[Michael: What is the most cost-efficient external means to improve your subjects' refinement degree and Tier?]

Michael knew a few external means to accelerate a subject's growth and boost his refinement degree, but most were too expensive for someone like Michael to afford.

The external means were consumables, which were priced much higher than the money Michael had in his bank account most of the time.

That was also why he had sent a short message to Alice before he closed the messenger.

Alice might not be able to help him, but he could at least try asking her for guidance.

Once the message was sent out, Michael closed the messenger. He arrived in the small room that was set up especially for Harry Baren to conduct his research on Soul Power and Soultraits.

Other than the Limit Breaker course, Michael had three more lessons to attend. He had applied for the History of the Origin Expanse, Memory Lane, and Soul Power theory.

He had attended a Memory Lane lesson before and was impressed and intrigued by the subject. Memory Lane taught a technique that applied origin energy in a specific and a very complex way to accelerate the brain's memorization process. It was a very tricky technique that had been separated into ten different stages.

Mastering the first stage increased the brain capacity by 30%, allowing the practitioner to memorize content much easier, and imprint it deep into the mind to ensure that it wouldn't get forgotten.

The technique was quite difficult to master, and Michael could only marvel at the few people, who were able to practice Memory Lane to a high stage. Their comprehension ability, willpower, and endurance to keep practicing the technique for years had to be excellent.

Michael could feel that he had gained a basic mastery of Memory Lane after working on it for a few times, but that was already it. He would have to spend months to improve his understanding of the subject and slowly attain perfect mastery.

Courses like Memory Lane were exceedingly popular. To apply for the Memory Lane course in the Saphirelake Military Academy, one would have to spend a small fortune of Saphire Points. That was not necessary on the way to the Academy since everything was free of charge during that period.

It was one of the open secrets that certain courses required special conditions, and a fee if one wanted to sign up for them in the Saphirelake Military Academy, and that they were free of charge while you were traveling to the Academy.

That was also why certain courses were flooded with students while others were avoided. This included the Limit Breaker course, History of the Origin Expanse, and Soul Power theory.

However, Michael didn't pay much attention to these things. He signed up for the lessons he wanted to spend the little spare time he got.

Michael tried to use Memory Lane to remember the teachings of the history professor. It worked to a certain extent, but Michael quickly noticed that he couldn't recall everything the history professor taught him. Thus, he rather focused on the teachings instead of memorizing everything word for word.

There was a significant difference between memorizing something and understanding it. Michael wanted to understand the History of the Origin Expanse and connected the events of the past with each other to gain a better understanding of the Origin Expanse, how devastating simple actions can be in the grand scheme of things, and the reasons certain races came to an end.

History lessons seemed boring, but they were quite intriguing once a point of interest was found. Michael's point of interest was the Temple of the Forgotten and the backstory of his family.

Unfortunately, not many were interested in the history lessons taught in the Dekalos-Class spaceship.

It was similar to the case of Soul Power theory.

Michael was the only freshman who signed up for the lesson. However, Harry Baren didn't seem to mind that. On the contrary, he was quite happy that Michael was intrigued in the subject he taught.

The young researcher was overjoyed to see that Michael shared an interest with him. However, that was not the only happy occasion for Harry. No, Michael seemed to have been invested in the research of Soul Power even before they met. Michael made a few suggestions about Harry Baren's theory, which the researcher first denied before he took a second glance at it.

Michael didn't know much about Soul Power, but he often spent his time theorizing about Extraction, the SoulStar Fragments, Soultraits, and ways to maximize his power.

While he was busy spending his time with the four courses he applied for, and searching for ways to strengthen his subjects, two weeks passed in the blink of an eye.

Only 11 days were left before they would arrive in Kelta, where the real competition would begin.

By now, most students had formed groups, and the competitive spirit between the groups began to surface. A handful of fights had already broken out until now, and the tension would only increase in the next 11 days.

Michael didn't join any group, but he didn't make any enemies either. That was probably because he was around Kaleb Zenovia and the Barbaric Couple whenever he visited the cafeteria. The four didn't become friends after they trained next to each other for hours every single day, but they spent enough time together to get to know each other much better than before.

Frederik and Jacqueline were oddly silent since Michael had humiliatingly defeated them in the spar. But that was actually for the better. The couple focused on their training rather than wreaking havoc in the cafeteria, or throwing a tantrum whenever something didn't go their way.

Frederik's comments and provoking messages stopped as well. That one fight against Michael had been enough to open his eyes and beat some sense into him.

Michael made it a point to visit his territory every day. He spent more than half a day in the territory to help the injured and give out more orders. Furthermore, Michael introduced the body refinement technique [Sacred Rectification], and the neutral energy absorption technique called [Pandemonium's Requiem].

When Michael was given the technique a week after he signed the deal with the Bartholomew Corporation, he was stupefied. It was different from what he'd expected. Pandemonium's Requiem didn't really sound like an energy absorption technique to him. Fortunately, it was a high-grade neutral energy absorption technique of the highest quality.

He introduced the two techniques, followed up by some tactics which Alice had introduced to him. Alice Zenovia was very busy, but she found enough spare time to send some files to him a few days ago.

Michael was very thankful for her great support.

After he had received all the techniques and tactics from her and safely stored them, Michael got back to work. Most of his combatants had recuperated from their injuries within seven days. Michael gave them three more days to rest and make sure to get back to their peak state before they began hunting again.

The trauma caused by the Blood-eyed Minotaur was still apparent in the minds of some combatants, but they had overcome their fear by facing it head-on. Michael was lucky enough to summon a few 1-Star Summons with knowledge related to overcoming traumatic events.

That was something Michael desperately needed because his knowledge about psychology and how to tend to traumatized Soldiers was really bad. It was one of the mandatory courses in the Elite Class when he was in high school, but he never excelled at the subject.

Thus, four days ago more than 230 Soldiers of the territory's Military went into action. They began to hunt once again!

Within four days more than 1000 Low Tier-1 Monsters had been hunted, near-perfectly dissected, and transported to Xiltra, where they had been sold. Michael also sold the blueprints and Artifacts dropped by the Monsters, leaving himself with only a vast fortune of Zentik to purchase rare blueprints and 754 Ordinary Summoning Scrolls.

Michael purchased enough blueprints in Xiltra to fulfill his side of the deal with the Bartholomew Corporation. He earned a fortune from selling the blueprints to the shop manager, who had introduced herself as Selina Magna, at last.

The fortune was used up to initiate one of the tactics introduced by Alice; grow your own herbs and concoct energy-rich pills.

It may sound stupid but purchasing a ton of herbs and plants to grow, and a few recipes containing Low-grade energy pills seemed to be the most cost-efficient way to utilize cheap external means to accelerate the growth of his subjects.

The initial investment was extremely expensive, but the funds required for a long-term production of energy pills were rather low.

Thanks to Alice's tactic he was poor again. However, at the same time, his territory was stronger than ever.

Not a mere handful but a total of 30 Summons broke through the barrier and ascended to the 1st Tier in the last two weeks!!

The territory's foundation was growing firmer, slowly and steadily!