Seeing that the battle was over, Lumine and Ryan walked over from the distance.
"Kid, you've got some real skills. This'll be enough for you to rank up to Intermediate Adventurer."
"Ah, no." Victor Wang gave a wry smile. "I was just a Novice Adventurer before. This only gets me to Junior Adventurer."
"Is that so? Doesn't matter. I'll be keeping an eye on you—your future's promising."
Before long, the corpse of the Pyro Whopperflower dissolved before their eyes into red motes of light that floated into the air.
Is this its return to the elements? Do humans vanish like this when they die too? No… that can't be right. With funerals and the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor, it's clear normal people leave behind a body.
Must be a trait of elemental creatures.
Hovering in the air, Paimon groaned. "Ah! I forgot to collect some Elemental Nectar!"
"Tch."
Back at the Adventurers' Guild, Lumine and Ryan received payment for witnessing Victor Wang's challenge.
That's right—getting people to witness your promotion personally is free. But going through the Guild makes it an official commission.
Both witnesses agreed that Victor Wang qualified for promotion to Junior Adventurer. Katheryne brought out a small booklet and logged the record.
"Adventurer Dust, you now meet the criteria for a rank increase. You are hereby promoted from Novice Adventurer to Junior Adventurer. If it's convenient, please hand me your Adventurer Certificate so I can update the information for you."
"Awesome!"
With Lumine and Ryan gone, Victor Wang was left waiting alone when three other adventurers came up to speak with Katheryne.
One of them, a middle-aged man, saw that she was occupied and came over to chat.
"You look kinda new. Just arrive in Mondstadt?"
"Yeah."
Bored from waiting, Victor Wang casually replied. Then he suddenly noticed that the blond youth among the trio looked familiar. Just as he was thinking that, the youth walked over.
"Hey there… masked friend. What brings you here?"
This young man with a Vision hanging from his neck was the one Victor Wang saw being saved by Ryan the other day.
"I just got promoted to Junior Adventurer. Waiting to update my certificate."
"Oh? So, you're a newcomer. I'm Sidney. Adventurers are friends from all corners of the world. No matter where you came from, welcome to Mondstadt."
Getting promoted to Junior Adventurer—whether by completing ten commissions or defeating a Hilichurl—still meant you were a newbie.
Even so, Sidney warmly extended his hand. After all, more friends meant more opportunities—even a small road is still a road.
Victor Wang had no choice but to extend his right hand in return.
"I'm Dust. So, what are you guys here for?"
Before Sidney could answer, the middle-aged adventurer jumped in, "Sidney just soloed a Whopperflower today. He's about to get promoted directly from Junior to Intermediate Adventurer!"
That's when Victor Wang realized—the two men with Sidney must be his witnesses.
Sidney, clearly pleased but still humble, shook his head. "Whether it's Intermediate or Senior Adventurer, anyone can reach it with enough time. I just took a shortcut, that's all."
"I see. Brother Sidney, you're being too modest. Taking it down on your own isn't a shortcut—that's skill."
While Victor Wang handed out a few free compliments, his shiny, newly issued Adventurer Certificate arrived. Most of the contents hadn't changed, but the personal info page now listed his rank as Junior Adventurer.
"Starting tomorrow, you'll be able to take on two commissions per day. Also, the rewards for Junior Adventurers are higher than those for Novices."
"They are?"
"Of course. Clients prefer higher-ranking adventurers to take their jobs—better reliability, better efficiency. You can think of the higher rewards as a kind of tip. And it's not just Junior rank. Each tier comes with higher pay. Once you reach Senior Adventurer, completing all four daily commissions will even earn you bonus rewards from the Guild."
"These perks are that good?"
"Yes, so keep working hard—Ad astra abyssosque!"
One more thing—Victor Wang asked how many commissions were needed to advance to Intermediate Adventurer: one hundred. To reach Senior Adventurer: one thousand.
Katheryne explained patiently that if someone completed every daily commission, it would take around four hundred days to go from Novice to Senior. This ensured that even a regular person would gain ample experience to be considered a true veteran.
Of course, if someone had the power to skip ahead by defeating strong monsters, they could fast-track the process—but those people were rare.
Victor Wang agreed wholeheartedly.
After bidding farewell to Sidney and the others, he left the Adventurers' Guild.
Even though today's battle was a landslide victory, there were still plenty of issues.
For example, he hadn't gone all-out from the start to obliterate the enemy, which resulted in some unexpected complications.
Or how, toward the end, controlling elemental energy became difficult. Against a strong opponent, that could have been fatal.
Victor Wang knew the reason: mental stamina.
Although he could draw elemental power from the world, that didn't mean it was limitless.
Ordinary Vision holders started with limited elemental and mental strength, training both gradually over time. Their mental strength grew in sync with their elemental capacity—often, they ran out of elemental power before exhausting their minds. That proved mental energy usually wasn't the bottleneck.
But for Victor Wang, things were different. His body, due to its unique condition, could only store about one-seventh the elemental energy of a normal person. By bypassing that limitation and drawing from the outside world, his elemental reserve was practically infinite. However, his mental capacity couldn't keep up. Once mentally overdrawn, he lost control of the elemental flow.
In short: normal Vision users worry about elemental limits; Victor Wang had to worry about his mental limit.
It's a cheat—but a small cheat.
In Understanding Elemental Power, Part II, the section on mental strength was the shortest, but its placement alongside elemental power and external catalysts proved how important the author considered it.
Victor Wang had no doubts—mental energy was real in Teyvat.
The ghosts of Liyue and Inazuma were clear examples of spiritual energy. The lingering wills within Visions, Raiden Shogun's Plane of Euthymia, and even Sumeru's dreams—these likely all involved mental strength.
Yet because elemental supply was limited, most people never realized its importance. There was no systematic way to measure or train mental strength in this world.
The author of Understanding Elemental Power proposed five levels of mental strength: Lamp, Pool, River, Lake, Sea.
Simple and crude—based on how much elemental power one could channel before total mental exhaustion. A river's worth meant River-level. An ocean? Sea-level.
Most regular people sat at Lamp-level. Ordinary Vision holders were at Pool-level. The stronger ones reached River-level. And the Seven Archons? No doubt Lake-level and beyond.
The author also claimed the Seven Elemental Lords were unbound by such worldly limits—they commanded all elemental power.
The book noted that artifacts (artifacts) could strengthen mental strength—but only slightly.
That's why Victor Wang wasn't in a hurry to farm artifacts. Outside the game's number-crunching system, artifacts had become significantly less important.
Aside from that, the only other way to increase mental strength… was through time. So, to summarize the entire chapter: Mental strength is important, but hard to train.
Still, Victor Wang, seasoned reader of cultivation novels, had his own theories—like repeatedly exhausting mental energy, then resting to recover.
This was a common trope and made decent sense. It resembled how Vision holders expanded their elemental reserves: repeated use. Or how building muscle required breaking and repairing fibers.
There was another method—stimulus, especially pain—but Victor Wang preferred the former.
So, he got to work.
Still mentally drained from battle, Victor Wang went to the outskirts of Mondstadt, stood by Cider Lake, and repeatedly unleashed enlarged Palm Vortexes.
Soon he felt dizzy—his peripheral vision darkening.
Just before blacking out, he stopped. Holding his forehead, he staggered forward like a zombie.
"Hey! You okay?"
Timmy ran over from the bridge to support him. "The pigeons are just coming back—I haven't even introduced you to them yet! You can't die on me now!"
"I… Help me back to the Goth Little Hotel."
Wobbling all the way to his room, Victor Wang thanked Timmy, locked the door, flopped into bed in a comfy pose—and fired off Wind Vortex Blades with both hands before promptly passing out.
When he woke again, it was already late morning. He still felt mentally tired.
Not daring to push it again, Victor Wang ate a proper meal and went to Mondstadt Bridge to help Timmy feed the pigeons, relaxing his mind. After another nap, he finally felt back to normal.
Unfortunately, without clear tracking, he couldn't tell if his mental strength had improved.
Once fully recovered, he began counting the total number of enlarged Palm Vortexes he could release. According to the book's classifications, he didn't yet match a River, but was clearly beyond Lamp-level—likely at Pool-level.
After another full recovery, he repeated the process. Sure enough, he was able to unleash one more Palm Vortex than last time.
With a sweet smile on his lips, Victor Wang passed out cold.