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Character ListQiao Zhiya: Half-elf, half-dwarf MC.
Chu Rong: Marshal ML.
Chu Yan: ML’s younger brother. Is the same age as MC, currently attending intermediate college.
Sang Bu: MC’s roommate. Information System major.
Yun Xiachu: MC’s classmate, a first-grader at intermediate college.
When he was taken out halfway through the training, Qiao Zhiya felt unwilling, and said sullenly, “Xiao Yan said that he wanted to teach me boxing…”
“You haven’t mastered the basics yet, what kind of boxing do you want to learn?” Chu Rong shook him like a rag doll and strode in. He put the blond youth on the sofa unceremoniously. “I know you  still want to make potions in the afternoon. Go rest now, don’t mess around.”
“To me, making potions means rest.” Qiao Zhiya retorted petulantly. He straightened his upper body and knelt on the sofa. Looking up at him, he said seriously, “I’m too weak now, I want to become stronger!”
“You want to become stronger?” Chu Rong sneered, he messed with the Bald Chicken’s bangs to vent his frustration and said, “Then, why don’t you continue your martial art training first? Also, didn’t you promise you will make me a mecha someday? Where’s the mecha you promised? Qiao Zhiya, if you do things half-heartedly, it will only accomplish nothing. Don’t make me look down on you.”
The chicken blood1excitement. inside him was extinguished by this sentence.  Qiao Zhiya blushed, and after holding back for a while, he whispered: “I am also studying mecha manufacturing…”
“Then keep working hard to study it well. Don’t think much about other things. Focus on the things that matter the most. So, go rest now.” Chu Rong pushed the leaning youth back, picked him up easily, turned him around, then pointed to the big-screen TV in the living room, and ordered, “Watch anything, We’ll have lunch later.”
Qiao Zhiya blushed from being manhandled like this. He held his breath, then turned to look at Chu Rong with a wide-eyed look. He picked up the remote control to turn on the screen, searched out the cartoon “The Adventures of the Bald Chicken”, and picked an episode at random to start playing .
After a burst of balloon special effects, the main character – a cute little chicken with sparse feathers, chirped towards the audience.
Chu Yan, who came in after the two stepped in, was taken aback when he saw this. He wondered out loud in pure shock, “Qiao, why did you suddenly look at this? This bald chicken is very stupid. I no longer watched this IQ-lowering show after I turned three years old!”
“But there are people who are almost thirty years old and still watch it.” Qiao Zhiya grumbled. He gambled on the chance that Chu Rong wouldn’t change the channel.
Chu Rong, who was going to walk away: “…” This damn child!
Qiao Zhiya’s huffiness continued until he finished the potion and went back to school. After arriving at school, he refused to give Chu Rong a parting hug.
“Come here.”
Chu Rong’s face darkened, and he closed the hover car’s door which had been opened by Qiao Zhiya. He wanted to speak to the youth, who was about to get out of the car completely.
In fact, Qiao Zhiya has lost his temper after lunch, but he has no experience of actually throwing a temper tantrum, so… he actually just didn’t know what to say to Chu Rong. Now that Chu Rong took the initiative to talk to him, he quickly stopped and turned to face him.
“Learn well at school. The end of the term is coming soon. You missed more than two months of class. Remember to make up for it.” Chu Rong didn’t know how to placate this Bald Chicken, so he just said nonsense. As usual, he pinched the youth’s pointy ears and put on his stern face. But he couldn’t hide his softness as it spilled over to his voice. “My condition is not stable enough for high-intensity treatment, and I might hurt you if I ever go berserk. Understand my worry?”
Qiao Zhiya looked at the White-Haired Monster’s gentle eyes. His temper subsided immediately, and the youth couldn’t help but to throw himself into his arms, and laid his hands on his chest. After rubbing his face for a while, he replied with a pouty voice, “Understood, I will make more potions for you… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t lose my temper.” “It’s okay to make a fuss once in a while.” Touching his hair, Chu Rong was finally satisfied. He patted the youth as a signal for him to go. “Okay, enough stalling. Go to school. Eat lunch well, don’t just drink nutritional supplements. I will know.”
Qiao Zhiya nodded, rubbed him again, and made up with him. He mumbled a couple of “I miss you”s before finally got out of the car.
This parting was extremely sticky and greasy. Chu Yan, who got out of the car first, couldn’t watch this anymore. His teeth were about to rot off by this amount of dog food!
This didn’t make sense! This was just a petty fight, why is the made-up scene this sickly sweet! He’s going crazy!!!
As the end of the term approaches, the atmosphere in the school slowly becomes tense. Everyone was preparing for the final assessment and wanted to go home with a bright result for the New Year. There were fewer people who paid attention to gossip, and even fewer people who bothered Qiao Zhiya.
Sang Bu began to take permanent residence in his laboratory to prepare for his test. His home was on another A-level planet far away from the Capital Star, so he needed to buy a starship ticket to go home.
Yun Xiachu had a lot of free time. Seeing that Qiao Zhiya was actively self-studying the following courses, he also followed up with his own self-study. He refused to be left behind in his studies. However, he wasn’t very worried.
Qiao Zhiya didn’t worry much about the final exam either. He did last year’s mock exam on Starnet and got full marks. He felt that this year’s exam should be fine. What worries him more now was the matter of skipping grades on the next term.
According to his current self-study progress, as long as he catches up with the material during the winter vacation and solidifies his theoretical knowledge again, then he should be able to apply for the grade-skipping exam when the school starts next year.
His goal was to skip directly to the fourth grade, and then work hard to complete the fourth and fifth grade courses in the second half of the year. He strived to graduate with Chu Yan and enter the Advanced College branch of the Federal Military Academy. But the problem now was that he was a bit uncertain about jumping to the fourth grade.
The first three years of the intermediate college were laying the foundation – so, it was mostly theoretical knowledge. There’s a lot of things to memorize and concepts to understand. This was something he could breeze with a couple weeks of focused study. But from the fourth grade onwards, the focus of the course began to shift towards practical application. Which needed spiritual power. The thing he currently lacked. Plus, those courses were something that needed to be done to be understood.
All in all, there was too much to learn and not enough time.
Despite all these roadblocks, he couldn’t stop. Even if he failed to skip directly into the fourth grade, at least he must reach the third grade.
Qiao Zhiya was studying harder than before, and even woke up an hour earlier every day to learn a little more before going out for morning training. At night, he speeds through his homeworks to save time for another round of studying. After dinner, he would go back to the dormitory to wash up and take online classes on the VR World. Then, he would say goodnight to Chu Rong at ten o’clock before going to bed.
After following this rhythm for three days, Qiao Zhiya finally couldn’t bear the AI teacher’s limitation. He began to look for a paid class. If he wants to speed up his learning progress, he must find a good teacher. He knew that more advanced courses were hard if he learned by himself. He needed guidance.
After turning his attention to paid classes, Qiao Zhiya found that he was still too poor. Good teachers were very expensive, and the money he got last time from selling his creations has been spent on buying materials, tools, and renting laboratories.
He desperately needed money.
After school on Thursday, he came to the trade area again and rented a larger laboratory than last time—he wanted to repair the energy blade along the way.
After entering the laboratory, he first took out the weapon material alloy he prepared in advance. He processed it into a long knife in record time, then tested it. After confirming that there was no problem with the data, he put away the long knife and took Chu Yan’s broken energy blade.
Mecha weapons were huge, and this energy blade was no exception. Qiao Zhiya put away his forging table that was too small for this energy blade. First, he took out the protective cover that Chu Rong gave him. He stretched the material to cover the energy blade from himself properly. Then, he took a deep breath, and started drawing a magic circle at the bottom of the protective cover.
—Large magic circles would definitely have a huge impact on the surrounding environment, even if it’s just a rudimentary magic circle. In order to prevent the magic circle from touching the laboratory’s self-defense mechanism and leaving traces, he came up with this method of isolating energy.
After drawing the formation, he spread the top-level fire magic stone at the center of the formation. He didn’t activate it for the time being, but first used magic power to probe into the energy blade to have a look.
Different from unprocessed ore, the internal structure of this energy blade was very beautiful and intricate. It’s obviously done by a master. None of its structure was superfluous – everything had a function.
Satisfied, he withdrew the magic power. He then pieced together the broken parts of the energy blade and put it in the center of the formation. He took out his hammer, and finally activated the formation at the bottom of the protective cover.
The hammer was too small, hitting the energy blade directly would have no effect. Qiao Zhiya tightened his palms, he decided to try to transfer the earth-type magic power to the small hammer until it completely enveloped the tool,  then concentrated his energy to start activating the small yet complex magic array inside the hammer.
Half a minute later, the magic circle inside the hammer was activated for the first time. With a loud bang, a surge of powerful earth-type magic power suddenly burst out from the hammer, and then burned blazingly around the hammer.
Qiao Zhiya’s eyes lit up, and his little face flushed with excitement—this was the first time he used the full potential of this birthday gift.
The section of the energy blade began to soften under the magic circle. The intense energy spilled over, reacting with the mineral and causing intense sparks. He collected his mind, with the proper angle and position, he began to hammer down the energy blade.
“Bang!”
“Boom!”
The moment his hammer made contact with the energy blade, an explosion of sound rang loudly inside his ears. Earth and fire magics collided, causing a burst of energy to be released over to Qiao Zhiya.
It blew up his bangs. His eyes closed in reflex.
‘So strong! The little hammer turned out to be so powerful! Fortunately, this laboratory is soundproof, otherwise that loud sound just now would definitely attract everyone outside the laboratory!’
He became more and more excited. As his blood boiled, he raised his hammer again.
Another strike, another burst of energy turned into heat2this is surprisingly faithful to science. Look up exothermic reactions if you want to know. and blew to his face. Gradually, this section of the broken blade merged and took shape again.
It took all the energy inside of the fire magic stone and three jades to replenish his own energy for the energy blade to be reconnected.
The dwarf’s exquisite craftsmanship was fully reflected at this moment. Without using magic power to probe into the internal structure, nobody could guess this blade was actually a repair-job.
Wiping off the sweat on his forehead, Qiao Zhiya touched the small hammer and put it away. He hummed as he turned the energy blade around, admiring his excellent work.
Now that the blade has been reconnected, he needed to do the most important part – repairing the internal function of this “energy” blade. He needed to make sure the energy circulation channel was proper, and the internal combustion wiring properly working.
However, at the moment he condensed his magic power at his fingertips, his communicator rang.
1excitement.2this is surprisingly faithful to science. Look up exothermic reactions if you want to know.