By the time Ye Bai found the Laen City Merchants Guild, night had already fallen in the game.
The Merchants Guild was closed and wouldn’t reopen until daytime.
Unlike the outer city, where all sorts of people mingled and extra quests might trigger at night, the inner districts of the main city usually enforced a curfew after dark. Anyone caught wandering the streets would be apprehended by patrolling golems.
Seeing this, Ye Bai decided not to waste in-game coins on lodging at a city inn. Instead, she prepared to log out and check whether her real-world psychic energy had improved.
Before logging off, she made sure to review her current stats.
After her class advancement, her health points and psychic energy had both increased. At level 40, compared to before her advancement, her health points had risen from 2,889 to 3,089—a boost of 200. Meanwhile, her psychic energy increased by 100, from 750 to 850.
From level 40 to 60 after the second advancement, each level-up would now double the health and psychic energy gains compared to levels 20 to 40. Health points would increase by 100 per level instead of 50, and psychic energy by 50 instead of 25.
Of course, aside from the skill points she had already used, Ye Bai also gained 1 talent point upon reaching level 40.
Unlike the first and second-tier talents, level 40 introduced third-tier talents. However, since these involved psychic energy, Ye Bai held off on allocating the point. She wanted to first observe the changes her advancement brought in the real world.
Opening her eyes on her soft bed, she saw darkness outside—the giant oceanic planet she lived on was also in the midst of night.
Ye Bai carefully assessed her real-world body.
There was an indescribable subtlety to it. She felt her perception of magical energy had sharpened.
Back when she first advanced at level 20, she could manipulate psychic energy to channel ambient forces into spells—that controllable sense of "being able to direct" energy was the hallmark of magical bloodline traits.
Now, compared to before, she could perceive those elusive flows of energy—part particle, part force—with even greater clarity.
As for her psychic energy level, her personal terminal could no longer measure it accurately. Beyond 50 nan, it could only indicate a value "above D-rank," with more precise measurements requiring specialized equipment.
This wasn’t a problem, though. Ye Bai spent 263 starcoins to order a private psychic energy detector capable of measuring up to B-rank.
Earlier, through trading in the Dandi Civilization’s Luo Yuan currency, she had made a shrewd investment. Before the market caught on, she exchanged 10,000 starcoins for over 5 million Luo Yuan, later selling it for 40,000 starcoins—a short-term investment that tripled her money.
Combined with her other funds, she now had over 54,000 starcoins in stable investments, generating enough daily returns to cover her living expenses.
Financially, Ye Bai was quite comfortable now, so buying a detector was no burden.
Within minutes, the device arrived.
Unpacking it revealed a spherical object the size of a head. After reading the instructions, Ye Bai curiously used [Insight] to examine it and discovered the same rare material, "Shadow Magnet," that was used in psychic dampeners.
This substance truly was extraordinary when it came to psychic energy. She wondered how such a remarkable material had come into existence.
With a mix of anticipation and nervousness, Ye Bai placed her hand on the detector and unleashed pure psychic force.
After feeling like she had fully exerted her energy five times in a row, the sphere’s red light turned green.
[Beep! Psychic energy measurement complete.]
The results were sent directly to her personal terminal.
[Current psychic energy level (5-attempt average): 316 nan. Rating: C-rank, mid-tier (300–400).]
She had indeed reached C-rank!
And not just the lower threshold—she was solidly mid-tier.
Ye Bai clenched her fist in excitement. Aurora, an adult of the Illusory Sea species, was at this same level. Not just among their kind—most mid-to-high-tier civilizations in the Stellar Alliance saw their newborns start at D-rank, with average adults reaching C-rank.
Progressing further to B-rank would mark her as an elite, while A-rank powerhouses were typically the pillars of their civilizations—like the Illusory Sea leader Aurora had once mentioned, an A-rank who was also their civilization’s head.
If D-rank was the bare minimum for stepping into the cosmos, then C-rank was the standard for an ordinary cosmic warrior. While she couldn’t yet defy gravity like B-rank psychics or survive unaided in the vacuum of space, she could now endure most natural radiation and harsh environments that would be lethal to carbon-based lifeforms.
Having confirmed her earlier suspicions, Ye Bai turned her attention to the fluid sandbag in her room.
While the changes in her psychic energy after the second advancement could be tested, her new skills were trickier to evaluate.
As a hidden first-tier class, the Spellbreaker was stronger than most, excelling against groups of magic users—but its class stats were far from invincible.
Its unique mechanics meant it lacked the core second-tier skills other classes had, and it required taking hits before dishing out damage.
There were no cooldowns on skills because her health pool and the enemy’s attack frequency were the cooldowns.
Just as she had weathered the counterattacks from the alchemical golem during her advancement trial, as long as the damage was high enough, she could eventually grind her foes down.
The core skill [Disruptive Return] might seem overpowering at first glance—especially to those unfamiliar with the class—but in reality, a purely physical lineup could leave her helpless.
A first-tier Spellbreaker started with only one spell-reflection slot, allowing her to choose one school of magic to mitigate and counter. Additional slots could be unlocked via skill points, maxing out at four.
This meant she could store four instant-cast spells at once—effectively starting battles with four scrolls’ worth of magic. However, the reflected damage couldn’t exceed her max health, and each cast consumed extra mana.
In practice, if she held onto a stored spell without releasing it, she couldn’t "save" another one when attacked again. So beyond the initial volley, her attack frequency depended on the enemy’s, and their damage output dictated her own.
Compared to a first-tier Spellbreaker who directly gains eight rebound slots for the already mastered eight schools of magic—equivalent to acquiring eight reusable magic scrolls (mana-consuming version)—Ye Bai faces a different challenge: finding powerful enemies across multiple schools and storing potent spells while grappling with insufficient mana reserves.
Moreover, in actual combat, not every enemy encountered will be proficient in all schools of magic, capable of filling all eight slots at once. At most, only one skill from a single school can be stored per battle.
Weak skills aren’t worth storing, while overly powerful ones might not be storable at all. This class truly shines only because Ye Bai possesses far superior resistance and health compared to her peers, coupled with the backing of the divine realm—a high-level map teeming with formidable monsters. But the cost…
"Whoosh!"
Ye Bai cast an Ice Spike at the fluid sandbag. Even though her mental strength had now reached C-rank, her full-power attack didn’t deal significantly more damage than before.
After the Spellbreaker class overwrote her Whisperer class, Ye Bai could only use the basic spells she had already mastered across all schools. She could no longer advance to learn the more complex and powerful second-tier spells like Frost Nova, Flame Dragon, Skyfall, Earthsplit, or Mind Plague—abilities typically unlocked by second-tier mages.
Though first-tier spells could still hold their own with her C-rank mental strength and high-level in-game stats, they were undeniably less versatile and potent than true second-tier magic.
Still, if she could fulfill her promise to the paper figure, Ye Bai would equip the Tome of Death at level 60, and all her elemental magic would be overwritten by necromancy. The end result wouldn’t be too different.
‘What a shame… I can’t test how the Disintegrate Rebound skill would function in reality.’
Based on prior experience, she speculated that if she encountered attacks in the real world resembling the magic she had mastered, she might be able to store and then "reflect" them like a mirror.
As this thought crossed her mind, the mercury-like fluid sandbag before her began folding according to her will, shrinking into a compact mass.
Suddenly, the folding halted.
Ye Bai froze, her breath growing uncontrollably ragged.
In that fleeting moment, a realization struck her—one she had never considered before.
The Spellbreaker’s core mechanic was "storing a skill." Given that the abilities she mastered in the game could be replicated in reality using mental energy, what if she stored a skill in the game… and then unleashed it in the real world?
Could she leverage the Spellbreaker’s unique traits to bridge the gap between the realms and reality—creating a true, two-way connection?
