Wulf placed his new potted grass inside his storage pendant. He arranged them in neat rows along the far edge, then put his hands on his hips and stared at them.

  Sunlight might be a problem, but…there was something odd about the void within the storage pendant. When Wulf stepped inside, it didn’t get dark. Instead, the walls just looked different. But the light was coming from somewhere.

  Having used the rest of his balance potion to keep the pendant open, he had time to experiment. He placed the pendant under a blanket, and the space inside darkened. He placed the pendant on the windowsill, and it felt like he was standing in the sun.

  He could keep his garden alive that way. At least, when it came to sunlight. Next, though, was a matter of water.

  He planned to use the mana-wine to further enhance his grass, but if he watered it with too much wine, they would die. It was red, viscous, and had a decent alcohol content. Too little, and it’d take much too long to improve the quality of his ingredients. He had to find a balance.

  After running to the water basin and filling a flask with water, he returned to his pendant and watered each plant individually with a different amount of wine and water, then labelled each pot with how much. He’d experiment with which plant did better and produced the best alchemical ingredients.

  Then he sealed up his pendant, placed it in the corner of his windowsill where no one would see it, and changed into his uniform for the day.

  ~ ~ ~

  Wulf spent the next few days running between his classes, making potions, gathering ingredients, and accumulating more bottles. He acquired a set of empty wine bottles from behind the Bounding Bobcat, and he used those to store his ingredients. He labelled them all, overwriting the glued parchment slips.

  Water, vinegar, mana-wine. Best not to get confused on what he had.

  He later went to the academy woodworking shop, a small hut near the southeastern border of the campus, where the non-Ascendant woodworkers repaired and built furniture for the academy. Sneaking around the back, he picked up a damaged, discarded shelf covered in cobwebs and sawdust. No one was going to miss it.

  He placed the shelf in his storage pendant, his portable lab, and stacked up all his ingredients in it. When all was said and done, the shelf still only went up to his waist, so he used it as a table, too—and that was where he left his holding rack.

  He made a routine. He and Irmond woke up early in the morning and went for a run around the edge of the campus. Wulf kept his eyes out for any special plants, and as the season latened, it grew darker and darker in the mornings—making the glow especially easy to pick out from the rest of the grass.

  What he couldn’t package up and put in a pot, he simply plucked, and stored in a set of jars he’d found in a wastebin. They’d probably been for pickled vegetables, but he washed them well and used them to hold dried plant material.

  By the first Seventhday, their day off, Wulf had added three new plants to his collection: a wild basil, some chamomile, and orcweed—a hardy plant with large, olive-green leaves that was nearly impossible to kill.

  Which was good for him, considering his track record with plants in his past life. He hadn’t even been able to keep the grass in front of his little hovel alive, let alone houseplants, but he was willing to learn.

  After his runs, he would eat breakfast and attend classes like a regular student, taking notes and studying along with the others. Then came lunch, and that passed normally, too. In the afternoon on his odd-numbered days, he had combat training, which he looked forward to the most.

  Instructor DeMark paired him up with Kalee for any activity that required a partner, and Wulf had initially thought it’d be the perfect opportunity to talk, but it turned out that he just didn’t know what to ask, and he didn’t really want to talk about the end of the world, either. She said very little, too.

  They never discussed their past lives.

  Not hating each other, not asking any questions…just trying to silently glean a little more about the other.

  Not ideal, but then again, he’d figure out where she stood eventually. He had time, and she was still a Middle-Wood.

  Besides, as far as he knew, she had no Marks. Nothing that improved strength, anyway. Marks’ strength often scaled with your tier, and that meant him focussing on gaining extra, lingering passive abilities would be invaluable in the long run.

  After combat training or his afternoon class, he cleaned up in the bathhouse, then went to the mess hall for dinner. Every day, he sat with Irmond, and whoever else they managed to pick up. Sometimes Ján and Brin, sometimes others. They caught dirty glares from Fletchers and other guild kids, and there were plenty of students who outright avoided them, but Wulf didn’t mind.

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  Soon, he was going to put the Fletchers in their place, and show people that they didn’t have to be afraid of this Umoch guy.

  There was the slight problem of retaliation, though. He had to get Umoch in a situation where Wulf was so obviously not the aggressor, and with plenty of witnesses, that they couldn’t expel him. Hells, it’d be even better if he could embarrass Umoch so much that the boy didn’t even want to talk about it, so word wouldn’t spread.

  He might suffer a little retribution for fighting on campus, but he needed it to be as minimal as possible. As long as he didn’t end up restricted, unable to work on his abilities, he’d be satisfied.

  As for potions, he spent his evenings developing potions, improving his techniques, preparing tinctures, and reading his borrowed textbook. He hadn’t created anything too powerful, but he’d filled a few wine glasses with a mixture of poisons and assorted weak effects (they were only Middle-Wood), like enhanced sight and a slight durability boost. Most ended up simply poisonous or otherwise harmful, which was fine for his purposes. He could still use them.

  A few times, he considered if he truly needed the Academy at all. But, on top of the exclusive dungeons they provided for the higher year students, which granted numerous Mark-gaining opportunities, he couldn’t forget the Oroniths. He’d probably make his own small golem eventually, and hopefully through the use of alchemy, but Oroniths were another topic altogether. A lot harder to make, and in his early years, he’d still need the resources of the Academy

  And of course, the academy also held a monopoly on high-quality mana-infused food and treasures that anyone could use to slowly increase their mana.

  As they discussed in Basics of Field-Based Advancement, an Ascendant could burn through all the mana currently available to them at their level. For a Mage, they used mana for spells, and were at the highest risk of running out. Pilots poured mana into their golems, but they guided it in a stable loop through the golem, and when they were done, they could draw the mana back in. There were mild inefficiencies, and if the golem received extreme damage, they would lose mana from, say, a severed golem limb.

  An artificer gained mana much like Wulf did—by completing constructs and golem weapons, or by repairing golems. And Rangers, though they gained mana the slowest, almost never lost it in Skills.

  But, as Dr. Maron had explained, “An Ascendant can set aside free available mana, which can be stored in a secondary mana core. This mana is your supply that you are willing to expend and lose in a fight, and is highly recommended for Pilots and Mages. For Pilots, an enormous supply of easily drawn mana will be necessary for operating an Oronith, and for Mages, you do not want to undo all your advancement progress because you cast one too many spells.”

  All Ascendants had a mana core—that Wulf knew beforehand. He’d never been great at envisioning his, but when he shut his eyes and pushed his consciousness down to around his stomach, he pictured an empty black void-like cavern with a sphere of simmering blue light in its center.

  They were all born with one. That was what made them Ascendants, and giving it an elemental alignment was what…well, gave their skills an elemental alignment. It stored mana, and when there was enough inside, the Ascendant advanced to the next tier. Hence the helpfulness of mana-infused food and such.

  But in his past life, Wulf hadn’t created a secondary core. He’d tried, but he only found out about such a thing later in life, and it was much easier for a Copper-Tier Ascendant to split a chunk off their original core than for an Iron.

  (He had, of course, attended the same lectures, but it turns out that when you’re busy concentrating on reading letters that you’ve only had a couple months to learn, or worrying about taking notes, you end up missing important details. But now that Wulf was better at reading, he had much more time to take in the Academy’s knowledge.)

  On Sixthday, after all his potion-making, he’d reached ninety percent advancement progress. But it was also the day that the Academy delivered its arcane resources to the first years. They each received a small vial of mana-infused water (rated at Middle-Wood) along with their meals. It tasted normal, and felt normal, except his enchanted paper shimmered in response, reading:

  [By consuming mana-water, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 95%]

  Not much, but then again, most Ascendants in the academy would probably be lingering around ten to fifteen percent progress to Middle-Wood at this point. There were exceptions, of course—that being Umoch—but he could deal with those as they came.

  Wulf, however, made sure to keep the little vials. They were only wide enough to fit a single finger inside, but they were a few inches deep, and he could hold proper potion portions in them. Enough that a single vial would be a single effective use of a potion. Ján, Brin, and Irmond gladly gave up their empty vials to him as well.

  But there came the next issue: Wulf couldn’t just carry around all his potions in his haversack.

  On Seventhday, their day off, Wulf and Irmond walked to Arinilka, in search of supplies. Wulf didn’t have much money left over, but it turned out he’d brought a little gold and silver along from his hometown. Ten silver. Probably his life savings after buying the rest of his supplies.

  In Arinilka, that was just enough for a single coat. They walked into the academy surplus store, where rows upon rows of unused uniforms waited. The villagers had sewn and spun them, and what the academy hadn’t bought got sold as leftover.

  Wulf, however, eyed the extra supplies. He hadn’t bought an academy-approved coat (which could be worn as a uniform and not be subject to reprimand) in his past life, thinking he’d spend his money on other equipment, but now, he needed the pockets.

  He picked out a dark green coat with brass buttons and pristine lapels. It had deep outer pockets, but he was more interested in all the pockets on the inside—which would be perfect for his purposes.

  He bought the coat, then, in the common room, spent the rest of the day chatting with the others while he sewed the inner pockets. Sewing was a skill most soldiers ended up learning eventually, considering how often they got in fights and took hits.

  With a thin strand of thread, he divided his new coat’s inner pockets into vertical segments—each perfect for hosting a single potion in a vial. On the left side, he would hold as many miniature vials as he could, and on the right side, he left room for larger potions and flasks, just in case.

  Once he finished, he returned to his dorm to finish a few more potions. As soon as he used his aura to fuel a potion, though, the sheet of enchanted paper on his wrist fluttered, and a message scrawled across it:

  [By crafting a potion, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 105%]

  [You have increased your Tier to Middle-Wood.]

  [Please select a new Skill.]