.

’Considering the changes I’ve already made to the technique, there isn’t really much left for me to optimize,’ she thought to herself after some time, noting down the couple of flaws she found while the technique was in operation.

’Though, if I were to push myself to optimizing this as much as possible before I formally became a Sage, I suppose the technique’s limit would be at around 240%.’

’But I feel like I’d be able to push it further to around 300%,’ she muttered inwardly, the gears in her head turning as she pondered over it.

Continuing to let the technique operate as she gathered more and more ether in the surroundings, Veradine eventually arrived at a couple of conclusions.

The first one was that there was a hard limit to how far she could optimize the Basic Ether Gathering Technique at her current level.

If she were a Scholar of higher rank, or if she had broken through to become a Sage of the Lower Boundary, then perhaps she’d be able to push the technique to the level of a true Class A Ether Gathering Technique.

Unfortunately, with her current knowledge and experience, she’d only be able to push it to the level of a Pseudo-Class A technique at most.

As for the second conclusion, it was actually related to her first conclusion wherein it had something to do with the Basic Ether Gathering Technique having a limit to its optimization.

That’s because after she let the technique gather some ether for a while longer, after realizing that there was a hard limit, she soon realized that there was a second hard limit she had to face in pursuit of the technique’s optimization.

In her mind, even if she were to become a Great Sage or a Grand Sage, she felt like she would not be able to break past this second hard limit.

For the Basic Ether Gathering Technique in that state would have reached utter perfection.

...

...

...But of course, that only remained true if she didn’t take the data that her lab had gathered from the other techniques this past half year into consideration.