If you want to see progress, you have to put in the work, this was the law of life.
Draco was currently doing so with full seriousness, focusing mostly on his conversion efficiency. The previous few times he had entered such seclusions to work on refinement, he mostly focused on either breaking through his current stage or accumulating knowledge of various materials.
This helped him now since his energy conversion efficiency was split into two pathways, Overall and Specific.
Overall in this case referred to his average conversion efficiency regardless of the item being changed while the Specific focused on his efficiency between two specific items.
For example, if Draco continued singlemindedly practicing by changing the dirt on this barren planet to iron, his Specific Efficiency might reach 99%but his overall might only be 88%. He would be incredibly efficient when changing dirt to iron, but if he was given a leaf to change into water, he would have far less efficiency.
Norma spent years in the mortal stage, almost exhausting her lifespan. She spent most of that time researching the nature of materials while also converting between many types in order to broaden her scope and raise her conversion efficiency as high as possible.
Draco too, had to do the same. It was the same with traditional medicine or any discipline that required technical and delicate knowledge. At the 'apprentice' or 'starter' level, you mostly had to accumulate theory knowledge and do some basic practical work to set up your foundation.
Once you become sufficiently proficient, you can advance to the next level of actual practical work that involves some professional aspects, advancing you to the basic level of the technical profession in question.
So Draco was in the midst of that nerd college phase where he was supposed to be running up and down the hall to classes in order to absorb as much knowledge as possible before the exam.
However, through some fluke, he had skipped a lot of classes and forged his name on the test sheets while cheating in the finals, having been previously promoted to the next level. He had made do while being in the next stage by utilizing his cheats, but now he had signed back up for the first year of college to genuinely learn and progress.
So in this state, his year 1 topics were: Basic overall conversion efficiency.
Draco was aiming to reach a basic conversion efficiency of 50%.
It was a simple and honest goal, one that was achievable even if he only converted one item repeatedly since the actual goal was to increase his will and mental power. The surprisingly pleasant thing was the speed at which he was achieving it.
Cough, if it wasn't already clear, Draco was equipped with the 'villain protagonist' template, which was important because it contained 'protagonist'. So Draco had protagonist-like traits despite being an Evil Bastard.
One of those traits was the famous 'Great Energy', where protagonists had energy beyond the level of even the most seasoned top fighters in their universe, but most of it was untapped and used crudely.
Similar to Naruto's humongous Chakra reserves or Ichigo who has spiritual energy surpassing even Kempachi.
Like them too, Draco often used it crudely and only trained it in passing when he had free time or when the situation forced him to. In this case, his human bloodline bears control, and his various 100 branches have mental empowerment, such as the Devil, Synchronic Beastmastery, Shamanism, and Celestial Overlord branches.
(AN: The list of currently unlocked bloodline branches for Draco and Eva is in chapter 898 while Shuangtian is in chapter 959.)
Refinement was a top-tier art that was worth the investment no matter how much time it took, and seeing the progress it made heartened him greatly. He knew that as long as he kept with it, there was a good chance he could achieve all his goals, and that was fine enough.
However, Draco was a busy man and he had a lot of responsibilities to fulfill now. All his core members had come up and Eva was working on handling the ministry while Shuangtian was dealing with the establishment of the city and the territory.
His job was to oversee the growth in power of the pantheon, starting with himself. Working on Refinement was one part of that, but it couldn't lag behind his own personal power. As such, he left the Morningstar World and went down to the main plane through the Ascension Road.
Appearing in the Rank 7 Church on the main plane, Draco felt nostalgic. He disappeared into space and appeared above the city, glancing down with a dazed look.
The tiny settlement he named after Eva to show his devotion to her had now grown into this, huh?
For the next hour, he simply teleported to old places that he had visited on this continent in this timeline and the next. He even visited the grove where he seduced Eva into giving him her virginity in the previous timeline.
At that time, she had been angered by vice-guild leader number 2, Local Lord, and stormed off. Sublime of that timeline gave him a look and began beating Local Lord openly, forcing the bastard to defend himself since he cared about reputation a lot.
Meanwhile, Draco chased after Eva after Sublime gave him a signal and they were in a small clearing with a picturesque groove that was on the way to their next dungeon meet. Draco, the shameless and relatively naive version of him back then, naturally uplifted Eva's mood with his antics, making her feel extremely touched.
The scene had been set and the mood quickly became ambiguous. They had already previously done many things, so it wasn't long before they were soiling the place with their debaucherous actions.
However, Eva was still hesitant about going all the way, even Boundless, because she still felt guilt towards the Lucifer Lineage prodigy who she was supposedly supposed to be betrothed to.
After all, the fella had been crippled to save her and was somewhere in the mortal world suffering, if not dead. However, her affection for Draco was a flowing river - literally - and she loved him so much.
In the end, between the transient Lucifer lineage prodigy and the physically present Draco, Eva eventually made her choice and they were joined in passion.
Draco - the current Draco - landed in the groove and folded his arms with a strange smile. So was this considered cuckolding or cheating? Did he cuck himself? Did Eva cheat on him with himself?
What a complicated situation. He was drawn to Eva without even seeing her beauty due to their fateful connection, bloodline crippled or not. Eva was likewise drawn to him, otherwise it was hard to reconcile that she would fall in love with him out of all the fellows around her.
If it was because previous timeline Draco was funny, shameless, and handsome, well so was RamButt, but did Eva like RamButt? No.
She ended up falling in love with the Lucifer lineage prodigy as destiny foretold with knowing he was the Lucifer lineage prodigy and without knowing she was drawn to him precisely because of that.
No wonder there had been so many misunderstandings in the previous timeline, this was a literal seedbed for doubts and confusion to sprout.
Draco fondly remembered how stupid he and Eva were during their first time, but absolutely clueless and completely lost. It was clumsy, it was loud and there was a good chance that someone - or everyone - from Darkrow's core membership had heard or suspected something, but if given the chance Draco would do it no other way.