I appeared in front of a stone building, and glanced around. Neither Araceli nor Mallory had been teleported in with me, so this must be one of the solo challenges.

There were a few things of note – above the doors of the building was the seal of some college I didn’t recognize. A few steps behind me, a large stone monolith stood, carved with spellforms. There was clearly a place to cast a spell into it, but none of my spells actually worked.

With nothing else in sight outside, I figured the challenge would be within, so I pushed open the large oaken doors and stepped inside.

The sage appeared before me and smiled.

“To have reached this far in the trials, you should have broken through to third gate. A critical time in a mage’s development. For many, it is the last step they will ever take. For others, it is the first step into true power.”

Hah! If only the sage knew that a hundred years after he died, a trans kid from the suburbs would hold off on advancement, in order to get a mark from a trial in another country.

“Of course, limited within this realm as you are, you’ve likely to have had limited access to spell resources,” the Sage said. “I present to you, my library.”

He spread his hands wide, gesturing broadly.

“I, of course, had seven types of mana, but I collected information on all of the mana types. This challenge is both simple, and incredibly complex. Within my library lay many, many spells, but I’ve removed crucial parts of them. You must study your magic and other, supplementary texts, until you’re able to fix a spell. Then you can use your new third gate spell and cast it into the tablet outside.”

He held up a hand and waggled a finger.

“Now, I know a few of you are thinking you’ll simply use a spell you have, but don’t you dare. The trial has already scanned your spirit and the materials you brought in with you, only a third gate spell that’s new to you will work!”

I sucked in a breath.

This was going to suck. I couldn’t actually cast third gate spells, and I wasn’t willing to ascend for a basic challenge like this. I might try it, if I had no other option, but… Giving up a chance at the Beastgate for a chance at power now felt incredibly stupid.

No, the best thing I could do right now was to cheat. I’d cheated in his other challenges, so I knew it was possible. The trial had scanned my spirit and items, but that didn’t mean it examined everything, especially the bonds I had. Dusk was nowhere nearby, and our link was weakened by the distance. It was possible the things in her realm hadn’t been scanned.

The first thing I tried was walking out to statue and overcharging a spell, then casting it into the stone. It did nothing, but that wasn’t exactly unexpected.

Next, I tried holding my hands out and reaching for Dusk’s realm. It took long minutes for me to connect, and minutes more for me to channel the blademoss out from my hands, but it did.

The magic slashed into the stone and left thin chips and gashes along the surface of the tablet. I let out a sigh as the strain pushed through my spirit, and lowered my hands, the moss dissolving.

It hadn’t worked. That was far more disappointing than the failure with overcharging had been.

With a sigh, I began to pull more items from Dusk. Even with the time it took, it would be faster than leaving and having to go through all the challenges myself, especially since I might just end up in this room again.

I tried tapping a third gate mana source to the stone, but that did nothing.

When I got my cauldron out, I got started on my next experiment.

I hadn’t made a third gate potion before, but I knew that it should, in theory, be possible for me to do. Meadow had said some true experts could even make potions two gates above them, and while I didn’t think I could get to that level, I was willing to try jumping one.

But what potion to make? I only had a few plants that had reached third gate already: my blademoss, gibbeous windbush, and mercurial lotuses. I didn’t have any experience with those.

A healing potion would be the safest, while simultaneously being the most time consuming. I’d need to spent hours connecting to the various flowers, pushing them to third gate, and then summoning them back to me. I wasn’t third gate myself, so I had to burn an absurd amount of mana to push them there, and I didn’t have a conveniently placed war-root to tap into for mana.

I could try to go for a mist potion, strength potion, or a scent potion, but all of those had plenty of problems of their own.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Sure, I only needed to connect to three plants for a mist or strength potion, but most of the plants for them were first gate, having only recently been acquired. Worse, I’d never brewed them before, so I’d be flying blind.

A scent potion would only need two, but it was hardly even a spell, and might well not activate the trigger, and I’d still be flying blind.

For all of them, I’d want to mix in Healer’s Heart. The plant was strange, having mana, rather than just energy, and changing to reflect the mana of the person who used it, and I was hoping that would allow it to trick the tablet into thinking it was a spell.

Thinking about the strange plant sparked a thought.

I didn’t technically need to spend all the time for healing potions…

I reached out and connected to Dusk’s realm, then started working to force a portal open.

That was even harder than summoning something to me. It took me thirty minutes to brute force one large enough to let me through, and by the end, I was panting and gasping. When it finally snapped into place, stable, my vision blacked out for a second. I thought I might pass out, but managed to only stumble a bit.

I flopped underneath the shade of a tree for a long moment, to allow myself to rest and recover, but I couldn’t take too long. Once I was feeling better, I headed to the lushest area of rolling fields, where the flowers were, and cast multiple overcharged Enhance Plant Life spells, then began to pour mana in.

I drained my mana, and began to convert mana from other gates into life mana, adding them to the task as well.

That ran dry, so I ventured back over into the forest area and mana from my Red Star tree, then proceeded to dump it into the flowers.

On and on it went, drawing from the Pointermoss and Transivy, from the Emperor’s Tree and Blood Carnations, then taking a break to allow my mana to recharge.

It took me close to ten hours, but eventually I had the Sunset Marigolds, Breath Aster, Dewdrop Feverfew, and Healers Heart, as well as the four basic alchemical plants at third gate.

I’d opted out of empowering the Soultoad’s Seat, because while it was powerful and useful, the mushroom was incredibly toxic if not treated properly, and I wasn’t going to risk that when using power beyond what I could call on.

With that done, though, I laid down in the cabin for a brief nap, setting a thirty minute timer with Internal Pocketwatch. I’d gone through a lot of fighting, and hadn’t had much time to rest and recover.

In the end, I slept for close to five hours, and when I woke up, I cursed at myself for turning the alarm off.

I couldn’t be that mad at myself, though. I’d desperately needed the sleep, and the craftsman had said I had time.

I just hoped I didn’t get caught in any multi-day-long scenarios, like I had in the second floor of the tower. Without skips to burn, it would make things tighter than they already were.

Come to think of it, this might be considered a multi-day scenario. Throwing together a spell out of incomplete parts wasn’t easy – there was a reason people got collegiate or mastery degrees in spell engineering.

That thought relaxed me a little bit as I made my way over to my cauldron. I lit a fire under it, then activated the enchantments to evenly disperse heat throughout the inside. I poured in tap water, then spun my ungated mana through the enchantments, pulling out as many of the impurities as I could.

I lifted my newly third gate breath aster and began to drain out the arrays.

The third gate mana was a strain, too much for my mana-garden to handle, and it bucked like a horse, resisting my control. I steeled myself, and commanded it to drain away.

The flower shriveled, the life draining away, and I focused on the arrays I’d left within, the ones that helped to treat earache, stomach aches, fevers, and promote the flows of life energy in the body.

I overcharged my enhancing spell and flooded power into the arrays. This time, rather than a bucking horse resisting my commands, it was trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. No matter how much I poured it, the flower demanded more, and it became hard to cut the flow off.

I gripped my mana tightly and yanked it away from the flower. My spirit rumbled uncomfortably, and I popped a spiritbalm leaf into my mouth and chewed.

I tossed the newly enhanced flower into the pot and stirred, allowing the energy arrays to spread through the liquid, then quickly repeated the process with my other flowers. I added some mundane echinacea, and a bit of white willow bark – not from the flaming flower willow, just from an ordinary tree – taking breaks every once in a while, in order to allow my spirit to rest and recover.

Each flower put about as much burden on my spirit as using Blademoss did, and while I’d had multiple spiritual enhancements recently – ingraining Beast Mage’s Soul, the elixir Octavian had given me, and the massive investment of deep mana – I wasn’t eager to put enough strain to injure myself again.

When my flowers were all boiling away in the pot, I turned my attention to the last component: Healer’s Heart.

Bringing it to third gate had taken more power than any other two plants put together, despite the fact it had been receiving regular infusions of mana since I got the thing.

The same proved true here. As I drained away its unneeded arrays, the power crushed down one me more like a spiritual attack than anything, and when I fueled its powers, it took everything I could give it, and more besides.

It kept drawing and drawing, and with a wrench, I pulled my staff from my spirit. Slamming it into the ground, I just barely managed to cut off the spell, then threw the leaf into the pot.

Third gate energy and mana began to spin and swirl within the cauldron, and I shoved ungated mana through its enchantments, grabbing a ladle and skimming the gunk off of the top layer by layer, until finally, I was left with a tiny pool of liquid a the bottom.

With trepidation, I ran it through some cheesecloth and into a glass jar, then set it aside. I packed everything away, making sure I had completely cleaned up after myself, before approaching the tablet.

I tipped the jar over the tablet, letting a drop spill out. The spells on the tablet started to glow, but dimly, and it started to dim further. Before the light could go out completely, I poured more potion onto it.

Green light raced through the lines of the spell array, and then a flicker of spatial magic came over me.

I stood at a familiar crossroads, one that reminded me of the one I’d faced within the dragon’s trial. There were once again two paths, but rather than wisdom or courage, I had to choose between temperance or justice.