[Scholarship]

At the school gate, Evelyn was waiting for him at the bus stop so they could go home together.

Richard did not join the line. He waved to his sister and made a walking gesture, meaning he was going to walk home himself.

The girl wrinkled her nose suspiciously but said nothing. She was swept into the bus by the crowd.

Two Stone Griffins crouched atop the gate's stone pillars, their wings piled with bird droppings.

Richard walked between them and turned onto the southbound street.

The reason was simple: he just wanted to walk more.

The [Walking] entry under "Physique" was still gray, but he wanted to confirm something:

Could an unlit skill quietly accumulate experience in the background?

If it could, then walking home would be a win-win: exercise his body while earning experience.

As he walked, he focused his attention on [Walking] in the panel.

Gray. Completely motionless.

After walking for around five minutes, he checked again.

It was still gray. The experience bar did not even display a number, utterly blank.

He walked for another ten minutes, and his breathing had already begun to grow heavy.

The panel still showed no reaction. The gray entry accepted no input whatsoever, not even hidden accumulation.

Just as expected, it would not function unless it was lit. There were no shortcuts.

He sighed, stopped watching the panel, and brought his attention back to the road.

It was roughly three miles (4.8 km) from Greenwood to his home, passing through nearly half of Briston's old district.

Terraced houses stood shoulder to shoulder along the streets. Coal soot had accumulated on their brick walls for decades, and the original red bricks had long lost their color.

Around the corner from Post Office Street lay the flea market.

Walking was not his only reason for coming this way. He had also planned to check the flea market and see whether he could find more antiques to gain points from.

They called it a market, but it was really just a narrow alley less than a hundred meters long.

Most of the vendors were elderly, and they had sharp eyes. One glance was enough for them to tell whether someone had come to spend money or merely browse.

So when Richard strolled over, not one of them got up to solicit his business.

Richard was happy enough with that. He slowed his pace, his gaze gliding across the stalls.

Bronze ware, old books, badges, worn pocket watches, tarnished silver chains.

He split his attention toward the panel, watching the available points section.

Zero. Always zero.

He passed more than a dozen stalls, flipped through countless bronze objects covered in inscriptions, and touched a few old books in terrible condition.

The panel remained quiet, without even a fluctuation of 0.01.

Apparently, not every old object concealed something within it.

The pendant and the God-Descending Disk had likely provided points because traces of supernatural power truly remained in them.

No matter how old ordinary objects were, if nothing was sealed inside them, they were just scrap metal and wastepaper to him.

Richard set the bronze cigarette case in his hand back on the stall. The vendor did not even lift his eyelids.

By the time he returned to his doorstep, the back of his shirt was soaked through with sweat.

Three miles was merely a stroll for an ordinary person. For him, it was forced marching.

He stood at the door and panted for a while, only pushing it open after steadying his breath.

No one was upstairs. His father had not yet gotten off work, and his mother was probably in the kitchen.

Richard went upstairs, shut his bedroom door, and sank his full attention into the panel.

[Available Points: 1]

The entire point contributed by the God-Descending Disk lay there quietly, waiting to be spent.

He first tried putting the point into Breathing again, to see whether it could stack.

That was how he played games, after all. The biggest mistake when allocating points was spreading them evenly; specializing in one area brought the greatest improvement.

Once he had confirmed it, his consciousness touched [Breathing Lv.1] and tried to push the point into it. The panel quickly displayed a gray prompt:

"This entry has already been activated. Further advancement requires:

Base level reaching Lv.2 experience max; personally learning a Supernatural Breathing Technique."

A smaller line of text appeared beneath it:

"Unlockable effect preview—Breathing: Healing:

Where breath flows, minor injuries heal on their own, and chronic ailments gradually recede."

Richard stared at the word "Healing."

If Healing could truly make "chronic ailments gradually recede," then as long as he was still breathing, his body would keep improving.

His thoughts drifted further.

Lv.3 healed minor wounds, but what about Lv.5? Lv.10?

If the level continued to rise, could Breathing directly strengthen muscle density, increase bone toughness, and optimize neural responses?

If that was true, then Breathing, the most ordinary-looking skill, was precisely the foundation of all foundations.

Because it never stopped, whether he was awake or asleep.

The higher its level, the greater the benefit from every breath. That was the logic of exponential growth.

He even thought of a more insane possibility.

What if he unlocked some kind of Supernatural Breathing Technique that allowed breathing itself to draw energy from the outside world?

According to the panel, one of the advancement requirements was "learning a Supernatural Breathing Technique."

Supernatural Breathing Technique. Those words alone were enough to set one's imagination running wild.

Supernatural power truly existed in this world. The pendant and the God-Descending Disk had already proved it.

If one day he found such a Breathing Technique and combined it with the panel's boost...

Others needed meditation, contemplation, spiritual medicine, or Rituals to accomplish things that he would only need to breathe to achieve.

He would grow stronger while eating, grow stronger while walking, and keep growing stronger even while Sleeping.

Along with the stacking effects of these lit skills... He quickly suppressed his excitement. It was too early to think about such things.

He gathered his thoughts and examined the panel again.

Since Breathing could not take a second point for now, he would look elsewhere.

His gaze shifted to the three remaining entries under "Physique."

The same reasoning ruled them out. They either required time or resources, and he could afford neither.

His gaze moved to "Intellect."

[Perception: Increased acuity of the five senses]

Once he truly entered the supernatural realm, sharp Perception might save his life.

But for now, overly keen intuition might instead invite disaster.

[Reasoning: Deduction, analysis, and drawing inferences]

It was an extremely powerful ability, and he was tempted.

When he tried touching Reasoning with his consciousness, the panel displayed a prompt:

"This entry requires: Scholarship ≥ Lv.3."

The logic of the cheat was that he needed a foundation of knowledge before he could build the tower of deduction.

Without a foundation, Reasoning would be built in thin air.

He came to the final entry.

[Scholarship: Rapidly master, memorize, and understand basic knowledge]

Richard drew up a list in his mind.

Part-time jobs students could take to earn money—translation, copying, tutoring. Every path depended on having sufficient knowledge.

As for Occultism, he had gained points twice through contact with antiques that contained sealed supernatural power.

If he wanted to reliably obtain points in the future, identifying and finding antiques would be a crucial path.

And the knowledge needed to identify antiques—archaeology, ancient writing, folklore, religious studies—all fell within the scope of Scholarship.

Every trail ultimately led back to the same starting point. He made his choice.

The gray faded, and the words lit up.

[Scholarship] Lv.1 Experience: 0/200

The change came more quietly than when Breathing had been activated.

Richard rose from the edge of the bed and crouched down to rummage through his schoolbag.

He first opened his Latin textbook, his most troublesome subject.

In the past, looking at Latin declension charts had been like staring into a bowl of unmixable paste. The word endings all stuck together, and he could not tell one from another.

He flipped to the chapter on verb conjugations and studied it for several minutes.

The relationships between roots and affixes began to emerge.

Amo, amas, amat—the changing endings of first-conjugation verbs were no longer a string of gibberish that had to be memorized by rote.

They had structure and logic. The endings told him who the subject was, where the tense lay, and what the mood was.

He turned to the next page, studied for several more minutes, and silently kept time.

Content that had once taken him an hour to barely understand now allowed him to build a framework in around ten minutes.

The effect was most obvious in language learning, memorization, and categorization.

As for deeper subjects, such as advanced mathematics, philosophical arguments, and legal reasoning, the effect was not nearly as dramatic.

Scholarship accelerated breadth. Breakthroughs in depth would have to wait for Reasoning.

In other words, he could become a well-read generalist far faster than anyone else.

But if he wanted to delve deeply into a specific field, he would still need time, Reasoning, and to gnaw through it piece by piece.

He closed the textbook and glanced at the panel.

[Scholarship] Lv.1 Experience: 1/200

Those few minutes of reading had already started moving the experience bar.

Unlike Breathing, Scholarship required active learning to trigger it.

Reading, attending class, observing, practicing... Every effective input of knowledge pushed the experience bar forward.

He made a plan in his mind: listen attentively in class during the day, then spend his after-school hours in the library.

The knowledge density in class was readily available. As long as he absorbed it seriously, he should accumulate quite a bit of experience in a day.

If he added self-study after class, he could probably reach level two within a month.

He read for a while longer when the sound of dishes clinking came from downstairs.

His mother had already begun setting the table, and Evelyn called his name at the top of her lungs.

Richard answered, got to his feet, and went downstairs to eat.