Chapter 338: Badass, V! You’ll Even Watch a Black Dream Chip You Found on the Side of the Road?

Meditation techniques were actually something that fell between spells and skills. They were an extremely crucial part of this world’s supernatural system.

They were considered spells, yet could be learned and changed relatively quickly.

But they could also be considered skills, since sometimes they affected one’s profession just like spells did. That was why they had been classified as a category of their own.

Their function was far more than simply calming the mind, as the name might suggest.

The true purpose of a meditation technique was to guide magic power through the body along a specific route while absorbing potions or drawing in the magic power dispersed through the air. This nourished the spell core, expanded the origin of one’s magic power, and increased Magic Adaptability.

In simple terms, it was used to advance one’s level.

It was said that the great families and top training institutions even had exclusive meditation techniques tailored to different advanced spells, magic equipment, mechs, and the like.

Those high-end techniques not only increased one’s power much faster, but also greatly improved the compatibility between spells and their users. Some could even keep running during battle.

But...

None of that had anything to do with Vivi.

Vivi didn’t even have a brain-computer interface, so she couldn’t use chips loaded with meditation techniques. All this time, she’d been like a blind person trying to figure out an elephant by touch, asking her teachers questions bit by bit and fumbling through her practice on her own.

With such primitive training efficiency, it had already been a struggle for Vivi to grind her magic power up to Level 3. If she hadn’t signed the contract, she might not even have reached Level 4 by graduation.

But.

With help from a brain-computer interface... she might be able to completely master a meditation technique, rapidly absorb potions, and increase her magic power!

This was all up to Teresa now!

…………

An hour later, Vivi returned to the apartment she shared with someone else.

It was completely dark outside.

There was no sound from next door. Maybe there weren’t any customers.

Vivi went back to her room, locked the door behind her, and switched on the light. Then she lay on the floor and reached halfway under the bed, fumbling around in a dusty corner for a long while.

“Found it.”

The white-haired girl crawled back out, covered in dust, with a small, rust-speckled metal box in her hand.

Inside the box was a jumble of chips in different colors.

Vivi reached in with two fingers and pinched out a chip bearing the school emblem.

“Here, this is the basic meditation technique the school gave out. They handed it out when I was in seventh grade. It cost me a full seven hundred credit points back then.”

Vivi stared at the chip, her voice turning gritted with anger. “Later, the school said it had to keep up with the times, so they rolled out several updates in a row. Who knows what those useless patches even changed! And the updates were mandatory. If you didn’t pay, they’d dock your credits and threaten to expel you! I didn’t even have a brain-computer interface, but I still had to grit my teeth and cough up the money. They swindled more than a thousand credit points out of me, all told!”

Just thinking about the hard-earned money the school had siphoned away under one pretext or another made Vivi grit her teeth.

However, when her gaze fell on the other chips in the box, a hint of a smug smile appeared on her face.

“But these are definitely good stuff.”

Vivi held out the remaining chips as if presenting a treasure. “I found them at the landfill when I was little.”

“When I found them, they’d been carefully packed in a pretty little box and hidden inside an old book with the pages cut out.”

“Clearly, someone had gone to great lengths to hide an unparalleled treasure, only for it to accidentally get thrown away with the trash!”

The white-haired girl’s eyes sparkled, and her tail swished back and forth behind her.

“Too bad I didn’t have a brain-computer interface, so all I could do was stare at them and keep them hidden until now.”

“Now I can finally find out what’s inside. Maybe it’s some peerless secret technique or something. That’s how it goes in stories, right?”

The pink-haired girl replied expressionlessly, “Your top priority right now should be deleting the Tomato short dramas from your glasses.”

“Oh, give me a break. If anything, you look more like someone who just popped out of a short drama than these chips do.”

Excitedly, she picked the most mysterious-looking one out of the black chips and wiped it on her clothes.

“Teresa, remember to share the video with me!”

Vivi reminded her eagerly. Then, with great solemnity, she inserted the chip into a small data-reading box and plugged the data cable into the port at the bottom of the alloy sphere.

Beep.

The instant the chip was read, Vivi’s vision went black.

When her sight returned, she found herself in a dim, cramped room.

“...”

“Her” body was sprawled out in a starfish pose on a round bed covered in red velvet.

A tight metallic restraint pressed around her wrists and ankles. Her heart pounded, and she felt strange, as if she’d taken some kind of drug. Her whole body was growing hot.

It felt kind of... naughty...

Before Vivi could figure out what kind of peerless secret-technique training scene this was, a rabbit-eared woman suddenly emerged from the shadows.

She wore a black blindfold, and her chest had been grotesquely modified into two enormous black, spiked sea urchins. With a strange smile on her face, she walked toward “her.” One hand swung a barbed whip that sliced through the air, while the other held a bouncing Yummy Stick.

“Good girl, which kind of special training would you like to try first today?”

“…………” *2

“Crack!”

The scene cut off with a sharp whip-crack, and Vivi’s vision returned to the shabby rental apartment.

She and the pink-haired girl were sitting side by side on the bed.

A deathly silence fell over the room.

After a full ten seconds, Lin Guang’s voice finally drifted over. “I turned it off. I don’t think this will help you become a magical girl.”

Badass, Vivi. You’ll even watch a black chip you found on the side of the road.

“I... How was I supposed to know it was that kind of thing?!”

Seeing the speechless look on Lin Guang’s beautiful profile, Vivi finally snapped out of it, her face bright red. Her tail went rigid as she sprang up, fumbling to pull the black chip out of the reader.

“Who would hide this kind of video in a hollowed-out book like it was a treasure?! What a pervert! A total freak!”

The white-haired girl was mortified and furious. “The first time I ever use a virtual-reality chip, and this is what you show me?! If you’re going to watch that kind of stuff, at least pick someone good-looking! She was so ugly! Seriously, I’m going to puke!”

As she hurled insults, she sneaked a glance at the pink-haired girl beside her. She seemed a little distracted, as if imagining something in her head.

Then Vivi’s face grew even redder.

Lin Guang: “...”

What was that supposed to mean?

After finally calming down, Vivi hurriedly shoved the black chips far away, as if they were some terrifying flood or beast.

“Ahem... Let’s get back to business.”