Handsome? It's a Trade-off for Happiness

After such an incident, Adam had no mood to continue reading and quickly left the Reflection Tower.

Before long, Adam accurately located the involved cat.

At this moment, the cat was lying next to its food bowl with a bulging belly, its legs spread apart, seemingly staring at something on the ground, completely ignoring the few birds hopping around in front of it.

Occasionally, the cat would wave its paw, but the power it exchanged for happiness did not manifest.

When Adam walked in, he saw this scene. Noticing Adam's return, the cat immediately looked over, its eyes shimmering as if on the verge of tears.

For a moment, Adam's mood felt a bit complicated, then he quickly approached the cat and picked it up.

After just one morning, this cat seemed to have doubled in weight, almost too heavy for an average person to lift.

"It's not even an orange cat." The cat was just an ordinary stray, with brown fur marked by black stripes, its yellow-green eyes gazing at Adam as if ready to cry at any moment.

Although Adam had enhanced its digestive ability, the cat's weight gain was startlingly fast.

Adam placed it on the table for a closer examination.

"Is it a benign mutation?"

Acting on a sudden inspiration, Adam had made adjustments, and the results seemed promising.

The Dustless Shield spell model had influenced the cat's life force circulation, and in turn, the spell model had changed.

This mutual influence created a surprisingly harmonious outcome, all positive.

"But its mental energy is still limited and can't replenish the spell consumption on its own," Adam observed. The spell model within the cat's body, embedded in its life force circulation, hadn't collapsed, and with sufficient mental energy replenishment, it could still cast spells.

"But as a naturally formed model, it has some inefficiencies," Adam noted but did not rush to correct them.

The cat's life force reserves were still insufficient; another surgery might cause its life force circulation to collapse.

Adam picked up the cat, gave it a few strokes, and then put it down. Not because it was too heavy, but because he had replenished its spell model with mental energy.

Adam wanted to study the effects of this mixed model of mental and life energy.

The Dustless Shield typically absorbs natural forces around it to form a protective barrier.

During this process, it also absorbs dust from the air, hence the name.

However, influenced by the life force circulation, the cat's Dustless Shield had altered, enhancing its absorption ability while weakening the condensation into a shield.

The absorbed natural force gathered but was too dense.

Watching the cat playfully jump around, Adam noticed this.

Not only dust but even small insects couldn't escape its pull.

For those insects, the cat's paw was like the grip of death.

To the outside world, this densely accumulated but poorly condensed shield was like grease, thick yet easily pierced. However, for the trapped insects, it was an inescapable prison.

Of course, this alteration also introduced some issues, such as excessive consumption.

The foolish cat stopped jumping after a few tries, staring at Adam as if expecting more mental energy replenishment.

Lifting the heavy cat and tossing it outside, Adam began to ponder.

Continuously replenishing mental energy himself wasn't feasible.

It's manageable for one cat, but Adam didn't plan to modify just one life form.

"Therefore, I need to find a way for this cat to learn to replenish its mental energy model," Adam thought as he opened the door and brought the scratching cat back in.

Looking at the cat, Adam felt a bit of a headache. The cat's mental energy was limited, and it couldn't learn on its own. Expecting it to meditate and guide its mental energy was unrealistic, making the life modification seem futile.

"So, is mental modification necessary now?" Adam considered. Initially, his goal was to externally modify the animals' mental and life energies into forms suitable for meditation or life diagrams.

But mental modification was too difficult, so he started with life modification.

"However, with this cat as a case study, the problems shouldn't be too hard," Adam sensed the spell model embedded in the cat's life force circulation.

"Surgery for mental energy isn't appropriate," Adam wasn't blinded by the initial success of life modification.

Unlike life force circulation, mental energy circulation patterns vary greatly between individuals.

Thus, mental energy modifications can't be templated and must consider these differences.

Surgery, which involves cutting and stitching, carries high risks and is not suitable for mental modifications.

"Therefore, mental modification should start with hypnosis and curses, though this also requires time."

"For now, I'll use hypnosis to assist, and later, during the second stage of surgery, further modify the cat's life force circulation and adjust the spell model to better align with the cat's mental energy."

"Alpha, your name," Adam decided to name the cat.

After roughly getting it to accept the name through hypnosis, Adam left it alone.

Adam glanced at the few birds hopping around the room, still not planning to operate on them.

Birds have small bodies and short life cycles, but their complexity isn't reduced much, making surgeries on them intricate and requiring more practice.

After studying Alpha, it was already afternoon. Returning to the Reflection Tower felt like a waste of time.

So, Adam opened the box containing the temporary body of Jin and took out the clay, starting to practice the clay golem spell again.

Having failed once before, Adam's skill with clay golems improved rapidly, at least now forming a reasonable life cycle.

Soon, a human-sized golem stood up and began moving freely under Adam's control.

"The mental energy model is too simplistic, unable to perform many commands," Adam concluded after trying a few actions, such as splitting.

As a basic clay golem, making it more flexible required enriching its structure.

"Of course, the primary goal now is to make this thing my avatar, ensuring most people can't see through it," Adam examined the clay golem.

Currently, it resembled a terracotta warrior, a large clay figure easily identifiable as not real.

"Jin could transform this into an avatar using his black smoke, and I need something similar to substitute for the black smoke."

For teaching purposes, Jin would tell Adam everything, including techniques for condensing an avatar with black smoke, but these relied on the unique properties of black smoke.

Adam didn't possess black smoke, so replicating Jin's avatar technique required finding a substitute spell.

Adam had searched for similar spells but found them rare. Near-equivalent spells existed, like Mirror Image, which summons a mirror image of oneself.

However, these mirrors lack life essence and don't last long, only useful for short-term deception.

So, hoping for an existing spell was less feasible than adapting Jin's methods.

Jin's black smoke could highly simulate everything about him, and using clay as a medium, it formed a near-perfect avatar. What spell could highly simulate oneself?

Adam recalled various spells he had learned, finding none that fit the criteria.

After all, according to Jin, his black smoke was nearly forming a ritual. A single spell couldn't achieve such an effect.

"It seems I'll have to settle for less," Adam thought, since the mysterious renegade monk's disguise always wore a mask.

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