This question left Sarah speechless.
Of course, mental energy injuries would affect the total mental energy. For example, after the inspector was injured, she couldn't draw a single card, and all the mental energy she could use was just enough to sign Sarah's recommendation letter.
As for Sarah's injuries, there were too many to count.
The most recent one was a few months ago at the Axiom Prime auction when she pushed herself to the limit modifying cards. Her head had hurt then, but compared to the injuries from the big explosion afterwards, it seemed insignificant. Without Professor Sun's question, Sarah might not have even remembered that headache.
If we disregard the passage of time completely, the most severe and frequent injuries probably occurred during her early days of practicing card repair.
Sarah could roughly estimate that she had been injured at least tens of thousands of times.
However, because she always felt better after a short recovery period following each injury, Sarah never paid much attention to it.
Mental energy could self-repair.
Sarah even felt that her recovery speed was getting faster over time. For instance, at the beginning, a headache would last for ten days to half a month, but later, Sarah would only feel pain for a few hours, and it didn't even affect her activities.
Before she could draw purple cards, Sarah had never worried about her mental energy. She even thought she had quite abundant mental energy.
Sarah always believed these minor injuries had no real impact on her.
It wasn't until Sarah started drawing purple cards that she finally felt her mental energy was insufficient, but she didn't take it seriously.
— At her age, it was normal to find it challenging to draw such high-level cards, right?
Now thinking about it... perhaps she had been injured too many times when practicing card repair as a child, so her mental energy points hadn't increased in quantity but had all gone into recovery speed?
Of course, it was also possible that Sarah's total mental energy was inherently low, which was why it recovered quickly.
Sarah wasn't sure about the situation.
However, pondering why this happened wasn't very meaningful now; the focus should definitely be on how to solve it.
"Is there any way to increase mental energy?" Sarah asked Professor Sun directly.
Hearing Sarah avoid the topic, Professor Sun knew that Sarah had indeed suffered mental energy injuries. She looked at Sarah incredulously, unable to understand how a child who had just come of age could end up in such a state.
But thinking about how Sarah could build instruments on her own despite her average foundation, Professor Sun realized there must be many untold stories in Sarah's past, so she didn't ask further.
Professor Sun directly took out a device from her spatial pocket and placed it against Sarah's forehead. Soon, the device beeped and lit up green.
"This was something I bought because of my troublesome mother's mental energy damage," Professor Sun explained. "It hasn't been used much since she ran off with a bunch of grudges, but I guess it's come in handy for you now."
The device was simple, just checking the state of mental energy. Green meant good, yellow meant rest needed, and red meant damage.
Seeing that Sarah's test result was green, Professor Sun breathed a sigh of relief and tucked the device back into her pocket. "Your mental energy is in good condition now. The low total caused by mental energy damage isn't actually a big problem; it will eventually increase back to normal."
Sarah laughed awkwardly.
The large amount of frequent mental damage had happened six or seven years ago. After that, she had at most occasionally done things that exhausted her mental energy... that's all.
Ahem.
Thinking about how she had barely rested for the past two months, Sarah felt a bit guilty.
Although she didn't have much awareness of self-care, having such a low total after such a long time made Sarah feel uneasy, unlike Professor Sun's assurance.
However, Sarah didn't voice these insecurities about her condition. Instead, she looked at Professor Sun pitifully and asked, "Can I enroll with 193 points?"
Good question.
Professor Sun once again remembered her original purpose for coming to Sarah's research room.
Originally, Professor Sun had been thinking about how to set the exam questions, but now it seemed she might not need to consider that problem anymore.
But this student, Sarah, was someone Professor Sun truly wanted now.
Not to mention anything else, this mental energy total testing device was a good thing!
Repairing the damaged device would at most balance the books; the copyright of the repaired device wasn't in their hands, so they couldn't make a second one to sell.
But this mental energy total testing device was different; it was entirely Sarah's own design.
If they removed the parts that Sarah had reluctantly made large due to component issues, the current person-high volume could be directly reduced to the size of a backpack, and the cost could be very low, only about 600,000 to 700,000 star coins to make.
She had gone through Sarah's entire blueprint and naturally saw that those sensing components were all replaceable. It seemed to have considered compatibility with five common detection values. It might be a bit more troublesome to operate, needing to change modules for each test, and it couldn't compare to "Thirty Billion" in terms of comprehensive testing values, but it only cost 600,000 to 700,000 star coins!
With a cost of 600,000 to 700,000, selling it for 3 to 4 million wouldn't be unreasonable, would it? That's all profit coming back!
Although the bulk of the profits from research results of institute members went to the individuals, the institute also took a small share.
This was all money!
Professor Sun had already listed Sarah as a future member of the Mental Control Research Institute.
Regarding Sarah's enrollment, Professor Sun's desire was even stronger than Sarah's own.
After all, if Sarah failed to enroll at Axiom Central University, she could still try other schools, but without Sarah as a student, Professor Sun would truly have to bear the debt alone!
Actually, there were quite a few ways to increase mental energy, especially for Sarah's situation where the insufficiency was caused by injuries rather than a small mental sea capacity problem.
The simplest, cheapest method was, of course, rest, but it was completely impossible to rest from 193 points to over 500 in two months. Professor Sun wouldn't dream of that.
As for other methods, they all required money.
Once again, anything related to card-making was never cheap.
Each option made Professor Sun feel the poverty of her wallet.
Fortunately, Professor Sun quickly thought of a place where they might not need to spend money.
"Has anyone told you about the enrollment assessment before?" Professor Sun turned to ask Sarah.
Not knowing why Professor Sun suddenly brought this up, Sarah nodded nonetheless. "Professor Mo mentioned to me that there might be an exam."
A sly smile appeared on Professor Sun's face: "If you help me solve that device in my research institute, I'll arrange a big exam for you instead!"
Sarah: "..." Somehow, this doesn't sound like a good thing.
But as a worker under the director's name, Sarah obviously had no right to refuse.
Thus, the analyzer that was originally planned to take more than a month to complete was repaired after the school's final exams ended.
This wasn't due to Professor Sun's skill level; it was mainly because these academics were used to only doing design, and they were indeed... a bit weak when it came to mechanical manufacturing.
Moreover, Professor Sun was already accustomed to using the best or most convenient methods to solve problems, and due to lack of money and more lack of money, she had to handcraft many components from materials herself — this even stunned Sarah. The efficiency of such handcrafting was certainly not as fast as Sarah's "use whatever works" approach.
... It was just that when Professor Sun saw Sarah pulling out certain components from her own spatial pocket, her gaze became a bit peculiar.
However, when Sarah's gaze fell on the materials that Professor Sun took out of her pocket, Professor Sun acted as if nothing had happened.
The pot calling the kettle black.
In any case, after the final exams ended, the Dean of the Card Engineering School at Axiom Central University, who had just relaxed, welcomed an unexpected visitor.
Seeing Professor Sun's smiling face, the Dean: "..."
Wanted to close the door.
People from this school smiling like that never brought anything good!
Seeing the Dean's expression change drastically after opening the door, Professor Sun very cleverly squeezed into the Dean's office, giving him no chance to change his mind, and shouted loudly: "Dean, I'm here to submit an application for the recommended personnel assessment!"
Hearing Professor Sun's words, the Dean finally remembered what had happened more than two months ago, feeling... quite strange.
The student recommended by that Inspector Vega was actually so well-behaved? It seemed like there hadn't been any trouble in these two months.