Swish.
Swish, swish, swish
In the dimly lit shack, Lynn practiced the White Crow Sword technique with meticulous precision.
The air was thick with the scent of dust and sweat.
His movements were sharp and powerful, each swing of the sword carrying a strange rhythm.
Under the yellow glow of the oil lamp, the youth's figure no longer looked frail; his arms were corded with muscle, his thighs strong and solid, his whole frame defined like a finely carved marble statue.
As the practice continued, beads of sweat began to form on his forehead.
They gathered, slid down his chin, and dripped onto the packed earth, leaving faint dark marks.
After a long while, Lynn seemed to sense something and gradually slowed to a stop.
Stretching his tense thighs, he turned his gaze inward.
[Name: Lynn Kent]
[Age: 16]
[Realm: White Crow Sword – Arms (100/100) / Legs (100/100)]
[Skills: Mind Shock Crystal plates Crafting (Proficient); White Crow Sword – Incomplete (Proficient)]
[Source Energy: 0.2 (Self); 0 (World)]
The leg portion of the White Crow Sword had also reached perfection.
At the same time, as expected, his source energy had undergone a qualitative change, rising to 0.2!
Exhaling softly, Lynn stood up, a pleased smile on his face.
The amount of source energy I have is tied directly to how 'strong' I am.
As long as I keep strengthening myself, I can keep raising my source energy limit.
Now with 0.2 self-source energy, each Insight session should be much more effective.
…Good thing I didn't rush into Insight this morning when my source energy first recovered to the 0.1 limit.
As these thoughts ran through his mind, Lynn walked toward the wooden bucket to take it outside for a cold rinse.
But as soon as he lifted it, he raised an eyebrow.
Feels like my strength has grown again.
While the first stage of the White Crow Sword was split into four parts targeting different areas of the body, that didn't mean it only strengthened those areas.
After all, the human body was a whole; training the arms or legs also strengthened the entire physique.
Setting the bucket down, Lynn suddenly felt playful.
He bent his knees, ready to jump with full force.
But just before launching himself, he glanced at the roof he had painstakingly repaired a few days ago and held back a bit of power.
Swish!
With a powerful push, Lynn shot upward like he had springs in his legs, almost grazing the roof!
"So high?!"
The slanted roof of the shack peaked at about 3.7 to 3.8 meters, while Lynn, at sixteen, was only a little over 1.7 meters tall.
That meant his vertical leap had reached nearly 2 meters, and that was without going all out!
This has completely surpassed the limits of human ability in my previous life…
If he were to run into thugs like Bartoli again, even ten of them together would probably only serve as a warm-up for him now.
And all of this had taken only half a month.
In the White Crow World, under normal circumstances, it would take an ordinary person at least five to ten years to reach their current level.
It was truly thanks to his Insight talent.
After rinsing off, Lynn returned to the shack.
Without hesitation, he took out two lesser magic stones and began using Insight on the Hossens Apprentice Meditation Technique.
Before long, the Insight session ended.
Lynn calmly opened his eyes.
Just as he had expected after the last session, even though this round of Insight was equal to the effect of his previous two sessions combined, it would still take at least three more such sessions, maybe even four or five, to successfully get started with Hossen's Apprentice Meditation.
However, Lynn could faintly feel that although his self-source energy had doubled, the time it took to fully recover after depletion hadn't increased much at most, from five days to one week.
In other words, in at most five weeks, he could use Insight to fully master Hossen's Meditation Technique.
But all of this depended on having enough magic stones.
He glanced at his now-deflated coin pouch, which held only three lesser magic stones, and silently thought to himself:
I need to find a way to earn more magic stones.
Relying solely on crafting Mind Shock Crystal plates definitely won't work.
Even with a 100% success rate, I can only make three stones a month, and after deducting the academy's debt, I'm left with just two and a half.
…Do I need to learn another craft like crystal plate making?
Lynn thought it over carefully for a moment, then shook his head and dismissed the idea.
Among the money-making skills available to ordinary people, crafting crystal plates was already in the top tier for profitability.
Learning to make crystal plates other than the Mind Shock type wouldn't work either.
The Mind Shock plate was already among the most profitable types of crystal plates overall, and those with a higher profit margin weren't that much better.
The only way to earn more from crystal plates would be to craft fully functional crystal foci, capable of casting spells.
But that was impossible. Even setting aside the fact that he most likely couldn't afford the knowledge required, he couldn't make them.
His mental strength was nowhere near the necessary threshold.
The first layer of the White Crow Sword Technique could only enhance the body.
Even the second layer, which passively nourished and increased mental strength due to bodily improvements, would still be limited if human physiology had its limits, and the mental gains would never be substantial.
Reaching the threshold to craft spell crystals wasn't even on the table; he couldn't even cross the Transcendence Barrier yet.
That was also why the White Crow Sword Technique's ceiling was only at the level of a second-rank apprentice.
It barely strengthened the mind, the only thing capable of controlling magic power.
An extraordinary system that cannot increase mental strength will always be a low-grade extraordinary system.
Whether a system could strengthen the mind was one of the common criteria wizards used when waging war in the Astral Realm to judge whether another world's extraordinary system was powerful.
Knowledge as low-grade as the White Crow Sword Technique could only make Lynn into a "warrior." It could never make him as versatile or as powerful as a wizard.
After a moment of quiet thought, Lynn suddenly picked up his longsword and walked out of the shack.
While warriors couldn't earn money the way wizards could, they still had their methods.
He could go to the Black Ring Assembly to take on suitable commissions or, as Giggs had suggested, make money by hunting in the Emerald Forest.
However, before that, he needed to investigate the actual situation and assess the level of risk.
No matter what method he chose, safety came first.
Leaving the shack, Lynn didn't head for the Black Ring Assembly right away. Instead, he turned and walked south toward the southern edge of Emeraldwood City.
The northern hillside of the city was home to the Hossens School's grounds.
The eastern and western sides were farmland.
Only the southern side bordered directly on the Emerald Forest.
...
The farther south he went, the sparser the shacks became.
The road gradually widened, but there were fewer and fewer pedestrians.
Occasionally, a carriage would pass something rarely seen in the shack district.
After walking a bit more, the area grew even more desolate. Many shacks had collapsed, some people lay on the roadside as if dead, and in certain dark corners, black shapes of unknown creatures darted away.
Lynn kept going, his right hand slowly resting on the hilt of the longsword at his waist as he heightened his vigilance.
Just then, a figure suddenly staggered out of a shack to his left.