Before his friends left, Max and Lance had a serious discussion about his new sword, and they decided to leave it at Max's for now, until Lance was stronger. The reality was that such a powerful weapon would be enough for Lance to protect himself if he had only the scantest bit of power himself, but unfortunately, he wasn't quite there yet. Despite Lance's earlier decision to take and finish his basic combat class before learning anything more advanced, he'd agreed to do private martial arts lessons with Max at least once a week from that moment on.

After his friends left that night, Max pulled an all-nighter working on Lavinia's magic circle. But now he was adjusting his focus. Instead of trying to create a one-size-fits-all magic circle that was also safer than before, he focused on adjusting it for only one person: Lance. It was much easier to change the circle in ways that made sense and were stable if it were made for an individual person. It also helped that Lavinia had slightly different senses than Max, and both of them had a very good read on Lance’s energy by this point.

Lavinia could run simulations in Max's mind on how well each iteration of the new circle would work with Lance's unique body and mana signatures. Before the night was even done, Max was pretty sure he had a working prototype to give Lance–a tool to give him drastically better luck finding a spirit.

The accomplishment was making Max feel full of energy again despite the long day.

In fact, as a two-star mana body, if he chose to go without much sleep, he could easily do so. There was still plenty of time for him to unwrap the package containing the pill furnace he'd acquired and take a look if he was willing to cut into his sleep. Screw it. YOLO.

Max brought the package from the workout room into his magic workshop, and Lavinia squinted. She said out loud, "I don't understand what makes that thing so special."

Max didn't answer her right away. Instead, he gathered up one of the giants’ bones that he'd set aside for this purpose. He asked Saliron if he would help him craft several spheres the size of marbles out of the heavy, solid bone.

"But of course," replied the dark spirit. “It is always a blessing to be lay my senses on some exquisite bones, to touch them, smell them. Taste them. Mmmm, taste them.”

Max was getting used to how Saliron spoke. Before he might have reflexively rolled his eyes, but this time he just ignored the spirit’s bone-related outbursts.

After a few minutes, he ended up with a handful of perfectly spherical, polished troll bone beads. However, they did not have a hole through them. Max was not planning on using them with his bead sorcery.

Max fetched the ancient pill furnace that he'd bought and ignited it with a bit of his mana. A pill furnace was an extremely unique magic artifact from an entirely different magic system at the farthest reaches of the universe. He knew the theory of how pill furnaces worked inside and out, and he was also aware of how difficult they could be to operate effectively. The usual function of a pill furnace would be for a cultivation Path expert to add various ingredients, drawing out their magical essences or thematic directions and then combine all of them harmoniously in order to make a powerful medicine or mixture. Then this would be used to create pills. True experts could even compress and dry the pills in the furnace itself so they were completely finished the moment they were retrieved. Of course, that advanced utilization would require even more skill and practice from the alchemist.

In Max's case, he wasn't doing anything so complex or impressive. Instead, Max was going to use the pill furnace to capture the tiny bit of mana that escaped his purification process and store it all in the troll bone sphere. The idea was that after the sphere was sufficiently saturated with mana, its matter composition would change and it would naturally become a pill inside the pill furnace.

Max had never attempted anything like this himself but he was confident about his odds. The process would be a huge boon, too. If it worked, what the pill should do is not only confer a certain amount of extremely pure mana but also jumpstart that person's body into passively absorbing ambient mana automatically. The effect would last for days. So although the quartet had low amounts of mana, theoretically speaking, whoever took the pill would be absorbing mana every minute of every hour of every day until the effect ran out.

For Max's friends, this effect would be the equivalent of them growing in power as quickly as Max's friends back on Earth, despite the huge disparity in atmospheric mana. Even for Max, at his higher level of mana body, it would help tremendously. After all, if he was passively absorbing mana at the same time he was actively absorbing mana, his progression speed would be even faster.

Max tested the pill furnace out briefly once before bed. He assumed a full lotus position and, right there in his room, began slowly shoveling mana into his mana vault before drawing mana from the device into his body. He kept the pill furnace in his other hand. The flow of mana was like the tides of the ocean; it ebbed and flowed.

Before he knew it, an hour had passed. It was time for bed then, but he was happy to see that his experiment had been at least a partial success. The bootleg mana pill wasn't quite finished yet, but it definitely showed promise. Using this method, Max would be able to effectively eliminate all waste, keeping every bit of the mana he was imbibing, including ambient mana from the atmosphere around him. On top of that, he'd be able to give these crude mana pills to all his friends in order to speed up their rise to power. Although they had an exponentially easier level of difficulty than Max as he built his mana body, it would still take time and effort for them to grow stronger using mana as their foundation.

Max dropped back into his trance in order to continue working on his mana body long enough to finish the pill. When it was done, he unceremoniously fell into bed with his clothes on and passed out. He had a long day ahead of him still.

***

At martial arts practice, Max gave out the rest of the weapons he had bought for his friends. This time, Lance stood to one side, looking somewhat awkward, but everyone already knew who he was and didn't even question his presence. Lance wouldn't actually be taking part in any group training for a while, but Max had suggested that he watch to expand his horizons and know what to expect when he started training with Max one-on-one.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As Max handed out the presents and his students were all in various states of shock, Momo stood to one side, arms crossed, acting like it was completely natural. Max caught her eye while the others were gushing in gratitude and gave her a look that was meant to say, "You are completely full of it." Apparently, she got the message because her cheeks reddened and she looked away.

“Thanks so much. Thank you again!” gushed Benjamin. The with a pause before putting everything he had into it, he threw is battleaxe against a tree in the distance.

"What was that for?" asked Max. Benjamin grunted and regarded the discarded axe with disdain. "I really don't like axes. I know they work really well for a lot of people, especially bigger people like me, but it wasn't my choice to use that."

"Well then, why were you using it?" asked Max.

Benjamin sighed. "One of my other teachers, my teacher for my Animals of the Universe class, Professor Sine, he told me that he thought I would be a good axeman. He knew I didn't have a weapon of my own. Well, he gave me this axe, and I couldn't just turn down a real weapon. Most people have to save up to buy their first weapon after a year or two in the academy. And then they only get a cheap one. This axe would probably serve me pretty well if I actually liked axes. But now that I have this sword, I can very humbly and very gratefully return this axe to my professor."

"So that's what it was, huh?" Max actually felt better hearing the story. It was nice to know that there were a few more professors in the Academy that seemed to actually care about their students. Max knew that the corruption in the Quartet was deep, but it was good to know that there were still professors that took their job seriously. This new knowledge would help prevent him from becoming too cynical. Maybe.

Once everyone had their weapons, Max used Lavinia's spirits to craft a pole in the middle of the clearing. This would be for cutting practice. It was easy to adjust the difficulty of cutting the pole by increasing or decreasing the density of the ectoplasm. And cutting the pole didn't harm the spirits in any way. It just took a little bit to regenerate, depending on how many spirits had been compressed into the target.

Cutting practice went well and everyone liked their new weapons. Then everyone stretched before the end of the session.

Max had made a total of three mana pills before practice. One of them he had already swallowed in order to verify it was safe and would work the way he had intended. So far, it was working perfectly. Before all of his friends went their separate ways, he said, "Momo and Gantry, you two stay back, please." They nodded, and before long, the only people left in the clearing were Lance, Max, Momo, and Gantry.

“Lance won’t be training with us, but he might stop in to watch.” Max jerked his head at his friend, This was said mostly for the benefit of Gantry, who was unofficially his assistant instructor. Then Max held up the two mana pills. He said, "Momo, I know you're having trouble with your throwing knives right now, recalling them." She nodded without responding further. While she had been practicing with them earlier, it had taken her a few seconds per knife to recall them back into the sheath. This delay was entirely a product of the fact she had so little mana stored in her body yet.

"And you, Gantry, you are the most advanced student so far. I think that the two of you should try these out first."

"What are they?” asked Gantry.

“Mana pills. I created them with some stuff I got in the central area. They will help you build up mana in your body faster."

"Wait a second," said Lance, pointing at the pills in Max's hand. "Are these experimental? What the hell? Did you really make those?"

Max grinned. "Yeah, I made them last night. They're experimental. I don't know how safe they'll be, but I took one myself and it's been working well so far."

"Will it make me stronger?" asked Momo.

"It should, yes," Max replied.

The red-eyed warrior calmly nodded and snatched one out of Max's hand before popping it in her mouth and swallowing without hesitation. "Oh, strange," she murmured. "It practically vanished on the way down."

"It's supposed to do that," said Max with a nod.

Gantry was more cautious, but he eventually took one too. Lance shook his head and said, "No hesitation. Complete trust. Sometimes I feel like everyone else I know is a main character and I'm just a side character or something."

Max grinned at his friend. "Last I checked, you’re the one with the super powerful sword. And if you're the only different person, wouldn't that make you the main character?"

Momo laughed, and Lance opened his mouth as if he was going to respond before shutting it. He got a thoughtful look. Max grinned. "Now that I think about it, none of my friends have ever just gifted me an insanely powerful weapon out of nowhere. Dude, I think you are actually the main character of the quartet."

Now Gantry laughed too. Lance frowned as he pointed at Momo and Gantry. "Didn't they also get powerful weapons? And isn't she kind of sort of dating you right now? If we're talking about who's more likely to be the main character, I still think it's not me."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said Max. He softly punched Lance in the shoulder in a good-natured way. "I can't go to a dungeon right now, but I'm thinking about trying to get the opportunity later. If you guys go, you should go with the whole group, all the Western Wind Style students."

"Well, that's a no-brainer," said Lance.

Momo smirked. "You say that like it's obvious, but certain people–" she said as she made an exaggerated look at Max, "do crazy things like going by themselves to their first dungeon."

"Holy shit, everybody's a critic today," muttered Max. "Didn't I just give you guys a bunch of gifts? Damn, can't a guy catch a break?"

"No rest for the wicked," Gantry said.

Lance said, "Speaking of wicked, have you all heard anything more about the spear throwers yesterday?"

"No, not yet," said Max, "but in my experience so far in the Quartet, the faculty aren't exactly the best about proactive communication…or updating us at all. My guess is that all those guys got +away with it, and if we want to do anything about it, we'll have to do it ourselves."

He didn't mention to his friends that he'd met the Mystic Spear Path headmaster. Max had a few ideas on how to get retribution for the would-be assassination attempt. Having contacts was nice.

"Maybe you should just leave it alone," said Lance. "After all, nobody actually got hurt."

"Maybe," said Max. He didn't explain that his main worry was that his enemies would try going after his friends again. At the moment, one of the first things he wanted to discuss whenever he actually met with the headmasters supporting him again would be some sort of protection for his friends.

The four of them arrived at the cafeteria without any of them having discussed the matter beforehand, and they went inside for a snack. But when Gantry and Lance got their food, Max noticed that they'd gotten a box to go. The two of them gave each other a conspiratorial look.

Lance said, "See you later, Max."

"Yeah, see you next practice." Gantry waved.

The two of them gave each other another look, and Max frowned. "What was that all about?" he asked Momo. Then he noticed that the two of them were standing alone and said, "Oh."

Momo just shrugged and gestured at one of the empty tables. "I don’t mind. Want to sit over there?"

"Yeah? Sure, I guess. Might as well."