In the simulated space, the deep-blue light slowly faded, and rows of icy text settled into focus on Ichinose Honami's retinas, leaving her silent for a long time.
[Simulation Ended] [Simulation Ending: An Unreachable Genius] [Simulation Review: You were too wary of someone and drove their affection for you to zero. As a result, although they kept their promise, they no longer wanted you to graduate from Class A.] [Simulation Rating: C] [Bonus Talent Points: 10]
Ichinose Honami stared at the results screen floating before her, her heart a jumble of emotions. Almost unconsciously, she checked her remaining talent points.
[Talent Points: 15]
The number glimmered quietly in the corner. When she closed her eyes, the long, oppressive three years of this simulation washed over her like a tide.
In fact, the Simulator allowed her to draw talents and even intervene manually to some extent.
With the Top-tier Detective talent the system had just awarded her, she had painstakingly pieced together the clues during the simulation and managed to seize hold of a series of Miyabi Nagumo's weaknesses. In the end, she brought him down and naturally took the position of Student Council president.
Unfortunately, this formidable Detective talent was expensive, and she couldn't afford to redeem it yet.
The struggle to make it to her third year in the simulation had been exceptionally difficult. Since Wu Qiao had honored his promise to "help Class B during the Special Exam," Class B had managed to weather the storms of the first two years without too much trouble, despite plenty of bumps along the way.
However, because she had seen Wu Qiao's terrifying side, Ichinose Honami had spent this life walking on eggshells.
She treated Wu Qiao with almost abject respect, yet kept him at a distance as if he were a nuclear bomb about to go off at any moment. She guarded against him as though he were a terrorist. The contrast was glaring: she remained as warm and friendly as ever with her other classmates, but only her smile for Wu Qiao concealed an impenetrable wariness.
Wu Qiao never said so outright, but Ichinose could sense his displeasure. As time went on, they drifted further and further apart. Their relationship, which had been fairly good in the first simulation, had fallen to freezing point this time.
The ending came in the final two months of the last semester. The boy who had once been lazy and content to coast through life suddenly seemed like a different person. He stopped plotting schemes and targeting anyone, and instead buried himself in the library.
Then came an event that stunned the entire school, even the whole world: Wu Qiao had solved one of the Millennium Prize Problems all on his own!
This astonishing academic achievement brought the school immeasurable prestige and earned Class D an astronomical number of Class Points.
Class D's bottom-ranked Class Points total skyrocketed in an instant. Against all odds, they surged into Class A, while the class led by Ichinose Honami was forced down and lost its chance to graduate from Class A for good.
All you could say was... This time, he hadn't destroyed the world or become that cold-blooded Tyrant. He had simply switched into genius mode and crushed everything through sheer ability.
From an ordinary person's perspective, it seemed like a decent enough ending. After all, Wu Qiao hadn't hurt anyone, and he had made a contribution to academia.
But for Ichinose Honami, it was undoubtedly a crushing failure. Her dream of leading everyone in Class B to graduate from Class A had been shattered completely.
When Wu Qiao was unhappy, he could raise his class's Class Points into the tens of thousands at any time. There was no need for competition—he could make all his rivals despair outright.
"So... Wu Qiao, what did you come to Advanced Nurturing High School for?" Ichinose Honami murmured, her heart full of confusion.
She carefully recalled the two vastly different paths her life had taken.
In the first simulation, Wu Qiao had been lazy and easygoing, and the two of them had become good friends. Only after he was thoroughly provoked and driven into a corner had he bared his fangs and used force to bring the world to heel.
This time, simply because she had been too wary of him and made him unhappy, he had switched modes and embarked on an invincible path of genius.
It felt... as if a player with a maxed-out account had gotten fed up with a game, so they either cheated outright or flipped the table and quit.
The only difference was who he targeted. The first time, Ichinose Honami still didn't know which factions he had targeted. The second time, he had targeted only her, declaring his displeasure in a way that was almost childish, yet utterly powerful.
Ichinose Honami suddenly felt that Wu Qiao was an incredibly complicated, inscrutable person, as if he wore countless masks. But then again, he also seemed terrifyingly simple.
Treat him well, and he treated you well in return, willing to laugh and joke with you. Treat him badly, or make him uncomfortable, and he immediately bared his fangs, leaving you to regret it.
"He's like a child who hasn't grown up yet, but has the power to destroy the world..." Ichinose Honami sighed, her eyes showing her helplessness.
After a whole week of experimentation and trial and error, Wu Qiao had finally worked out a simple set of rules for "Path Practice." He discovered that practice didn't necessarily require some earth-shattering event. Certain everyday actions could also count as a low-grade form of practice.
For example, with the [Path of Gluttony], besides eating voraciously to satisfy one's appetite, the simple act of "eating" could build up a tiny bit of experience. The [Path of Elation] could be triggered by sharing happiness and creating fun, while the [Path of The Hunt] could be advanced through strict self-discipline and setting goals.
These "low-grade" practices gave pitifully little experience, but every bit helped. At least they proved he was heading in the right direction.
Of course, the easiest path for gaining experience was the [Path of Erudition]. Whether or not he fully understood what he was reading, simply opening a book and studying made the experience bar steadily rise.
The problem was that this path, the easiest one to grind, was excruciating to follow. The sensation of his brain being forced to work at high speed left his scalp tingling.
And the boosts it gave were incredibly "stingy." Besides improving his mental processing power and logical reasoning, they couldn't strengthen his body or increase his charm. It was practically a bookworm path that only knew how to study.
At that very moment, in Class D's classroom, Wu Qiao was leaning back in his chair as lazily as ever, idly playing with a packet of fruit candies.
Whenever a classmate passed by, he casually offered them a candy, a mild, harmless smile on his face.
Just then, his seatmate Wang Meiyu walked over. Wu Qiao's eyes lit up, and he suddenly switched to fluent Chinese, speaking at a volume only the two of them could hear. "Morning, Wang."
Wang Meiyu froze for a moment, then replied in Chinese with delighted surprise, "Morning! I didn't know you spoke Chinese so well, Wu-kun!"
In a class full of Japanese students, hearing her mother tongue made Wang Meiyu feel especially close to home. Although Wu Qiao had been born and raised in Japan in this life (Wu was indeed a surname in Japan), he hadn't forgotten the language he had spoken in his previous life as a Chinese person. He could have a completely private conversation with Wang Meiyu without any difficulty.
"It's all right. An elder in my family taught me," Wu Qiao replied casually, keeping a straight face as he made up an excuse. Then he solemnly took out the small notebook and ballpoint pen he carried with him. "By the way, Wang, there's something I've been meaning to ask you. How much do you know about Chinese cooking?"
Wang Meiyu blinked, looking a little bewildered. "Chinese cooking? Are you trying to learn how to cook?"
"Yeah, I've been looking into it lately." Wu Qiao nodded earnestly, pen poised to take notes. "Today, I thought we could start with Di San Xian. How should you prepare the eggplant so it soaks up the flavor without getting greasy? Should you fry it or pan-fry it first? Should the potatoes be cut into chunks or thick slices?"
Watching Wu Qiao's intensely serious expression, as if they were discussing some kind of national secret, Wang Meiyu couldn't help bursting into laughter.
Who would have thought that this boy, who always seemed so absentminded in class, would be privately taking notes on how to cook dishes with such dedication?
"All right, all right, I'll teach you." Wang Meiyu laughed and leaned closer, beginning to explain in detail in Chinese. "First, cut the eggplant into chunks and sprinkle it with salt to draw out the moisture. That way, it won't soak up oil when you fry it..."
Wu Qiao listened while rapidly writing down every step in his notebook, occasionally asking a follow-up question or two. To anyone watching, they were simply having a friendly conversation in a foreign language. In reality, Wu Qiao was practicing the painful yet unavoidable [Path of Erudition] in this unusual way.
After all, recipes and cooking methods counted as real knowledge, too.