Chapter 330 Happy Family
Alex spent the next seven hours fighting against his clone, primarily adopting a defensive stance, focusing on utilizing his sword and elemental abilities to protect himself while actively studying his clone's tactics.
The clone's goal was to kill Alex, and he was very good at it, as even though there was no virtual difference in their stats or swordsmanship mastery, he was much better at using them and creating setups.
Alex was pretty much immortal for the forty-ten-minute sessions, but the pain was real, and after seeing that he couldn't kill him, the clone made sure to inflict as much damage as possible in every session.
However, seven hours of relentless suffering was worth it, as not only did Alex learn from his errors, but he also gleaned invaluable insights from observing and countering his clone's tactics.
Simultaneously, his mastery over elemental manipulations also improved, as in the start, he could only create harmless, simple attacks like spears and shields from darkness and nothing from the chaos element.
But at the end of seven hours, he could simultaneously create multiple attacks of the same kind from darkness and even cover his blade in chaotic chaos energy, which was wild and hard to control, but it was getting better.
Alex spent the next five hours studying early-stage third Rank spells and learned three of them while he also made improvements to his knowledge about how spells work and how two or more spells could be combined to create a new spell.
The spells were, in essence, commands that made the worldly law create certain elemental phenomena, and the magic circle responsible for these commands were just runes or law language, as few called it, described in a certain order that the law recognized.
A magic circle was just a canvas to write the runes in a specific order, and the higher the spell's rank, the more complex it would be, meaning more runes and circles.
All the complex spells with multiple circles had them layered one above another to simultaneously complete the rune writing on them by a chant or manually writing in the restricted time placed by the law to complete the spell, or it would crumble before even completion.
So, while combining two or more skills/spells or creating one from scratch, time was the second biggest issue right after the command for one because even a perfect command that couldn't be executed in time was worthless.
The process of combining skills or creating new ones, as Alex understood it, was broken down into several stages, namely comprehending the core principles, recognizing shared elements, analyzing distinctions, and creating synergy with trial and error.
There was nothing major new about the method besides a few tips that he was not privy to, but what Alex learned new was that instead of creating the new skill with the simple runes, he could use the method of stacking runes, making the new spell or skill much simpler.
The upside was that the new spell would be much stronger than the base version and could be executed in much less time, but the downside was that stacked runes were very hard to learn and very unstable, so the chances of failure were very high.
Alex spent the next two and a half an hour experiencing the memories of a young individual named Nochin, a man who was one of the previous domain guardians.
Alex watched Nochin learn the runes stacking from the basics, and if learning runes was like learning a new language with a thousand alphabet, then stacking was learning to make the runic sentence be described in just a few words.
The method of Rune Stacking was almost the same as combining skills, and the process was less complicated than combining skills, but that didn't mean it was an easy task by any means.
After experiencing the memories, Alex spent close to an hour sorting through what he had learned while asking questions to Lady Margaret to clear his doubts.
Alex spent the last two hours meditating and working on his mana and then said goodbye to his guardians for a day and logged out.
When Alex exited the VR capsule, it was reaching nighttime, so after taking a shower, he decided to spend some time on game forums while he waited for his father to arrive from work and for dinner to be ready.
Alex knew he didn't want to stay away from his family, at least not for months, so he came up with a simple plan to make sure his family nor anyone on the outside felt suspicious.
Alex was building a mansion in the rural area that, if anything, would cost him millions of dollars, not even including the training chamber built underground, so taking his family there to live was not an option.
Alex knew if he wanted to stay hidden, he needed to stay in the light, meaning make his new place and everything about it as public as possible so no outsider would come knocking on his door to get answers.
Alex planned to create a narrative that would not only help solve his issue but also help him in his future plans, from supporting his father's company to making his trusted organization members awaken individuals like him.
After his father came, Alex told them that they should go to a hotel for dinner, as he had some good news that he wanted to share with them and also celebrate with them.
The family was happy to hear the news, and within less than an hour, they found themselves comfortably seated in a private dining room of an upscale hotel.
"So the good news is that I have found a job, a very well-paying job," Alex said, a bright smile gracing his face, his eyes filled with enthusiasm as he prepared to share the details of his newfound opportunity.
"I have been playing solo since I joined the game, only temporarily joining teams to gain experience and some resources, and through one of those raids, someone recognized me as a talented player, and he recommended it to my boss,"
"I was contacted by a man named Sheikh a few days ago, who is also a real Saudi Sheikh, and he offered me 10K gold coins a month to work for him, and depending on my performance, the salary will only increase,"
"So, after some thinking and seeing the contract, I expected his offer," Alex said, and by now, his mother and father were all smiles while Sophie also had a smile even though she seemed to be lost in making the calculation.
"Son, this is great news, a moment for celebration," Alex's father said, a rare, bright smile appearing on his face.
"Brother, you are wealthy again," Sophie said, her words followed by joyous laughter that was soon joined by his mother and father.
Alex knew that 10K gold was not even a fraction of what he had, but it was more than enough to make his family happy and give them a comfortable life, and that was enough for him.
"Another thing I need to share is that I'll have to travel to a location about a 30-minute drive from our home every two days and dedicate almost a full day to supervise the construction of a mansion, as it is an order from my new boss," Alex said, after a few seconds silence.
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