This feeling!
Zoe felt as though all of his mental blockages had suddenly been cleared.
Yet at the same time, his three split minds began to stir, threatening to slip out of his control.
This was exactly the skill he wanted, but the effect... was it perhaps a bit too potent?!
“Ohoh! Ohoh!”
Zoe's body freezing in midair gave the angry Two-Brained Face Demons the perfect opportunity.
Moving in unison, they aimed toward the sky and spat out massive torrents of muddy water.
Zoe forced his mental control to suppress his panicking minds.
Acid Rain Bullet!
Channeling the acid throughout his entire body, he unleashed a wide-area barrage of rain bullets from above.
Highly corrosive acid pelted down on the Two-Brained Face Demons like hail.
Confronted by the oncoming torrent of muddy water, Zoe condensed his body into a pitch-black cone.
A vast amount of corrosive gas erupted from the tail of the cone, launching his body forward like a cannonball. He pierced straight through the muddy torrent and crashed to the ground, skewering a Two-Brained Face Demon.
“Ohoh-hoh!”
Screeching, the Two-Brained Face Demons lunged forward, swinging their sharp claws.
Zoe's form shifted once more, liquefying into a viscous pool that spread outward.
Acid: Shadow Blade Heart-Piercing Needle Rain!
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
To the sound of tearing air, countless pitch-black shadow needles shot from Zoe's mouth, tracing a multitude of dark arcs through the sky.
As blood splattered into the air, Zoe did not pause for even a fraction of a second. He condensed a shadow shield to block incoming strikes while simultaneously summoning a clone with 200 mana.
At this moment, Zoe had less than 200 mana remaining, but the abundant reserves stored in his Shadow Pool were being digested at full power to replenish his consumed mana.
He and his clone each conjured a massive hammer and charged at the Two-Brained Face Demons.
As the pitch-black hammers swung, the air buzzed with immense force.
The resulting gusts of wind were strong enough to kick up splatters of mud from the swamp floor.
The actual combat strength of these Two-Brained Face Demons was inferior to even goblins.
Rarely did they possess special variants, and their level cap was only Lv. 15.
Now, suppressed by Zoe and his clone, they fell into utter disarray.
The muddy water they spat out was slow and weak; even if it connected, it dealt very little damage.
Furthermore, given Zoe's outstanding Agility stat and powerful kinetic vision, how could muddy water of this caliber possibly hit him?
[Experience pool full. Level raised to Lv. 16.]
[Agility +1, Free Stat Point +1, Max Mana +5.]
“Ohoh! Ohoh!”
Staring at the bodies scattered across the ground, the Two-Brained Face Demons lost all courage to fight and fled the area, screeching in panic.
Zoe wanted to give chase, but some of the Two-Brained Face Demons leapt onto the trees, moving rapidly through the branches.
Others dove straight into the swamp, fleeing in all directions like swift water monkeys.
Despite Zoe's incredible Agility, the enemy's environmental advantage meant he only managed to catch one more.
“The effects of Dual Brain are a bit too potent...”
With the battle over, the three minds in Zoe's head began to slip out of control once again.
Due to the effect of Parallel Mind, these thoughts were fundamentally all Zoe's own.
Yet, conflicting thoughts kept popping up in his head.
One told him to head south, while another urged him not to let the Two-Brained Face Demons get away and to pursue them.
“But at least it has effectively weakened the mutual influence between my minds.”
Zoe quickly prioritized one thought and discarded the others.
He swiftly stuffed the corpses of the Two-Brained Face Demons scattered across the ground into his Shadow Pool.
The Shadow Pool was packed to the brim, likely providing him with food for quite a while.
He then slipped into the shadows, activated Stealth, and departed the blood-scented battleground.
After sneaking through the swamp for a long while, Zoe finally found a dark, narrow underground crevice. Merging into the shadows, he squeezed himself inside to hide.
With an abundant food supply, Zoe began researching the skill Dual Brain Lv. 1 (E-grade).
The effect of the Dual Brain skill was to split one's consciousness, producing an effect akin to split personalities.
Its overall utility was far inferior to Parallel Mind, and it carried significant risks.
However, the advantage was that the split minds had very little influence on one another, behaving almost like two independent entities.
In battle, if one consciousness perished, the other could even take over the body to continue fighting.
Zoe wanted his minds to possess that independence while still maintaining the connectivity of Parallel Mind.
The split thoughts of Parallel Mind could merge at any time; if he could achieve true mental independence there, he wouldn't have to worry about developing psychological issues or multiple personalities.
Relying on the stockpile of food in his Shadow Pool, Zoe huddled in the narrow underground crevice, meticulously unearthing the potential of the Dual Brain skill.
With the bonus of his C-grade Unearther talent, Zoe's comprehension of skills was at the level of a supreme genius.
To maximize his research efficiency, Zoe had his three minds study it simultaneously, multiplying his progress threefold.
While two of his minds focused on research, the third acted as a test subject, controlling a shadow clone. He kept this third mind constantly under the influence of Dual Brain to maintain its independence, trying to make it sleep as an experiment.
The main two minds closely regulated the effects of the Dual Brain skill.
The moment the experimental mind showed signs of losing control or breaking away permanently, Zoe would quickly retract it and split off a new one.
Under such intensive training and experimentation, several days flew by. Most of the food in the Shadow Pool had been consumed, and before the training could yield definitive results, his existing skills leveled up first.
Stealth Lv. 1 (E-grade), Shadow Pool Lv. 1 (D-grade), and Shadow Clone Lv. 1 (C-grade) had each upgraded to Lv. 2.
With Stealth upgrading to Lv. 2, Zoe's camouflage capabilities became even stronger.
With Shadow Pool upgrading to Lv. 2, its storage capacity doubled. Its dimensions had expanded to a height of two meters and an area of twenty square meters.
With Shadow Clone upgrading to Lv. 2, Zoe's clones became far more solid, allowing them to exert greater power.
However, it did not increase the number of clones he could manifest, which left him slightly disappointed.
Then again, the fact that his race was named Dual Shadow rather than Multiple Shadow was self-explanatory.
Yet, just as Shadow Clone reached Lv. 2 and Zoe attempted to test his clones' independence once more, a massive breakthrough occurred, far surpassing any progress he had made over the previous several days.
The consciousness controlling the shadow clone had actually successfully drifted off to sleep.
Even though it only lasted for a few seconds before the excitement of Zoe's other two minds jolted it awake, it had indeed fallen asleep.
This was a monumental breakthrough!
“But the mutual influence between my minds is still too strong.”
Although one mind had fallen asleep, it was still affected by the emotions of the other two.
Zoe realized that if their thoughts and emotions continued to bleed into one another, his grand plan for a twenty-four-hour mental rotation shift would never succeed.
He needed focus—each split mind had to focus strictly on its own task.
He decided to try a different training method.
Conveniently, his Shadow Pool's capacity had increased, and his mental energy was already largely exhausted.
Zoe's new approach was to make his minds focus on entirely different tasks at the same time.
Expending his entire reserve of 891 mana, he conjured a shadow clone.
Then, he sent the clone out to hunt.
The main body's consciousness remained inside the crevice to continue studying and practicing skills, while the third mind digested food to refine and restore his mana.
With the three minds handling their own separate tasks, their thoughts were kept from overlapping as much as possible.
Through this method, he trained his mental concentration, allowing his minds to think in parallel. While they could still receive each other's information, they could function without interfering with one another.
“When it comes to grinding skills, I'm a professional.”
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