"Lucas Aternaz. 17 years old. Talent is 3. You have been in the academy for more then a year and have excelled in potioneering. You also became an acolyte despite spending many months reading every single book in the library. You truly wish to sign this contract?"

John showed hesitation. In truth, this phantom soul was basically brand new. It didn't matter if it died, or what situation it found itself in.

This was John's plan to acquire the materials to become a rank 2.

He would have this waste body progress the normal way. Then have his main body progress alongside it.

Right now, he was talking to the principal of the academy! A rank 3!

John was very much interested, in seeing how strong the contract made by a rank 3 was.

"I accept the conditions!"

"Good. Our academy will have another rank 1 potioneering master soon!"

The rank 3 snapped his fingers and a contract appeared in the middle of the air.

John touched it and it shot into his brain.

A big snake had wrapped around his soul!

Luckily, this was just a waste phantom soul. It could be discarded whenever.

"You have to serve the academy for 100 years! This includes making reactive elixirs. We will naturally pay you, and once you are ready to become a rank 2. You can sign another contract and serve for an additional century. As for rank 3, haha. Don't expect to get there without a high grade visualization technique."

John inwardly sneered.

The lifespan of a rank 1 was 200 years!

The lifespan of a rank 2 was still 200 years!

Only at rank 3 does it increase to 500 years.

As for rank 4. It becomes 1000 years.

In order to become a rank 2. He would need to dedicate his entire life to the academy. This was a bit ridiculous!

John was given a copy of a spell model he already had.

'Hellfire Safeguard'

John didn't plan to engrave two spell models on his focus. He wanted this body to follow this worlds system without making any changes.

He was also given a reactive elixir.

John didn't even modify the hellfire safeguard. So the flames would remain red.

Although his spell on his main body, had blue flames.

John went back to his room and took the elixir.

His body started to heat up as he began to breakthrough. He inscribed Hellfire Safeguard on the first layer of his focus.

Stolen novel; please report.

His magic core formed successfully! He had broken through. Although he still lacked the shield on his body. This was due to it not yet being blessed. He would have to tap into the matrix. Truthfully, he could do this in an instant using his backdoor. But he was pretending to have a talent of 3. Not peak of 5.

So he didn't even use his back door and reported to the principal.

"Congratulations! The hard part is over. Now you just need the blessing of Mer."

"I will try my best."

"With your talent, it should only take you a year to tap into the matrix again. Until then, you'll have to keep using your magic medium."

A year passed.

John had successfully enchanted his magic core.

During this time. John had been converting his mana in his main body.

Because of his peak 5 talent. It was extremely fast progress.

He had already converted 25%

While in his other ontology. He had made it go a bit slower, spending less time out of his day meditating. It was only at 5%

If he continued at this pace. His main body would be ready for rank 2 in four years.

But the body with a contract would take 20 years...

During this year, he had been given the recipe for reactive elixirs and was successful in brewing them. His value went up a lot.

You don't need a reactive elixir for breaking into rank 2.

You merely need to succeed in inscribing a rank 2 spell model on your focus.

John's perfect magic core was a bit different though. Another chamber would cover the first one. Obviously, this chamber would have less slots. Only three rank 2 spells could be stored.

This would also lock in his current spells, meaning he couldn't swap them out.

He was thinking of getting rid of mana vision before breaking through, and putting in a better spell. Since he could just rely on his spiritual sense to gaze the strength of his opponents.

John also inquired about astral stones.

But he was laughed at for being too poor to afford them.

A single astral stone went for close to a hundred thousand magic stones.

Or 10 high grade magic stones.

A high grade magic stone was worth 100 mid grade magic stones.

A mid grade magic stone was worth 100 low grade ones.

John wanted to study a high grade magic stone.

But where was he to get one? Even then. It would probably require more then tier 7 magic to conjure it. This was out of his reach.

Astral stones were used as currency between rank 4's and higher. Yet, to acquire this currency. Potioneering for centuries could possibly save up.

Even if John used Greater Conjure Magic Stone. This was a tier 6 spell. So he could only cast it twice around every hour.

It would take 1000 cast.

This would take 500 hours.

It would take him over 20 days of constantly casting the spell.

In all honesty... that wasn't completely unreasonable.

But it wasn't like he owned a magic stone mine. How was he to explain his wealth? Not to mention, not having enough strength to protect it, could cause him to become targeted.

Either way. He started to grind away at creating mid grade magic stones.

A month later. He had over 1100 mid grade magic stones. This was equivalent to 110,000 magic stones! It would take forever to save up this amount by brewing potions.

As for where he stored these potions? He had studied spatial rings and had developed something quite useful.

Why bother having to worry about a spatial ring or pendent that can be stolen?

In this wizard world. People didn't commonly have this equipment either way. But John wasn't from this world. Spatial rings were common place in the cultivator world, not to mention pocket dimensions. He had cracked over a thousand inheritances in the havoc sea.

From this, his understanding of pocket dimensions was quite insane.

He built a formation in his soulverse and successfully anchored an infinite pocket dimension in it.

There were limitations obviously. He couldn't go within his soul without causing a wormhole to form. But he could open up a portal into it, this portal was anchored to his pocket dimension in his soulverse. This space lacked a few laws.

Time didn't really pass in this pocket dimension. There also wasn't an atmosphere or environment. So living things weren't really compatible with it. They could still be stored. But they would be frozen in time essentially.

He stored all of the mid grade magic stones in this space. He could easily reach into a portal and pull out things from his pocket dimension.

John decided to take a trip outside of the academy. He wanted to buy an astral stone!

This was quite risky. But he felt he was strong enough to protect himself. He could always teleport away if there was any real danger.