The Live-In Son-in-Law

Trudging through every street and alley of Magic City with Lingling — all for bounties he barely considered worth his time — Mo Fan was starting to feel like he was going backward in life. Still, with next year's Hunter Championship on his mind, he reminded himself that the more hunter points he accumulated, the higher the tier of tournament he could enter. These small, thankless jobs were just grinding his hunter stats. Nothing more.

Lucky for him, having Lingling as his brilliant strategist made it all considerably easier. In under a week, Mo Fan had cleared every last one of those scattered commissions. The total came to roughly five hundred thousand — a sum that would have felt like a windfall once. These days, as an Intermediate-Level Mage, even basic expenses ran into the millions, and anything worth the effort cost tens of millions. Dreaming of attaching a Spirit Seed to his Shadow Element was starting to look like a pipe dream.

After wrapping things up, Mo Fan returned to school — only to find a bigger headache waiting for him. His stack of challenge letters towered higher than all those commission sheets combined.

Fortunately, formal challenges were only scheduled for the second and fourth weeks of each month. Otherwise, this month's rewards would have been handed straight to his challengers.

The school's resource allocation was generous. Among the perks was access to the Three-Step Tower for cultivation, and to Mo Fan, that was the single most coveted privilege the Main Campus had to offer. That place was nothing short of a sacred training ground.

The rewards for holding the hundredth rank were already quite good, but what genuinely surprised Mo Fan was that he'd also been allocated a speed-control Magic Weapon.

This weapon was something special. It allowed a Mage to link Star Mote to Star Mote with far greater precision, while the connections between Star Trails became smoother and more resilient. Practicing Control with it could yield twice the results for half the effort. Most critically, it shortened the time needed to trace and complete Star Trails.

Simply put: it accelerated spellcasting.

Mage combat looked complex on the surface but came down to something fundamental — whoever cast first held an enormous advantage.

For someone like Mo Fan, who had already trained his Lightning Element and Fire Element basic-tier spells to the fourth level each, if he could link Star Motes faster and reach the point where spells answered at a gesture, he would be unbeatable against opponents of the same rank.

What truly startled him was that the school also offered Fire Element Spirit Seeds.

Every placement on the Fire Rankings earned a corresponding number of Spirit Seed fragments. Accumulate enough, and they could be smelted together — with enough luck, the process could yield a complete Spirit Seed.

Mo Fan had received one Spirit Seed fragment in his allocation. Ten were needed to attempt a single smelt.

The smelting also required a variety of fire-attribute materials. The more materials, the higher the success rate. Land a Spirit Seed from the process and one's power would leap to an entirely new level.

Since Mo Fan already had the Rose Flame, Fire Element Spirit Seed fragments held little appeal for him. He traded his fire fragment for Shadow Element ones instead, hoping to eventually raise his Shadow Element to Spirit Grade as well.

The Summoning Element had no Spirit Seeds to speak of, but raising a summoned creature demanded resources comparable to supporting a full Mage — bloodline, soul, and physique had each evolved into entire fields of study in their own right. With how tight his finances were, Mo Fan couldn't afford even a young familiar, and his Contract Summoning skill had been gathering dust ever since.

When it came down to it, Mo Fan was flat broke.

There was still so much he needed to develop at the Intermediate-Level Mage stage. Without rounding himself out completely, how was he supposed to dominate the campus?

The school's resources were all working in his favor right now, and he wasn't about to hand them over to a parade of challengers. But how exactly was he supposed to handle this mountain of challenge letters? He needed a real plan.

"The top fifty get two Spirit Seed fragments plus a fire-attribute Magic Weapon," Mo Fan said. "Ai Tutu, what does a fire-attribute Magic Weapon actually do?"

"Are you from another planet?" Ai Tutu said, gnawing on a banana. "A fire-attribute Magic Weapon boosts Fire Element cultivation. It works somewhat like a Star Nebula Artifact — the Star Nebula Artifact strengthens the soul and raises a Mage's overall cultivation speed by a large margin. A fire-attribute training weapon, on the other hand, targets Fire Element specifically. When a Mage already has a Star Nebula Artifact, it stacks an additional multiplier on top. On its own, the effect is unremarkable, but pair it with an outstanding Star Nebula Artifact and you're looking at a dramatic surge in single-element cultivation speed in a very short time!"

Mo Fan's eyes lit up. "That would actually be useful to me. If I train inside the Three-Step Tower while running both the Star Nebula Artifact and the fire-attribute Magic Weapon, then pour all my focus into Fire Element — my Fire Element cultivation would shoot forward like a rocket, wouldn't it?"

Ai Tutu nodded, her chubby little mouth crammed with most of a banana, words coming out muffled. "The problem is, most people would be thrilled just to have one of those things. You want all three stacked at once — isn't that a little too much to ask for?"

"How high do I need to rank to get access to the Three-Step Tower?" Mo Fan asked.

"In your Fire Hall, you'd need at least the top fifty for a shot at training in there — and that only gets you one day. The higher your rank, the more time you earn. Honestly, just holding onto the hundredth spot is impressive enough for you. Cracking the top fifty? Give it up. Every single person in Fire Hall's top fifty is weirder and richer than the last. Nobody there would even admit to being Fire Element top fifty without a full set of premium Enchanted Gear — count how many decent pieces you've actually got, you broke mess. Sure, your natural Dual Elements give you more offensive options than most, but the moment anyone does their homework on you and equips Enchanted Gear that counters Lightning Element or Fire Element, you'll be sent flying in no time!"

"That's actually a fair point," Mo Fan said, giving a genuine nod.

*At the end of the day, I'm a free-to-play player in a pay-to-win world.* Compared to those rich kids, gear was exactly what he lacked. His innate Dual Elements advantage could very easily be nullified by someone else's perfect set of Enchanted Gear. And not everyone was as foolish as Dongfang Ming, who had blown a fortune on Wing Enchanted Gear — something that barely helped in a direct Mage-versus-Mage fight.

If Dongfang Ming had put that money into a high-stat Shield Enchanted Gear or Armor Enchanted Gear instead — something capable of shrugging off Mo Fan's basic-tier spells — beating him would have been a real challenge.

"Why not just marry into the Mu Family?" Ai Tutu suggested with a grin. "That Great Lineage knows how to value talent. With your current reputation as the Great Demon Lord, they'd probably outfit you with a full set of high-quality Enchanted Gear for free."

"Not a bad idea at all," Mo Fan said with a wicked smile, his eyes half-lidded as they drifted to the balcony, where Mu Nujiao's graceful silhouette moved among the flowers she was watering.