Zaki opened his eyes and looked around him, seeing the familiar lush forest he had been running through for the last half a month, but this time from a very different perspective. He could hear the sounds of small critters around him, and he could see the patterns on a leaf a couple of meters away from him with extreme clarity.

" so this is the mental strength apprentice realm?"

Said Zaki while feeling the heightened control over his body.

The realm that Dimitri had overheard in the tavern from the adventurers was the mental strength apprentice realm, also known as the initial refinement realm.

According to the old alchemist in the final trial, the mind had three powers, mental energy, mental strength, and willpower.

Mental energy is what mages use to cast spells, espers to use telekinesis, and for some other powers that use mental energy.

Mental strength increases a cultivator's control over his/her body, spells, cultivation techniques, auxiliary techniques, and anything that can be directly influenced using mind power.

And willpower is the ability to control oneself, it's a person's endurance, determination, and grit.

As long as a person passes the first two stages of the trial, he or she would be rewarded with advancement to the refinement realm.

The refining realm's enhanced control over mind and body is why a person can take on multiple opponents at once and yet sweep the floor with them, as the adventurers had described in the tavern.

Zaki changed his sitting posture and stretched his upper body, feeling the changes brought by his mental strength.

" even without the memories from the academy and my life as the three-sword user, just the enhancement brought by the mental strength has increased my combat power by several times," Zaki muttered.

Zaki automatically went to rest his hand on his three swords on his waist, but his hand ended up hitting the ground; he then remembered he didn't have three swords because he wasn't the vice-captain on the ship he sailed on in his sixth stage of the trial.

Looking at his current sitting posture and recalling the posture he was in just before eating the fruit, he realized that the way he is sitting now allows him to stand back up quickly in the event of an assault.

Clearly, numerous years as someone else in the trial's sixth level had altered his habits by a bit.

Zaki closed his eyes and started to sort out the gains he had in the trial.

The first and the second trial clearly targeted his yearning for his parents which was hidden deep within his heart.

The third trial then targeted his obsession with lapidary, giving him an endless amount of gems to practice with, if not for the Mystic stone breaking the scene, Zaki might have been stuck in that trial until he was deemed as disqualified.

The fourth trial targeted Zaki's thirst for knowledge by sorting and giving him endless explanations from different perspectives of the knowledge Zaki had accumulated from different sources. Yet again, if not for the Mystic Stone, Zaki might have been disqualified at this level. Sure, he wouldn't lose all the knowledge he would have gained in the trial, but he would have missed out on the rewards of the later stages of the trial.

The fifth and sixth trials provided Zaki with extremely critical knowledge that he desperately requires in his current situation.

The fifth trial's ninja academy provided Zaki with much-needed cultivation knowledge, and the sixth trial provided Zaki with a wealth of battle experience and a decent sword style.

And the greatest benefit he received from the trial was on the seventh and final level when he was introduced to alchemy by none other than Zhou Yuan, the best alchemist on the planet.

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Opening his eyes, Zaki reflected on the teachings he had learned at the ninja academy; even though ZhouYuan had stated that everything learned in the trial works in the real world because it is both a trial and a reward, it didn't harm to try it in case it didn't work and gets him killed in the middle of a conflict.

After some consideration, he came up with the ideal spell to test without causing a commotion: [Enhanced senses], a reconnaissance-type spell taught to preparatory sensory ninjas.

He concentrated and guided some of his internal energy in his meridians toward a specific meridian node and used both his hands to create a hand seal. When he created the hand seal, the internal energy moved from the node and traveled through several meridian channels. Through each channel the internal energy traveled through, the properties of the energy changed until the internal energy changed into some other kind of energy.

Zaki then directed a small stream of the changed energy towards his ear, only to wince in pain and cut it off.

It's not that the technique was problematic, it had worked quite well, too well actually, because Zaki heard the surrounding sounds at a very high volume, similar to blasting music in the ears in full volume using headphones, but in this case, it wasn't music, it was ambient sounds.

He guided a stream of energy again, but this time he only guided 1/10th of the energy to his ear. As soon as the energy reached his ear, Zaki began hearing ambient sounds in a 3-meter radius extremely clearly, including the tapping sounds of insects moving around and the heartbeat of a deserter sitting 2 meters away from him.

Zaki changed his hand seal and envisioned the "circle of hearing" growing as he recalled the academy's lessons.

With that the circle expanded from three meters to four then five and then ten, the more the circle expanded the more transformed energy was sucked to his ear through the stream, it expanded until fifty meters and by this time Zaki had a pained expression on his face, hearing all the sounds within fifty meters radius was taking a toll on Zaki's psyche, at this point all the sounds superimposed onto each other giving out a sound similar to television or radio static.

Enduring the discomfort and slight pain, Zaki followed the academy's instruction and focused his mind on just one sound; it took a few seconds for him to get the hang of it, and now in Zaki's ear, he could only hear the sound of rustling leaves, leaving the rest of the sounds in the background; he then switched his focus to several other sounds as a grin crept across his face.

In the last two weeks, Zaki has seen a lot of things that subverted his understanding of the world, his body, and people, some of them being cultivation, internal energy, or the fact that in the last two weeks, he had run from daybreak till dawn, something pre-cultivation Zaki and basically everyone else on earth can't do.

But none of them were nearly as impactful as this, enhancing senses to superhuman levels on command was exhilarating, sure he had been through more mind-blowing things in the trials, but that was more like a dream, This! This is him really doing things that weren't possible for a human to do on Earth!

It would be a lie to say that Zaki didn't want to go back to his workshop in Afghanistan and live his life as a skilled Lapidarist, doing what he's been doing for more than ten years, but now that Zaki has touched the world of cultivation and superpowers, along with a ton of advanced knowledge about lapidary and most importantly Alchemy, he...rapidly lost his desire to return back to his old life.

Who would want to go back to a life without superpowers just to serve as a teeny-tiny gear in a massive corrupt machine known as a country? To slave away for pitiful returns in the financial and social standing?

Yes, Zaki lost his desire for his old life even though he was being hunted by the guards of an entire province, unbeknownst to Zaki the 6th trial had changed his mindset too, after all being hunted by a lot of enemies was an everyday thing for the three sword user in that trial, he even had a massive bounty on his head at that time.

In comparison, being on the run from "weak" enemies in a forest is not worth mentioning.

Zaki cut the stream of energy from his ear and this time he guided and split the stream into two parts and connected it to his eyes, with the gradual increase in energy pumped into the stream, Zaki's sight changed into something like a combination of a magnifying glass and a binocular, he could see a tree leaf thirty meters away with extreme clarity, as if it's being watched using a magnifying glass in close range.

Like a kid that got a new toy, Zaki tried the different ways [Enhanced senses] could be used, from enhancing his sense of touch in his palms and caressing the bark of the tree he was sitting under, to enhancing the hair on his head, feeling the faint wind trajectory.

He also tried enhancing both his eyes and his ears, locking on a bug walking sounds using his ears and watching it with his Enhanced eyes forty meters away.

Zaki then improved his nose merely to smell the stench of Shit...coming from his pants, which made him wonder, 'Did I shit my pants?'.