Chapter 170

After this harvest, Gao De's savings finally broke into the triple digits once again, reaching the gratifying figure of 107 gold and 18 silver.

So much so that when he saw the medicinal field being reclaimed, he felt a lingering reluctance in his heart.

"I must find time to take the 'Utilization and Reclamation of Spiritual Land' course as an elective," Gao De thought to himself.

"Utilization and Reclamation of Spiritual Land" was also one of the branch courses under Pharmacy, teaching how to reclaim natural spiritual land and artificially create it.

The conditions for magical plant growth are harsh, especially the extremely high requirements for magic power.

Planting magical plants on ordinary soil simply won't allow them to sprout and grow.

So-called spiritual land is soil rich in magic power that can support the growth of magical plants.

And owning a piece of spiritual land is equivalent to owning a cornucopia.

Whether reclaiming it oneself to plant magical plants or renting it out to pharmacists, it can provide a steady, continuous stream of income.

For a course with such "money-making potential," it was practically a required course for Gao De.

However, this was an advanced course; to take it as an elective, one needed over 30 credits, meaning it was generally for third-year students, and Gao De had not yet met the requirement.

When his door was knocked on by Jielika that evening and he received a small New Year's gift from her, Gao De suddenly realized that today was actually the last day of the year.

Winter Solstice Month, 30th.

Sairisi Academy also held New Year's celebrations in the academy square that night.

After all, except for the local noble students of Shengxi Encheng who would go home for the New Year, most students remained at the academy even on this day.

But Gao De was not interested in this; compared to wasting time on celebrations, he preferred to use that time to learn a little more.

In a world where knowledge is expensive and monopolized, Gao De always had a lingering sense of crisis.

This sense of crisis drove him to want to learn more whenever he had the chance.

This mentality was similar to how people who have experienced famine subconsciously develop the habit of hoarding food.

As the academy's twelve-o'clock magic bell, representing the ringing out of the old and the ringing in of the new, echoed throughout the entire academy.

The first year of Gao De's arrival in this world had passed just like that.

The year 9655 of the Nolan calendar passed quietly away.

Listening to the bell ringing in his ears, Gao De felt a thousand emotions in his heart.

He had arrived in this world on the 2nd day of the Awakening Month of this year, and so much had happened in the past eleven months.

Compared to this, his twenty-one years of experience in his previous life were like a blank sheet of paper.

Gao De could not predict what would happen in the newly arrived year 9656 of the Nolan calendar.

He only knew that he needed to grasp the present well, so that no matter what happened, he would have the ability to deal with it calmly.

And for this year, Gao De's goal was to strive to push his progress in the Guidance Art to perfection.

As for the progress of his Meditation Art, he would just have to let it take its course.

However, judging by his current cultivation progress, no matter what, he would be able to push the Meditation Art to perfection by next year.

By then he would be 15 years old, and he could attempt to advance to a 1st-circle magic user.

If successful, he would be only one year behind Yilan. But Yilan had reached that magic user rank without the academy's resources.

Thinking of this, Gao De couldn't help but sigh that this guy's talent was truly terrifying.

In the three months after the New Year, Gao De's life never encountered any other "small episodes."

He spent all his heart and energy on cultivation and course study.

During this period, Gao De welcomed the conclusion of several more branch courses.

"Business Group Management and Trade Practice," also a theory-based course, was specifically opened for students aspiring to join a chamber of commerce after graduation.

Gao De mainly valued the knowledge points in this course regarding trade practice.

In his view, for a magic user, "making money" is also a basic and essential ability.

In the final assessment, Gao De was symbolically deducted 2 points on the final open-ended trade practice question, ultimately achieving a high score of 98.

This course brought Gao De 1 credit.

"Geological Creature Research" was opened for battle magic users. The existence of "Wind Spirit Moon Shadow" destined Gao De to inevitably deal with geological creatures frequently.

What's more, in this world, as long as one is a magic user, who wouldn't come into contact with geological creatures?

In Gao De's view, this course should also be listed as a required course.

It's just that the academy didn't do so, and the course attendance rate wasn't high.

When it came to the final assessment, Gao De finally understood that the assessment difficulty was too high:

Besides basic questions, the final major question was to provide several sketches of geological creatures and require students to infer the specific information of the geological creature based on the knowledge learned in the course.

The more information inferred and the more accurate it was, the higher the score.

This carried a bit of luck, and questions that were too "open" often left students with nowhere to start.

Even Gao De only achieved a score of 85 in the final assessment of this course.

The credit for this course was 2 points.

"Magic Medicine," "Magic Pet Cultivation," and "Magic Engineering" were also small 1-credit courses, and Gao De finished the final assessments for all three with full marks.

The final assessment for "Magic Ink Extraction and Production" was to produce a portion of magic ink on the spot, with scoring based on the quality of the final magic ink produced.

The quality of the magic ink prepared by students, besides being related to technique, also had an extremely close relationship with the quality of the raw materials.

In terms of technique, Gao De, who had previously engaged in potion preparation and had solid theoretical foundations, was certainly second to none among all the students.

But he didn't want to spend a large amount of money to buy good materials for a grade just to boost the quality of the final magic ink, so he simply bought basic materials to prepare a portion of magic ink.

So he only got 80 points in this course, which was the lowest score among all of Gao De's courses so far.

"Magic Ink Extraction and Production" was also 1 credit.

After going through all this, Gao De's credits reached 24 points.

Remaining courses yet to conclude included the 2-credit "Racial History," the 3-credit "Pharmacology Research," and four first-stage courses that were currently only 1 credit each: "Magic User Basics," "Spell Application and Combat," "Basic Cultural Studies," and "Runology."

After completing all of them, Gao De's credits for the first academic year would reach 33 points.

As for Yilan, his basic credits were 22 points, and his seven elective courses totaled 9 credits.

After all courses concluded, his credits would barely reach 31 points, still 2 points behind Gao De.

Of course, only half a year had passed since the end of the first academic year.

In the latter half of the year, both Gao De and Yilan could continue to take other courses to add to their credits.

It would depend on who could out-compete whom.

Gao De was still very confident about this.

One is the blessing of 【Divine Guidance+】; in terms of learning, he couldn't possibly lose to Yilan.

The second is that he heard Yilan had spent most of his energy during this period on learning spells.

This was an instruction given to him by his mentor, the Minister of the Spell Department.

Magic user rank can unreasonably bridge the gap in resources by relying on talent.

But the mastery of spells requires a large amount of resources.

This led to Yilan owing a lot in terms of spells, and now he needed to work hard to fill the hole and pay off the debt.

By comparison, Gao De, whose number of mastered spells was even more terrifying than his learning ability, was actually on the right track from the beginning.

In this three-month state of focused learning, Gao De didn't even pay much attention to how his strength had improved in such a "dull" life.

His Guidance Art broke through again on the 14th of the Awakening Month, as naturally as water flowing.

His total magic power had reached the level of 13 cantrips.

And after nearly three months of self-study, Gao De finally fully grasped the thirty-six classic composite rune diagrams and that stack of half-a-person-high materials that He Xi had given him.

After that, Gao De entered the "problem-solving" stage.

Every day he would receive a requirement from He Xi, then independently design a composite rune based on the requirement, and hand it to He Xi for review the next day.

(End of chapter)