POV: Zhang Xiaohou
One week had passed since my explosive training session in the Bo City Mage Association’s private training area.
My daily routine had settled into a new, efficient rhythm.
During the day, I attended classes at Tianlan Magic High.
During the evenings, I locked myself in the dorm room with Mo Fan.
While he sweated bullets trying to force his stubborn Lightning stars into alignment, I slipped on my Spirit-grade Stardust Magic Tool and seamlessly ran through my Lightning Star Path.
Thanks to my continuous practice, my casting speed had dropped to a solid 1.35 seconds, even when moving.
But my mind was equally focused on the money.
My liquid funds had taken a massive hit after purchasing my magical armor and the Spirit-grade tool.
I needed to replenish my accounts.
It was late Friday night.
Mo Fan was dead to the world, snoring softly on his mattress.
I sat cross legged on my bed, the dim blue glow of my lightning powered laptop illuminating my face.
I opened the compiler for my newest project: ‘Ruin Runner.’
The player controlled a little pixelated treasure hunter running endlessly through a crumbling, magical temple, swiping to dodge collapsing pillars, jumping over spiked pits, and sliding under ancient swinging blades.
It was fast, visually stimulating, and highly addictive.
But the real magic was in the monetization code.
I had perfected the advertisement algorithm from ‘Derpy Griffin’.
Instead of just showing ads when the player died, I introduced a “Revive” mechanic.
If a player missed a jump and fell into a pit, they could watch a thirty second, unskippable video ad for civilian laundry detergent or instant noodles to revive their character and keep their high score.
Human psychology is incredibly predictable.
No teenager is going to let a high score die if they can save it by watching some commercial.
I navigated to the global civilian app store portal, selected the upload package under the “Zhang Studios” developer tag, and clicked publish.
> [Programming: Lv.
64]
> [Money Management: Lv.
38]
I closed the laptop, slid it under my bed, and went to sleep.
‘The trap is set,’ I thought.
Two weeks later, the results were in.
I was sitting in the back of the cafeteria, picking at a plate of stir fried noodles.
Mo Fan was sitting across from me, violently jabbing his chopsticks into a piece of tofu as he complained about his second star constantly slipping out of his spiritual grasp.
“I swear, Monkey, it’s like the star is mocking me,” Mo Fan groaned, his eyes heavily bagged.
“I get it right to the edge of the Star Path, and then it just zips away.
It’s infuriating.”
“Patience, Fan-ge.
You have to guide it slowly,” I replied automatically, though my attention was entirely focused on the table of second year students sitting diagonally across from us.
All four of them were hunched over their civilian smartphones, furiously swiping at their screens.
Yes, there are two different smartphones, a civilian version and a Hunter version.
Most mages use the Hunter version so it won’t get damaged easily in combat, but it is also costly.
“Slide left!
Slide left!
Ah, damn it!” one of the older boys cursed, slapping the table.
“Just watch the ad, bro.
You were at three thousand meters, don’t lose the run,” his friend urged, his eyes glued to his own screen.
“I know, I know.
I’m watching it.
Stupid shampoo commercial,” the first boy grumbled, though he dutifully kept the screen open.
I took a slow sip of my water, masking the predatory grin spreading across my face.
‘Ruin Runner’ hadn’t just succeeded, it had exploded.
The goodwill and massive player base established by ‘Derpy Griffin’ acted as a colossal springboard.
The moment “Zhang Studios” released a new title, millions of bored civilians and stressed out magical students downloaded it out of sheer curiosity.
When classes finished for the day, I headed back to the dorm and booted up my laptop.
I logged into my secure corporate banking portal, bypassing three layers of encryption I had built myself.
The screen loaded, displaying the combined revenue streams of both ‘Derpy Griffin’ (which was slowly declining but still profitable) and the explosive two week launch window of ‘Ruin Runner’.
[Current Balance: 18,740,500 RMB]
I stared at the glowing numbers.
Eighteen million yuan.
I closed the banking portal and leaned back in my chair, intertwining my fingers.
I had spent nearly 140 million on equipment earlier, but now I was recovering it steadily.
I guess that’s why most of the population stops at Novice Mage before the age of 20, slowly fading out into obscurity because mage development decreases as age increases.
If you want to achieve the advanced ranks, money is essential.
That’s why a lot of talented mages from common backgrounds join the powerful clans or the military.
But if you join a clan or the military, there is no freedom.
Still, at least it is better than becoming a Hunter and fighting life and death battles every day just to gather your own resources for common people.
The financial bottleneck that strangled 99% of mages in this world had been entirely eradicated for me.
I didn’t need to beg a clan for resources.
I didn’t need to sign away my freedom to a guild for a fraction of a magical seed.
When the time came to upgrade my Lightning element with a Spirit-grade seed, I wouldn’t have to risk my life in a monster infested cave hoping to find one.
I would just walk into the nearest high end magical auction house and buy it in cash.
But wealth meant nothing if I was dead.
Once I reached the Tier 3 Novice rank, I would go to the Hunter Association to register myself as a Hunter and begin my adventure.
Two months had passed since we awakened our magic.
Mu Bai was the undisputed star of the class, or at least, he thought he was.
Two months into the semester, he proudly “slipped” that he had successfully connected his fourth Ice star.
The entire class fawned over him.
Zhao Kunsan practically offered to shine his shoes, and even the teachers gave him approving nods.
“Look at him,” Mo Fan muttered one afternoon, resting his chin on his desk and glaring at the back of Mu Bai’s perfectly gelled head.
“He connects four measly stars and acts like he just slew a beast.”
“Let him have his moment, Fan-ge,” I whispered, smoothly spinning a pen between the fingers of my left hand while writing notes with my right.
“How are your stars?”
“I’ve got all seven Lightning stars lined up,” Mo Fan replied, keeping his voice incredibly low.
“But the connection is unstable.
Every time I try to link the seventh to the first to form the complete Star Path, the energy shorts out and I get a backlash.
It’s like trying to thread a needle while riding a roller coaster.”
“As for the Fire stars, I connected three of them,” Mo Fan continued.
“You’re forcing it,” I advised quietly, not looking up from my notebook.
“Stop trying to pull the seventh star.
Push the first six toward it.
Let the circuit close itself.”
Mo Fan blinked, processing the advice.
“I’ll try that tonight.” He paused, casting a sideways glance at me.
“What about you, Monkey?
The teachers think you’re still working on your fifth star because you’ve been playing dumb.
Where are you actually at?”
I stopped spinning the pen and offered him a perfectly polite, completely harmless smile.
> [Progress To Next Level: 94%]
“I’m making progress,” I lied smoothly.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that while he was struggling to thread the needle, I was already manufacturing the clothes.
One month later.
Saturday night.
1:00 AM.
I stood in the center of Room B-09, a private training room at the Bo City Mage Association.
The heavy steel door was locked, the soundproof barriers were active, and a fresh row of tungsten alloy dummies stood at the far end of the hall.
I wasn’t wearing my school uniform.
I was outfitted in the specialized Hunter gear I had purchased online: a sleek, dark gray tactical suit woven with elemental resistant fibers, and my Lightning affinity boots laced tightly.
Strapped to my lower back was the newly arrived seventeen million RMB weapon, a perfectly balanced, magically conductive short sword forged from cold iron and obsidian.
My breathing was slow and rhythmic.
For the past two months, I had spent every weekend in this room, draining my spiritual energy to the absolute dregs and using my Spirit-grade Stardust Magic Tool to aggressively force my recovery.
It was a torturous, exhausting cycle that would have permanently crippled a normal mage’s mind.
But the System was absolute.
I dropped my center of gravity and bolted forward.
My [Parkour: Lv.
25] and the Lightning affinity boots worked in terrifying synergy.
I didn’t just run, I blurred.
I crossed twenty feet in a fraction of a second, launching myself off a reinforced pillar and twisting into a horizontal spin in mid air.
I didn’t need to close my eyes.
I didn’t need to concentrate.
My [Parallel Processing: Lv.
21] handled the physical calculations of the acrobatics, while my spiritual world engaged automatically.
‘One two three four five six seven.’
The purple Lightning Star Path materialized in my mind with the effortless fluidity of a heartbeat.
> [Tier 1 Novice Magic Release: Lv.
9 —> Lv.
10]
The notification flashed across my retinas, but I didn’t have time to read it.
I felt the fundamental shift in reality.
The microscopic delay between the mental command and the physical manifestation of magic vanished entirely.
While still spinning through the air, I snapped my right hand toward the tungsten dummy.
I didn’t chant.
I didn’t shout the name of the spell.
The purple beam of ‘Lightning Strike: Python’s Mark’ erupted from my palm with catastrophic velocity, tearing through the air and detonating against the dummy’s chest before my feet even touched the floor.
BOOM!
The concussive shockwave ripped through the training room, sending a cloud of superheated metallic vapor into the air.
I landed softly in a crouch, sliding a few feet backward on the smooth stone floor.
I slowly stood up, brushing a speck of ash from my shoulder, and looked at the dummy.
The solid tungsten alloy hadn’t just melted; the sheer kinetic and thermal force of the instant cast lightning had violently blown the upper torso entirely off its hinges.
Zero cast time.
It is something only High-Tier mages and above can do.
If a One Eyed Magic Wolf leaped at me from the shadows, I wouldn’t need to retreat to buy myself the standard three seconds a Novice Mage required to cast a spell.
The beast would be vaporized while it was still in mid air.
“Perfect,” I whispered, the sound echoing in the empty, cratered room.
But shooting stationary metal dummies had lost its value.
I needed to focus on moving targets next.
I had also reached Tier 2 in Novice magic, but I hadn’t trained it to perfection due to putting my whole focus on instant casting Tier 1 magic.
Now I needed to change my routine and focus on Tier 2 magic.
When used, it formed a lightning whip.
With the help of my [Martial Arts] skill, I knew I could use the whip as a fluid weapon that was why I hadn’t focused on training it until now.
Tomorrow is Sunday.
It should be another training day, but Xinxia asked to go on a date.
She didn’t specifically mention it was a date, but everyone knows it is.
When I was free in the evenings, I always went to her school to drop her off at her aunt’s home.
If I couldn’t, my mom would pick her up.
Because of that, she never faced bullying in school.
She also had friends who were interested in me for my looks, whenever I showed up in front of Xinxia, they surrounded me, but I wasn’t interested in them.
Sometimes I watched Xinxia get jealous when I talked to the other girls.
But I never mentioned it.
I know maintaining a harem is highly risky if the other girls in the harem don’t like each other.
So I had better plan something when the time comes, but that is a problem for future me.
To be continued…