Chương 228: Chapter 225 - The Unified Trial Theory

Raidco's Mastery was a facility that operated twenty four hours a day, nearly every day of the year. As adventurers didn't operate on a fixed sleep schedule, neither did the institutions that catered towards them. The lights were still on, the enchanted skyscraper standing bright in the commercial district around it. [Spellweave Perception] told him that even the enchantments on Raidco's buildings were mostly for show rather than any real defensive measure.

It was the same with pretty much every single enchanted building he'd passed. San Kingsgrove wasn't a city ready to handle a siege, especially if a clone of the Witch Tyrant burst out of the system portal. The receptionist on duty today wasn't someone Ryan had seen before, though that didn't stop them from instantly recognizing him. They welcomed him like he was an old customer.

"Ah, Mr. Robinson, are you looking to book a time for today?"

"No thank you. I'll just be borrowing your lobby for a bit and waiting until Grevich is awake."

"Oh that isn't a problem at all. In fact, I believe assistant Grevich is likely awake right now, let me just call him." Ryan walked towards the lobby and took out a laptop he'd just bought on the way here. —— Assistant Grevich, was absolutely not awake in his apartment right now. As much as he had wanted to work on the paper all night long, at a certain point, it was inefficient to sacrifice sleep for good work.

Besides, it was going to take a few weeks to months with a few more adventurers in the bottleneck to really hit the academic world with irrefutable proof. A marathon not a sprint, that was the mindset Grevich had adopted. So, when a phone call from his work woke him up, the top assistant of Raidco's Mastery was naturally very displeased. Though none of it showed in his slightly raspy voice.

"This is Assistant Grevich."

"I have Ryan Robinson here waiting for you. He's currently working on a laptop and has mentioned he'd wait for you until morning." That woke him up immediately. The receptionists knew indeed when it was important enough to interrupt his sleep.

"I'm on my way." Grevich immediately ripped open a can of cold coffee, made himself look as presentable as possible and jogged out of the door. … When he made it into the lobby, Adventurer Robinson was on one of the lobby desks, typing away at blistering speeds, arms and hands wrapped in what looked like fairly thick black gloves. Undoubtedly enchanted though there were no external markings. As the assistant approached the adventurer looked up and his eyes flicked towards the receptionist.

"You just woke up?" Grevich adjusted his tie as the receptionist tried not to look nervous. Naturally even he could not mask his tiredness in front of an evolved adventurer. He reminded himself that Ryan Robinson did treat civilians with respect. Perhaps a little too much.

"I told the receptionist to tell me if anything came up. All my decision of course." Ryan accepted that with a bit of grace.

"Right. Well, now that you're here, could you take a look at this?" Grevich took the laptop from Ryan's hands and started scrolling through the document. He frowned.

"Did you have a change of mind? I assure you if you want full credit I am more than happy to provide that." Ryan had originally chosen to stay anonymous and launch a joint paper with his name as one of the many adventurers in the study. This document… was quite the opposite.

"Nothing like that. I was just thinking I wanted to get a move on."

"Something like this would undoubtedly cause controversy. I do not recommend it. Further, you risk losing public support if you implement this, not to mention that you would make less money if you take this approach." It was too… simple and raw. Even if Grevich edited it, it would still come off as something that Ryan had stumbled upon rather than a professional methodical process that adventurers would pay for.

"Ignore the money…" Ryan then shuddered.

"I can't believe I said that. Anyway, ignore the money, let's say we implement this and then we get some high profile adventurers in and break their bottlenecks, is it possible that it would spread faster?"" Possibly. You would still get pushback from the academic side but adventurers are a practical sort. If you show results they will notice."

"That's what I'm hoping for."

"Could I ask why you've changed your mind so quickly?" Ryan looked around, namely at the cameras and the receptionist that was pretending they weren't straining their ears to hear the conversation.

"Got anywhere private we can talk?" A few moments later they were in a private enchanted room of Raidco's Mastery. Ryan Robinson looked at the enchantments on the walls, as if he could read through them. Grevich tried to assure him.

"I assure you, Raidco's Mastery operates on a strict policy of good faith, we do not bug our rooms to gain a competitive advantage."

"I know, trust but verify, you know? Not that I can actually tell what half these enchantments can do with just my skill." Grevich nodded.

"Naturally, these are high quality. Now what did you wish to talk about?"

"I know you've put in a lot of work into all of this and that's why I wanted to talk to you before doing it. I'm going for maximum adoption as quickly as possible rather than slow pushing it out and maximizing profit and professionalism." Grevich had deduced as much, though the motive was still a question.

"Is there a specific reason for that?"

"A few, the Witch Tyrant fighting with the Passive Tyrant for one."

"I–what?" Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Ryan Robinson flicked his laptop over, a picture of the Passive Tyrant about to punch the Witch Tyrant with the Chieftain Tyrant trying to stop them. In the middle of the city. A cold sweat went down Grevich's back. He did not have access to adventurer's records, he could not tell you what was going on.

"I—surely that's doctored." Ryan flicked to a golden image of a tree, a brilliant tree that BURNED INTO GREVICH'S MIND AND FORCED HIM TO STARE AT IT. Before Ryan took it away. The image was still burned in his eyes, he could still see the great golden tree in his mind. Though he could think again.

"I–what was…" Ryan shook his head.

"Dragonslayers picking a fight with the Tyrants, Artigan showing up with an unknown dragonslayer stronger than any other, then the Witch Tyrant letting him escape. That Flesh Titan rising up and Seffara coming out of retirement. Then the Witch Tyrant and Passive Tyrant looking like they were about to kill each other. There's too many insane things happening at once to be a coincidence." Grevich gulped, this was the kind of thing that was taboo to even talk about in the lounges of Raidco's Mastery.

Dragonslayers didn't like to talk about anything involving the Witch Tyrant publicly, that was all you needed to know to stay well and truly out of it as a civilian.

"Adventurer Robinson, this is well above my paygrade to speculate on." Ryan nodded gravely.

"It's above mine too. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. If we can increase the average adventurer's strength then there's no reason to prepare ahead of time." Grevich rubbed his forehead as he sat and scrolled through Ryan's document properly. It was… well written for someone who had only just started writing this up… and hadn't finished college. Grevich could definitely assist in cleaning up the document and adding references, but this was just a little too… presumptuous.

"There are too many hypotheticals with no data, any researcher would disparage this document. I would disparage this."

"That's why we're not releasing it as a peer-revised document, we're doing this adventurer-style."

"I have worked with thousands of adventurers in my tenure at Raidco's Mastery, I have no idea what you mean by adventurer-style." Ryan just grinned at him. Confidence brimming in waves. The assistant couldn't help but remember how Ryan had the same confidence when they worked with the other adventurers. With someone like that leading the way, he just tried to help as much as he could. Grevich would later mention in an interview that he regretted putting his document anywhere near the original release.

——'The Unified Theory on Trial skills, classes and resonance (Preliminary).' By Ryan Robinson, lightly edited by Assistant Grevich Donovan of Raidco's Mastery. Classes, resonance and skill mastery are all one and the same. Plenty of papers have gone over each of their nature and understanding to the best degree. This is an attempt to stand on all of the shoulders of giants to give adventurers that want to reach resonance and break through bottlenecks their chance.' Arrogance, Grevich would have put it.

Pure and simple arrogance to say that you have a unifying understanding of classes and skills that is correct after working with only three adventurers. This would bring everyone in the world out of the woodwork to disprove it. Or as Ryan Robinson put it, the perfect ragebait to spread throughout the realmnet.

Imagine this: Some upstart adventurer with fifteen minutes of fame announces to the world that he has a unifying method to help in class resonance that inevitably'Zahiru the Settler Swordfront once said that every skill defies reality. To learn the skill means breaking free from the Trial System's training wheels to bring that to reality.

While it has been hypothesized that increasing in realm grades help acquire this, it does not help those that want to advance without a Trial slot free nor does it explain why there are some ninth realm [Rogues] that have failed to learn a Rare physical skill. This is not an enormous secret that others do not know about. Many have practiced 'acting' more like their class to resonate. Plenty of researchers have argued that you must reach a flow state where your body and mind work in unison.

I am writing to those frustrated and stuck in bottlenecks that it is all one and the same. To bend reality to your will, to make it conform you must align with what you yourself resonate with the most. It is that junction of skill, body, mind and desire where you will find the most results. Do you need it to learn a trial skill?

Of course not, there are plenty of examples of talented adventurers that only have had two or even one of those things to learn their skill, but even to those people, I believe they are missing out on their full potential by missing that one key part. How does your class and skill reflect what you yourself want.

Naturally, for adventurers that are used to training all day, everyday, they may not understand exactly what they want, whether they have fooled themselves or because they simply followed their talents and have known nothing else. I will keep working to create a full list of how and why I approach things the way I have done so. Example one… From there the document went on to outline how Ryan had figured out different adventurer's bottlenecks and even shared class resonance.

Hiding nothing back, gaining approval from the three adventurers they worked with as long as he promised to continue to share his work with them. Hypotheses thrown out left and right without study. Ryan wrote about classes, souls and resonance like it was something that everyone should already understand and know. How Trial System classes were just a separate layer on top of the soul that you had to align with yourself, that resonance was the first step in mastering your class concepts.

You could start with skills or you could start with your class. Grevich was rubbing his head, trying to figure out a way to say his objections professionally.

"Please, I think we shouldn't mention some of the esoterics so explicitly. We risk alienating everyone before we start."

"Nah, it's fine. Once we get the ball rolling, everyone will look at the rest and follow along."

"Or we could release that after gaining more social proof."

"I'd rather we do this now while I have time. It's okay, I've got a few more stuff coming alongside." Madness. They were going to get destroyed publicly. But of course, the writeup was only the first step. Once they had a preliminary document Grevich could be horrified at, they moved on to finding ninth realms for test subjects. As Ryan put it:'It won't matter if we piss off a bunch of people as long as we get results. They'll all fall in line.' And it was hard for Grevich to argue with that logic.

He himself had been sold with how Ryan had worked up a storm with the other adventurers. … This had the same energy. And it was difficult to not get swept away. People often mentioned that working with a [Savant] was something like this. They would toil away at a vision nobody else could see, and you ended up getting caught with the flow.

Grevich was desperately trying to keep up, to understand that vision Ryan was seeing, the insane amounts of confidence that things would work out, no matter what Grevich believed otherwise. They both toiled away, refining for a vague deadline Grevich could only see the outline of. A whiteboard had been added, tablets strewn about, showing adventurer profiles. They collated information, sometimes bouncing back to the 'unified' document to edit things as a break. Grevich brought up a tablet to Ryan.

A potential ninth realm for consideration.

"Adventurer Redpoint has found two regeneration potions in the past two years. He has considerable wealth that I don't believe he would mind paying if he gains results." But Grevich had apparently missed the point. Ryan considered it for a moment before placing Redpoint near the bottom of the list.

"Is there a reason why this is the case?"

"Personal reasons." Grevich opened the spreadsheet on his tablet. He'd been wracking his head for exactly what Ryan wanted and now crossed out the overtly wealthy. The other criteria? Too clean? They were thrown to the side. Too secretive? Also thrown away. Any major controversies? They were thrown to the side. It took another hour before Grevich finally caught on. What Ryan was looking for was… genuine people.

Not necessarily the most heroic or the ones with the biggest fanbase, but the ones that might tell the public what they really thought about current events. People with some level of controversy but not to the point where they completely lacked any social awareness. Those that kept it casual with their fans? Yes. Those that sometimes got drunk on camera and didn't say disturbing things? Yes. Those that talked about their hunts and admitted to mistakes? Yes. Real people, that was who he was going for.

Grevich understood the genius then.

"Is that because these people are most likely to be unguarded about their personal lives? Of course, considering they need to get into a flow state it'll be easier to work with people that won't be so guarded about themselves." Ryan frowned and considered it for a moment.

"Huh? Oh yeah, that's totally what I was going for." When it was clear that apparently that wasn't the criteria, Grevich finally gave up trying to understand what Ryan was seeing. He sat back on his chair, a deep sigh escaping his lips. He was but a mortal trying to keep up with an evolved adventurer. While he believed he had done well to edit the unified paper, that was really all he seemed to be able to help with.

The assistant simply watched as Ryan toiled away, focused, unbothered and absolutely in a flow state. He wondered what kind of upbringing Ryan had to be able to tap into the flow state while researching adventurers. What exactly it was that Ryan himself wanted to be. Time passed. Once Ryan was happy with his ninth realm list, he sent realmnet messages to them on his adventurer account without a thought. He then rolled his shoulders.

"Okay, next is the video."

"Video?" And Ryan grinned. Grevich would finally understand what Ryan meant by adventurer-style.