Soon after signing his name, Wulf ran out of free available mana, and he cut off the Skill before it chewed into his main core’s supply. There was a bit of a mental leap required to switch cores, and no Ascendant could accidentally switch, but Wulf wanted to be safe.

  The golem’s central cavity opened up, allowing him out, and just in time. Without his skill to control it, the potion slowly leaked out into the floor, but no one seemed to notice or care about the puddle.

  But it didn’t matter. Wulf had a solution to operate golems. His biggest limiting factors now were simple: he needed a way to gather tons of mana.

  ~ ~ ~

  On Fourthday, he met with Irmond in the dorms’ common room to talk.

  “We need to plan,” Wulf said. “The Fletchers are coming for us in a week, and if we don’t choose the place of engagement, we won’t have an advantage. They’ll be stronger than us, and they’ll be better equipped. And they’ll probably be after you first.”

  “You’re a Pilot,” Irmond said. “Should you…do this in a golem?”

  “That was what I was thinking,” Wulf said. “If you can lead them to the labs, I’ll be there, and I’ll do the rest. As long as it’s not too late at night, there will be plenty of eyes, and we won’t look like the aggressors.”

  “We…aren’t, right?” Irmond said.

  “Not really,” Wulf said. “They’ll try to spin it that way, though. I just have to make sure that I don’t get expelled, and then we’re good.”

  “And…then we’re good?”

  “I’ll see what I can do to make sure that this ends permanently.”

  “You’re gonna kill him?” Irmond exclaimed. “He’s a Middle-Coal! Even if you could, you’d incur the wrath of like…every guildy in the world.”

  “Not gonna kill him,” Wulf said. “In fact, I doubt I’ll be fighting Umoch himself.”

  “What?”

  “These families,” Wulf said, calling on knowledge from his past life, “are all the same. They don’t want their entire organizations to look weak, and they’ve trained their kids in etiquette, no doubt. It wouldn’t look good for Umoch if he didn’t have an underling capable of dealing with me.”

  “So he’ll try to send someone else to deal with you?”

  “Exactly. Probably someone around my tier, so it looks like a fair fight. So it looks like he has the most skilled Ascendants in his little posse.”

  “And once you beat up his underlings…?” Irmond asked.

  “You’ll see.” Wulf leaned back on the cushioned chair, basking in the warmth of the common room’s brazier. “Until then, you need to get good at running, and I need to make some more potions.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wulf spent his evenings in his portable alchemy lab. Since he planned on using a golem, he couldn’t pre-make a potion. He’d have to turn the golem into a potion right there, then activate [Arm of the Alchemist] before the potion seeped out. It’d require good timing, but also, a stronger potion would help him control the golem.

  So, with his remaining supply of vinegar, he created a tincture.

  His wine-watered grass was the perfect ingredient to begin with. Over the past few days, with how much mana-infused wine he’d fed it, it had become High-Wood quality. It had probably been close beforehand, not to mention the wine itself was High-Wood. Given enough time, he’d be able to advance the grass to higher tiers, but the higher he tried to advance it, the more mana-infused wine it’d take. There would be diminishing returns.

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  So, he plucked the grasses at a High-Wood level and created a tincture with them. After sifting out the remaining husks of grass, he distilled it into a higher-tier ingredient via boiling—now Low-Coal.

  In theory, if he had a strong enough aura, he could turn his golems into a Middle-Coal strength.

  Usually, a Golem’s strength scaled with its Pilot’s tier. [Arm of the Alchemist] would do the same, but it also scaled with the strength of the potion. If Wulf infused a golem with a high-power potion, he’d output significantly more strength than his tier usually would allow.

  After distilling his tincture, and getting his potion almost complete, he had a few vials’ worth left that wouldn’t fit in his flask.

  Those, he turned into potions intended for his consumption.

  But if only it was as simple as stirring and distilling. It turned out, if you tried to stir a distilling fluid quickly and uncaringly, you wouldn’t get good results. Even sometimes, when he didn’t stir it properly, didn’t follow the bubble patterns or mix up the areas of varied concentration, he could end up lowering the tier of his ingredients through his lack of skill.

  So, after ruining—or accidentally decreasing a tincture's quality down to Low-Wood—he stopped for the day. He'd been experimenting to see if stirring quickly, disregarding the movements of the Field, would hurt the potion terribly. It did.

  Potion making was more like cooking, in that regard. He couldn't just do random actions and hope for the best, even if he would end up transmuting a random potion anyway. He still needed it to have a high tier.

  Besides, the potion had a certain will to it, like the ingredients were trying to show him what they wanted to be. Though he could adjust how he stirred it, what he put in, and more, there was a reason a regular alchemist had to use certain ingredients to always make certain potions. The ingredients themselves were striving toward something too, and the Field wanted him to give them their purpose. He was a shepherd.

  But that also meant he had to focus.

  For a few days, instead of making potions, he practiced his technique. Stirring as best he could, he experimented with plain water, then with lower quality ingredients, until he could improve their tier through proper stirring and distillation every time.

  And then, only then, did he turn his last two vials into the best potions he could make. Stirring them with his best technique, listening to their will, and listening to what the Field saw for their futures. To top it all off, he consumed the last of his luck potion.

  In a matter of an hour, he created his two best potions yet:

  Strength Potion (Middle-Coal Quality)

  Greatly increases the user’s strength for thirty seconds.

  [By crafting a potion, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 32%]

  And:

  Fate Potion (Middle-Coal Quality)

  Increases the user’s luck for twelve minutes.

  [By crafting a potion, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 36%]

  He’d noticed that each increment of advancement progress was starting to differ. It was easy to keep track of through Low-Wood, but now, it seemed a lot more dependent on the potion he made, and perhaps how generous the Field was feeling.

  Or, maybe, it was just that certain potions were closer to his purpose than others. If a fire-aspect Mage killed an enemy with a sword, they’d gain a lot less mana than if they killed an enemy with fire. If a Pilot killed an enemy with stone, they’d gain more mana than with their bare fists.

  Even if he didn’t have an aspect yet, he’d be working toward one. Upon advancing to Copper tier, all Ascendants gained an aspect. It wasn’t always a broad element, and it usually impacted the Class. For example, in Wulf’s past life, he was a [Granite Warrior Pilot], not just [Pilot].

  In that regard, Classes could become much more unique as an Ascendant gained tiers.

  On Thirdday evening, almost exactly two weeks since he’d been reborn, he began experimenting with his secondary storage core. Most other Ascendants at his tier wouldn’t have the control to split their core like he had, so no one would expect him to have such a large well of free available mana, but he still wanted to make it larger. He’d filled it up and drained it a few times these past few weeks—once in the second golem lab, and a couple other times while practicing [Arm of the Alchemist]. It’d expanded slightly, and it was bursting at the seams right now.

  Still…there was a way to make it larger. Master Arnau had talked briefly about it, and if he recalled right. If refilling and emptying it could expand it, then…by guiding the mana in and out, not to fuel a Skill, but just into his body, he could theoretically begin growing his mana storage.

  All evening, when Ján was fast asleep on his bed, and all the other students in the dorms had disappeared for the night, Wulf sat at his desk. In the light of a flickering candle, he practiced mana movements.

  It didn’t matter if his mana moved like a charging bull. He targeted his storage core with his will and emptied it, but just into his body. A faint heat swelled around his gut, and a pattern of veins shone blue beneath his light tunic.

  Then, he pulled all the mana back, pushing it into his core as fast as he could, like he was filling a balloon with a single breath.

  It expanded slightly, but only up to a certain point. He’d need more mana to expand it more, and he wasn’t taking from his main core unless absolutely necessary to keep himself alive. He also wasn’t in the mood to make more potions for the night.

  Tomorrow, he’d figure out if his efforts had been enough. If he didn’t win, and if he didn’t get Umoch off their backs, Irmond was going to suffer. But more than that, if he didn’t stay in control of the situation, Umock would spin it in a way that didn’t favour Wulf.

  There was a high chance he got himself expelled tomorrow.