Indeed.
Contrary to the difficulty she expressed during the meeting after being asked if it was possible to improve the Basic Ether Gathering Technique even further, Veradine had actually made a lot of progress in increasing the technique's efficacy during the past couple of weeks.
Of course, after making so many changes to the technique, she first thought about sharing this massive breakthrough with her colleagues. After all, writing an article about achieving a 160% boost to the Basic Ether Gathering Technique's efficacy would definitely set off great waves in the field of both Scholars and Sages.
Though, as she gave the idea a bit more thought, she eventually decided to withhold most of the changes, instead settling for an improvement that was still a sizable jump from before, but was at least in the realm of what she considered "believable".
Naturally, there were a number of reasons as to why she had done this.
