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"Thanks," I said.

"No~w that you’ve accomplished the basics, we need to practice working under an oxygen-deprived domain." Elana pulled out different powders provided by the alchemy station, mixing them with alcohol to create a paste. She picked up a spoon, and drops of it splattered in the bowl. "Your turn."

I grabbed a bowl and the ingredients, as hers was an illusion, and then set to work. I made it fine, but once I added the last ingredient, the bowl rattled violently as the contents snapped together as if frozen in ice, cracking and creating ridges like mountains forming.

"W-What the hell was that?" I stammered.

Elana smiled. "This is a compound that rapidly oxidizes, creating a solid."

I grimaced, trying to remind myself that this was another world. Oxidation was famous for tarnishing and rusting metals and also for oxidizing surfaces to make them more flammable, but it didn’t usually create solids. It did play significant processes in drying oils for paints and varnishes, which established cross-links between the oil and unsaturated fats, leading to a hard film. But… nothing like this.

"I see…" I said.

"It’s very volatile, obviously. Your job is to remove oxygen from your domain to prevent it from oxidizing."

I placed my palms on the counter and collapsed onto them weakly. "How am I supposed to do that? You’re talking about molecular separation."

"It’s part of the separation spell, yes?"

"Which tier?" Separation was a five tier collection spell, which was to say that it was five spells that contributed to the same operation, rather than a single spell, like Active Camouflage, that obtained more functionality as it improved. I only knew the first tier—and I sucked at it.

"Third," Elana said with a sadistic smile.

I wanted to respond but lacked the understanding of the situation to complain. So I pushed myself up off the counter, standing there like a plank for a few seconds. "How long’ll this take?" I asked.

"It’ll take as long as it takes," Elana said, gesturing for me to sit. "Let’s chant."

My shoulders slumped as I sat on the ground impatiently. I wanted to get stronger, not spend another week practicing the alchemy—

—but that’s what happened. Only it was six weeks.

2.

Aiden spent a platinum request he got from the Trial of Worth on a skill to borrow a contracted beast’s eyes and body. Halten wouldn’t allow him to take over his eyes, let alone his body, but he did allow Aiden to connect to his eyes.

And so, Aiden took to the skies on Halten’s back, using a specialized harness that gave him a little more freedom. It was slow. Halten could barely fly under the curse—and he was helpless to magic.

Areswood Defense Alliance officials and guards stood outside, each pointing bows tattooed with arrays and runes. They didn’t look particularly intimidating, but Halten’s wings flapped weakly, and he grunted and wheezed. It felt like the true weight of his injuries was on display without magical backing, and he was aging rapidly. He needed healing—real healing—or he would die.

Keep focused, Aiden, Halten said. We must practice.

Aiden nodded and closed his eyes, seeing the world through Halten’s vision. Then he broke out and looked back as Halten took over his. It felt like someone pierced his mind with a syringe, and his eyes itched, but he could feel Halten using his vision.

Good, Halten said. Next.

Aiden put his hands onto Halten’s scales and started using a healing spell that made his scales glitter with golden light. It was surprisingly extensive, rippling all the way to his wings.

It was a diamond spell he bought after earning one for taming Skia, the demigod fox—and the mana costs were proportional. Aiden collapsed seconds in, collapsing forward, held in place by his harness.

You must cleanse and build a core, Halten said. You should use your largest requests to build one.

Aiden smiled wryly. He had one platinum request, but he didn’t know what to spend it on. Core building? Or security? That was the ultimate question that he was agonizing over.

Is it that important?

Halten snorted.

More important than getting a better deal with another family? Aiden asked. Brexton was using him and Everen was trying to bleed him dry. Family members were watching him from the sidelines, always trying to speak to him. He needed protection. Yet Halten seemed unconcerned.

Yes. Your core is more important than anything. It’s up to you to deal with the families. You have leverage—use it.

Aiden smiled wryly. He needed to buy a cleansing elixir, which meant dealing with sketchy families and building a core. Then, he needed to speak to beast healers…

It would be difficult—but he had a plan.

That night, he paid a trip to The Nest and found himself ushered into a private room, where a woman was bitterly correcting her hair and looking at Aiden like he had ruined her life.

"Don’t mind her," Brexton said, smiling slightly. "Now tell me. What brings you to this dark and dingy establishment? I thought you’d never speak to me again."

Aiden’s blood boiled, but he contained himself. "You want me to succeed, right? That’s why you drugged me, right? Why you did all this?"

Brexton clapped and grinned, pointing them at Aiden. "Exactly."

"Then make me stronger," Aiden said. "For free. On contract. No sketchy shit."

"Ooooh? That’s rather bold of you to ask."

"You owe me. And I don’t owe you anything. Fuck with me again and I’ll go to the Dante. I’m one request away from getting their help with everything."

"And he did his homework," Brexton mused. "So why are you here?"

The reason was simple—if someone taught him the wrong core technique, it would remove his ability to use magic forever. There were countless cases where teachers intentionally crippled cores to prevent talented people from challenging the might of the families. Therefore, if he wanted a core, he had to pay for it, and he only had one platinum request. If he paid for the Dante’s support, he would get a nasty set of contractual obligations on what they wanted. Elle warned him about this after he used an information request. Her words were:

Careful there, cowboy! I know you’re salty, but consider the world you’re in. The whole thing’s terrible—terrible, I tell you! If you think the Claustra are bad, wait until you meet the other six! The Dante cull their young in death matches at age five, and the Melhans will string you dry with so many contracts that you’ll never see an animal again! No, no, no. What you need is someone who doesn’t want your life or money and a nasty, nasty contract from a badass lady that’ll bleed ’em dry and mess ’em up if he acts up.

The Oracle could negotiate loop-holeless contracts for a price—and a gold could prevent people from even looking at Aiden wrong. His competitors, like the Melhan or other families that stood to gain from Mira’s resources, wouldn’t accept a contract that could prevent them from engaging in the market for centuries, which is why Elle suggested he go to the Claustra, a family that was forbidden to get into the sale of resources. The question was whether Brexton would take it.

Aiden stared him down in the present and put it to the test. "’Cause my competitors won’t make a gold contract with me. Question is—will you?"

Brexton grinned and leaned in, forearms on his knees. "A gold request, huh? You mean business. Tell me, Aiden. What do I get out of this arrangement?"

Aiden told him. Brexton readily agreed. The Oracle carved a contract from stone that required Brexton to protect Aiden from everyone, provide Aiden with tutors, resources, and training, and close all means for Brexton to exploit Aiden for any gain other than the agreed upon price—

—under threat of intense punishments.

Brexton grinned and pulled out a box, exposing a cleansing elixir and a bathroom in the room. "Now that that’s out of the way," he said. "Enjoy the worst twelve hours of your life."

It was time for Aiden to get stronger.

It took two weeks for me to establish a hold of the second stage of the Separation spell—four more weeks to learn the third. It’s hard to conceptualize what it is, but I’ll try my best to explain it.

Separation works by passing mana through an object like an MRI or X-ray, allowing the mage (if you could call these people "mages") to grab certain molecules with telekinesis.

In the first tier, it’s a selective version of using your fingers. You can grab wyndrel fruit pulp selectively and rip it off something else. It’s a simple process—grab a chunk of something and separate it from something else. It is like selectively tagging one thing.

The second tier was much harder to establish. It requires the mage to pinpoint specific things by patterns and separate multiple at the same time. Imagine capturing the skin of a fruit, the pulp, and the shell surrounding a kernel and separating them simultaneously.

That led to the third tier, which required me to selectively pull individual molecules out of the air.

This was both easier and exponentially more difficult than you can imagine. On the one hand, magic could create water out of nothing, which simply took water from the atmosphere and condensed it together using a specific spell. It was similar, but it required finding that molecule, differentiating it, and then pulling it together like a magnet.

To do this type of training, I had to close my eyes and spend hours a day sending out a pulse of net of raw mana, memorizing all the different molecules in the air. Then, I had to selectively grab them and pull them together.

I failed.

A lot.

And Elana never turned down an opportunity to point that out, chastising me to get my head out of the clouds and stop daydreaming about men and delusions of grandeur as if I was thinking about anything other than my daily splitting headache.

Between sessions, I practiced mental shielding to ease my mind, took my basic mana challenge recovery syrup to ease my channels, and then threaded cores to gather more mana. Then I went back to it.

Two hours later, I’d find Kline lying in front of me, ears twitching—two more beasts dead near the fire.

I petted him and skinned the beasts and put them on the flames before returning.

It wasn’t an easy undertaking. Some days, I would open my eyes to find my whole body sunburnt and peeling. Kline woke me up on others because I was soaked and shivering.

I ended up spending most days in the tent at Kline prowled, being the breadwinner, and bringing food to the dinner table. I skinned and cooked it, giving him heavy helpings, smiling when I watched him smack his jaws and shake his fur happily.

It was a good life—

—and it was easy.

That was the remarkable thing. When I wasn’t fighting for my life and looking out for trap plants and poisonous plants, it wasn’t hard to live. So I studied on as Kline practiced his mysterious powers in the woods and pressed on.

A week after separating the third spell, I could separate sand and clay from dirt and levitate all of them in a sphere, using Pervasive Breeze to throw them away—then capture them. By the second, I could snuff out flames by depriving them of oxygen and separating soot from smoke, collecting it into a ball of ash.

In total, it took four weeks to learn Separation—

—but that didn’t help me complete the task.

I had to create a domain and use Separation within it to remove the objects—which was impossible since my soul force prevented me from using magic in the environment!

It felt impossible, and Elana wouldn’t comment on it. So I practiced day and night, trying to penetrate it, trying different approaches, separating oxygen first, and trying to move it in with zero results.

Some nights, Kline snuggled up against my chest to cheer me up and stayed around for my lectures with Elana to hiss at her and tell her to ease up. I pressed on.

It was only halfway through the second week when I realized what I was doing wrong. Instead of injecting my mana into my domain, I had to utilize the mana inside it—as it wasn’t affected. It was just locked inside like a bubble that only I could use. I couldn’t do it—but I could utilize mana… sort of.

I yelled at Elana for not mentioning it. She chastised me for giving up on trying to figure it out a few days in and spending six weeks doing the same thing. I huffed and reminded her that she was my teacher.

She ignored me, but she did teach me how to blend my mana with my soul force—

—and we carried on.

A week later, I managed to create a water sphere inside my domain. By the end of the following, I could separate rocks in the group. Then, a day past six weeks, I managed to regulate oxygen within my domain.

I pumped my fists triumphantly. "I did it!"

Elana clapped a few times melodically from her parasol-shaded chair as if to start a slow clap or lead a villainous monologue. I turned and found her lifting the oxidizing chemicals as if to say, You haven’t even started.

I cried internally and pressed on.

It took a week of fighting through rain and wind and shine for me to pull it off, but I did it. I wrapped the table in a domain except my head, and used Separation to remove the oxygen. I carefully added the ingredients to the bowl and mixed the chemicals together. Once I finished, I created a paste, mixed it around, and then lifted a spoonful to Elana like it was gelato.

"Excellent job," she said. "Took nearly two months, but you can finally handle a basic alchemy procedure."

My entire shoulder spasmed, and I broke the barrier. The gray goo on the spoon rapidly hardened, exploding and sending flakes of cracked clay slamming into my shirt.

"Oh dear," Elana said dryly.`

I glowered at her, and she rolled her eyes. "How did I end up with a pupil so humorless? Mira. You did excellent. Years above your peers. If you want even more validation, you must first appreciate your teacher."

My eyes lit up excitedly, and she blushed slightly at my aggressive response. Then, her face twitched, and she looked away in embarrassment.

I keep forgetting gods are just people… I silently giggled, seeing her regretting her praise. It was rude to revel in her embarrassment, but I did feel good. I did it. I really did it.

"Now listen, Mira," Elana said. "The recipe I alluded to previously is misleading. It will create the elixir I showed you—but it makes up for it with powerful enchantments. Those are out of your reach, so we must supplement it with ingredients that are. Coincidentally, these are also ingredients that are part of your Tribute. So this is a great opportunity to get some experience. You’ll also get to try out your domain."

I smiled. It was a long ass haul, but I finally learned valuable battle magic and alchemy skills. Now, it was time to put it to use.