"There you are. You have all passed," Shim said without looking up from the book he was reading. He raised his gaze after a few moments, as if finishing a paragraph, and looked at Victoria.

"Bonus points to Miss Victoria for organizing the hunt of a third-stage monster. Very well done. I was worried I would need to step in, but you seemed to have it under control."

"Under control?! We almost died!" Maura burst out.

Shim raised an eyebrow and looked at her with contempt.

"Awfully noisy for someone who's still alive."

"Sir, what do you mean when you give Victoria the credit for hunting that snake?" Nia asked with a frown. Certainly, someone had taken charge and given orders. That wasn't Victoria.

"Don't worry, the rest of you also contributed, so you also deserve some bonus points."

"Wha—" Victoria put a hand on her shoulder before she could continue protesting. Nia glanced at her and then at Alec, who shook his head.

Shim wasn't going to admit it, regardless of what they said. The only thing they would get by arguing was poorer grades, a scolding, and a slap.

Alec hadn't done it for the credit anyway. He had done it to survive. And secondarily, it was a good experience. The fight highlighted his shortcomings and what he needed to work on.

If it hadn't been for this incident, he would have never thought that he would need to create a spell to regenerate lost limbs. Now he knows.

Then there was the revelation that fighting as an artillery mage wasn't useful against a monster that can plow through a house with ease. He needed to work on his mobility and learn how to fight like a combat mage.

"I'll go rest in the carriage," Alec said to Maura, who was still supporting him. She nodded, but Shim interjected before she could respond.

"Don't think a wound like that excuses you from cleanup duty."

Alec turned his head and looked into Shim Lester's sour eyes.

'Being a bitter old man must suck ass.'

"Of course, Sir." He didn't have the energy to argue. He just wanted to lie down and rest.

Shim shot Alec's back a dirty look but didn't hold him back.

The rest of the day passed in a blur for Alec. His mind was in disarray and only started clearing up the next morning when they were on the road again.

From what he could tell, the others all passed without incident. Alec wasn't surprised.

The only thing that surprised him was the spell formation Madelynn delivered on Victoria's behalf right before he was left at the burn-damaged ranch.

It was a spell called Reinforced Recovery. Unfortunately, it couldn't regrow his hand or anything. It was a relatively easy spell that simply increased his body's natural recovery abilities. It boosted the body's natural functions.

While it wouldn't regrow his hand, it would help close the wound on the stump and ease his situation.

Unfortunately, it would also make him hungrier.

Alec was already hungry from his body doing its best after losing a hand, so he held off on using it until he could secure some food.

'It's a shame I couldn't eat that snake.' Alec wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. A third-stage monster would have done wonders for his [Gluttony]. His body and mana would have grown much more than they did when he ate a simple first-stage monster.

But it wasn't over yet.

After hearing the details about the ranch, Alec still had hope.

The ranch was an illegal monster-rearing facility. The owners gathered and kept monsters to use in illegal monster fighting or for personal uses, whatever those may be.

The snake that didn't belong anywhere near the Vongrad Kingdom had been illegally imported to the monster ranch. It had then escaped in a completely unexpected accident and somehow found its way to the Bjerion ruin.

'Did it sneak in when someone else visited?'

The only question was how such a big snake could enter the ruin.

'Or maybe there is another entrance somewhere?' Alec hadn't exactly had time to investigate the ruin completely.

Alec sighed and scratched the edge of his wound while looking at the ranch.

His job was to raze it to the ground and make sure it couldn't be used again. It wasn't exactly difficult for a mage.

However, Alec was in no rush. This was a perfect opportunity to figure some things out in private.

But first, he had to hunt down and eat a monster. It wasn't difficult, even when he was down one hand.

The lack of one hand disrupted the flow of his mana slightly, so he missed the first Pebbleshot, but he quickly adjusted. After that, he just roasted and ate it in pieces until he was full.

After eating, he started razing the ranch and all its buildings to the ground, turning them into smithereens with repeated uses of Burst.

When he ran out of mana, he sat down and continued eating while thinking about three things. The Poem of Neverlasting Wisdom, a mobility spell, and his ability to stop time.

Stopping time drained his skill energy like he had sliced the bottom of a bucket of water. But it was too useful. It had already saved his life twice, after all.

So, he kept using it whenever he could to get a feel for how it worked and its limits. He soon confirmed that he could only stop time when he was actively reading. He already had experience with multitasking from when he created his Heartguard and magic circle, but this was on another level.

The slightest loss of concentration made time flow again. It was a miracle he had managed to keep it up when he was poisoned.

However, that was only a problem when he needed to use it while not reading. When he was reading, there was nothing stopping him from stopping time for as long as he could.

In this weak-to-strong world where countless powerful mages and warriors had decades of experience on him, gaining more time than everyone else was the best thing Alec could have gotten. It was what would bridge the gap between him and the old and powerful.

He couldn't condense his mana while stopping time, but he could modify and create spells, he could plan how to use them, and he could read about how to become stronger when time flowed again.

Condensing mana and magic circles were fundamentally based on understanding Aether and magic, after all. Alec didn't need time to move for that. He just needed it for the actual condensation.

Alec's mood improved drastically.

In a way, he had sacrificed his hand for the ability to stop time. Given the circumstances, he would make that trade a hundred out of a hundred times.

After all, he had already made significant progress in less than a day in external time.

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