Advancing to Melee Scholar

The potion slid down his throat like a cold lump of jelly entering his stomach. A second later, Odys suddenly felt as if he had been struck and sent flying by a speeding train.

His entire body felt as though it had fallen apart, every inch of his skin pricking with needle-like pain.

Then his head began to buzz with severe tinnitus. His vision went black, and he could see nothing.

Odys struggled to focus, barely managing not to pass out from the intense pain and ringing in his ears.

He felt huge invisible hands kneading his muscles, violently tearing them from his bones, bunching them together, then loosening them again.

As this repeated over and over, Odys felt so much pain that his entire body went numb.

He fought against the pain, doing his best not to lose consciousness. He had no idea how long it took, but eventually the darkness before his eyes faded, and his vision finally recovered a little.

Blurrily, he saw that the muscles along his entire arm had truly been twisted together by an invisible force into a horrifying spiral. Soon afterward, they spread apart again.

Then they were twisted together once more.

It was not an illusion. The potion was truly tearing apart his body and reshaping his muscles, tendons, bones, and blood vessels!

At that moment, a piercing pain shot through his head, gradually overtaking everything else.

Odys felt his vision distort from the pain in his head. The floor, experiment table, ceiling, beakers, and graduated cylinders were all spinning wildly!

Dizziness and pain ravaged Odys's mind, making him feel as if he were caught in a violent storm, liable to collapse at any moment.

Fortunately, he had digested the Mystery Pryer's potion well and had consistently trained his mind through meditation. After passing a certain stage, the intense dizziness and pain rapidly weakened.

The buzzing in his ears vanished as well. Then, all at once, a strange, icy voice bored into his ears: "...universe... piling up... erratic leaps... knowledge... Carnal... endless..."

Most of the words were indistinct, and he could only make out the occasional word.

The indistinct portions sometimes sounded like the low growls of a savage beast, making Odys's heart race in fear. Sometimes they sounded like fingernails scraping thin iron sheets, producing shrill noises that made him unusually irritable. At other times, they resembled harmful ultrasonic waves, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.

Fortunately, the voice came quickly and went just as quickly.

But it was enough to make the veins on Odys's forehead bulge. He collapsed into his chair with a deathly pale face and dry-heaved for a long while.

A minute or two later, Odys finally leaned against the chair back, breathing heavily as he rested.

It felt much like a hangover. His entire body was weak, and his head felt as though it were splitting apart.

He took out his pocket watch and checked it. The whole advancement process had actually taken only around three minutes. The earlier pain had lasted less than two minutes, yet it had felt like an entire century!

And the later discomfort had entirely been caused by the Hidden Sage's voice after his advancement!

Having just advanced, his spirituality was already unstable. Those two utterances from the Hidden Sage had made that instability even worse, and he had nearly shown signs of losing control.

What a scam!

Odys sighed inwardly. Something even worse than having a true God on one's Pathway was having a God with uniqueness on one's Pathway who was an evil god!

Then he discovered that, despite having just advanced, he had already digested half of the Melee Scholar potion.

That left his mind comparatively relaxed rather than so tightly wound, and the discomfort throughout his body quickly faded.

After thinking about it for a moment, Odys understood. What I digested in advance was the "scholar" part of Melee Scholar!

His research every Sunday in the Knowledge Moor, along with his experiments in the real world, had all been like a scholar's research into mysticism!

Over the past three years, Odys had conducted all kinds of research in the Knowledge Moor during his dreams for a total of around twenty years.

Adding the three years of research in the real world made twenty-three years! That was nearly as long as he had been alive.

More importantly, he had achieved abundant results, so he could definitely digest part of the potion in advance.

Then Odys realized that digesting the Melee Scholar potion required separating "melee" and "scholar." He could not always place the emphasis on "melee," because the potion was called Melee Scholar, not Fighter.

Clearly, "melee" was a means or safeguard for a scholar to conduct research.

Of course, researching "melee" could also be one of the ways a scholar came to understand the world.

At that thought, Odys suddenly smiled. It gave him the feeling that the only thing scarier than a thug who knew martial arts was a thug with an education.

Then, while restraining his spirituality, he began to sense the changes in his abilities and body.

First, Odys felt that his strength had become incredibly precise. It was a wondrous feeling. For example, if he had wanted to place a medicine jar somewhere high up before, he would definitely have needed a ladder.

But now, he felt that he could simply throw it up there! And it would land exactly where he wanted it to, without the slightest deviation.

This was because Odys now possessed superb fighting techniques. They seemed innate, as though they had been imprinted in his mind since birth.

The Melee Scholar potion had also reshaped Odys's body, allowing him to fully display those techniques.

However, he still needed a certain amount of practice to completely integrate the techniques with his body and accumulate actual combat experience before he could become a qualified fighter!

Odys had already made plans. He intended to join a fighting club and spar with its members.

Another change was that a great deal of mystical knowledge had appeared in Odys's mind. This knowledge allowed him to perform more advanced ritual magic.

In truth, when he had become a Mystery Pryer, his extraordinarily high spirituality had already allowed him to cast some magic and sorcery with the aid of rituals or magic arrays.

But at that time, all that knowledge had been learned and explored by himself.

Now, however, things were different. After advancing, Odys possessed some mystical knowledge that allowed him to use rituals to cast magic such as healing, as well as draw arrays such as defensive magic arrays by infusing them with spirituality.

Another enormous change was that Odys could clearly feel his thoughts becoming more agile. He realized that problems that had originally required three hours of thought could now be completed in one hour.

His ability to learn and comprehend knowledge had also become three times what it had been before.

If he completely digested the potion, it could even reach five times what it had been at Sequence 9!

Odys let out a deep breath. His advancement would also help with his research.

At that moment, he truly did not want to move, so he spent the night in the lounge and laboratory.

In Backlund's dock district, inside an abandoned West Balam shipyard.

Klein lay in ambush before a weed-choked warehouse when he saw three figures approaching at tremendous speed.

Maric was running at the front. He was responsible for luring the enemies here, and he was currently moving even faster than a steam train.

Behind him were their enemies, the Zombie Jason and the Werewolf Tiel.

Upon reaching the center of the abandoned shipyard, Maric suddenly turned around, raised the Arrow of Flames, and fired six shots in rapid succession at the enemies behind him.