Millennium Witch.

Chapter 19 - Hardcore Benchmarking
A moment later, the iron door to the air-raid shelter slowly opened with a screeching sound, revealing a giant nearly two and a half meters tall standing behind it. He wore a simple black shirt and had not undergone any mechanical modifications, but his muscles bulged like balloons. Upon closer inspection, one could see that he wore a ring-shaped magical terminal on the index and middle fingers of both his hands.

This made Yvette glance at her a little longer, raising an eyebrow slightly.

—A normal person would not need to use four magic terminals unless he has a special need for them, such as as a reserve tool for magical formulas.

Soon enough, the term "cyber mage" immediately came to Yvette's mind. But unlike her, a pseudo-cyber mage, the opponent was likely the real deal, and was probably following the Black Tower Medicine's "Active Rune Set," and might even have used "Rune Elixir" to enhance the body.

Well, strictly speaking, they should be considered bio-magicians or mutant mages...

"I'm the one in charge here, and the brothers in the underworld all call me 'Welding Gun.' Beautiful mage, what's your name?" Despite his burly and fierce appearance, the giant spoke with a refined and gentle tone, sounding like someone who had been educated.

“Yvette Theon.” Yvette gave her name; since it was a dream and a pseudonym anyway, she didn’t bother to make one up.

"Miss Theon, I heard from my men that you want to make a deal here?"

"Yes."

"In that case, please come in and talk."

Yvette gave a calm "hmm." Although she looked like a beautiful girl who couldn't even kill a chicken, her composed aura made the welding torch look at her with new respect.

On this planet, strength can be acquired by spending money, but charisma and inner qualities can only be cultivated over time. This girl was neither arrogant nor timid, which made him wonder about her age.

He suspected that the person had been injected with a secret elixir that supposedly kept them young, and that their real age was probably in their forties or fifties... he thought warily.

Following the welding torch into the air-raid shelter, through a rough underground corridor riddled with bullet holes, and listening to the approaching clamor, the master and apprentice saw the underground market.

The scorching gun barrels glowed blue on the stall, and the hum of the lightning blades sliced ​​through the air. Although they were all obsolete runic weapons, they were perfectly adequate for ordinary people, and their prices ranged from several thousand to tens of thousands.

Besides, in the corner of the hall filled with vulgar language, there was a huddled exchange of addictive substances that were even more dangerous than weapons. Rosalyn looked over curiously, only to be met with filthy and drooling gazes, which made her hastily put on a stern face and imitate her teacher's nonchalant attitude.

The welding torch's "meeting room" is an iron cage enclosed by explosion-proof steel plates.

He sat down on the sofa inside the iron cage, ignoring the noisy surroundings, silently poured three cups of coffee, pushed two of them to the person opposite him, and said, "Are you two new to the Blackwater area?"

A wisp of white steam rose from the rim of the coffee cup, carrying the bitter almond aroma of some kind of additive. Yvette gestured for Rosalyn not to touch it, then nodded slightly: "Yes."

"So, what kind of deal do you two want?"

“I’d like to purchase a secure new identity ID card and pirated rune knowledge books,” Yvette said calmly. “Also, I’d like to have a stall here to sell some of my original ‘restricted spells’ or to accept commissions related to rune compilation.”

"Your order..."

Welding Gun suddenly laughed, as if he had heard something very funny. He picked up his coffee, took a sip, and said, "I can get ID cards, but pirated books?" Then he licked the coffee stains from the corner of his mouth and chuckled, "Last year, a gang stole and printed introductory textbooks on runes from Black Tower High School and tried to sell them. They all vanished in less than a month, and nobody knows where their bodies are now."

A flicker of surprise crossed Yvette's calm face. From her readings about the pre-apocalyptic era, she knew the Origin Civilization was extremely strict in its fight against piracy, but now it sounded… much more serious than she had imagined.

Rosalyn exclaimed in surprise, "It's that serious? Why?"

“Because it infringed on the company’s intellectual property rights. This is something they make money off of, how can they not protect it properly…” Welding torch said, noticing Yvette’s expression, and narrowed his eyes, “Miss Mage, this, don’t you know?”

Yvette glanced at him, her eyes devoid of any emotion, as still as a stagnant pool. But for some reason, Welding Gun felt a chill run through him, and his earlier doubts about the cyber mage's identity vanished instantly.

But what he didn't know was that Yvette was inwardly sighing frantically.

Last night, while shopping online, she originally intended to purchase a patent book titled "Elemental Attenuation Completion Technology" from "Jinhen Chemical," one of the super companies, to solve her real-world energy storage problem.

Then I saw the price, and it was just an ebook, priced at 50 credits. I was stunned. I subconsciously brought in my past life experience and wondered if I could get some pirated copies.

She only just discovered that the black market trades in illegal weapons, but not pirated books related to rune knowledge. Forced to buy legitimate copies, she has no idea how long it will take to save up that money.

"However, Miss Mage, your goods are indeed rare. Perhaps I can offer you some trading opportunities. How about it? Many gangs would be interested."

The welding torch changed the subject, leaned forward, and chuckled, "Everyone knows the commission here is 20%, but I'll only charge you 10%, isn't that generous? After you inspect the goods, I'll help you make connections."

"can."

Eager to make money as soon as possible, Yvette wasn't too concerned about commission rates. However, the discount on the welding torch seemed genuine, since in her previous life, e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com seemed to only take around 10% commission from ordinary stores.

"What a straightforward young lady. I hope we have a pleasant working relationship." The welding torch's smile deepened.

He wasn't lying; halving it meant halving it. After all, in his view, a mage's connections seemed more valuable, especially since she could provide original restricted-level spells, suggesting she was highly skilled.

Of course, the welding torch himself is a cyber mage, but his mastery of runes is only at a beginner level. He's lucky if he can cast other people's spells; he wouldn't even dare to create his own. He wouldn't even dare to make minor adjustments, for fear of accidentally creating a bug and blowing himself up.

It can only be said that there are differences even among mages.

The commission to compile runes didn't come out of thin air, and Yvette knew very well that she needed to first demonstrate her abilities with some solid results.

Therefore, for her initial sales, she chose a restricted-level original technique—an alternative name for illegal techniques created privately without official review and filing.

The spell is called "Arcane Wind Blade - YH47254," the same move she used yesterday to kill those three thugs. "YH" represents "Blackwater District, Ish City," and "47254" is the number of runes. This naming convention effectively avoids duplicate names.

"Arcane Wind Blade?" Welding torch raised an eyebrow, asking skeptically, "Sounds ordinary, is there anything special about it?"

At the same time, he led the two into an inner room.

This room is slightly larger than the previous reception room. The paint on the walls has peeled off, revealing dark red bricks. In the corner sits an old machine, its casing yellowed, as if it had been soaked in time for a century.

However, this is not a plastic shell, but a kind of "fungal plastic", an organic synthetic material invented by "Lin Tui Bio", the developer of Magic Light Vine. The main material is the secretion of a certain magic-loving fungus, and its function is not much different from that of plastic.

"Nothing special, just some optimizations I made, the performance should be pretty good." Yvette's gaze fell on the machine.

—A spell simulator is a testing machine used to simulate the effects of magic. It is somewhat similar to a "test" in the field of magic and can measure the performance rating of a spell to the maximum extent.

Although she had learned about this thing from the professional books in the Abyss Base, this was her first real encounter with it, which made Yvette feel like she was about to take the college entrance exam.

She'd been working on rune design for centuries, but this was her first time doing a hardcore benchmark test, and she was a little nervous for a moment.

In particular, she didn't optimize the spell "Arcane Wind Blade" as carefully as she did the other four great spells of ice, fire, wind, and thunder, such as Frostbolt, Flame Dance, Wind Chaser, and Thunder Fury, so the test results were a bit low.

I'm entirely self-taught; I've never had any systematic training. I hope I won't lose a lot of points... This is in front of my apprentice, you old machine, don't push me...

She thought to herself expressionlessly.

“Well then, Miss Theon, why don’t you check the machine first?” the welding torch reminded her.

This is a basic procedure to prevent the theft of rune sets, checking if "Incognito Mode" is enabled. Of course, it's possible to tamper with it even if it's enabled, but it's extremely difficult and easily leads to copyright complaints; ordinary gangs simply wouldn't dare take that risk.

Evie nodded, placed her hand on the touchpad, and began a thorough check of the machine's system. After confirming that everything was correct, she activated the test mode, entered the rune set, and waited for the machine's calculations.

"It's starting to move!" Rosalyn exclaimed in surprise as the machine began to shake, then saw a line of text appear on the screen—

[Rune quality testing in progress...]

“Rune quality, what is that?” Rosalyn asked. She couldn’t read it, but perhaps because of the high illiteracy rate here, the welding torch machine turned on voice broadcast.

Before Yvette could speak, the welding torch chuckled and said to Rosalyn, "This is an indicator used to check the redundancy of the procedure."

"redundancy?"

"Yes, in the arrangement of runes in a magic spell, there are often useless 'junk runes' that affect the efficiency of casting the spell. For example, a spell that can be cast in three seconds may be delayed to three and a half seconds."

"The more runes a large spell has, the more junk runes it usually has... And rune quality calculation is to find out the proportion of these junk runes, and then compare it with spells of the same specification to get a quantifiable reference."

"Why would there be trash runes?" Rosalyn asked, puzzled.

“There are many reasons.” Welding Gun shrugged. “It could be that repeated modifications during testing resulted in residual files; it could also be that the compiler was lazy and didn’t bother to optimize; some formulas even cause problems when the redundant parts are deleted, so they have to be kept.”

"So that's it..."

"The way to quantify the score is also very simple. It calculates the redundancy rate and makes a horizontal comparison ranking among similar procedures. The ranking results show that the top 5% are S-level, the top 10% are A-level, the top 20% are B-level, and so on, with the worst 10% being J-level."

While the welding torch was being explained, the first indicator, the "heat test," was also nearing its end.

A moment later, the test was completed, and a large "S" appeared on the screen.

"Wow, this is the first time I've ever heard an S-rank announcement..."

Shocked murmurs rose behind her. Yvette glanced over and saw a few thugs peeking in from the doorway, watching the commotion.

The welding torch was also momentarily stunned.

"Rune quality" is the lowest weighted performance indicator in the overall score, but achieving an S-level is quite difficult. This means that the compiler is either a super expert who can compile runes in one go, or a perfectionist or obsessive-compulsive who is willing to spend time...

After glancing at Yvette's shimmering silver hair, clean face, and simple black-and-white nerdy outfit, Welding Gun thought for a moment and still felt that the latter was more likely.

(End of this chapter)