Chapter 142: iu

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Max went back into his bedroom and sat down with his MacBook on the desk. The battery indicator was already flashing low, so he plugged in the charging cable before settling into the chair. The familiar hum of the laptop waking up filled the quiet room as he opened his notes and lecture material.

Once he started reading, his focus sharpened quickly. Max leaned slightly forward, elbows resting on the desk as he moved through the material with steady concentration. Time passed quietly while he worked through the subjects one after another, the calm morning light from the window spreading across the desk.

Nearly an hour passed like that, at some point during that time Jennifer came back into the room. She had finished showering and was getting dressed, moving casually around the bedroom while naked and picking clothes from the wardrobe.

Max tried to stay focused on the screen, but it wasn’t easy.

Jennifer seemed to enjoy testing his discipline. Every now and then she glanced toward him with playful, provocative looks — the kind of gaze that made it clear she knew exactly how distracting she was being.

Max exhaled slowly a few times, forcing his attention back to the laptop, he kept reading, pretending not to notice, but every now and then he had to pause for a second just to steady himself before returning to the lecture notes again.

Damn, she’s cruel.

Max shook his head slightly as Jennifer finally left the room. The moment the door closed behind her, the quiet returned and he let out a slow breath of relief, leaning back for a second in the chair, he ran a hand through his hair before straightening again.

Jennifer clearly knew what she was doing. The looks she had been throwing at him were deliberate, and Max had felt every bit of it while trying to focus on his notes, but to Max, there was always a line, there were moments to indulge and moments to stay sharp.

Right now was the latter, with that thought settled in his mind, he turned his attention fully back to the screen, his posture steady again as he continued studying, the quiet morning apartment giving him exactly the focus he needed.

[Updated]

[Side Mission: Study Hard for 30 cumulative hour’s] [Passed]

[Passing Grade: Fixed]

[Reward: Neural Modifier Card. (Item)]

[Press here to get the rewards]

Just as Max was about to close his laptop, his eyes lingering on the last paragraph of his notes for one final check, the familiar system notification appeared in front of him. The translucent panel floated quietly in the air, the glowing text cutting across the calm morning light in the room.

Max blinked once in mild surprise, the system rarely appeared these days unless some mission had been completed. For a moment he simply stared at the panel, reading it carefully to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding anything.

He leaned back slightly in his chair, the corners of his mouth lifting faintly.

I guess I am being lazy.

The thought crossed his mind half-jokingly.

In reality, the reason the system had been quiet lately was obvious. Max had accumulated several missions that were still pending — some of them required long-term effort, others depended on circumstances outside his immediate control. Because of that, the rewards hadn’t been appearing as frequently as they did when he first started.

Still, seeing the notification appear again carried a familiar satisfaction.

Max tapped on the [Get Rewards] button, the familiar click sound was heard.

[Updated]

[Neural Modifier Card. (Item): Card successfully applied to brain. New Passive gained.] [Modification becomes a Passive ability.]

[Passive: Accelerated Learning.] [Permanent]

A card appeared in his hand, it was thin and metallic, the surface shimmering with faint lines that looked like circuit patterns. At the center of the card was a stylized brain symbol, glowing faintly with a blue light that pulsed slowly like it was alive. The entire design had a strange technological feel to it, almost as if the card itself was some piece of advanced hardware rather than a simple item.

Max looked at it for a moment before doing what he always did with system items, he pressed the card against his forehead instinctively.

The moment it touched his skin, the card dissolved instantly into light, in the next second his entire mind felt like it expanded outward.

It was as if someone had suddenly removed invisible limits inside his head. His thoughts began moving faster, connections forming between ideas almost automatically. The notes he had studied earlier flashed through his mind with incredible clarity, every detail arranged neatly like perfectly organized files.

Concepts that previously required effort to understand now felt simple, almost obvious. His brain seemed to process information in parallel, multiple thoughts forming and completing themselves at the same time.

For a brief moment Max closed his eyes, it felt like his mind had suddenly become bigger, sharper — as if he had upgraded from a normal processor to something far more powerful.

When he opened his eyes again, the room looked exactly the same but the way his mind worked inside it had changed completely.

Wow… what the fuck.

Max muttered under his breath as the card completely disintegrated into faint particles of light that vanished into the air. For a second he simply sat there, blinking slowly while the strange sensation inside his head settled.

The change was immediate and profound — not painful, not overwhelming, but unmistakably different. His thoughts felt clearer, faster, almost layered, like his brain had suddenly gained more space to work with.

But instead of getting distracted by the feeling, Max instinctively looked back at the laptop screen. The lecture notes were still open exactly where he left them. He glanced at the clock on the corner of the screen. 09:34.

He still had more than twenty minutes before he needed to leave for the university. Quitting now felt wasteful. So he leaned forward slightly in the chair and decided to study for another ten minutes.

The moment he started reading again, the difference became obvious. The next ten minutes stretched strangely in his perception — not slower in time, but richer in thought.

Information seemed to flow into his mind with incredible clarity, like his brain had turned into a sponge absorbing every drop of knowledge thrown at it. Concepts that usually required rereading suddenly became obvious after a single glance.

He was currently reviewing first-year medical material at LMU — subjects like Human Anatomy, Cellular Biology, Biochemistry, and Basic Physiology, courses that normally crushed students under endless memorization.

But now the diagrams of mitochondrial metabolism and the Krebs cycle lined themselves up in his mind like a clean flowchart. The long chain of biochemical reactions suddenly made intuitive sense rather than feeling like random memorization.

Even the anatomical structure of the brachial plexus, a nightmare for most medical students because of its complex nerve branching, appeared in his mind like a clear map — roots, trunks, divisions, cords, branches — each connection forming almost automatically as he read the text once.

He flipped to another page explaining membrane transport proteins and ion channel behavior, material that usually took hours to digest, and yet his mind was already organizing the information before he finished reading the paragraph. It didn’t feel forced or exhausting. It felt… efficient. Entertaining, even. Like solving puzzles that instantly revealed their answers.

Max realized something surprising. Those ten minutes had passed normally on the clock — but mentally he had processed what felt like an hour’s worth of studying without effort.

Damn!! Did I just become a genius?

Max muttered under his breath, leaning back slightly in the chair. A grin had already formed on his face before he even realized it. For the first time in his life he had studied intensely without feeling that familiar mental exhaustion creeping in.

His head wasn’t heavy, his eyes weren’t strained, and the information he had just gone through still sat neatly organized in his mind instead of fading away like it usually did after a long study session.

Max had never been a genius.

Everything he achieved academically had come from pure effort and discipline. While others relied on quick understanding, he had always compensated with discipline. If someone studied for two hours, Max studied four. If others read something once, he read it three times until it stuck. That was how he had managed to keep up in a demanding place like LMU, especially in medical subjects that crushed even naturally talented students.

But now something had fundamentally changed.

With the Accelerated Learning passive running quietly in the background, the biggest weakness he had always fought against — the slow absorption of knowledge — had suddenly disappeared. Concepts stuck almost immediately, connections formed naturally, and the mental fatigue that normally came with heavy study simply wasn’t there.

For the first time, Max felt like the effort he had always been willing to give finally had the right tool behind it.

Alright… I’m going to be late.

Max glanced once more at the time on the screen before pushing his chair back and standing up quickly. The MacBook battery was only halfway charged, but that was more than enough for the day. He unplugged the charging cable, closed the laptop, and slid it neatly into his backpack.

His movements were efficient and practiced — helmet in one hand, bike keys in the other — as he stepped out of the bedroom and into the living room.

Machina was already sitting at the dining table with her own MacBook open in front of her, typing something with quiet focus. The screen’s pale light reflected softly across her face as lines of text filled the document she was working on. She didn’t look rushed at all, just calmly working through whatever task she had given herself.

Max slowed slightly when he saw her there.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep