Chapter 9 – Absolutely Brilliant Idea
The usually luckless native’s fortunes took a rare turn for the better, as a burst of deep purple light shot forth from the mysterious silk pouch, depositing a most incongruous object directly into her hands.
This object, brimming with metallic feel, featured a frame forged from an inky black material shaped into an incomplete ring, its canopy adorned with wings—one pitch black, the other pure silver—resembling the coronal plumes of a Valkyrie.
Perhaps the natives wouldn’t recognize what this thing was, but Tillysha couldn’t have been clearer about it.
Wasn’t this just a pair of headphones worn over the head?
Moreover, its cyberpunk aesthetic was striking, with the glossy metallic material gleaming excellently in the light, the earpieces featuring a wing style that ranged from black on one side to stark silver on the other. A deep black accentuated the contrast of these two opposing colors, and the exquisite design rendered the headphones as something akin to an artwork.
Each earpiece was also embedded with a piece of an enchanted gemstone, which flickered like LED lights.
Tillysha held up the headphone, examining it against the sunlight—the enchanted stones emanated a barely noticeable metallic sheen. This was a method for identifying enchanted gems taught in the beginner enchantment course at the academy: enchanted gemstones, due to their magic properties, would not shimmer as brilliantly in sunlight as regular ones did.
A preliminary judgment could be made that these gemstones were indeed enchanted products—genuine enchanted goods and not shoddily made fakes. But whether they were high-quality counterfeits or not remained uncertain.
The magic user trade was a messy affair, where passing off inferior magic stones as legitimate ones was commonplace. It wasn’t unheard of to have items enchanted with the wrong resistances—like cold resistance mislabelled as fire resistance, leading tragically to deaths—making the credibility of such enchantments suspect.
Magic users in Caleburn didn’t have the lofty reputation or flashy spells one might imagine. They couldn’t be accused of great magical ability since all their power depended on disposable scrolls and enchanted tools, so to call them particularly ethical or principled would be a stretch. The field was rife with all sorts—from the talented to the charlatan.
Tillysha cast the Divine Analysis Technique on the enchanted gemstones.
Item Name: Crown of Sun and Moon
Effect:
1. Increases Divine Resistance by 20%, reducing noise and enhancing hearing. Once per day, it can block one fatal strike from Divine Authority. After blocking, the device will fall off and enter a ‘powerless’ state.
2. Can disguise a specific part of the face.
Tillisha’s expression became peculiar. She suspected, more than once, that there were other transmigrants living in this world apart from herself. Now, she was more certain than ever. Could such a design appear just by chance?
Could it be that another transmigrant had come to this world before her and eventually ascended to greatness?
Glancing at her status bar, the digestion time of the Holy Oblivion skill had changed from 29 days and 4 hours earlier, to 29 days and 3 hours.
It would take nearly a month to fully extract the core energy of this weapon. With sufficient energy, her body would undergo a transformation into a Divine Maiden.
Divine Maidens are an exalted race who carry the bloodlines of the gods or the sages, wielding Divine Authority.
Their divine powers stem from their bl**d, innate and ever present. The closer their bloodline to the divine, the greater the Divine Authority they manifest. This was why Pure bl**d was such a big deal among the Divine Maiden families—these families placed tremendous importance on bloodlines, inevitably giving rise to the haughty Pure bl**d ideology and their extreme forms, the Dragon People of the Skies.
Amongst them, elves were considered the cream of the Dragon People. In this world, elf half-breeds were almost unheard of, thanks to their robust bloodline and Pure bl**d ideologies. If by chance there were any elf-halfbloods, elves certainly didn’t give them any regard.
Their attitude towards half-elves was at best, hostile—or more precisely, dismissive. They didn’t even consider half-elves “elves”.
For them, these “unclean” half-bloods didn’t deserve to exist in the world. Humans, perhaps, might approach half-elves because of their refined appearances, but even they didn’t fully trust them.
Half-elves thus faced rejection from elves and humans alike, becoming an isolated and marginalized group—neither here nor there.
In addition, elves would expel any of their kin who married other races from their registries, banning them from ever returning to the Elf Forest. They used this as a severe warning, showing their stance on the consequences of such inter-racial “defilements.”
While the elves might have their own reasoning for these actions, Tillysha simply couldn’t warm up to them. As someone from Blue Star, she had no fondness for these “pointy-eared” haughty and imperious creatures, as if in this world, they alone deserved to be called ‘people’, and all other races were mere cattle to them.
This was merely her personal opinion. At best, she was an outsider here, her worldviews clashing against those of the locals, and she certainly had no intentions of imposing her values onto them.
With her imminent eviction from the academy, she couldn’t even bring herself to care about such trivialities at this point. When she could barely put a meal on the table, who had the time to dwell on these philosophical musings?
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she left the academy, but she needed to return quickly or risk falling behind in her studies.
While Coleman Academy’s principal was an elf, she was commendably meritocratic—regardless of race, if you could demonstrate your capabilities, not only would your tuition be waived, you’d receive abundant resources, quality teaching conditions, and appropriate team allocations.
What set Coleman Academy apart from others was its team-based teaching methodology. The academy emphasized not just intellectual knowledge and practical skill, but interpersonal skills and life experiences, after all, it was but a microcosm of society.
Once admitted, new students would form their own teams, with a maximum of six members, and at least two—a Divine Son and a Divine Maiden—were mandatory. Other roles had no such constraints.
Since each team’s commander and captain could only be a Divine Son, the academy mandated that only Divine Sons could create teams. Thus, the recruitment of team members naturally fell to the Divine Sons—a nightmare for the socially awkward.
A typical team of college years would become your closest friends, battle buddies, and mutual support group—relationships that would likely endure after graduation. Most would even become lifelong friends and some even marriage partners.
Hence, your teammates in Coleman Academy were lifetime influences—one rose together, and one fell together. Associating with future greats or prestigious families would only enhance one’s own prospects, and every Divine Son would hope to recruit high-performing, high-potential teammates from influential families.
Elite Divine Maidens didn’t have to worry about recruitment. If they were exceptional, they could afford to be choosy and say ‘I’ll consider it’ as hordes of eligible Divine Sons clamored for their attention. Later, they could leisurely evaluate and choose the most suitable Divine Son.
In their pride, they believed they were doing the choosing, not being chosen.
Due to bl**d inheritance, Divine Sons could awaken their gifts by chance—whether in commoners or nobility, making their ranks diverse. The Divine Maidens, on the other hand, only came from prestigious families through lineage, with no exceptions.
This imbalance often made it difficult for commoner Divine Sons to manage the proud Divine Maidens in their teams, leading to a high degree of internal competition among Divine Sons. The pressure to outdo each other was immense, prompting them to offer all sorts of incentives to win over top-tier Divine Maidens.
Some of these incentives included cooking, cleaning, acting as personal servants, making the team revolve entirely around the chosen Divine Maiden.
Seeing these terms, Tillysha, both socially avoidant and uninterested in the competition, sighed. Not that she could match the intensity anyway, so why bother? She would just give up and let herself go.
But she couldn’t afford to do that—she needed a Divine Maiden on her team.
Glancing at the Divine Maiden countdown on her status bar, Tillysha thought of an absolutely brilliant idea.
