Chapter 186: Satisfied

The process was slow, yet fast at the same time.

The pain made it seem like everything was happening at an extremely slow pace, but in reality, it had been a mere minute since the device had entered my body.

The excess particles from the cube had now entered all of the mana meridians across my body, enclosing each of them in their sphere of influence.

“It should be over now.”

Alfred commented as he scribbled something on his device while closely observing my body.

And… he wasn’t wrong.

The pain had now begun to subside, as I felt my control over the mana in my body increasing with every heartbeat.

As seconds passed, I was able to control my mana core again.

Haa…

“That was within the expected time.”

Alfred’s indifferent voice made me look into his eyes.

Standing up, I wore my shirt before placing my hand on my lower abdomen.

“How should I use it?”

I was a little excited to test the device.

“Hm. Channel mana through your core and try to imagine lowering the rank of your mana core.”

“Huh? But the device isn’t connected to my brain, is it?”

“Try it.”

Giving a not-so-detailed reply, Alfred did something on his device, resulting in the pillar before me merging with the floor below.

Seeing that no extra explanation would be given, I began to channel mana through my core, while at the same time imagining lowering my rank by a single tier.

The moment I had the thought in my mind, I felt the device working around my core and mana meridians.

And the next instant—

I could sense my rank being lowered to Silver 2.

This…

I could feel that my core was actually at Silver 2, but the moment I tried to use the mana within, I knew that it was at Silver 3.

The feeling was kind of weird.

Even I was confused about the actual rank of my mana core.

It felt like my mana core had really regressed a tier below.

“Hm. Silver 2. Good enough. Try the other one.”

Alfred spoke while observing me from the sidelines.

Each of his words felt more like computer prompts than actual sentences used in a conversation between two normal people.

Taking a deep breath, I willed the mana through my core again, and this time imagined the rank of the core to be hidden from everyone—

To be specific, I had imagined my core to have no rank at all.

And the result—

I could feel the rank of my core changing from Silver 2 to a blank slate.

Haa…

Though I knew what the results should have been, I was still surprised by the efficiency and effectiveness of the device.

Sensing the rank of my mana core again…

There was no rank left to be sensed.

It was like I didn’t have a core at all.

“That concludes the experiment.”

Alfred’s robotic reminder brought me out of my thoughts, as I turned to look at him—only to see the madman walking towards the glass wall.

The moment the purpose of staying here was served, Alfred was ready to begin working on his other projects.

Though I saw him as a madman—I mean, the world did the same—but right this instant, I had to commend Alfred’s dedication towards his work, no matter how twisted it was.

Leaving aside Alfred, right now I was very satisfied with the results.

With the cube in my core, I would now be able to cultivate freely without having to worry about others finding out about my real abilities.

And the interesting part about the cube was that it didn’t require me to constantly feed it with mana.

I had to channel mana just once to either change my rank or hide it completely. After that… there was no need for extra consumption of mana.

“And yes—”

Alfred, as if suddenly remembering something, spoke from the other side of the glass, though his words were clearly audible to me.

“Your pet and its companion are with Arthur, so don’t search for them here. You can leave my facility now, and don’t disturb me until the time to use the other device arrives.”

Saying his part, Alfred walked out of my view, leaving me alone in the silence of the room.

I hadn’t forgotten about either of them; it was just that I wanted to first see the progress of the main projects, and then I was going to see them.

While going to the academy, I had left both of them in Arthur’s care, as Alfred kept repeatedly asking to keep them in his facility.

I couldn’t trust the madman, so it became Arthur’s duty to bring my supposed pet and the seed to Alfred’s facility every time the guy asked for it.

Arthur would stay near them to ensure that Alfred didn’t dissect either of them.

Sigh.

Thinking about Arthur, the guy would soon return.

I just hoped that everything on Arthur’s end was going well… because I wanted the teleportation passage to be built soon.

Now that hiding my actual rank was possible, I had no interest in limiting my growth.

I had been at Silver 3 for a long time, so I was entirely prepared to evolve my mana core into the Gold rank.

As for increasing my power after that… I needed the teleportation passage for the same thing.

There were plenty of strong monsters in Azuna, so maybe I could just go there for a small tour and increase the tiers in my soon-to-be Gold core at the same time.

Haa…

Everything was going surprisingly well.

But maybe… before evolving, I could do some warm-up hunting so as to increase the cracks in my core.

The greater the mana essence in the core, the better it would be after evolving my core.

At present, my mana core was filled to its brink after all the cultivation and absorption of mana essence. Still… I could compress more power into it before finally evolving it.

The Ares Mountains had a good amount of monsters, so maybe… the hunt could start on my return journey to Tamyr.

After all… I wasn’t interested in the least in evolving in the vicinity of Alfred.

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