usenovelonline Chapter 239: Glued Together
Chapter 239: Glued Together
The following morning, the academy returned to normalcy.
Lecture halls reopened, morning practice resumed, and the intense atmosphere from the exam period seemed to slowly settle. However, beneath the calm hid a quiet movement sweeping through the academy.
Despite the exam having ended, practice halls were filled to the brim. Last night, the exam results were released and along with them, a comprehensive analysis of everyone’s individual performance.
It pointed out their weaknesses, strengths, habits, and even provided recommended training focus. With such an invaluable resource, no one wanted to let it go to waste, especially after being so thoroughly defeated by the Demon King.
Thanks to that, everyone now knew exactly where they stood and how much further they still had to climb.
First-years who were barely keeping up with Lake’s evening training started practicing before the sun even rose; second-years who had grown complacent began to desperately swing their weapons. Even the third-years weren’t free from the trend, with many of them forgoing their usual outings in favor of returning to the training grounds, revisiting fundamental techniques that they had long thought perfected.
With all that happening, an undercurrent of power was silently flowing through the academy, and with it, big changes were coming.
****
Inside a first-year lecture hall, the atmosphere was unusually quiet.
Everyone’s eyes were constantly flickering to a certain corner in the back of the classroom.
No one dared to speak out and instead resorted to messaging in their private group chats.
[Ashley: Something definitely changed after the exam.]
[Melody: I know, right? They’re totally giving off a different vibe from before.]
[Raiden: They look so good together!]
"...."
Lake frowned, sensing something was afoot but couldn’t quite pick up on it with his senses. He wanted to use Observer of Fate to figure out what it was but refrained, his sixth sense telling him it wasn’t worth it.
"Something wrong?"
"...No."
"Mhm." Sylph nodded, resting her head back on her arms which were folded on the table.
Her bright green eyes staying on Lake’s face the entire time.
Lake lazily rested his chin on one hand while they waited for the lecturer to arrive.
The two of them maintained this position all the way until Professor Cedric walked through the door.
"Alright, settle down—?"
He was about to speak but paused, also noticing the quiet atmosphere surrounding the class, but swiftly ignored it, beginning his lecture right away.
"Alright, turn to page 135 of your textbook. Today we’ll be going over the history of mana utilization and its development..."
****
The bell rang, signaling the end of class.
It had stretched on for what felt like an eternity as the students groggily got up from their seats, making their way to their next lectures.
Lake similarly got up. Although he didn’t need to attend lectures given his current status, he currently didn’t have anything better to do.
Since he didn’t have any pressing tasks or events to prepare for like before, he decided to attend a few classes for the free points. It also gave him time to investigate a few matters through the Web of Fate.
As Lake got up to leave, Sylph also rose, silently following behind him.
The two of them walked through the hallway until Lake arrived at his next lecture room. Before he entered, he turned around and glanced at Sylph.
"You’re not planning on following me inside, are you?"
"Hm, should I not?"
"Are you taking this course?"
"No. Does that mean I can’t enter?"
"...Just do whatever you want."
Lake decided not to test his luck and walked in.
For the rest of the day, Sylph followed him from class to class, sitting next to him wherever he ended up.
In the cafeteria, Lake sat down with an impassive look on his face, Sylph sitting beside him. At that point, everyone in the cafeteria was staring their way, and Lake could hear the sounds of photos being taken.
It was then that Lake decided to avoid the school forums for the next few days for the sake of his sanity.
Looking at the tray of food before him, he felt as if he had lost his appetite.
While he was contemplating whether to eat or not, someone came and sat opposite him.
Looking up, Lake’s eyes reflected silver as he smiled and greeted her.
"Afternoon, Senior."
"Nice to see you too, Junior."
Gwen sat with a smile, her eyes momentarily glancing toward Sylph before returning to him.
"So, taking a break from your usual activities?"
Lake asked meaningfully.
"Not really. Just not as desperate as before."
Gwen lowered her head, a relieved smile on her face.
"I guess everyone else is busy enjoying their free time as well."
Lake chuckled as Gwen nodded.
"Well, what about you, Junior? I thought the great Demon King would be a busier man."
"Unfortunately, that seems to be the case."
Lake shrugged without noticing the subtle glint flashing through Gwen’s eyes as he finished speaking.
"...Then, if that’s the case, how about helping me out?"
****
The lights were off inside the dorm room, nothing but the pale blue glow of Bloom’s interface cutting through the dark.
{Greetings, Mr. Egoven.}
"Status report."
{Beep. The requested data has already been compiled into the following report.}
A secondary interface expanded beside the first, populating with a structured list of prospective income streams, most of which showed figures in the millions and tens of millions. Lake leaned forward, scanning through it with a subtle frown.
"...Why is it so little?"
Despite the incredibly high returns, the projected figures were lower than he’d anticipated—noticeably so.
{The selected projects were chosen based on currently available market options with the highest guarantee of returns and the lowest associated risk.}
"Guaranteed or not, at this rate it would take more than three years to clear the required budget." He scrolled to the bottom of the list. "Aren’t there any faster options?"
{Analyzing current global market trends... sorting by highest prospective return rate...}
{Beep. In response to your query—based on current market conditions, the fastest method of accumulating the required funds outside of the provided guaranteed options is rift material extraction and liquidation.}
There was a pause in Bloom’s reply before it flashed a warning.
{Warning. Rift extraction is not recommended as a primary funding strategy given its inherently volatile nature.}
Listening to Bloom’s response, Lake exhaled slowly as he leaned back into the chair. After closing the secondary interface, his gaze settled back on the primary screen where it had been sitting since yesterday—unchanged and deeply unwelcome every time he looked at it.
{ Estimated Total Required Budget: $23,000,000,000 } { Current Progress: 0.03% }
He stared at it for a long moment.
The number itself wasn’t the problem. He understood why it was that high—the overwhelming majority of it wasn’t even operational costs or investment capital needed to fund his organization.
It was hardware. Bloom’s hardware specifically.
The infrastructure required to take an AI of Bloom’s capability from a system attached to a network and give it the physical tools to match what it could actually do. Surveillance arrays, biological analysis and modification equipment, control towers, dedicated processing units, energy and power facilities—none of it came cheap, and none of it could be substituted or cut without compromising the entire point.
He’d known it would be expensive going in, but even then, he hadn’t anticipated twenty-three billion.
The figure had completely blindsided him yesterday—though in fairness, so had everything else about Bloom’s completed report.
Originally, when he’d instructed Bloom to perform a full scan of the available data after installation, he’d been referring to the facility’s internal database and the Blackheart Guild’s intelligence system. A reasonable scope. Enough to get Bloom oriented and functional.
The three-day completion estimate had even mildly disappointed him at the time. For an AI of Bloom’s caliber, he’d expected faster.
Now, he understood why it had taken so "long."
Simply put, Bloom had not interpreted his instructions as he intended. While Lake had been thinking in terms of the facility and the guild network, Bloom had simply identified the nearest available network access point—and from there, without pause or apparent difficulty, had extended outward until it reached the natural boundary of its search.
The entire continent’s network.
Every public database, every registered guild’s intelligence archive, every accessible government system, every commercial infrastructure with a digital footprint—analyzed, indexed, and compiled into a single database for its own use over the course of seventy-two hours.
Lake had sat with that information for a full minute before coming to.
In his experience of accumulating knowledge and power through the System and the Web of Fate, he had developed a reasonable sense of what qualified as genuinely impressive, and Bloom had cleared that threshold without apparent effort.
What made it even more striking wasn’t the scale of the breach itself, but the fact that Bloom hadn’t flagged it as unusual. There had been no notification, no request for confirmation, no moment where the AI had paused to ask whether this was within the intended scope.
It had simply done it.
Because from Bloom’s perspective, the instruction had been clear, and the continent’s network had been available.
Lake felt like smiling every time he thought of it, but that feeling quickly faded once his eyes landed on the unchanging interface with an eight-figure budget and a progress bar that barely registered.
He looked at the 0.03% again.
"...Twenty-three billion."
The words sat in the quiet room without going anywhere useful.
Previously, whenever he had money-related issues, he would seek out Kate, but after she had spent nearly a hundred million last time to set up the facility, he dared not ask for monetary support again in the short term.
Even the current 0.03% was leftover funds from her initial investment...
Anyone could tell asking for more would end in disaster.
Still, the guaranteed investment streams provided by Bloom were a valid option, the only issue being the time it would take to accumulate—three years.
Although it seemed like an incredible time frame considering the sheer size of the budget, it still wasn’t fast enough for Lake. He simply had too much going on right now for him to be able to wait that long.
He needed to quickly create a force he could utilize to face the impending disaster the system had warned him about—and to do that, he needed to quickly generate a large amount of funds.
He pulled up the system’s map, which revealed the only path that seemed to move the number in a meaningful way—the only option with returns large enough to matter and quick enough.
Rift extraction.
The process of extracting valuable resources from rifts and also the largest income source for most minor-to-medium-sized guilds.
With humanity’s current capabilities, plundering rare resources from rifts was the natural development after securing their foothold in the world.
The various resources, treasures, and artifacts that could often be found in rifts could often cause even the lowest of beggars to rise to become kings overnight.
Although Lake had only ever been inside two rifts, he had already acquired Bloom from one of them, and there was no need to question its value. If Bloom’s existence were made known to the world, there would be chaos with everyone fighting to gain access to the code, and if he were to auction it at that point, the cost would likely exceed the current goal several times over.
However, there was only one problem. Not all rifts contain valuable resources, with the majority of them mostly containing monsters and landscapes ravaged by destruction. It is quite literally a gamble whether you stand to earn something from raiding a rift, as once entered, exiting requires the rift to collapse which could take days, if not weeks, depending on the size of the rift and hunter activity within.
If he ended up trapped within a rift without any valuable resources, he would not only have wasted his time but also lost the chance to make progress through other means.
Which was why Bloom had flagged it as volatile.
But volatile and impossible were different things entirely, and Lake had never particularly confused the two.
Glancing at the system map, his eyes scanned over the small description of the various "anomalies" dotting the map, particularly landing on one he had been eyeing for a while now.
[Anomaly Grade: B
Anomaly Description: A medium-sized pocket dimension teeming with life. Terrain: Ruined Cityscape. Estimated difficulty: Low-Rank Martial Master.
Clear Reward: A Low-Tier Role, +0.1 mana density.]
As his eyes scanned over the info, the corners of his lips rose into a subtle smirk as his thoughts drifted, almost without prompting, to his conversation with Gwen earlier this evening.
A hunting trip. Paired with the usual third years and an open schedule with no fixed destination yet.
When she initially proposed the idea, Lake was taken by surprise, but he was neither slow nor fast to agree, instead stating he’d let her know later.
Now, after going through Bloom’s report, his will had been solidified.
Third years counted as approved supervision for off-campus activity. The B-Grade rift he’d been eyeing for over a week now sat less than fifty kilometers east of the city, hidden away and undiscovered till now.