Alex was disappointed that nothing came of their short trip to the central gravesite, not even a spike in their score for the trial, but on their walk back to the eighth site, he decided they’d made the best call.

Messing with Tier 2 defenses, even if they’d likely decayed, was just asking for trouble. Without any Abilities or items that could assist with wardbreaking, they would have no choice but to brute force any defenses. If he was at the peak of Tier 1 with a strong Mana Body, Alex would probably be able to handle Tier 2 defenses that had decayed to such an extent.

Instead, he was at the beginning of Tier 1 without a real Mana Body. The gap was just too wide, and the potential benefits weren’t worth the risk. What could a Tier 1 world possess that he wouldn’t be able to receive from high-difficulty trials eventually?

By the time they made their way back, Alex was ready to get back to work. Thinking about something else for a while had refreshed his mind, and he had a promising idea nearly immediately after sitting down.

If the whole point was symmetry, the flaw in his current system was obvious. His mana naturally Refined any area it occupied, including the incredibly thin area that he used to pour mana into the expanding center. His ideas to change the method so far had involved trying to create additional entry points to balance out the original, but the additional difficulty had proved beyond him.

But what if he didn’t use another entry point?

Staring down at a new aperture in his palm, Alex’s mana entered each of the four component spheres smoothly. This part of the process was so practiced that it came automatically, but he diverged from his normal method almost immediately.

The mana didn’t stop upon reaching the center of the aperture, instead he created a straight line of refined material piercing straight through each component sphere. His control was precise, using the exact amount of mana needed. When the line was completed, he funneled more mana into the aperture.

From here, he returned to his previous method. Mana reached the center and expanded outwards. Days of near-constant practice made it far easier than it had been initially, and even the need to account for imperfections didn’t make this a particularly complex feat of mana control.

The necessity of splitting his mana was the only real source of difficulty now that he’d spent so many hours training this specific set of actions. This multitasking put a heavy burden on Alex’s focus, but, well-rested as he was, that wasn’t a problem.

A few minutes later, he reached the point where he had failed the last several attempts. And then he kept on going.

Less than a minute later, he stared down at a completely Refined Soul Aperture as an unexpected notification rang in his ears.

He didn’t open the notification immediately, instead staring down at his success with a mixture of pride and dissatisfaction.

It had been that easy, in the end? How had it taken him so long to find such an obvious solution?

Of course, thoughts like that could only last for so long in the face of reality. A few wasted apertures as he tried the hard way instead of the easy way weren’t important, all that mattered was that he had done it. In barely more than a week, he’d gone from vaporizing one of these things nearly immediately to Refining one in its entirety.

The satisfaction that bubbled up in his chest felt an awful lot like the thrill of victory after a won battle, but it was a bit more tempered. That visceral joy was less constrained, but he found that he liked this feeling nearly as much.

Maybe his mana type pushing him towards some crafting in his free time wasn’t all bad. He’d have to experiment more in the future.

“You did it!” Jess suddenly exclaimed, having noticed that the aperture still stood while Alex was no longer injecting mana. Her excited shout immediately drew Anthony’s attention, and the two moved over to him.

“That was fast,” Anthony grinned, “What did you do differently?”

Alex explained the tweak to his method, not quite managing to conceal his annoyance at the amount of time it had taken him to come up with the obvious addition to his technique.

“You just needed a break,” Anthony stated, “No shame in that. You’ve been working pretty hard while Jess and I have been excavating these huts.”

Alex frowned, surprised that Anthony was downplaying their involvement, “You both have been working hard too.”

Jess had been less involved in his work than Anthony, but there was no way he would’ve managed to recover so many apertures without his friends to do the labor while he Refined.

“Not really,” Jess disagreed, “The digging has been relaxing, honestly.” Alex inferred from her tone that she wasn’t being self-deprecating or downplaying the difficulty of opening the graves. She just really did enjoy the hard work.

Anthony’s brief frown revealed that he didn’t quite agree with describing demanding labor for half of the day as relaxing, but he didn't comment.

Alex also found it a bit odd, but he could kind of see why falling into a routine of hard work with a clear goal would be nice. Jess wasn’t the type to handle idling well.

“Anyway,” Alex pulled the topic back, “I think I’ll make sure I have this figured out with another few apertures, and then pull out one of the good ones for Jess.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Anthony agreed, “It’s probably time for us to figure out how she’s going to assimilate it.”

Alex froze up for a second at the thought. Anthony had danced around the issue with how he worded it, but that was a serious problem that Alex hadn’t considered. Most Neophytes would build an aperture in a strategic position inside of their chest, but these apertures were already real physical items.

Muhammad had swallowed the aperture from the sentient zombie that almost killed him, but something told Alex that Jess wouldn’t be able to match that feat without a mana type that facilitated the process. Would they have to break her ribs to pry them open and put the aperture in?

He felt more than a bit queasy at the thought.

“Yeah, no,” Jess stopped Alex’s thoughts from spiraling any further, “No offense Anthony, but we’re doing that with your dad around after he agrees that it’s safe.”

Anthony nodded with a relieved expression, “I was hoping you’d say that. I could probably fix any problems, but dad’s the expert.”

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The best part of that plan was that Alex didn’t have to be involved in any surgery, so he quickly nodded his own agreement.

Scrambling for a different thing to think about, Alex didn’t have to search his brain for long.

He hadn’t checked his notifications yet, after all. He quickly opened them, eager to rectify that.

You have used your mana type to alter a Tier 1 Soul Aperture. Your alterations have improved the aperture by 11%. Alterations will allow any pathwalker without a mana type to use the aperture. Using your mana type to improve an aperture not your own is considered an Uncommon Tier 1 Achievement.

That seemed… stingy? Alex would get a Rare Achievement from his first Hard Mode delve. Were crafting Achievements that much harder, or was he overestimating the difficulty of this project?

It was probably the latter option. His mana control had been exceptional for an untiered Academy student, but compared to Neophytes good enough to receive non combat Achievements he had a very long way to go even after the week of intense practice. His mana type did pretty much all of the heavy lifting on this one, he’d just needed to push it into simple shapes.

He hadn’t really been expecting an Achievement, so he decided to just be content with receiving anything. It wasn’t like complaints would get him anywhere.

“Notification?” Alex’s perusal of his status hadn’t gone unnoticed, Jess was clearly curious about what he might have received.

“Refining the aperture with my mana type gave me an Uncommon Achievement,” Alex replied.

“Just Uncommon?” Jess’s initial reaction was the same as Alex’s.

“I think it’s low because it was my mana type doing the heavy lifting,” Alex replied, “I only improved it by 11% as well.”

“That makes sense,” Anthony nodded, “You might be able to upgrade the Achievement once you’re good enough to remove flaws in the design.”

Alex nodded thoughtfully. He probably didn’t need that Achievement, but it might be nice to track his improvements in a measurable way.

Anthony’s face suddenly shifted into a frown, “You hardly reacted beyond reading your status. Did you even notice the attribute boost?”

Obviously, Alex had noticed the extra mana suddenly flowing into his body. It was a boon, just not the life-changing reward that it was for most Neophytes. It wouldn’t really change anything for Alex in the short term, but a few extra points would let him push his future Mana Body that small amount further.

“I did,” Alex replied, opening his status to review his rewards as he spoke, “I just wasn’t focusing on it.”

Achievement: Tier 1 - Uncommon

Common Reward: Minor Mana Guidance.

Uncommon Reward: +5 Connection, +5 Capacity.

The rewards were more succinct than their Tier 0 counterparts, mainly because each reward was only redeemable one time. The tradeoff was that these rewards were better individually, but anyone who reached Tier 2 would see the balance clearly in favor of the repeated benefits.

Alex had already known what to expect from Tier 1’s low hanging fruit, so he closed the screen without thinking about it much. The rewards were nice, but far from important to him. They were designed to assist in gaining a mana type and forming an aperture attuned to it, the greatest hurdles you had to clear to Attune your body and break into Tier 2.

Alex had already done both of those things. His time as an Aspirant had been so exceptional that Tier 1 was just a stopping point on the way to Tier 2. His Attunement was a matter of when, not if.

Of course, he would have to be stupid to ignore the far greater benefits that came with high-level Achievements. Getting as close to replicating his Tier 0 Achievement as possible was his real goal for his time as a Neophyte. Something Unique to the entire Realm was likely impossible, but if he could manage a Cluster first it would be great for him and for Earth.

It was easy to get lost in dreams of Grand rewards and additional mana types, but Alex pulled himself out before he could waste too much time.

He still had plenty of apertures to Refine, after all.

*****

The next few days went by slowly. With the excavation done, and no desire to risk splitting up the team, Anthony and Jess had little to do besides working on Abilities and Enhancements. Without any reference material, they didn’t have much to go on.

Anthony was able to improve his healing Ability a decent amount, changing out the runes for Tier 1 versions, but Jess didn’t have a mana type to use for extra progress. She managed to create two new Abilities, but her lack of knowledge of Neophyte runes meant that they were clearly just Tier 0. Neither Ability was particularly impressive, either, since she was going off memory of blueprints she hadn’t looked at in weeks.

Creating Abilities, or Enhancements, over your tier was impossible, since the high-tier runes required high-quality mana, but that rule didn’t go both ways. As Neophytes, they were more than capable of powering a Tier 0 Mana Body, it would just be noticeably weaker than if they used Tier 1 runes.

Upgrading a Tier 0 Ability to Tier 1 was easier than directly creating a Tier 1 Ability, but it normally wouldn’t be worth Jess’s time to go that route. Still, she had nothing better to do.

During that time, Alex had managed to exhaust their stock of apertures. With no time spent walking around, he was able to Refine at a faster pace than when he’d been practicing. Only two of the misshapen, low-quality apertures remained for later attempts to improve the design.

Out of the others, Alex had successfully refined eighty-six apertures. It wasn’t an incredible success rate, and he was far from satisfied with the number. More than twenty attempts had failed even with his improved technique.

Some of those failures could be explained as simple mistakes. He’d tried to continue after he was exhausted, or allowed himself to be distracted by Jess and Anthony talking about their blueprints.

Some of them, though, were just reminders of his own still imperfect skills. Part of him had to wonder if he should’ve held off until he’d improved more. Across the eight locations, there’d been a bit more than 170 apertures. That meant that he’d ended up with a roughly 50% success rate.

Being that wasteful with such a limited resource would probably get an apprentice in New Chicago in serious trouble, but Alex didn’t have a master to answer to when it came to improving his skills. Alex hadn’t been worried about waste initially, but he hadn’t managed to fill their packs with apertures, leading to his current doubts. Would it have been better to just bring the loot home and work with it after he had a few months of practice?

“So, we all ended up with the same number of trial points?” Alex asked, more to fill the remaining time than out of real curiosity. He had his status open as he asked, looking at his own score of 160. Each of the sites had provided twenty points.

“160,” Jess confirmed.

“Same,” Anthony nodded, “I would’ve told you about any surprise increases.”

The group hadn’t really discussed the numbers, because they had no context for what they would be worth. With time ticking down and nothing to do, Alex’s desire to speculate had overwhelmed those factors.

“What are you guys hoping for?” Alex asked.

Anthony shrugged, “My main goal at the moment is forming an aperture, so anything that can help with that.”

“Maybe something that could help me gain a mana type?” Jess didn’t sound very confident, “I doubt we’ve qualified for anything great.”

“We should get a bonus for survival, since that was the original goal,” Alex pointed out.

The others nodded, but didn’t seem convinced that would be enough to really push them over any major breakpoints. They continued to discuss potential rewards for a little bit, but that topic didn’t last for long.

Perhaps it was the large number of low-quality rewards they’d already received, but another Minor Guidance just didn’t excite any of them. Alex was hoping for something a bit more exotic, but couldn’t come up with anything exciting enough to spark a real discussion.

It was clear that Anthony and Jess were more interested in going home and seeing their families than they were in talking about rewards, so Alex eventually let them fall into silence as the minutes ticked away. He couldn’t really fault them for looking forward to the return to New Chicago.

With nothing left to do, Alex’s thoughts drifted, eventually settling on Becca and wondering how far she’d progressed. Would she have her own aperture when they returned?

Without Body Guidance, it seemed unlikely, but he didn’t know how much help she might’ve received.

Eventually, a notification that he hadn’t been expecting drew him out of his thoughts.

1 hour remaining in trial. Group is under no threat and will not take actions to reach a higher score. Competition Store opened.

Points acquired from exploration: 160

Points acquired from survival: 200

Total trial score: 360. Prodigy status grants access to all rewards.

Open store?

That was new.