Richard turned off the faucet and dried his hands on a towel.
He sat down in the chair and focused all his attention on the panel.
[Available Points: 2.22]
This was the largest amount he had ever managed to save up.
He first tried pushing a point into [Scholarship].
A line of gray text appeared on the panel, in exactly the same format as the one he'd seen when he had tried to add a second point to [Breathing]:
"Already unlocked. To advance again, you must meet the following requirements:
Reach Lv.2 progress 100%; 1 available point; personally decipher one piece of encrypted text with Double Overwriting."
A line of smaller text appeared underneath:
"Preview of unlockable effect—Scholarship: Erudition:
Every text you lay eyes on will leave a trace in your brain. You can retrieve it as easily as flipping through a book, and your rate of forgetting will approach zero."
Richard stared at those words for a long time.
Erudition.
If Lv.1 and Lv.2 brought accelerated learning—like upgrading from dial-up to broadband, then to fiber-optic—Erudition was like installing a library in his brain.
Every text you lay eyes on will leave a trace in your brain.
You can retrieve it as easily as flipping through a book, and your rate of forgetting will approach zero.
That meant every book he read, every page, every line of code would be permanently stored in the depths of his consciousness, ready for him to call up at any time.
For someone following the Scholar path, the value of this trait was almost limitless.
Deciphering encrypted texts required him to keep four streams of information in his mind at once: the original text, the substitution key, the network of word origins, and the context.
For now, he relied on the boost