“Well, the first step to becoming a Doctor-Alchemist is knowing things about the human body. The library can help with that.” Ray said, reading from a book. The professions of the Empire.

“I have limited library time.” Marcus stated.

“Yes, but you don’t have limited learning time. Does the College allow you to take notes?” Ray asked.

“Well, yes, but it's generally not preferred…” Marcus said.

“Well it's generally not preferred to have a low mana pool, but look where we are. Now you’re going to sit here and learn all you can about being a Doctor. And then later I am going to lecture you on being an Alchemist.” Ray instructed as Marcus sat down to read.

And then Ray went about his next plan, getting more mana. The neutral potion had given Ray an idea. Just how many paid students and others were there that were stuck below Tier 3 and needed neutral mana?

Ray was sure there were a few. And now, say there was a shop selling these potions, they would come rushing, wouldn’t they? And there was only benefit to be had from reaching Tier 3 anyway.

But how could he do it? The first step was to either get into the Mana Manipulation class or learn things about it. The early levels of a skill were easiest to level, things became harsher later on.

Ray walked towards the amphitheater, hoping the selection wasn’t over yet. Marcus had told him that Mana Manipulation usually went a bit empty, the teacher was something of an eccentric and not particularly well-liked, and the course was considered an easy one.

“Can you please tell me if the Mana Manipulation class’ selection is done?” Ray asked a white robed disciple there, hoping he would have some information.

“No, but I wouldn’t bother waiting. The teacher has left and there is no one to teach anymore. The class is gonna go empty. An easy mark though if you’ve already taken it, the College won't hire another teacher for a while, and you’ll get full marks until they get one.” the white robed disciple replied before walking away.

The teacher left? Just like that? In the middle of the year? Ray was shocked. Well, there was only one thing he could do. Learn by himself. Sighing at his luck, Ray went back to the library and began looking up books on Mana Manipulation. But there were none to be seen. In the end, Ray decided to trouble the gray robe on duty.

“Hello, could you please tell me where the books on Mana Manipulation are.” Ray asked.

“Not in the library, they’ve all been checked out. The teacher up and left, so everyone’s been checking them out. I suggest you try again in three days.” The gray robe said.

“Is there no book left?” Ray asked, frowning, he could wait three days, but he would prefer to learn now.

“Well, there is an old, probably useless tome up there. The bloody thing dates back to before the Empire,, so you can be sure that the information is obsolete by now. But sure, if you can levitate things from so high up then you’re free to borrow it. Just don’t damage any books.” the gray robe replied, pointing Ray to a pillar.

“Umm, how high is it?” Ray asked, nervous now.

“The seventeenth shelf. The only book without gold on it. The Empire loves putting gold on every semi-valuable book it has, so we have an abundance of those.” the gray robe said as she added silver to a book cover. “And every once in a while they need to be repaired. But at least the College pays.”

Ray nodded as he headed for the pillar, wondering what he could do. The book was too high to levitate down, each shelf was thirty centimeters high, and five meters was a bit much, even with the wand.

But Ray was not out of options just yet, he moved a nearby potted plant there and conjured some green glitter. A ladder could work, maybe, possibly. At least he could try.

Ray pointed his wand at the plant, sending glitter to make it grow in the rough shape of a thin ladder. The plant grew high, consuming most of Ray’s mana as it did so, but in the end the plant grew to the height, joining the shelf, enough that Ray could now safely climb the ladder.

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Grunting at the legwork of climbing a ladder so thin that only one foot could fit on a step, Ray climbed up, scaling the impressive height and retrieving the book. But now he had another challenge, getting down. And he had to do it with aching feet and one hand occupied.

Ray climbed down, looking downwards with fear as he carefully stepped, one hand clutching the book.

“What are you doing?” the voice of a gray robe shouted from below when Ray was halfway down.

“I am trying to take a book!” Ray yelled back.

“I swear, all of you book freaks are going to be the death of me one day. Could you not just wait three days? At least you didn’t damage anything. Now get down, so you can shrink this thing down.” the gray robe said, reminding Ray that he could not, in fact, shrink anything down. But he decided he would tackle that when he was down and not in danger anymore.

Thirty minutes later, he was staring at the face of a very annoyed gray girl. “Now, can you please shrink the giant ladder plant down?” she asked.

“Well, you see, I can’t exactly do that.” Ray began.

“I figured, not enough mana, eh?” the girl said, waving her hand at it. A wave of metal plates emerged and cut the plant into little pieces.

“Now you are going to find someone with a fire affinity and some control to burn these things.” she continued, but Ray was already on it. The climb up and down had been long enough for him to recover his mana, and he took advantage of it.

Ray sent yellow glitter at the pieces, setting them alight and burning them to ashes.

“I was talking about someone who could actually control the fire and not let it burn any books, but I guess it worked. The College might have known something when it made the pillars so far away.” the girl said, shaking her head as she walked off, her annoyance clear.

Ray was just happy he had the book now. A simple brown covered book with the name The Mana arts, but it would hopefully gain him a few levels.

Ray sat down on a sofa and began reading. To his disappointment, the book was a simple list of mana exercises to improve mana control The problem? The exercises were unsuitable for him. Ray could hardly twist fire into a whirlpool or draw a water shield, all he had was glitter. The only thing he could do was creative.

Hmm, what was something in the book that he could do but would be hard? Ray set to work drawing whirlpools of water, growing potted plants in weird ways without killing them, and just generally doing things he thought were hard to do.

[Mana Manipulation] raised to level 3: 105 +1 to Wisdom

[Learning] raised to level 5: 144 mana +1 to intelligence

Threshold reached. [Learning] will not level up until Tier 6 is achieved.

Tier 3: (444/800)

Ray’s brows furrowed as he levelled up to Tier 3. The threshold meant something important happened at Tier 6, but it also made it harder to get there. Just the skills he had wouldn’t do. No, he would need more skills if he wanted to reach Tier 6 successfully.

But how did you get new skills in the first place? And did Ma not run into it? Or was she keeping it from him? Ray doubted it, Ma would not keep him in the dark about something as significant as this.

The common sense answer was to do something related to it. But Ray had done things not related to it, not many, but enough to get a skill for it. Was it intent that was missing? Hmm, if he read a book with the intent to just read it, instead of learning from it, would he get a [Reading] skill.

Or was there something else he had to do? Hmm, magic combat had to be a skill, right? Ray had seen a practice area on the map, perhaps he should go there and test it out.

And so Ray went, finding a rather dust covered arena that, of course, had a restriction attached to it. A student could apparently only use it twice a week before paying. Ray put it out of his mind, focusing on learning [Magic Combat]. The arena measured combat capability by one’s ability to break a shield. The more damage you did, the higher the power.

Ray conjured a line of yellow glitter and shot it at the shield. The shield would be easier to break if he targeted only a single point. The line struck the shield, making a bright yellow dot that grew bigger as more glitter hit it.

The number ticked up slowly, showing that Ray wasn’t doing much damage. Five minutes passed, and the shield had yet to break, but Ray was nearly out of mana. But the number had been creeping up fast.

In the end, the number stopped at 393, something Ray ignored. After all, he had no idea if that was a god or a bad number. But he had yet to gain a skill. Was it even possible to do so, Ray wondered, if perhaps there was a catch somewhere.

Perhaps the System would answer if he asked? Did Systems do that? ‘System, can you tell me how to gain a skill?’ Ray thought.

Rerouting power… question confirmed as class 0.

The System will answer only general questions to those that have recently joined the System to aid in the transition.