“A letter for… Lee? Lee Hill?”

  The voice jolted him out of his thoughts. “Coming,” he instinctively responded as he stood up to walk towards the door.

  As he opened the door, he was greeted by the mailman—he wasn’t quite sure if this was the same mailman as before, but he grabbed the letter regardless. “Thanks.”

  “Yup,” the mailman seemed busy, so Lee closed the door as the mailman rushed off to deliver more mail to the other tenants in the apartment. The letter was the same as before—a letter of his invitation into the Artificer’s College. He could join the College again. It’d most likely end up better than before, though he doubted he could land a better job.

  As an artificer bound to a job, however, he found that… he wasn’t as well informed about the Empire’s going-ons as he could have been. Yes, some of those was from his own lack of interest, but being an artificer was mostly a static job. Being in the army changed that by a bit, of course, but it tended to be that an artificer was assigned a garrison, and they either stayed there, or were reassigned to just another garrison. But reassignment wasn’t guaranteed, and it could take years before that happened. He was only reassigned once in his previous life, even though he lived it for years.

  As a soldier, he certainly moved around a lot—but that wasn’t within the Empire. And soldiers didn’t really mingle with people—not that there were any people worth to mingle with when he was in service. His legion often ended up attacking the barbarians within their territory, though he was relieved of duty in Esnef when his wounds accumulated.

  He could, of course, try and aim for promotions and move up in the ranks, but firstly—he wasn’t a noble. Getting promoted within the army would be a trying task, possibly stopped by the noble officers who feel that a commoner is getting too uppity for their station. He has heard horror stories from the commoner officers about their experiences.

  Besides, promotion within the army would still bind him within it. He loves the Empire, but… he didn’t want to be part of the army anymore.

  That left finding a different job, but he couldn’t think of anything in particular that would let him travel around as much as he wanted… unless he was to become an ‘adventurer’.

  Well… an ‘adventurer’ was just another word for a ‘jobless vagrant’, but it was probably fine. Many kids, some like Lee himself, had once thought that being an adventurer would be a dream life. They could explore the Empire, meet new people, not have to listen to laws and even slay monsters!

  Well—a few of those were true in reality, such as meeting new people and slaying monsters, but the laws still have to be followed, lest the Enforcement Legion follow them and put them in chains. And slaying monsters is not as desirable a job as it could have been perhaps decades ago—raw materials are much more easily sourced from any Empire-approved farms.

  Sure, an adventurer could maybe get paid for killing a particularly rowdy monster, but those aren’t too common near any village actually willing to pay them. It was more usual for adventurers to have to kill monsters while they traveled from place to place. The roads may have been frequently patrolled by the Enforcement Legion, but they can’t catch every monster—some are smarter than they should be, and hide from their patrols.

  But, despite all these downsides, it was a somewhat attractive prospect for Lee. Money was tight, yes—his coins, in both lives, didn’t last too long. As an artificer, the coins his mother had left him lasted only shortly after College, and this was with extra work being done on the side. But since he did not need to pay for any more text books or extra equipment, he could stretch it out much longer. He can also offer to fix things he comes across for a relatively cheap price to help stave off the expenses he will undoubtedly accrue. His experience as an army artificer will be sure to help with that.

  It would be dangerous, however—as a soldier, his combat experience was mostly about fighting within formation rather than how the specialists within the army fought. He was, after all, a regular foot soldier, his individual skill wasn’t anything too good, but he’ll have to make do. Maybe.

  He gently set down the letter with his new textbooks. He was brimming with ideas on how he could possibly make it work, but a dash of realism needed to be applied to his thoughts. It will be difficult, and dangerous—was that what he wanted to do? After he had solidified to himself that he must cherish his life, and live it to the fullest, to live as long as possible?

  He hesitated.

  Perhaps he needed to be a bit more prepared. He wasn’t sure how to survive in the wild, after all. He knew how to set up a camp—he learned that much in the army, but he wasn’t sure on how to hunt, or cook, or skin his game… He never learned those himself. It might have contributed to why he was so poor in his first life, now that he thought about it.

  Well… he still wants to be an adventurer. But maybe not today. He can live in the apartment for a bit longer. Now, he needs to use the money he was supposed to use for his education for survival items and knowledge.

  Sorry, mother, he apologized to her. I’ve been dealt something out of my control. This is my way of adjusting for it.

  It has been two months of trying to learn as much as possible about how to live outside the cities—living off the grid, so to speak.

  Of course, he didn’t ask people how to ‘adventure’ so directly. He asked around with experts on hiking, or on foraging, or hunters. There weren’t as many as there could have been inside the City of Angels, as it was a highly developed city, but there were still some that had experience with it, mostly people who dealt in wares with their specific products.

  Many clued in on what he was going to do—people were unfortunately perceptive, and with him currently being a teenager on the cusp of being an adult, many people tried to dissuade him from what he was about to do. He had politely declined, of course. He had already decided on what to do, and while he may not know what he was doing, he was all too willing to learn just how to survive out in the wild.

  The short of it was that… He couldn’t.

  Other than the environmental dangers and the monsters, there were also roving groups of bandits (he was reminded of that attack force that had killed him in his previous life—he wondered if those were playing as bandits right now?), and hunting was made illegal without a proper license. He would have to purchase food within the cities for every trip out he made.

  This was… not too surprising. He hadn’t known that hunting was illegal—he had never needed to learn that it was so until now. But he figured it would be something like that.

  “If I were you, kid,” a gruff apothecarist advised him. “I’d pick a trade and get halfway decent with it. Make some money and settle down. An adventurer’s life is a miserable and thankless one.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Lee politely smiled and gave him a few coins, buying a potion that he had placed on the counter as a conversation starter.

  Foraging, thankfully, was not illegal. It was possible to be able to collect enough wild herbs and vegetables to feed himself, and he’s been cramming the edible ones and useful ones in his head. He even bought a book that had many herb names, pictures, and uses. But man was not made to eat leaves alone. Besides that, while he may have learned what they look like, he wasn’t confident in picking up the correct herbs. Some of those plants look awfully alike.

  The closest he could do in terms of ‘wilderness survival’ is traveling between cities and villages, doing some odd jobs to get some coin, and using that coin to buy food, supplementing it with foraged herbs if he ever decided to do so. Traveling with a convoy would be far safer too—but that also requires more money. And would probably put him in a tight schedule.

  Well… that’s a lot more hurdles than I thought.

  It wasn’t a complete deal breaker, especially now that he was, at the very least, successful with learning how to cook. It wouldn’t be a chef’s cooking, but he was satisfied with his own brand of it. It tasted well enough and would help him save some money from constantly having to eat in restaurants.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Of course—the issue then lies in storage for all these goods he was going to have to carry while he was traveling.

  He’d like to say that it was the easiest part of his equipment—after all, he was an artificer! He could apply magical modifications to any equipment with ease with his experience in the military, right? The reality was that most of his experience was maintenance and repair rather than creating new equipment. Creation just never came up. He was aware of how to manipulate intent and converting mana into other elements, but some were far beyond him—like using Stasis or Expansion as is typical for the more expensive modifications.

  However, he had two months of time to practice. He couldn’t learn this all in one go, but he had some time and money to do a couple of cheap experiments. So, he purchased a simple, modifiable pack—which was essentially just a backpack that was as long as his torso and had a slot that a person with sufficient knowledge could put a mana gem in. Normally, this was where ‘pre-programmed’ stones came in and did their magic with the backpack, but he didn’t want to use a lot of money buying them when he could possibly do a hacky, and cheaper work around instead.

  So, while he was practicing cooking and learning his herbs, he was also experimenting with intent, which in turn, helped him practice how to manipulate mana.

  Manipulating mana was simple enough, of course—a basic application of willpower, and implanting intent within it, so that it follows the caster’s will. The problem comes when the caster wants it to become something else to do what the caster intends it to do—Conversion, in other words.

  Simple spells that even he, as an artificer, could do, were simply external manifestations of mana with the intent to Hurt, which, depending on the caster, can manifest as a quick beam or a simple mana-based projectile, or to Protect, which can be something like a bubble around a caster—which had been fairly common for many of his former classmates within the College—or a simple shield in front of the caster, which was the manifestation for Lee himself.

  He has never tested those spells in combat, of course—those were never the main focus for an artificer. His expertise came from how to manipulate foreign mana into listening to the intent that it was supposed to be following. Spellcasting uses his own internal mana, which had remained pitiful during his previous life. Spellcasting without a medium of some sort was also fairly difficult with his pitiful reserves, so he never thought to practice it.

  Though, if he’d have known he would have come back to this young again, maybe he would’ve tried at least a little. Then maybe he’d know how to combine intents and create what he needs.

  But that aside—Conversion requires Understanding or an innate insight rarely ever found in a person. It is easy to understand how to Hurt and how to Protect. It is thus easy to convert the properties of the mana to be able to do both. There are other basic intents too, of course—like Cold or Heat—which can then lead into the next, more advanced conversions.

  Lee concentrated as he held on to the mana gem, his mana interfacing with the energy inside. It was similar to the gems he used back in his previous life as a College student—the difference mainly lying in the quality of the product. It was significantly worse than what he had used to study, but that was to be expected. He didn’t know how his mother had gotten him an invitation to the Artificer’s College, but it was a College for the Elite, and so it stands to reason that the equipment they used to also be top-notch.

  It was just a shame he turned out to be so mediocre. He wondered what some of his classmates ended up becoming, with the war raging on as it had. He might find out in this life, if he ever came across them again.

  He closed his eyes as he manipulated the essence and imprinted his intent into the gem. Its blue hue seemed to glow as he left a few instructions into the gem: Expand, Sustain, Absorb.

  Expanding, in this case, meant the energy would have to spread within the backpack where he would slot this gem in. Sustain meant the energy would have to stay after it propagated within the confines, and Absorb would mean that it would absorb ambient mana from its surroundings to continue powering itself. A simple loop for what he was planning to do.

  Then, came the intent to Convert the mana into something that can actually modify the bag’s internal space.

  For an expensive bag, the mana stone that would have been slotted inside it would have mana converted into Space with the intent to Expand. Maybe with Stasis as well to prevent spoilage of anything within the bag. But Lee was not proficient enough to even think about using those kinds of intents, much less together.

  Instead, he’d have to do a somewhat of a hack job. Preservation, would be one of the intents the energy would have to be converted into. A relatively simple intent to convert into. Protect could also work, but his Protect is mostly physical rather than ‘protecting the things from spoiling’. Preservation won’t stop objects from spoiling, but it will help extend the longevity of materials he stored without any other special requirements. A nice, general enhancement.

  And since his biggest worry was about food, and not particularly any other magical ingredient, he could focus on doubling down on food preservation. It wouldn’t be as easy as just adding an intent of Food Preservation—mana didn’t particularly understand what ‘food’ was, and unless he detailed everything he would carry, it wouldn’t do much. Thus, he would have to add an intent of Ice, an elemental intent.

  It’s not as easy as the simple intents—most elemental intents need a base and components. This base and its components can change how an element would be manifested physically, though there are some elemental intents that remain relatively simple in comparison, acting as their own bases, due to how present they are in life. Water, Air, Fire, Earth, Light.

  In the case of Ice… He would have to have a base of Water, with a component of Cold. With his skill, he could weave in a few more intents, though that might increase the power draw that the mana gem will have and have it burn out quicker than it can absorb mana. So, he settled with adding one more intent: Preservation. Ice, by itself, will help preserve food already, since food spoils slower in the cold, but with the added intent of Preservation, it should enhance the idea that the Ice should be helping preserve things within it. And not damage any of the machines and equipment he would be carrying.

  To summarize his current experiment, it would be a mana gem that will Expand, Become Ice, Sustain Itself, then Absorb Energy, and loop that constantly, with minimal outside input to add more energy. A bit more complicated than the projects he had done in College, but it should work.

  He finished imprinting the instructions onto the mana gem, making it glow with a dull light, signifying the completion. He exhaled a breath he wasn’t aware he had been holding, carefully slotting the gem into the backpack’s slot, closing it up with the hatch attached to it, and waited.

  He felt mana getting sucked from the very air itself as the mana gem got to work. The slot where he had placed the gem started to glow as mana ran through the backpack and…

  Something went wrong. He felt the mana gem’s influence grow outside the backpack… and then when it reached a critical point of not being able to sustain itself… it turned into a block of ice, before the mana gem stopped glowing, done with its instructions.

  “…” He picked up the block of ice and chucked it into the bathroom. He should have used a different base for the Ice, like Air—and used Restrained Expansion instead of just Expand. Well, he was close now, and he can finish it up quickly, then he can start testing it out for a week or two. By then…

  He glanced around his room. It had changed much over the last two months. Gone were his textbooks, sold to get him more coin to afford experimentation. In its place was a mana stove he had purchased, along with a pan and pot. Hanging in his closet were folded traveling clothes—a thick jacket and padded pants. They weren’t particularly good for armor, but he couldn’t afford that without setting himself back quite a bit.

  A spear leaned against a wall, the tip polished and sharp. The weapon he was planning to use while he traveled.

  A distress beacon, for emergencies.

  And food—non-perishables, like dried jerky or military rations. Plenty of water as well for the journey. He had tried to drink water made out of magic, to try and circumvent having to spend money for them, but it turns out that magic made material tend to dissipate into mana eventually. His thirst wasn’t quenched, but at least, at that moment, he had more mana than he usually did within his body, though he had to expel it quick, lest it damage his internals.

  He was ready. He had knowledge and equipment. All that was left was experience.

  And the modified backpack. He has to fix the backpack.

  “Okay,” Lee mumbled as he pulled out the spent mana gem, imprinting another set of instructions. “Guess I have to swap out the base for Air… and add Restraints to the Expansion…”

  He stood before the gates of the City of Angels.

  It has been a week. His apartment was sold pretty quickly after he had finished his preparations. It turns out an apartment within the City of Angels was highly desirable, much more when the apartment was relatively cheap. He didn’t get as much coin as he could have, but it was enough for now. He doesn’t know when he’ll come back here. He doesn’t know if he’ll settle down in this life.

  “Well,” he chuckled lowly as he readjusted his backpack, which carried much food, water, clothes, and smaller equipment. Tied to its sides were a pan and pot, and tied on top of the pack were his camping equipment. Precarious and heavy, but with him enhancing his body, it was surprisingly fine. He held his spear to his right as he looked to the sprawling wilderness, broken apart by convoys and the road paved by stone. “I suppose it’s time.”

  If he were any younger, he would probably take one long look back and remember his time in the City with his family, when he was younger. When his little sister would run around its parks. When he would give his mother mild heart attacks as he attempted dangerous stunts. When his father would come home and buy the entire family a feast.

  But he had nearly three lives under his belt now. His memories of the city… he’s gotten over it. He knows that they’re with him in spirit, if not in body. Acceptance has been something he had burned into his heart two lifetimes ago, when he lived life as a soldier that may never meet another day.

  Thus, it was with a light heart and some excitement that he stepped out and explored the Empire.