Lucas woke up with a start, and a time clock appeared in his line of sight, indicating that he still had fifteen hours left in the room. That was a novelty, for sure, but the water that by now had turned cold didn’t allow him to dwell on it. He got out, wrapped himself in a towel, and then put on the bathrobe.

He hadn’t planned on sleeping in the bathtub, and now he felt bad for wasting that wonderful-looking bed that was waiting for him, but there was nothing he could do now. He had been pushing himself too much in the last few days, and it was beginning to take a mental toll on him that no stamina points could account for.

Lucas felt that the relation between stamina and tiredness was often misleading. Theoretically, shouldn’t he have overcome the need for sleep through stamina potions? But that wasn’t how it worked. It didn’t matter if his stamina pool was full; he would still feel the need to sleep nevertheless. Similarly, many other aspects of the system didn’t seem to make much sense.

For instance, why did the heat from the chimney burn his skin but the flame he produced in his hand didn’t? Or why were the Strength and Toughness stats unrelated? He could be strong enough to lift a car, but if he took a hit of the same strength, he would crumble. If logic were applied, they should both be parts of the same thing, but that wasn’t how things worked. In fact, Strength was somehow related to sharpness, but not Toughness.

After a few minutes of pondering the inconsistencies of the world with the system, he decided that some things were simply the way they were and that there was no point in questioning them. His energy was better spent figuring out how they worked, not why. And when he thought about it, he also didn’t understand many of the scientific aspects of how things worked back on Earth, and that didn’t make them any less real.

Lucas considered what his next steps should be. He still had fifteen hours left, but he felt that wouldn’t be enough for him to learn how to control the temperature of his flame to an acceptable enough standard to start trying to do alchemy with it. He still had a lot more to learn about mana control that he hadn’t managed to cover yet. So he decided to shift focus and start learning the other basic aspects in which mana could manifest itself. Fire was only one aspect of it, after all.

Returning to his bed, Lucas started reading his books again. According to them, mana in its most basic form could manifest itself in four elements: fire, water, earth and wind. Fire and water were theoretically the easiest of the four. So Lucas decided to focus on the water next.

Water magic was naturally also related to emotions, in this case, sadness and calmness. This sentiment was easier for Lucas to emulate than anger; he only needed to think about the times he spent with his father and mother, just doing nothing, and the sadness of a memory with her came along with it. Pouring the emotion through the mana in his body and channeling it through his arm and out of his hand, a liquid soon began to form on his palm. This time, his progress was even faster than with the fire, taking him only thirty minutes to produce the first results.

After deciding to try to learn all four elements before he had to call it a day, Lucas moved on to the next one: Earth. But the difficulties with this one started to arise as soon as he read the book definition on it; earth was described as decisive and unmovable. What was that supposed to mean? Faruk’s journal wasn’t of much help either.

According to him, when he did earth magic, he thought about his wife and how she had fought when facing cancer. It was surely very touching, but Lucas would have preferred more descriptive instructions. But then again, those weren’t exactly instructions, but his experiences on the matter.

Lucas got the gist of it, though. He needed to picture a strong-minded person—his wife in this instance—someone he believed wouldn’t waver. Which made Lucas wonder about the circumstances of her death, but he ignored his curiosity and focused on the task at hand. Lucas thought about what he could use as inspiration for this, and the only person to appear in his mind was his mother again. It was only natural, considering she was one of the most present people in his life. But it wasn’t just that; his mother was strong-minded too, as seen in how she wasn’t willing to change planets, even with a comet coming their way.

So Lucas tried and tried, but after almost an hour of thinking of various situations involving his mother, he got nothing. “What am I doing wrong?” Lucas murmured to himself. He believed the theory was right; he even double-checked the book to be sure. So the problem should be in the example he was using. He then went on to visualize a rock and even a mountain for the next hour, but still, nothing happened.

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Lucas sighed and laid on his bed, closing his eyes. He could really use a teacher for this one. Sometimes learning alone was simply too hard, but he wouldn’t quit. And when this thought appeared in his mind, a flash of insight came to him. A strong-minded person—someone who wouldn’t waver—wasn’t that himself?

It sounded a bit arrogant to think of himself so flatteringly, but he was a prime example of what he had been looking for. When he couldn’t use his body back on Earth, he used his brain. And he continued with the same intention of moving forward, no matter what. That had to be what he needed. Lucas focused once again, and five minutes later, dirt was coming out of his hand. He thought it would be gross, but it was a pleasant feeling.

Finally, he thought, closing his hand and stopping the process. This one had been a little harder, but he managed to pull it off, and he felt he began to understand the whole process much better than before.

So, when it came to the wind and he had to picture freedom, he had no trouble doing it. He only needed to remember the feeling he had after he killed his first beast, overcoming many of his fears, and a small fan was formed on his hand. He would never have to overheat again. Lucas had just stepped into this world of mana manipulation, but it felt good to take this first step nonetheless.

He still had a few hours left, and he could keep practicing mana manipulation, but he decided to use this time to focus on his alchemy. When he left Hilda’s house before coming to the tower, he brought with him a few ingredients to make potions whenever he could. He had become pretty decent at the most basic potions: Health, Mana, and Stamina. But that wasn’t what he was thinking of making today. It was something he had never done before, something even Hilda didn’t do much: elixirs.

Hilda had naturally known how to make them, and she was pretty good at it too, but since she didn’t have too much time to spare, she used to focus solely on producing Stamina, Health and Mana potions for the Alchemy Emporium simply because they were the ones who sell the most, for obvious reasons.

The effects an elixir could produce, however, were not to be underestimated. Basically, what they did was increase one’s stats temporarily. Hilda’s elixirs could enhance up to 15 stat points for two hours. Lucas wasn’t expecting all that, but any upgrade in stats that he could make with an elixir could be useful if he was able to access his ring during the next challenge. So he got to work.

He had brought with him a portable stove, one of Hilda’s cauldrons, and the ingredients he would require: a lot of herbs and quite a few parts of beasts. He had memorized the recipe for the two elixirs he wanted to make, so that part was not a problem; the problem was the execution. He had seen Hilda make them, but that was pretty different from doing it yourself. You can watch someone drive a car all day long, but that won’t make you a good driver. There will always be doubts and unexpected events along the way, and it took Lucas many hours of intense work to finally be able to produce one functional elixir.

He knew it took time to do alchemy, even the simplest potions could take a couple of hours to be made. Sure, once it was done, you would have a whole batch of it, but it still took time. But this time, it went above anything he had done previously. He spent eight entire hours focused on his task, and only at the end of those hours was he able to make something he could identify. A lot of that was due to his inexperience, but it was still representative of how much harder elixirs were to craft than the regular potions. But he didn’t have time to celebrate. He took a sip of a stamina potion he had stored and went back to work.

His first elixir was still far from what he wanted, only giving a +2. It should be the worst elixir ever created. He still had four hours left on the room, so he hurried to try and make others. Hopefully, his experience this time around will help him in his next attempt.

Sweat was pouring from his forehead, now he was entering in the final stages. It was time to add the most vital ingredient to that recipe: Troodon Tendons. The fastest beast is below level twenty, according to Hilda. The tricky part was let the tendons boil and slowly dissolve into the mixture, making the most of their essence.

The last time Lucas didn’t control the fire properly, and the tendon burned a little before fully dissolving it, making his elixir less effective in the end. But this time, he had to get it right, because judging by the time that he had spent on that one elixir, it would be his last attempt.

Placing the tendon very carefully into the mixture, Lucas didn’t take his eyes off them for a second, observing any minor change in them and controlling the fire accordingly. Thirty minutes later, he turned off the fire and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Carefully, he proceeded to place the liquid into an empty flask, as he had to do this for the elixir be recognized by the system, and anxiously identified it after he had done so.

Agility Elixir (Low-Quality)

Gives +5 points in Agility for an hour.

“YES!” Lucas yelled, celebrating. That was one of the hardest things he had ever done. It was still pretty far from what Hilda could make, but that was partially due to the simplicity of the recipe he had used. He didn’t have many ingredients to spare, so he had to simplify, but he wasn’t disappointed. It was pretty satisfying creating something on his own, and he had a feeling he would get addicted to it.

Checking the time, he was surprised to see he had only twenty minutes to spare. Originally he planned on doing two elixirs: one for Agility and one for Strength, but he didn’t expect to take so long on just one. Hurrying, he placed the elixir on his ring, took a quick bath to get rid of the sweat he had accumulated over the last hours, and entered the elevator, getting ready for the next challenge.