Having grasped the Profound Mysteries of Quadratics to the point where he could instantly solve for quadratics equations, Shuxue’s greatest weapon, apart from Zhujiao, was his quadratics attacks!

Quadratics attacks were attacks of the early Algebra stage, but that didn’t matter when Shuxue could shoot out five quadratics dragons per second. And not only that; the profundity of his quadratics attacks infinitely neared infinity.

What this meant was that even though Shuxue was using early Algebra stage techniques, they were being executed with the profundity of the peak peak Algebra stage knowledge and understanding of Quadratics!

Shuxue’s quadratics dragons would use the same amount of mathforce and technique, but they would be stronger than the quadratics dragons of others!

“Wow, it’s like power levels are complete bullshit or something!” Shuxue shouted as his fists vibrated, sending out 25 quadratics dragons over the span of 5 seconds. Each of them smashed straight through the shields of the various disciples and shredded them into meat patties.

“Zhujiao’s rubbing off on me.” Shuxue thought as he released another 25 quadratics dragons. “I’m inputting 600 points of mathforce into each attack, which means I used up 30,000 points of mathforce so far in this fight. I spent 30,000 points of mathforce earlier getting onto this floor. My mathforce pool is only 50,000, but I still have 20,000 points of mathforce left! It’s like energy consumption is complete bullshit or something!”

50 disciples had been killed in the blink of an eye. Interestingly… all the corpses had been black-robed disciples of the Ji Clan!

“I just found out something shocking!” Shuxue shouted to Zhujiao, who was still charging up his factorial mathforce channeling equation.

“What?!” Zhujiao shouted as his Plot Armor blocked a flying calculus-grade sword, which seemed to follow a profound trajectory as it traveled from the elder to Zhujiao.

“Don’t harm the silver-robed man anymore, Zhujiao! That man in black robes manipulated the silver-robed man! The silver-robed man is entirely innocent of premeditated rape!” Shuxue said, a devious glint in his eye. He wasn’t lying when he spoke that last sentence. To the best of his knowledge, at least.

“But he has Calculus pearls!” Zhujiao shouted, blocking the gusts of air created by the black-robed elder’s Calculus fan. “Only thieves have pearls, because all the pearls are belong to me!”

Shuxue groaned to himself. “I’m sure we can work out a deal with him!”

“I don’t negotiate with thieves!” Zhujiao roared, sending a 362,880 blasting the silver-robed elder back. The silver-robed elder blocked the attack with a strange symbol, dy/dx. He was completely unfazed by an attack of that magnitude!

“362,880 units of Arithmetic mathforce is a large number, but my derivative shield reduces all that to zero!” The Argent Heaven elder shouted.

“What!” Zhujiao yelled. “That’s not fair! You can’t have armor like that!”

“Speak for yourself, you motherfucker!” The black-robed elder cursed, sending a cloud that coalesced around Zhujiao. The Plot Armor glimmered, and the cloud was instantly shattered.

“AHH! My Calculus cloud!” The Ji Clan elder looked like he was about to explode from anger. “My Calculus fan! My Calculus bottle gourd! My flying Calculus sword! My Calculus incense sticks! How dare you destroy all my profound artifacts! I’ll kill you!”

The Argent Heaven elder smiled. “Looks like eyebrow lengths aren’t the determinant of who wins and who loses after all! Ho ho ho, it’s too bad you’re too stupid to know how to make a Derivative artifact!”

“Shut up!” The Ji Clan elder screamed. “I know you bought that derivative artifact at a discount sale hosted by the Whitecloud Sector!”

“It was a discount auction! If we bought an item, they would shave off 50% of our next bid! There’s a difference, it takes skill to win a discount auction!” The Argent Heaven was indignant.

“Dammit.” The Ji Clan elder was cursing as Zhujiao broke his Calculus tissue box. “Everybody knows that discounted items are definitely trash products! I guess even the farmer who waits at a tree stump will eventually catch a rabbit to eat! You got lucky with that purchase!”

“Luck is part of skill, Elder Ji.” An Argent Heaven disciple chimed in smugly.

“Yeah, don’t be bitter, Elder Ji.” Another Argent Heaven disciple said.

“When meat pies fall from the heavens, it is the people outside who reap the rewards.” The Argent Heaven elder sniffed as a 3,628,800 was vaporized by his derivative artifact. “You can only blame yourself for being inside your secluded meditation, causing you to miss out on that heaven-sent bargain auction.”

Then, his eyes bugged. “What the fuck are you disciples doing, kill that punk!”

Shuxue groaned. “Damn, he had to point it out.” Along with the Argent Heaven disciples, he had been spectating the fight for the last thirty seconds.

“Fellow Mathivators!” Bendan shouted. “We must kill this man, else our fellow disciple will never rest in peace!”

“Inner Disciple Bendan, that boy is too strong! We’ll all be joining fellow disciple Ji Luyuan (meaning: Note taker) in the graves if we do!”

“That doesn’t matter at all!” Bendan said solemnly. “He killed our fellow disciple, so we are obligated to kill ourselves taking revenge for him!”

“Oh my god, you’re right! Kill him!” “Kill!” “Kill!” The disciples readied their weapons, advancing with gusto.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Shuxue said. “Time out!”

All of the disciples stopped.

“What this Bendan man said is incorrect! You should never take revenge for somebody dead!” Shuxue lifted up a finger as he spoke. “You see, now that that guy is dead, he can never come back! Acting on the basis of the fact that he died would be acting according to the sunk cost fallacy!”

“Okay, so what?” Bendan took out some paper and a pencil to take notes with. This is what is called, gaining benefits even in the midst of great danger.

“Even if you all die killing me, your one fellow disciple won’t come back from the grave. You see, he is an irretrievable sunk cost!” Solera said solemnly. “Taking revenge, according to the profound laws of mathematical economics, is not economically efficient. It’s best just to let things go.”

One Argent Heaven disciple nodded vigorously. “Yes, now that we’ve lost him, we’ll never get Luyuan back. Besides, his name was Ji Luyuan. He was definitely an undercover agent from the Ji Clan!”

“Wow, you’re right! Why didn’t I think about that before?” “Wait, but the two Ji’s sound a little different.”

“It doesn’t matter, Ji is Ji is Ji!” Shuxue said gleefully. He hadn’t thought about this train of logic. It took a genuine idiot to think up something that stupid. “I was actually rooting out a traitor! You should all reward me with your jade slips!”

In the distance, Zhujiao finally slayed the Ji Clan elder, but nobody paid any attention.

“No, that would be economically inefficient!” The Argent Heaven disciple who had previously been agreeing with Shuxue spoke again. “Now that this boy has killed the traitor, it’s in the past. The traitor is already dead; even if we rewarded the killer with jade slips, the traitor won’t come back to life. There’s no point in giving him rewards, because the death of the traitor is a sunk gain, which is a reverse sunk cost!”

Bendan was excitedly scribbling onto the paper. “As the rumors say, the profound mysteries of economics are completely counterintuitive! Never take revenge! Never give rewards! What will you tell us next, stock prices go up because people believe they will?”

As Bendan was talking, Shuxue’s eyelids were twitching from irritation. His own bullshit argument had been used against him!

“Bah, whatever. They probably only have trash jade slips anyway.” Shuxue muttered to himself, before raising his voice. “Zhujiao, spare that old fool’s life! I have a plan!”

“Fine!” Zhujiao shouted, teleporting back to Shuxue. His face was red from frustration. “I used up, like, 420 hundred thousand Arithmetic pearls in my attacks! I’m so poor now, I dropped a level!”

Shuxue rolled his eyes. “I already figured out the secret of that derivative shield. You’re doing it all wrong, Zhujiao. Watch the master!”

Shuxue leaped into the air, preparing to subdue the Argent Heaven elder.

“Should we help Elder Yin (meaning: Silver)?” An Argent Heaven disciple asked.

“No, because they are already fighting, that would be a sunk cost.” The economics expert nodded sagely.

“All right, let’s get back to solving these mysterious equations then.” Bendan said. He began to shoot random numbers off at the strange monsters.

Shuxue raised a single finger at Elder Yin, vibrating it countless times. Before Elder Yin could deactivate the derivative artifact, thousands of illusory 1s had already flown into it.

After the first 50 1s, the derivative artifact began to crack. After the next 75, it was nearing the point of breaking. Another 75, and the derivative artifact shattered into pieces. The Argent Heaven elder stared in shock as he saw the dy/dx symbol dissipate away.

“Haha, I knew it!” Shuxue laughed.

Elder Yin stood there in shock. “H-how did you know?” He spluttered.

Shuxue sneered at him. “There are only 3 categories of shields: subtraction shields, ratio shields, and every other kind of shield!”

“Yeah, you don’t say.” The elder growled.

Ignoring him, Shuxue continued. “Subtraction shields trade one unit of mathforce to dispel one unit of the enemy’s mathforce attack. You couldn’t possibly endure 3,000,000 units of mathforce, much less 39,916,800! It couldn’t possibly be a subtraction shield.”

“Yeah, I know that, I’m not an idiot!” The elder was growing impatient.

“Ratio shields block part of the attack, trading off mathforce at a favorable rate. For example, cutting 50% off a 1000 unit mathforce attack at the cost of 25% of the 1000 unit mathforce attack. Thus, you gain 500-250=250 units of mathforce, a favorable exchange, but you still have to deal with 500 units of mathforce. Can it be that you would take on any reasonable percentage of a number like 39,916,800?”

“I already know all this! How stupid do you think I am?” Elder Yin yelled.

“The third and final category, everything else! Your shield clearly wasn’t a subtraction shield or a ratio shield, but a shield that fits into the third category! These third category shields do a certain kind of defense for a set cost, regardless of the magnitude of the attack it faces. Your shield could only be that third kind of shield, which is easily broken by repetitive attacks!” Shuxue said, smirking smugly.

“Yeah, no shit!” Elder Yin said. Then, his eyebrows lifted. “Oh, so that’s how you figured it out. You’re a genius!”

Shuxue began laughing. “No need to say the obvious, elder of the Argent Heaven Sector. Right now, the fact that I’ve gotten rid of your shield is as clear as the crystal odyssey pills my Sector subordinates at the profound Infinity pill furnace are concocting at this very moment! My friend here can kill you at any time. It’ll take him a little while to recharge his mathforce channeling equation, but you’ll still be dead meat! Unless you don’t want to die, you had better do what I say!”

Author note:

“It took a genuine idiot to think up something that stupid.” xD