“Yo, you guys are finally back, you really kept me waiting!”
As soon as they entered the gates of the Area 51 base, they saw Ishtar’s gloomy and stinky face.
It was obvious that her resentment from being forced to rush the work while repeatedly reading the unofficial history of the abyss of odin was so huge it was about to overflow.
——You left me here alone to suffer while you were out having fun freely.
Aren’t you living quite comfortably!
However, this temper full of grievances was vented for nothing; no one paid her any attention at all.
Grimm and the others did not show any signs of joy.
One could even say that the atmosphere among the three returning people was visibly heavy, and they all silently returned to their respective seats without a word.
What does this mean?
Did you guys have a hard time outside too?
Ishtar’s curious gaze wandered among the three, thinking to herself: Why don’t you guys reveal the inside story of those unhappy things to me, so that you can make me happy too?
“Don’t even think about it, just go do your work! It’s that business related to ley lines.”
Ereshkigal sighed.
Even with her toes, she could guess what kind of bad intentions her arch-rival Ishtar was holding in her belly.
“Even if I tell you the current situation, you won’t necessarily be very happy.”
Her expression was tense because the condition of the ley lines was more complicated than imagined.
The good news was that, based on her emergency discussions with Francesca, a preliminary conclusion was reached—there was indeed hope of shaking off the constraints of the entire Niflheim world and contacting the outside world by seizing a sufficient number of ley line fulcrums and spiritual lands.
This was actually a common phenomenon in the Type-Moon world, especially among magicians, known as the “struggle for spiritual lands”.
Good spiritual lands were often built on specific fulcrums of spiritual veins, which could provide sufficient Prana magic power, making magical exploration and magic research twice as efficient with half the effort, and often attracting covetousness and sparking conflicts.
The construction of this unreal world was also based on spiritual veins and land.
Ereshkigal pulled Francesca along to analyze it a wave, guessing that the space constructed by Odin used the spiritual veins of the Snowfield City area as fulcrums to form an “alternative space” that was similar to reality, overlapped in coordinate positions, but hidden in a different dimension.
As long as one occupied these, it would be equivalent to holding the authority of the entire Niflheim alternative space in hand.
But the bad news was that these strategic key points now obviously belonged to Odin’s side.
Once they made any suspicious moves in these places, it would attract Odin’s hostility or even strikes.
This undoubtedly verified Grimm’s initial worries.
“Is that so! Then you’ve worked hard.”
Ishtar rarely refrained from mocking her arch-rival.
The spiritual land scramble also concerned her vital interests, and tangling endlessly over this point brought no benefits.
“What about you?”
“Hum hum hum, why are you looking at me? It’s off-duty time, let’s go drink tea first!” At this time, Francesca was pouting aggrievedly.
The reason was very obvious: Ereshkigal insisted on dragging her along to work overtime, and it was foreseeable that most of the days in the future would be like this. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Doing things like ley line projects—she had already done them for decades in reality, and now she had to do it all over again here.
Was there anything more boring than this in the world?
Compared to this, Francesca preferred to stick to Grimm to observe his cultivation and “modification” of his flesh.
As for Grimm…
This person’s level of melancholy was probably even higher than the two of them.
“Ah! I am so sad, I want to play Chopin in the rain, I want to draw blade light in the rain.”
“The melancholy of that day, let it grow melancholy. The loneliness of that day, let it grow lonely.”
Grimm sighed as he paced towards the other side of the corridor.
Ishtar couldn’t help taking half a step back, “…What’s his situation again?”
Why did he suddenly start gibbering?
Ereshkigal said, “I’m not sure, it seems to be some problem with Alchemy.”
Francesca also nodded, her cheeks puffing up and down.
Anyway, neither of them were Alchemy professionals.
The ancient Alchemy of the Atlas Academy and its related technical details couldn’t even be accessed in the Clock Tower; at most, they only knew some basic information.
“Oh! So it’s this. You should have said so earlier! If you had said so earlier, I would have helped solve it! What’s with always frowning here?”
Suddenly, the smile on Ishtar’s face became “enthusiastic and sincere” all at once, and she stared at Grimm’s back and followed him.
Sure enough, I said so!
How could an introductory apprentice who had only learned Alchemy for two days smoothly advance by leaps and bounds all the way on this path?
Now it seemed…
that was just an illusion produced by just starting out, walking unsteadily, and suddenly taking a big step forward.
The problem was that having just learned how to walk, how could one take such a big step?
Hey!
Look, didn’t he trip and fall right here?
“Student Grimm! I heard… your progress in Alchemy isn’t going smoothly? Hey, you were taught by me after all, I need to say a few words to you!”
Come come come, let Teacher Ishtar tell you: being down-to-earth and avoiding fancy operations is the most important thing!
“Yeah! Alchemy is indeed profound and abstruse. Perhaps my vision is shallow and I underestimated it too much.”
Grimm frowned and sighed in a low voice, “My little ingenuity was too much of a failure, completely not enough to look at.”
“Oh, what kind of little ingenuity was it?” This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
Ishtar’s beautiful eyes narrowed, and her heart skipped a beat.
She remembered the shocking wisdom of Grimm directly refining his own blood vessels into Magic Circuits on his first day of learning Alchemy.
This time couldn’t also…
Oh, just now she heard Grimm say it was a failure, so it seemed it didn’t work!
Yesterday’s success was ultimately just a temporary accident.
“It’s ‘Divided Thinking’!”
Grimm said this while beating his chest and stamping his feet, in extreme pain.
“I actually spent a full eight hours to independently develop Divided Thinking; this is simply too much of a failure!”
He needed such a long time just to divide out his first personality.
Then how long would it take to innovate the Nibelungen Project and research other aspects of enhancement in the future?
And how long would it take to apply it to actual combat and counter Odin?
But now, pressed by the situation, especially the upcoming ley line struggle, he couldn’t bypass a frontal conflict with Odin.
Grimm once again deeply felt the darkness, lack of light, and desperate helplessness of this long road, which inevitably made people feel sorrowful and utterly disheartened.
Ishtar’s face instantly went blank, her mouth stuttering: “Only…”
You mean that without any prior understanding, you figured out and learned the Alchemy spell-formula of the Atlas Academy in 8 hours on your own?
I really was stupid, truly.
Why did I believe his nonsense about failing?
“Right, Ishtar, what was it you wanted to advise me about just now?”
Grimm suddenly remembered that Ishtar seemed to have wanted to tell him something when she came over.
“I, I…”
Ishtar held her breath, feeling that her face was already burning and blushing hot, “I wanted to advise you to be down-to-earth and communicate more about the basics with your teacher and others…”
Grimm nodded, not doubting it.
“Is that so! Indeed, it is necessary to be down-to-earth and strengthen mutual communication; splitting just one personality might still have a turning point…”
A flash of inspiration suddenly struck him, “Wait! Between different personalities of the same person, communication via brainwaves is almost seamlessly connected. Can this be treated as thinking units operating in parallel?”
“When thinking about the same thing, different personalities exchange information. Can the rate be superimposed on each other to form high-speed thinking? This is equivalent to a computer relying on multi-threading to improve the processing efficiency of single-process operations!”
“So ‘High-speed Thinking’ is the true marvelous use of multiple personalities!”
“I’ve attained enlightenment!”
Ishtar: “…”
I shouldn’t have come.
I really was stupid, truly.