It was their second day at the Academy after the expedition. The holographic training served to show them how the approach between delving and dueling was different. A delver had to be cautious, a duelist needed to overwhelm and control the battlefield. At least that was the current meta of dueling at the Academy.

Robert could do that without a hitch but he would fight in the tournament with two-thirds of his true power behind lock and key. He couldn't show the world the true reach of his abilities or the world would all want a piece of him. And most of them would want real pieces like the brain and the heart so he couldn't grow to become a threat to their little fiefdoms.

Amanda was still playing catch-up. The two-star brackets had some students who were two-stars for years, not three and a half months. They had already evolved their abilities with the proper concepts, they had tempered into the second stage, and they trained for the duels with tutors for twice as long as Robert had been an Archhuman.

Toss one of these duelists into a wild passage and they would become monster food in no time. Bet a million dollars these spoon-fed duelists would reach four stars and you'd lose your money. Such considerations were irrelevant. They were dueling in a specially prepared arena as they were right now.

On this second day, they weren't going to spar with holograms. Noah did that as a courtesy, a reality call to ground the two explorers of the deep interspace and show them where they stood. Now, they needed to catch up. While they spent close to four months in the interspace, the duelist babies were eating duelist formula and being breastfed duelist milk.

Today, they were going to close a gap between them and the more experienced duelists. They were going to get concepts for all of the shells that were ready to evolve.

*

*

Noah led the two students to a massive dome that doubled as a gathering chamber. It sucked in copious amounts of wisps and channeled them to specific rooms. It also captured a lot of vestiges and even remnants, locking them in Ether traps. They had rooms full of single-affinity wisps for every known affinity. The key word here is "known". They didn't have a chamber for Fey wisps, for example. But they had a room where they stocked the wisps that didn't fit any known affinity. These were often harvested wholesale by those with the power to make the most out of them.

But today, they were picking concepts for their shells. Shopping would be the most adequate term. The students had to pay with their essence for the privilege of harvesting the concepts. Robert offered Time essence, something that was highly sought after. Amanda had to offer Nature because Water and Earth were as common as their combination, mud.

The concept facility was made out of several rooms where individuals or groups entered to donate essence, purchase, and absorb concepts. The rooms were shielded and the Academy guaranteed privacy and secrecy. Robert, Noah, and Amanda entered an empty room.

They discharged their essence into the storage crystals, the same process Noah had Robert do to enchant the crystals. They could top up by going to a gathering chamber keyed to a lesser affinity. Amanda could recharge for almost free by visiting a Water or Earth chamber. Robert needed to go to a Life chamber, which was a bit more expensive to use than Amanda's. His other affinities were not suitable for this kind of trade as they were either more expensive or less frequent. The Void chamber, for example, was still marked as under repair after the Cult of the Pail Priestess attack. The cultists somehow took control of the chamber to recharge their abilities and sabotaged it on the way out.

All in all, they only needed to devote time to get their concepts. But then again, Robert had way more shells necessitating a concept to evolve than Amanda. All in all, Robert had to pay more essence than Amanda.

"This facility pays for its maintenance cost many times over," Amanda said after she donated enough essence to pay for a concept. She wasn't complaining, just stating a fact.

"How so?" Robert asked.

"They capture one or two unique vestiges every year. Instead of letting students slave away as essence cows forever, they auction these uniques. You can imagine their prices go well into several hundreds of millions of dollars."

"Oh."

"But they can't just give students free concepts. They need to work a little to earn them. It builds character."

Amanda nodded. "And that's why I never took a concept from Samson."

Robert chuckled. "Did you ever visit a Samson gathering chamber with a full shell?"

"That's inconsequential," She retorted, fully aware she was caught. "Come on, go get a concept. I'll award you first pick."

As a bribe, Robert thought.

"But even if it brings in that much money, it still hadn't paid for its construction costs," Noah said, closing the argument. "This facility does not turn in a profit, as someone might interpret Amanda's comment."

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Robert swiped his student ID to start the process. Once the display came to life, he scrolled through the list of available concepts and their costs.

"These are not as expensive as I thought," Robert commented.

Amanda peeked from the side. "What? Why stuff is ten times as cheap for him?" She protested.

"It will be the same for you. You were accepted as an honor student with an advanced track," Noah explained. "It comes with several perks, the reduced cost for concepts one of them."

"OH. Oh! Robert, hurry up!" Amanda urged.

Robert found one concept he wanted. Resilience. Its cost was a little on the higher end of the spectrum but they had several such concepts, from different affinities. Allegedly, the bonus from the concept was better if it was of the same affinity but that wasn't a deal breaker. He purchased it.

"What do I do now?"

"Enter the Netherecho and capture your concept," Noah said. It is already there.

Robert quickly accessed the Netherecho. A floating rock with a face and two arms floated in front of him, stunned by some effect. He shot the shell of his tower of iron will and forced the vestige into it. Resilience greatly improved the protection from his tower of iron will.

"Amanda, you're up," Robert said as he moved to the back of the room.

Amanda selected the concept of empowerment for her druidic attunement tempering. She caught the construct and grinned. "Yay. It now grants passive essence regeneration the more vegetation and animals are around me. Including my own plants, it seems!"

That was great. Compared to Robert's cheat essence drain spell, Amanda didn't have the same staying power on the battlefield. But if her plants could grant her more essence, that would be great.

It was Robert's turn. He checked the list and bought the concept of contagion for his drain essence. It would allow his curse to jump from enemy to enemy, drastically improving its cost/benefit efficiency as the new curse would happen for free.

Amanda bought restoration for her granite bones tempering. It granted a small passive healing effect for the bones and the connected tissue like tendons, sinew, and muscles.

Robert bought perfection for his reconstruction spell. It increased the healing quality, finally allowing him to reach Supreme quality in the future.

Amanda then bought absorption for her thousand wet hells. Despite her expectations, it didn't allow her to absorb impacts as essence. That was too big of an ask. Instead, the energy absorbed would empower her Water effects, reducing the essence cost and improving the effect.

Next, Robert got friendship for his shield voidling. It was as he expected. It granted his constructs the ability to understand friend from foe. No more risk of friendly fire.

She bought, at a steep cost, wholeness for her stoneskin. It granted a small passive healing effect to it.

He picked, also at a ridiculously high price, potency for his void lance. Straight damage increases without changing the essence costs.

She selected synergy for her flowing river tempering. It improved the effect of every water-tempering technique she had. Which was huge since it impacted hundred wet hells.

He selected creativity for his intellect fortress. It would let him reach breakthroughs during research more easily and also improve the quality of creative works he created inside the bastion.

Amanda bought responsiveness for his shape earth spell. It greatly reduced the casting time and allowed her to move the earth almost instantaneously.

Robert then picked hospitality for his mind palace. It was not a gamble this time. He read that some Archs tried with it. This concept allowed him to bring people into his mind palace. It was a dumb idea if they had any way to attack his mind because he would allow them to bypass his strongest defense. But it also made it much easier to create imprints from willing subjects, since the person would send their mind into the palace. His dominated subjects counted as willing.

The Nature Arch got strengthen for her shape plant. Plants shaped by her would become tougher and stronger.

On his turn, Robert bought restoration for his chronal shear. It allowed the ablative defense to recover on its own.

Amanda got permanency for her create water. It didn't make the created water last forever but for more than a week. Time enough to use it to nurture people and plants since the water would be long gone from the body by the time it dissipated.

Foresight upgraded with the concept of prediction. That one was a no-brainer. The spell now granted a more accurate insight and a slightly wider time range at no additional cost.

Amanda bought regeneration for her water body. It was similar to lavi flows in many aspects and now in one more. The tempering now restored body fluids and healed minor wounds.

"I'm out of abilities to upgrade," Amanda said. "I'll excuse myself, I need to enter the line for the gathering chambers to repay my debt."

Even with the advanced track discount, Amanda still incurred a debt. Robert could only think of what he would have to do. Without the need to let her use the terminal, he finished his purchases.

Temporal distortion, the conjoined child of haste and slow, gained one of the top ten most expensive concepts on the list. Amplification. It increased the numeric value of the buff and debuff. The reason this concept was so expensive was that it could become a good fit with almost any shell.

Void veins gained conductivity. It enhanced the speed of his Void spells and gave a small essence cost discount.

Void punch evolved with potency. More raw damage but the explosion of matter ejected became stronger.

Biomass absorption received vastness. It would allow him to store even more biomass.

Healing hands gained cooperation. It now had a healing over time as it stimulated the target's body to heal itself. And this healing over time was of normal quality.

Telepathy gained comprehension. It allowed the spell to surpass language barriers and also sharply reduced the risk of misunderstanding one another.

Comprehend languages evolved with Wisdom. It accelerated the process of learning new languages.

Accelerate thought gained the concept of knowledge. Now, it not only accelerated his thought process but also made him smarter.

Enhanced senses gained accuracy. Better precision when determining sensory input.

Beast bond got the respect upgrade. This concept, in particular, matched the affinity. Bonded creatures would have a natural admiration for Robert so long he treated them well. The Gurglock he sacrificed to the void obviously wouldn't benefit from this concept.

Robert stopped to check how much debt he incurred. He needed to pay twenty-five essence pools of debt in Time essence. Just out of curiosity, he tried to see what it would cost with Space essence. To his surprise, the debt was only sixteen essence pools. But since the payments were made in this chamber, he could donate any kind of essence without nobody being the wiser. But Space was the most sought-after among his affinities. Most likely because of the forever-hungry industry of space expansion and storage items.

He explained his debt and then said. "I'm going to the Gurglock passage to farm some essence, professor."