Four Split Personalities

"Yeah."

To everyone’s surprise, Dabus actually answered with a straight face, then sighed slowly under their stunned gazes and said helplessly, "You might not believe this, but our current levels are... Hellfire Warlock Level 39 and Berserker Level 39."

Hearing that, NPCs like Jadka and Ya Ya could still barely keep it together, but Motan and Ji Xiaoge, as fellow Players, were completely blown away.

"Level 39?"

Motan jerked his head up and said in disbelief, "If we remember right, your Hellfire Warlock and Anthony’s Berserker are both high-level professions, yeah?!"

Ji Xiaoge, who also occasionally browsed the forums, couldn’t stay calm either. She shrieked, "The level cap for high-level professions is Level 40, right? Back when we just split up, weren’t you and Little Anthony not even Level 20?"

Jadka finally reacted as well, and the look he gave Anthony Dubs was full of disbelief. "High-Order Pinnacle?"

"Uh, I don’t think that counts yet. I saw a post from some big shot in a pro club saying that only when a high-level profession hits Level 40 can you call it ’pinnacle.’ Then you get an Epic Tier transfer quest, which is considered Half-step Epic, and only after you obtain an Epic Tier profession can you be truly ’Epic’ in the proper sense."

Dabus shrugged and shook his head. "I should still be far from that. The EXP from Level 39 to 40 is astronomical, and after hitting 39, I can’t get any more EXP from [Teaching Quests]."

Jadka turned his head to Motan and blinked, signaling him to translate.

"In short, what he’s saying is that he and Anthony are still a long way from the High-Order Pinnacle, and Epic is even more out of reach."

Motan gave a concise explanation, then suddenly froze, whipping his head around to look at Dabus. "Wait, what exactly do you mean by ’[Teaching Quests]’?"

"That’s the ’secret’ behind how I got to this level."

Dabus smiled, then said with a faint grin, "After I finished all the onboarding procedures at this Academy, I soon received a repeatable special daily quest. The content is ’Complete the teaching plan.’ Progress is measured in class hours, and for each class I finish I get a certain amount of EXP. At 100% completion, there’s an extra item reward. But because Anthony keeps causing trouble, I rarely get the full reward."

Thinking about Anthony Dubs’s current level, Motan’s lips twitched, and he dryly asked, "So what’s the usual amount of reward you get?"

"Uh, for ten class hours, I can probably manage to hit 100% completion twice. The reward is 20% of my current EXP cap. But because of my Symbiosis Talent with Anthony, once it’s averaged between us, it’s actually only 10% each. The extra rewards are usually things like Enchantment scrolls and high-Quality Alchemy Potions. I’ve saved up quite a lot. You guys can have them later; I’ve got no real use for that stuff anymore."

Dabus scratched his cheek and, under the gaze of Motan and Ji Xiaoge—two people who didn’t really care that much about Level but whose eyes were still getting sharper and sharper—lightly coughed and said awkwardly, "For the remaining eight class hours, maybe one will get seriously disrupted by Anthony, putting the quest completion below 50%. That only rewards 5% of my current EXP cap, so 2.5% each. Then about 70% of the time the completion is between 80% and 90%, for a 10% EXP reward and no extra item. Yeah, that’s about it."

"Ju~st li~ke tha~t?"

Ji Xiaoge narrowed her eyes slightly, drawling out the words.

"Averaging it out, Dabus, you’re getting about 5.75% of your current EXP cap per class hour. Which means..."

Motan finished a quick round of mental math in a flash, rubbed his temples lightly, and said a bit weakly, "Even if we shave off the decimals, you can still guarantee that every 18 classes you’ll level up once, right? And that’s one level each for you and Anthony."

"Old Jia, you can think of it as him getting one extra ab muscle for every two days he works out."

Ji Xiaoge explained for the utterly-confused-but-awed Jadka, then glanced at her own character panel and sighed deeply. "So this is what civil servant benefits look like..."

Dabus cleared his throat and said very seriously, "Well, actually, we teachers also talk about this when we’ve got nothing to do. These quest rewards do give a lot of EXP, but that’s all they give—just pure EXP. My Specialization Level hasn’t gone up at all during this period. Same for Anthony."

"And what exactly are you trying to say?"

Ji Xiaoge glared at Dabus irritably. Just thinking about how her Chef Level had barely budged since that big update at the start of the year made her blood pressure spike.

"Ahem, what I mean is that I haven’t actually gotten much stronger. Really."

Dabus blinked his big eyes with exaggerated sincerity, looking very honest and harmless.

Ji Xiaoge waved her little fist in a show of force, then bumped Motan lightly. "Say something to him! You’re just gonna let this hateful civil servant humblebrag like that?"

"There’s nothing to say. Dabus has the ability to do this, after all."

Motan took it pretty well. Then he slowly stood up, smiled brightly at Dabus, and asked, "So if your Skill Specialization isn’t going up, that means you haven’t been gaining much actual combat experience either, right?"

Dabus nodded like a bobblehead. "Yeah, yeah, Mor, you really get me, I swear. Honestly, this amount of EXP is no big deal, so Night Song, you really don’t need to..."

"How about this."

Motan cut him off in a light, cheerful tone and blinked. "You’re free this afternoon anyway. Just sitting here chatting is kinda boring. How about the two of us do a bit of practice and help you get your rhythm back?"

Dabus: "Huh?"

"Yeah. You just said it yourself—your Specialization Level isn’t going up or whatever."

Motan stroked the [Dawn· Ruthless Sword] at his waist and smiled like a harmless little lamb. "What a coincidence. I just got a new Weapon and also want to get a feel for it."

Dabus suddenly felt very unwell. It took him a while to react, then his Big Face went pale as he swallowed and said hoarsely to the guy in front of him who was supposedly capable of sparring with the top-ranking big shots on the leaderboard, "Mor, you can’t do this. I just got a bit more EXP over the last while and leveled up a few times. It’s not like I did anything heinous or..."

"I never said you did anything heinous. I just haven’t seen you in a while and wanted to spar, that’s all. How does that saying go again? Isn’t the way men express friendship with each other through their fists?"

Motan cut him off again with a cheerful smile and said leisurely, "Isaac Academy should have a practice field or something, right? Once Wang Badan gets here, we’ll all head over."

Dabus was instantly horrified. "You’re bringing Wang Badan too?!"

"Of course. I’m using a new Weapon; I’m really rusty, you know."

Motan nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world and chuckled. "Since we’re both rusty, and your Level is higher than mine, plus you’ve got Anthony as Support, it should be fine if I casually bring along a Wang Ba or something, right?"

[The hell do you mean ’casually bring along a Wang Ba’! A 1v1 with you and a fight against you plus Wang Badan are two completely different difficulty levels! What are you doing! What are you trying to do! I just leveled up a bit, do you really need to hold this much resentment over it!]

While Dabus was raging internally, under Motan’s oppressively gentle smile he managed to nod with difficulty. "N-no... no problem... probably."

"Whoa!"

Even Ji Xiaoge was startled by this rare, sharp-edged version of Motan. She let out a small cry. "No way! Mor, your resentment is even bigger than mine?"

"Is it?"

Motan tilted his head, smiling brightly as he asked back.

"Isn’t it?"

Ji Xiaoge blinked her eyes rapidly.

"Yeah."

Faced with such a blunt question, the ’honest’ Motan naturally wouldn’t lie. This guy, whose total Game Time for all his characters combined was only about a quarter of a normal person’s and who basically had no time to focus on grinding, nodded hard and cheerfully declared—

"It’s really damn huge!"

Chapter 1198: The End

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