"I think the synergy of the Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul is too powerful to pass up,” I said after a few moments, looking up at Meadow.

“It’s certainly the most powerful option,” Meadow agreed. “The Magister’s Body is one of the less popular publicly available bodies, but it suits your magic well.”

“And if I’m understanding correctly, so long as I use magic regularly, I’m going to transition fastest with it. I just don’t get control over my form.”

“That’s right,” Meadow said, nodding. “Well, we should begin then.”

“Yeah, we should,” I said, leafing over to the diagrams at the bottom of the stack – or page, in the case of the body that the library had provided. “One thing I don’t understand… These don’t look like any spell I’ve seen before. It reminds me of the diagrams for a cauldron, more than it does anything else.”

“Your cauldron analogy is an apt one,” Meadow said. “To create the spells on the cauldron, you had to use the bits and pieces to fit the size and shape. This is similar, but instead of a cooking pot, we’ll be using your second gate mana.”

I frowned as I took the potion she handed me, drinking half and passing it to her.

“Does that mean if I built up extremely high walls, I could fit a more complex body?” I asked as we materialized in the garden.

“Not in this case. It would be stronger, but not more complex. This is… Well, you saw Alvaro’s full gate spells, yes?”

“I did,” I said, nodding.

“Was it a library contained by stone walls?”

I frowned as I thought. I felt like I would have noticed if the library or cathedral-like structures had butted up against the wall.

“No…” I said slowly. “A full gate spell…”

“Consumes the walls, yes,” Meadow said with a smile. “Or more accurately, they become the wall. They continually push upwards, growing on their own, like all spells, albeit more extremely.”

We stopped as we came to the barren field where my second gate life mana was. The mists of untapped potential still filled so much of the room that I wasn’t able to properly gauge its size.

“One boon you have is that your mana-garden size isn’t shifted too much by your legacy. I once met a fellow with a mana-garden that was tiny, but regenerated power quickly.”

“Or stories about legendary heroes who have the godchild legacy,” I said. “A hundred times as much mana, supposedly.”

“Precisely. Full gate spells are actually extremely hard to design for people with either exceptionally large or small mana-gardens, since the spell diagrams are built for normal people.”

She gauged the size of the second life gate, and then went to look at my second death gate before we returned.

She did a bit of math, based on the amount I’d grown in my life against my death gate, and then we used the approximation to start designing.

We had to ensure that all of the core functions fit in, and then made sure they all connected correctly, but that was the simplest part. We then had to go over some of the variants and options that could be incorporated into the spell.

There was also a common function that most full-gate spells had – a conversion path – which I picked up.

A full gate spell ate all of the mana in the gate, including anything extra that was converted up or down. A conversion path slightly weakened the overall power of the spells, but would create a small path that I could pass mana through, to convert third gate down into first gate, and vice versa.

Next came a shut-off function, which Meadow and I agreed to not to put in. It was commonly used for those who created permanent magical weapons or the like with a full gate spell, like a force blade.

The Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul were only able to tap into excess magical energy in my body and soul, and not what was actually needed for my mind and body to function, so while I could give myself a headache or weaken myself, I wasn’t going to hurt myself too bad with them, and switching off a soul and body altering effect could be a little unstable if left off too long.

There were a few other common functions that I worked through, but none were as important as the conversion path, and some were variants that were specific to the Magister’s Body and Beast Mage Soul.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The biggest one for me was ensuring they would be able to tap into the excess power provided by things like potions, without tapping into anything that was being used. The last thing I wanted was for it to consume the mental mana from my new medicine, rendering it pointless, or rob a healing potion of its power while it was actively working to heal me.

When we finished, I stared at the diagram that we’d written out.

It was huge. Absolutely massive, even in comparison to something like the Analyze spells I used.

It wasn’t even two diagrams, but one giant diagram that covered both, but with only a small amount of overlap where the soul-body link enforcement would be.

“Am I even going to be able to sketch that?” I asked.

“At the moment?” Meadow asked. “No. But when you’ve pushed back all the mists, you should have just barely enough mana to finish the sketching. For now…”

She tapped some of the core functions on each of the spells.

“Work on sketching these. They’re incomplete and won’t do much, but expending and recovering mana is one of the fastest ways to push back the mists. As you grow, you’ll be able to sketch more and more.”

“What if my garden’s a little bigger than our estimate, or a little smaller?” I asked.

“There is some margin for error that the spells can account for,” Meadow said. “But if it comes to it, we’ll redesign.”

That sounded like a pain, so I hoped that she’d been right.

“It is getting late,” I said, glancing at the rising crescent moon. “I should probably get dinner.”

“First,” Meadow said, “your plants should have their mana increased until they can form a stable source of second gate mana density.”

“Oh!” I said, waving open a gate to Dusk’s realm, then stopped and stared. Dusk and two of the pixies were using the small, single potion sized cauldron to do something. Presumably, making a potion. Dusk waved happily to me, instead of hiding like a guilty child, so I assumed that it had to be safe enough.

At least I hoped it did.

I walked over to the plants I’d gathered that were still at first gate and slowly fed them second gate power until they had enough power to form a stable second energy source inside of them.

The Blood Carnations remained unchanged, but the Emperor’s Tree grew by nearly two feet, jumping from a tiny sapling to…

I wasn’t sure what the word for the next stage of a tree’s development was. Treenager seemed the most sense to me, but scientists rarely went with such logical and flawless puns.

To actually power all of them up, I had to draw from my Red Star Tree and Transivy in order to recover, which made me laugh. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something about using plants to upgrade the plants amused me.

After I finished, I wandered over to join Meadow, who had gone to examine what the pixies were doing with Dusk.

The liquid in the bowl shimmered a faint greenish blue color, and Dusk let out a rustling-wind sound, then pointed at it.

I swept my own mana senses over it, confirming that it was indeed what Dusk had said. Mana water, but aspected towards her mana, rather than towards life or death or such.

“Interesting. I suppose Kene was right you’d be able to do alchemy. I’ll have to keep that in mind, and see if we can pick up some herbs for you.”

She nodded and whacked the side of the cauldron. Apparently, she and the pixies had an easy time getting water into the cauldron, since Dusk could just float it from the stream, but she was having a hard time getting the mana water out of it.

I smiled and poured it into a mason jar for her, and she cheered.

“Good to see your interest in alchemy,” Meadow said. “You should look into enchanting and wards a bit as well. I think the text Kene gave you had some simple enchantments and wards in it?”

“It did,” I said, nodding. “I mean, making the cauldron was a bit of enchanting, but it was annoying. And wards… I think Orykson’s got some spatial wards that he’s planning to show me? But speaking of cauldrons.”

I spent a while fixing both of my cauldrons so that they could handle second gate components, and then went in for dinner, and Meadow left to get her own dinner.

After dinner, I was restless, but tried to practice some of the core components of my full gate spells.

I still couldn’t help but be excited. Tomorrow, Ikki would come by, and I’d almost certainly get a new time spell or two that I could practice.

To burn off some of the leftover energy, I flew to the pharmacy nearby. The woman who’d pointed me towards the tea wasn’t there, but the guy with the shaved head and rainbow isopod was, so I made my way over to him.

“Do you have anything to assist in the development of full gate spells?” I asked.

He leaned forwards, putting his elbows on the counter.

“That’s a pretty specific request, but… Yeah, we’ve got them. Some, anyways, and some generic medication to help. But the real best thing for that is Dott’s Draught. Pricey, though.”

“What does it do?” I asked curiously.

“It affixes parts of a spell to the walls of your mana-garden and then sucks any mana regeneration into them. Since full gate spells already do that, it’s a great way to shave off almost all of the effort and time in mastery and ingraining. It’s also able to be used with whatever mana type.”

“What’s the catch?” I asked.

“It’s pricy. We don’t even keep it in stock, we’d have to order it in.”

When he checked the price to confirm, I paled. It’d wipe out my entire savings three times over to buy the two doses.

Well, that was out of the question.

“How about just general development for second gate?” I asked. “Other than mana stimulators, is there anything I should take?”

“Hmm. Well, the guy who ran the orphanage I was at always recommended we drain our highest gate mana before bed, but leave the others full of power. Mana recovers from the center outwards, generally speaking. Just keep on with the… Bone broth, wasn’t it? It won’t help as well, but it should help some.”

That was a useful tip, but I was more confused why an orphanage owner was giving tips about this sort of thing. Then again, an alchemist was a pretty cool job. Maybe he’d just done his best to set them on the right path. Who knew?

Ah well.

“Thanks for the tip, and yeah, it was,” I said, nodding. “Well… Thanks! I’ll see if I can afford any of Dott’s Draught, or anything of the sort.”

A bit disappointed, I browsed the shelves for a while, and picked out a couple of minor things that I thought could be useful, but it was similar to the stuff Kene had given me – nothing revolutionary, just basics to help keep me afloat – before heading out.

I did take his advice, draining my second gate mana entirely into my plants, while leaving my first gate full, before taking the mana enhancer and going to bed.