"Are you his twin brother?"
Faced with Frieren's question, Zenith finally couldn't hold it in anymore. He stood up abruptly. "It's been like this since earlier! Is it really that hard to accept that I suddenly became a genius?!"
Frieren had expressed strong distrust regarding whether Zenith was actually Zenith, leading to her continuous barrage of questions and the scene that just unfolded.
Pinching her chin, Frieren revealed a deeply thoughtful expression. "If I had to put it into words, it's like a baboon suddenly gaining human intelligence. It's truly unbelievable."
"A baboon???"
Zenith slumped back into his chair in defeat. He had just spent a single hour successfully mastering Rin Tohsaka's most famous starter skill, Gandr.
Compared to his previous learning progress, he had to admit that his past IQ in STEM subjects was indeed baboon-level.
"Fine, I used a magic item."
Zenith took out the Scroll of Ageless Wisdom he kept on him and explained, "By injecting your own experience into it, it proportionally feeds back corresponding wisdom to the wearer."
Experience? There was no such thing as leveling up with experience in this world. EXP in Minecraft was inherently used for enchanting; without the relevant mods, there was no quick way to get stronger by "adding stat points" either.
In Frieren's understanding, experience equated to life experience, which rounded up was basically the same thing as memories.
"An incomprehensible, wondrous magic item. Did you really have that much life experience?"
*I feel like she's subtly targeting me with her words,* Zenith thought, rubbing his face vigorously. "Not exactly. I've just been through three adventures."
Three adventures. To Frieren, that was probably the equivalent of taking out the trash three times. "Humans really do grow fast. Let's drop the subject. While your brain is still functional, let's continue studying."
Study time always passed quickly. After all, when the brain was active, the perception of time would be distorted. Before he knew it, six months had actually gone by.
A whole semester had passed. Sure enough, gaining power required paying a price.
Zenith lay on the roof of the magic shop, looking at the twinkling stars in the sky. He had finished learning all the magic and barriers recorded in *The Wizard's Handbook*. Frieren was a true genius, and by relying on items to cheat, he had managed to keep up with her pace.
It was only at this point that he noticed the strongest magic in the wizardry mod wasn't Explosion Magic. It actually secretly contained Ainz Ooal Gown's *Fallen Down*.
Super-Tier Magic—a power that surpassed conventional magic tiers, which could also be called a forbidden spell. Even if *Fallen Down* were thrown into the D&D system, it would be at least a 9th-level spell, maybe even bordering on Epic Magic.
Frieren also hopped onto the roof. In this era, humanity's magic system didn't yet have a "flight" category; the sky was still the domain of monsters and demons.
"Here, this is for you. I put Mending on it. Once you inject mana into it, you can fly, though it's not very fast."
The Flight Amulet from the Baubles mod was practically an old friend of Zenith's. Ever since he discovered he could apply Mending to it, the consumption of Nether Stars—one of its crafting materials—had plummeted.
Given the current ore production in the Overworld and the speed at which Withers were being slaughtered, the SPW Foundation elites working in the Overworld practically had one each.
Taking the brooch-like item, Frieren tried using it, and her body indeed floated freely into the air. "You can always pull out so many weird and wonderful magic items. You're a man with secrets!"
"Are you interested in delving deeper into those secrets?"
"No."
"Oh."
There were still many years before the Hero Himmel would set out to find his comrades and prepare to subjugate the Demon King. If he invited Frieren to defeat the Demon King ahead of time, was there any chance of success?
The probability seemed very low. After all, he didn't have Himmel's infectious charisma.
"There's no chance," Frieren said. "Besides, I haven't fought demons in a long time. And with just the two of us, even dealing with the Seven Sages of Destruction would be incredibly difficult."
Frieren was strong, but the strength of the demons' Seven Sages of Destruction could not be underestimated. They were seven executives of the Demon King's army; just one of them could force this not-yet-fully-grown elven mage into a bitter struggle.
A few hundred years ago, she had attempted to challenge Macht of the Golden Land, one of the Seven Sages of Destruction, but she obviously failed. One of her arms was completely turned to gold, and it took her over a hundred years to recover.
Zenith didn't press the invitation. These things depended on fate; forcing it was meaningless, and besides, that wasn't his personality anyway.
Frieren left—or rather, she left after fulfilling her prior agreement with Zenith. Even though Zenith still had many magic books on hand, it was to no avail. Learning knowledge was never something that could be achieved overnight; it had to be done step by step.
So they agreed that the next time they met, they would study the next book, tentatively decided as the *Lexica Botania*.
Frieren possessed a magic that could make a field of flowers bloom as long as she had analyzed them. Using this kind of magic in the Botania mod was practically cheating. Infinitely spawning functional flowers with mana? That was simply invincible.
Therefore, Zenith decided that after learning this magic, he would start researching and advancing the Botania mod. He was too lazy to progress honestly, but if he had a cheat, he guaranteed he'd be more hardworking than anyone else.
It was worth mentioning that, because of their magic studies, both Zenith and Frieren coincidentally forgot about the sweets and pudding mentioned at the very beginning.
Zenith felt fortunate about this, because as far as he remembered, Frieren's favorite, Mercury Pudding, hadn't even been invented yet in this era.
He'd worry about it next time. Who knew when they would meet again anyway. He had heard that Mercury Pudding was actually just a certain type of fruit pudding. Replicating it shouldn't be too hard... probably.
"Anyway, the semester is over. Not having to study again for a while is pure bliss."
Zenith shed tears of excitement. He was going to play hard and party hard to commemorate his lost six months of youth.
First, he needed to get himself a legal identity in this world. Adventurers naturally didn't care about such things, but who was Zenith? What was the difference between hiding your wealth and having no money at all?
He wanted to be the cream of the crop; he wanted to be a noble! Although the powerful adventurers in this world only showed respect to nobles out of fear of trouble, that only applied to the tiny fraction at the very top of the pyramid. To ordinary adventurers, nobles were still an unattainable existence.
His target was the royal capital. Nobles sounded very prestigious, but in reality, it was just what it was. Nobles only existed because of a social system, and a social system could never avoid the economy.
Nobles were also human, and secular ones at that. As humans, they had a desire for money, not to mention that humanity in this world faced the massive external threat of the demon race. There were colossal military expenditures, the costs of hiring adventurers, and pensions for fallen soldiers.
Money was always in short supply. What to do when there's no money? In a medieval world, expecting the royal family to enrich the treasury solely through taxation was nothing but wishful thinking.
So they could only rely on borrowing—borrowing from nobles, borrowing from wealthy merchants. And a title of nobility was the best IOU and proof of credit they could give to a wealthy merchant.
Thus, Zenith became the biggest creditor to the royal family of the Central Kingdom in this world, gleefully obtaining a non-hereditary Earl title.
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