[Note from the Story Channeling System: Names were translated into their phonetical versions of the world they are channeled into. The name for females were translated to end in the letter A or E or Y, with the names for males ending in any of the other letters. The names for the futa/hermaphrodites can end in any letter.]

"What are you looking for, young cultivator?", said the old woman with a mellow smile.

"Hello! I recently failed my first advancement, so after healing and buying an alchemy book and an aura eyes book from the outer knowledge peak, I read the books, then I came here, since the librarian recommended me your shop. I need a cheap alchemical cauldron, big enough for around 5 pills at once. I'm planning to use it with grass from the outer disciple forest, to train my alchemy before I can make pills, after which I'll come back here to buy the herbs needed to make a proper pill. I only have 94 Flows left, and I would like to save some to buy the alchemical herbs, too, once I advanced enough with my alchemy to be sure I won't be ruining them.", said Sip, with a somewhat sad look.

"You're quite lucky! Someone sold me a cauldron like that a while ago, as a failed product, and nobody wanted it so far. I planned to sell it to a forge for 20 Flows, to be used to train new blacksmiths, but I'll sell it to you for 60 flows. The herbs for the easiest and cheapest pill cost 40 Flows for what you need for one pill, and you can have both for 80 Flows. That leaves you with 14 flows, which should be enough for a meal or two, and I recommend a sandwich worth 7 flows every day. Since you got far enough with your cultivation to attempt an advancement, even if you failed, it means you can absorb mana and somewhat sense it, too. If you manage to use both the aura eyes and the alchemy technique for moving the mana to the center of the cauldron, where the aura can be absorbed by leftover impurities, you will be left with an almost-useless aura recovery pill made from grass, which should be enough to have you not need to eat for that day. And with the leftover money, you can still afford to fail for the first 2 days, or 3 days if you already ate food, or an aura recovery pill, for today. The librarian seems to have seen potential in you, since he rarely sells the aura eyes book. It's a book he made, so he knows the dangers of using it to hurt others. Make sure you don't betray his trust, you hear me?", said the old woman, starting surprised, continuing calm and relaxed, and ending on a serious note.

"Yes, I understand.", said Sip. "Can I see the cauldron before I pay?"

To which the woman responded: "Of course! It a small cauldron shaped like a small cooking pot. It was meant to be used to serve sauces in restaurants which serve aura-filled foods, think of it like cooking with alchemical materials and aura-rich foods. It comes with a lid, and it has a small hole if you rotate the lid in a certain position, which can be used to see when there is steam. It wasn't wanted as a cauldron because it looks like a cooking pot, and it wasn't wanted by the restaurant because it's oddly shaped. None of that should matter for alchemy, though, but most people prefer to spend a bit more and get a cauldron with a normal shape, and it's too expensive for a cooking pot. The only people who would want something like this are restaurants and travelers, but this cauldron is too small for cooking for anyone who isn't a kid like you, and even for you it might be a bit too small for a whole meal, so if you travel you would need more time to cook the same amount of aura-rich foods than with a bigger alchemical cauldron. I'm sure the book told you, but make sure you get branches of multiple sizes, and separate the sizes before use. You want at least 3 different sizes, which would help you to have a better control over the flames. And have a longer and thicker stick which you can use to remove some of the fuel, to adjust the temperature. What do you say? It's a good cauldron, just a bit of an odd shape."

The woman seemed chatty, and what she said did make sense for Sip, and he came to the same conclusions about the heating method, and started thinking. "As she said, if I'm lucky and find something edible in the forest, after I buy a book about foraging, I will be able to use that to cook something. Even a fruit. For example, an unripe fruit which would otherwise be really sour and give me a belly ache, but cooking it will solve that issue."

After a bit of thinking, I finally answered. "I think that's a good deal. What herbs are included? I'll pay as soon as I see that the herbs are in good condition."

The woman started smiling, then searched behind the counter and brought a bunch of 3 different dried herbs in good condition, which Sip knew from the alchemical book that they were meant to be ground/mashed into a paste or powder, then placed in an alchemical cauldron with water as soon as the water started boiling, quickly stirred with a stick, then the fire should be removed, then use your aura to push the aura to the center of the cauldron, where it will mix with some of the impurities to form an alchemical pill for healing small wounds.

The woman then placed the dried herbs into the cauldron, Sip paid the woman the 80 Flows, then took the cauldron with the herbs inside, with the lid on the stick-like handle, since it was made to be used as a small dish on the end of the cooking cauldron's handle, then said his goodbyes to the woman and left for his home, quickly using the lid to cover the cooking cauldron.

On the way home, he remembered that he put a stop to the memories from his current life and from his previous lives, so he started allowing the memories back, but at a much slower pace than before. That's when he remembered that there was one week left of the holidays, after which school will start again. The school consisted of 2 days of classes, 6 hours of studying, 1 hour for eating before the start of the classes, and 1 hour of eating after the end of the classes, so everyone can focus on learning and resting properly. The rest of the week was meant for individual training, with one day of the week free from work, but everyone had to choose their resting day from the two days of weekend. This was meant so that the settlements can keep working but also make sure that people are resting. The week had 8 days, for the 8 demigods which maintained the balance of the world created by the creator god. The demigods were also called lower gods, since their power was much more limited than that of the creator god, but it was still enough power for any of the gods to cause the end of the world. Sip was not familiar with the religion of this world, but he at least knew that the order of the 8 demigods did not reflect the order of their power, but the order in which they became demigods and nothing else. Though he believes it will be useful to find more about them, if he wants to avoid being involved in needless conflicts.

As he got out of the market area, he realized that while most things were the same as in his previous world, the colors of the humans in this world was different. While on Earth the skin colors were different shades of yellow and orange and the blood was red which caused lips to be red and blushing and angry people to turn red and with bruises to turn purple, in this world the skin colors were different shades of blue, the blood was yellow which caused lips to be yellow and blushing and anger to turn people green and closer to yellow and bruises to turn brown. This made for an interesting aesthetic, and Sip couldn't help but dig it.

Once home, Sip carefully left the covered alchemical cooking pot near the books, then enthusiastically walked to the forest to gather grass, using ragged clothes meant for training, instead of his good clothes meant to be kept clean.

With only one week left before the start of the new school year, Sip started his days by buying and eating a sandwich, then going in his ragged clothes to get grass, then go back to his home inside the academy, and try to make alchemical pills. In order to get grass with more aura, he had to try using the Aura Eyes technique, which at his level only had the effect of making his eyes slightly magnetized to look at places with more mana, undoubtedly because of the low amount of mana he was able to feed the technique. However, even that small magnetic effect was very useful, because he took his time to see which part of his vision was more magnetized, which he told himself would also be a good training against techniques which try to make others focus on some place, usually used in seduction techniques, or not focus on some place, usually used in stealth techniques.

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Cooking the grass didn't smell good, so he had to cook outside his home, otherwise his good clothes and even his books, would start smelling bad. Sip only had enough energy for trying to make two pills every day, and the first thing he tried was to compare making a pill from grass which was mashed into a paste, with a pill made from grass which was not mashed, and the result after 2 days of trying was that mashing had the result of making low-level aura water, instead of an aura pill. However, without the first advancement, he wasn't able to use aura to purify the contents of the alchemical cooking cauldron, so the result was not edible, but he could still mash the pill and lick a part of it, or lick the liquid once the solids were removed, to see if he can absorb some aura from it, which helped him train his aura sense, so he can absorb even more aura.

Having studied the Sword Aura technique before failing to advance meant that he did train to move aura inside his body, which helped him to recover quicker, and helped to increase his aura sense, which sped up his cultivation. Studying alchemy helped increase his aura sense by training him to move aura outside his body. The aura eyes significantly sped up the alchemy cultivation, and after his first successful advancement, he would be able to use it to better control how his aura is moving, and see how other people's aura is moving so he can compare to and copy others. With the help of the 3 techniques, he was able to make the trash-tier level 1 (stone level) aura recovery pills and elixirs, then absorb their mana inside his body, which significantly sped up his cultivation, to the point where he might be able to advance before the start of the school year.

Before he started trying to make pills, there were 8 days left until the start of the school year. After the 3 days in which he had money for food, he managed to make the pill and elixir be of high-enough quantity to replenish his energy, so he could spend the rest of the day cultivating, then sleep at night to recover his fatigue. This continued until the 6th day, when he noticed he was close to advancing, so the next day he gathered more grass than in the previous days, made only aura elixir, then he poured that elixir on his skin in order to absorb the energy faster, and all that aura elixir was absorbed just quick enough to trigger the advancement, but left him without much energy to stabilize himself after the advancement, which meant he had to spend the rest of the day and night cultivating, and only in the morning of the 7th day did he fall asleep, waking up in the evening of the 7th day, then rushed to wash himself to remove the smelly aura elixir from his skin, then cultivated a bit until sunset, and then falling asleep once more in order to wake up early enough to get to school.

The process of advancement wasn't difficult to explain, but it was difficult to do. What one had to do was to create an energy core in their body, using aura. The easiest and most stable energy cores were in the dantian, commonly known as in the middle of the belly/abs, two-three finger thicknesses above the belly button, or in the hearth. The most difficult and was to make the energy core in the brain, and it literally could not be done before the second advancement. So a small group of people tried to make an energy core in their brain for their third advancement, because the academy would take care of healing them if they failed, and depending on how close they got to achieving it, they might get selected to get healed again for free, because of how useful it is to have an energy core in the brain. And many people who reached the third level, the Iron Level, before trying to advance, made for themselves an extra Copper Level energy core somewhere in their body, in order to be able to use it to more quickly recover if they fail to advance, because sometimes the failure to advance destroys the energy core used.

Thankfully, each home had a fence around it, and aura formations were used to only allow the owner and it's guests to get inside the property of the home, which made it safe for everyone to keep things at home. This made leaving things inside his home safe, so he didn't have to carry his belongings with him, or burry them somewhere inside or around his home.

So on the beginning of the 8th day, Sipher woke up early, cleaned himself with water from the public well, then put his good clean clothes on, and went to school, hungry as a starving wolf. As much as he would like to be able to buy better food than was was served in the cafeteria, free food is free food, so he quickly ate the mashed potato, then started cultivating in order to absorb as much of the aura of the food as possible. Unfortunately, the food had no aura, but the aura expelled by the others in the cafeteria helped him stabilize his cultivation right as the time for eating ended.

With a stable cultivation of Copper Level, he finally has the chance to move from being an outer disciple to being an inner disciple, and go to classes useful for his chosen path.

After leaving the cafeteria, he walked to the outer plaza, where people were lined up in front of 6 booths which tested the new cultivators. Being the last to leave the cafeteria, he was among the last to be tested. There were a few tests for each person, and passing at least one was enough to make one an inner disciple, if passed with perfect scores, otherwise one would need to pass at least the first test and get a good-enough score in the rest of the scores, adding up to the equivalent of passing two tests with the maximum score, even if the test was not passed perfectly.

The first test was moving aura into a plate made of metal and aura crystal, similar to the inner coating of an alchemical cauldron, which measured the amount of aura moved into the plate, similar to a barometer or thermometer. Sipher managed to push just enough aura to prove he advanced.

The second test was to use a level two (copper level) aura ink (made by mixing aura into ink) to write a glyph, rune, or sigil. Because there was a simple example of a glyph, Sip was able to write one, but his lack of exercise could be seen because the glyph became unstable shortly after writing half of it, which caused Sipher to fail this test.

The third test was using a small spear-shaped or sword-shaped dull knife without an edge to cut a piece of paper, which required the user to use an aura blade. After a lot of concentration, Sipher managed to make a small cut, a third way from the bottom, which was enough to pass the third test, but meant he didn't have enough practice or enough talent with bladed weapons. The paper was placed on a metal board at an angle, and a tiny bow was provided for those who use archery, requiring them to use the bow from almost point blank and release the knife or spear to fall on the paper, to try to cut the paper that way. But that was not normal paper, but paper filled with aura, so only those who could put aura into their weapon of choice could cut it.

The fourth test was making a grass pill or grass elixir, and another device would tell how much aura was concentrated in that pill or elixir. For Sipher, that was 6 out of 10 parts of the total aura of the grass used, and in order to pass one had to have at least 5 out of 10 parts. While it might not seem like much, for someone who advanced a day ago, and who tried this as the fourth test, it meant that if this was the second test he took, then the result would be 7 or 8 out of 10 parts, which was taken into account for the total score. So even though the pill he and elixir he made had 6 parts each, he was noted with 6 for the pill and 7 for the elixir. Seems like his bet with using elixir to absorb aura for the advancement was a good bet.

The fifth and last test was sensing which of 5 items had the most aura, with there being two acceptable answers, but one of them having slightly more mana while the other was releasing more mana. Thanks to his mana eyes, he was able to see through the trick, and passed with the highest score of this test, by saying "The blue ball has the most aura, but the pyramid releases the most aura, so it's possible for the pyramid to have had more aura at the beginning of the testing, if it kept releasing aura at the same rate. ... I'm not sure how close the amount of aura in them would have to be, at the beginning of the test, if they kept releasing aura at the same rate since the beginning of the test." Apparently, trying to estimate how much time has passed since they both had the same mana was the next question, which Sipher answered before the question was even asked. Not being able to accurately calculate when the two had the same amount of mana meant that he did not get a perfect pass, but only the maximum score.

At the end of the test, Sipher managed to get 32 out of 50 points, with a mere 20 being needed in order to be accepted in the Torec Inner Academy. This meant he received a badge and a bag, and he had to go to his home inside the Outer Academy to get his books, alchemical cooking cauldron, dirty clothes, and the badge for being an outer trainee, then come back to the same plaza, so he can be relocated to a better house inside the Inner part of the Torec Academy. And a short while later, he and 46 other kids ranging from 12 to 17 years old, gathered in the same plaza, waiting for a teacher to come and tell them what to do next.