NEC Chapter 46: The Grind King Arrives

Despite his deep disdain for “ignorant, profligate noble heirs,” Morton was, at the very least, a competent instructor.

He spent the entire morning teaching Chen Mo the [Blue Leaf Meditation Technique], a specialty of Master Hal’s lineage, meticulously explaining the names and uses of the accompanying magical materials. He also taught a basic spell, [Basic Illumination Technique], commonly known as the Glimmer Spell.

The meditation technique was for cultivating mental strength, while the Glimmer Spell was for training mana.

This was far more structured than anything Chen Mo had learned before. Black Crow Castle had largely ignored theoretical foundations, focusing solely on practicality, akin to a trade school churning out immediately deployable forces.

If you could summon skeletons, you brought skeletons. If zombies, then zombies. If stone statues, then those. Anything and everything had its use.

Their approach to basic education was a mess, even handing out magical materials in pre-packaged bundles, leaving Chen Mo with piles of gold coins but no knowledge of which materials to buy on the market.

Now, no matter how much Morton peppered his teaching with biting sarcasm, Chen Mo felt only pure delight.

“Excuse me, Instructor Morton, what should I do when I run out of meditation materials?”

Morton’s lips curled into a sneer. “At your level, if you manage to use up the materials provided, you’re already doing your parents proud. Don’t overthink useless things.”

Pretending not to catch the jab, Chen Mo pressed again.

“You can buy more from me, but the price isn’t the same as your basic allocation! Tsk, I forgot, you’re not short on cash, are you? Six silver coins per portion, then.”

“Got it. And, Instructor Morton, can I also purchase additional mana cultivation potions?”

Morton nodded.

He was done wasting words on this clueless kid.

The basic tuition paid to Hal’s “preparatory mage tower” included the essential magical materials for each cultivation stage, sufficient for maximum-efficiency mental training. But extra materials? Those came at a bone-crushingly steep price.

Out of his irritation, Morton doubled the already inflated rate.

Since this arrogant kid wanted to contribute to Master Hal’s mage tower, who was he to stop him?

But Chen Mo wasn’t done. He turned to the person in charge of the cultivation room, an old man whose age was hard to pin down but who looked like he wasn’t far from the grave.

“I’d like to use the cultivation room outside the designated hours. How’s the pricing?”

This tidbit came from the ever-helpful lanky Kato, though, having never used the service himself, he didn’t know the specifics.

The old man lazily glanced at the black-haired kid, mumbling, “Five silver coins per session, ten per day.”

“And for a monthly pass?”

The old man looked up again, sizing Chen Mo up thoroughly.

Oh, so this is the guy who paid big money to sneak in. No wonder.

His throat bobbed as he spat a chewed-up pit with a “thwack” into a waste chute in the corner. He pulled out a thick ledger, blew off the dust, and flipped through it for a while before finding the answer.

The Glimmer Group’s cultivation room hadn’t seen anyone buy extra services in ages.

“Eighty silver coins for ten days!”

A price that would make most commoner apprentices balk.

Chen Mo pulled out his coin pouch.

In that moment, he became the very person he once despised, someone using wealth, connections, or power to enjoy privileges.

So, most resentment toward privilege just stemmed from not having it yourself…

Whatever. This is for serving the motherland!

With his mental justification complete, he drafted a detailed schedule. He also set a scrolling reminder on his tactical watch, ensuring it was always in his line of sight.

128 days until the next assessment!

With densely packed reminders timed to the second, Chen Mo or rather, Roy, began his cultivation journey.

Up at 4:20 a.m., a 30-minute morning jog around the compound, mentally constructing the Glimmer Spell model.

After exercise, a quick breakfast shoveled down in the cafeteria, Chen Mo was the first to enter the study hall for meditation practice.

It wasn’t that other students lacked diligence. Meditation was like pushing the mind to its limits, returns diminished with longer sessions.

The consensus in magical academia was that, in peak condition, about two hours of meditation maximized daily gains.

It was like tackling a tough exam. The first attempt yielded rich rewards, the second offered slight reinforcement, and by the third or fourth, you were just fogging your brain with negligible benefits.

Meditation’s diminishing returns worked the same way. If the first two hours of daily meditation boosted mental strength by about 0.02, a second session might yield only a tenth of that, and a third, less than a hundredth.

The mental strain remained just as heavy, not to mention the astronomical cost of extra materials.

But Chen Mo didn’t care. He just wanted to “grind practice questions”!

First meditation session ended at 7:05 a.m. on his tactical watch.

Five minutes to pre-build the Glimmer Spell model, ten minutes of closed-eye rest, then Morton arrived for the day’s basic theory and spell model analysis.

From 8:20, other students entered the cultivation room for meditation, and Chen Mo began his second session of the day.

Two hours later, his brain felt like it was about to explode, temples throbbing as he emerged.

From 10:30, it was Morton’s Q&A time. Chen Mo opted to return to the dorm to rest and recover, since he couldn’t understand the veteran apprentices’ questions anyway.

Waking at 11:00 to an alarm, he dashed back to the cultivation room for a 40-minute short meditation, a shift from boiling in a red-hot pot to simmering in a milder one.

Before noon, he hit the cafeteria. Lunch was a bit late, but thanks to his money, Kato had reserved him a meal. Cold or not, food was food.

After a brief rest and spell model construction, he was back in the cultivation room by 1:00 p.m.

Another two-hour long meditation.

Then a fifth one-hour session, a sixth half-hour session, and a seventh final two-hour session, leaving him utterly drained as he staggered back to the dorm.

Day after day, Chen Mo embarked on a monotonous, relentless cycle: dorm, cafeteria, study hall, cultivation room, a never-ending loop.

He became a peculiar sight in Glimmer Group.

Always the first to arrive, the last to leave.

Eating like he was racing, walking like he was sprinting.

His oversized water bottle steeped with bitter mind-soothing tea.

Mornings, his backpack bulged with magical materials; nights, it returned empty, carrying only his exhausted shell.

Social gatherings, entertainment, or idle chatter among apprentices? He was completely detached, not sparing a single extra word.

It was as if Chen Mo had been thrust back into the battleground of “East Xia Senior Year,” where the world was reduced to a countdown in glaring red digits and ceaseless cultivation.

Rain or shine, he never stopped.

Faced with Chen Mo’s silence, all the apprentices hoping to see him falter fell into a deep, stunned silence of their own.

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