Chapter 693: Progress

In a way, Harloys’ teaching style was indeed incredibly effective. Not only were her soul books capable of directly injecting knowledge, even the practical combat experience could be gained as well. This was absolutely cheat-like in its power.

But on the other hand, this learning style was far too dangerous.

Every individual would have their own characteristics. Apart from obvious physical characteristics, more important would be one’s internal characteristics. The so-called internal characteristics could only be one’s memories and soul, while a personality would be the product of one’s memories and soul. But, since it was possible to transfer memories in this world, it would also be possible to transfer personalities… Besides, Harloys even gave me a concrete answer. She confirmed that she had indeed mass-produced identical clones of a low-level mage before.

Now then, there was a philosophical issue that I had to deal with. If a person’s memories were replaced by an outsider’s, would that person still be themselves, or would they become the outsider? While the physical body was still the original one, the personality and memories would be from someone else.

“I am myself. Is it because my physical body is me, because my soul is me, or even simply because my memories are me? Then, if my physical body is cloned and injected with my memories, is that also me…?”

Ahem, not only was such a question a word game and tongue twister, there would be no real answer, so we shouldn’t take this so seriously. It was just that with others’ memories being injected into one’s mind, with the contents of those soul books feeling like one’s own personal experiences, anyone who didn’t have a soul and will strong enough would easily lose themselves, finally losing their own identity and becoming subordinate to the injected memories and knowledge, becoming a host for the personality within the soul book instead.

Harloys didn’t say what the result of her mass-produced mage clone experiment was, but it was obvious that she would have been shooting herself in the foot. She had personally killed every single mage to create all the soul books here. If those souls trapped in the soul books were able to revive in new hosts, they would naturally first want to take revenge on their “murderer”. It would be quite a chilling thing to even imagine having a group of subordinate clone mages who absolutely hated your guts.

Even though Harloys had already stripped all daily life memories and anything unrelated to magical knowledge out of the soul books, the secrets and memories of the soul still remained hidden beyond the mist. After reading and learning the memories of just a few soul books, I already started becoming confused about my sense of self, and had to hurriedly tell Harloys to stop for the time being.

My soul would obviously be one of the strongest in the world already as it had crossed the River Styx multiple times already with multiple deaths. So, if even I was having such problems, an ordinary mage who tried reading one of Harloys’ soul books would likely be instantly brainwashed, and if that mage tried to read multiple soul books, it was likely that they would come down with multiple personality disorder as a result. But, when considering how Harloys had been able to casually read all these countless soul books in her library without any problems, I could only say that everyone had their personal strengths… Moreover, I could also faintly understand now just why Harloys had been so adept at controlling so many of her own clones. Maybe she had the worst case of multiple personality disorder in the entire world already!

“Even if she has endless personalities already, every personality is still Harloys. That’s an incredibly strong sense of self… Since she’s a natural slime now, how about planting a Harloys in spring, and harvesting a dozen of her in fall… Damn it, don’t bite me!”

At first, the silly cat had been quite delighted to hear my praise, but then I accidentally said too much, causing a row of teeth marks to appear on my face.

I also had another inference that seemed highly likely. Maybe the truth could actually be determined by reversing the cause and effect. Harloys had gotten accustomed to reading soul books and the confusion they could cause to one’s sense of self, which was why her sense of self was now so strong and clear. As for me, I had ridiculously high resistance to all mental magic due to going through the River Styx several times, but Harloys was probably already at the state of almost complete immunity to mental magic.

Even though I was unable to read through the soul books that swiftly as I needed to take time to recover and rest, my growth rate was still astonishing. During the day, I would hunt fire elemental creatures to obtain more ice magic mana, and at night, I would devour the knowledge of one or two archmages in their soul books. My skill in magic was improving at incredible speed. It was no exaggeration to say that one day for me equaled 10 years of progress for others.

The only slightly unfortunate part was that this type of magical knowledge gained from forceful injection wasn’t truly as easily used as knowledge you gained through hard work and studying. While understanding and using the gained knowledge wouldn’t be a problem, using this knowledge as a foundation to improve even further on top of that would still require time to better absorb the knowledge.

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The tremendous amount of new ice magic knowledge I gained also helped to restart my plan for creating my personal Myth-ranked sword of ice which had been at standstill for so long. Previously, I had made no progress on creating this sword, because my foundational knowledge had been obviously insufficient, but I was now gaining practical ice magic combat experience from the soul books, and I even had the chance to train in actual combat against the fire elemental creatures. I hadn’t felt this fulfilled for so many years already. The feeling of being able to sense one’s own growth on a daily basis was far too precious and rare for old artifacts like myself.

I could also faintly sense that once I broke past a certain boundary, my future path would be limitless.

Although I still kept my basic design for my sword of ice, it was absolutely necessary to greatly modify and improve it as my theoretical knowledge of ice improved. I also gained knowledge of a tremendous number of ice magic spells, which finally meant that I no longer had to be an ice mage who was limited to only fighting like an artillery piece, gathering mana and tossing it out for long distance attacks. I now had new tricks to play on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, the elemental war between fire and ice was becoming ever fiercer. The battlefield was just like a meat grinder. Every day, one would be able to witness endless fighting between ice element creatures and fire element creatures.

The Great Snow Mountain Magical Realm had also established an elemental connection point here, from which a humongous amount of the power of ice poured out. On one side was an ice mountain with avalanches of snow, while the other side was a volcano and lava. Both sides’ fighting became ever fiercer, but no high-level elemental creatures had appeared on the battlefield yet. It seemed that it still wasn’t time for “high-level communication”.

Of course, this was a good thing in a way as a hunter like myself who only stayed on the outskirts could obtain even more benefits. This also meant that I wouldn’t need to get involved in Elemental Lords’ fighting just yet, as that would be incredibly dangerous to the current me.

And so, the famous “Ice Armored Harvester” appeared on the outskirts of the battlefield.

As I stood there, icy wind blew all around the battlefield, directly killing large numbers of low-level fire elemental creatures before they could even get close to me…

Although this scene seemed rather familiar, there was still a foundational difference…

“Mommy, don’t worry, I won’t freeze my butt on the toilet anymore! I’m no kitty cat king, nor am I Guldan…”

Actually, only now did I finally learn how foolish I had been. Not only had I injured myself by sitting on my own ice throne for too long, even my previous “Coldest Ice” armor invention would always injure myself with frostbite as well. Actually, other ice mages would also use ice to protect themselves, but they would never suffer similar problems. Previously, I believed that other ice mages simply suffered in silence without telling others about it, but now I finally knew that it was all because I had played truant and slept too much in class, not learning critical information.

Underneath the ice armor, it would be necessary to maintain an appropriate amount of water in between the ice armor and skin. Not only would this create natural insulation, it would also make the ice armor even more flexible. It could be said that in order to be an outstanding ice mage, water magic knowledge was highly important. Yet, I never understood this until today.

And so, I no longer needed to cultivate my ice magic resistance anymore. Previously, I’d truly thought that all ice mages like myself would suffer together while cultivating their own ice magic resistance… A mysterious sense of sadness overtook me as tears fell down from my eyes, yet those tears instantly froze into ice crystals.

“…Even someone like you is capable of reaching Level 4 as an ice mage? Shouldn’t all other ice mages be crying instead?”

Okay, let’s get back on topic. At the very least, I was having lots of relaxing fun grinding low-level monsters here, but unfortunately, some others out there were unwilling to let me have my relaxation. New trouble had already come for me.