Chapter 469: I’ll Read It Myself

He kept scrolling down to the aquatic section.

[Name: Rapid-Scale Trout]

[Reproduction Time: 14 Days]

[Recovery Period: 5 Days]

[Litter Size: 100+ Fry]

[Harvesting Time: 3 Weeks]

[Information: A highly durable, fast-growing aquatic protein staple. Their genetics have been altered to survive in nearly any temperature of water within the dungeon. The scales are extremely hard and durable due to being enhanced by corrupted mana.]

Adrian rubbed his chin.

’That covers everything. But there is going to be a massive amount of waste. Bones, guts, toxic chicken meat once they die, and the chaotic mana horns from the rabbits and there’s stuff from other creatures too. I can’t just let that shit pile up in the dungeon.’

He scrolled to the very bottom of the system screen and smiled. The system had already calculated a perfect solution for the waste management loop.

[Name: Mana-Scrap Fungus]

[Reproduction Time: Continuous Spore Release]

[Recovery Period: 0 Days]

[Litter Size: Massive Clusters]

[Harvesting Time: 4 Days]

[Information: A highly specialized mushroom species designed strictly for waste recycling. It rapidly consumes all wastes, including toxic guts, chaotic horns, and discarded bones. It acts as a natural filter, breaking down the chaotic properties of the mana inside them and converting it into highly concentrated, clean liquid mana within its cap.]

Adrian let out a satisfied laugh. ’A fully self-sustaining, zero-waste meat production line. The perfect monopoly, heheheheee!!’

He leaned backwards and supported himself with his hands on the floor and just stared happily at the flickering candle light.

’Okay... system. Use the land we already have and set things up in a way where there’s a perfect level of time boost for every single thing I just read about. Do the calculations yourself and set things up by using around 90% of the total stored mana. I need the remaining 10% for emergencies. You can do that right?’

[Affirmative.]

Almost an hour later, Adrian headed back to his own hut.

He saw Aria sitting calmly on the bed, quietly reading one of the thick martial arts books he had given her earlier. Right beside her lay a really thin book which was only about as thick as a thumb.

Claire and Serena followed right behind him. They weren’t exactly stumbling or exhausted this time, having completely recovered their stamina.

As Adrian walked in, he immediately picked up the thin book that Aria had written for him. Before he even said anything, he just casually slipped it into his spatial ring, sending it directly into his dungeon storage.

He sat down on the mattress right beside Aria.

"How is the reading going?"

Aria didn’t look up from her pages. "Papa, I am still reading the first book. Once I am done fully reading all of these books, I will start training."

Then, she paused before she looked up at Adrian.

"Papa, can you..."

She stopped right there. She looked past him at Claire and Serena, who were right there in the room. She hesitated for a split second before her eyes locked entirely onto Claire.

"Mama, can you help me train?"

To Aria’s slight surprise, Claire immediately nodded. A massive, incredibly wide smile broke out on her face. It was almost comical how quickly she grinned.

Even Adrian had rarely seen Claire get this excited for something until now except for a few things that he would never tell anyone about.

And unbeknownst to herself, even Aria couldn’t help but feel a really weird, warm sense of genuine happiness that she couldn’t completely control.

Aria just got off the bed and walked over to hug Claire’s leg.

As Claire leaned down and happily picked her up, Aria secretly sent a thin mana thread straight toward Adrian’s mind.

’I want to use your dungeon to train. Since you can boost the speed inside using Temporal Overdrive, I can train for much longer in there while the time outside is much lower.’

Adrian instantly frowned. He sent a mana strand right back to her.

’No. I am not letting you do that.’

’Why?’ Aria asked mentally, wrapping her small arms around Claire’s neck.

’While time does flow quick in there, can’t you see the obvious drawbacks? If you spend too much time in there, you will also physically grow older much faster. You are not immune to time now, are you?’

Aria didn’t reply for a few seconds.

’I have a few specific spells that help me extend my life. They help my vitality get stronger. Even in my past life, if it wasn’t for certain people hunting me down, I could have easily lived for over five hundred years without any issues at all. And if I actually sat down and learned about Life Magic, I could have gone over a thousand. Maybe even more.’

Adrian let out a quiet sigh.

’I don’t want to see you grow up that fast.’

Hearing this entirely emotional, illogical response, Aria once again did not respond.

In fact, she didn’t respond for almost ten whole minutes. She just quietly hugged Claire as the knight carried her around the room, saying absolutely nothing to her either.

Serena, on the other hand, walked over to the bed and sat down gently beside Adrian.

Adrian let out an internal sigh and looked at his system interface.

’Okay, I guess. I don’t know what she is thinking right now, but whatever. I just hope she doesn’t do something dumb.’

He closed the interface.

’System, go through the whole book that Aria has written and just summarize—’

He paused his thought.

’Actually, never mind. I will read it myself. After all, she went through the effort to write it for me.’

A second later, the thin book popped out of his inventory and into his hand. He started reading it himself under the dim, flickering candlelight when all of a sudden, the rhythmic sound of rain hitting the bamboo roof echoed loudly.

Adrian immediately sent the book back into his spatial ring and quickly walked out of the hut.