"First," Osiph said taking a sip of his tea. "The political reasoning is that this planet is under a ban on outside forces making contact or interfering with the local population in any form, without specific approval like the kind I got to come here. It is the reason none of your Ascended ever come back. It is under something called the Barren Accords and it's a treaty organized by some of the largest factions to protect planets with limited Mana such as yours and many others like it."

"The sensible explanation is the balance of the world itself. The resources to get you to ascend are a blip in the grand scheme of things. But thousands of people hunting faster than the planet can replenish itself due to the lack of Mana would lead to a Mana drought. That would leave the planet magicless for all those who weren't raised up already."

"Finally, personally, it's because I want something from you and only you. That Transmogrify Ability you have could be the answer to a very old question that many, including my boss, have spent an incomprehensible amount of time, effort, and resources into answering. So, very simply put, none of the others here have anything to offer me."

"So your boss, I'm assuming some very powerful figure, needs my ability to achieve something because of reasons and you think I can help him, but aren't allowed to simply take me to him because that would interfere with the treaty in place. And I'm assuming all the secrecy is because you don't want whoever else is also looking for the answer to find out that I can potentially answer it for them. Thus losing your chance at answering it yourselves?"

"You're almost as bad as Bel." Osiph groaned, leaning forward and placing his head between his hands. Looking back up he stared for a moment. "Yes, that is pretty much spot on. The fake name is because I did not report your survival, as that would lead to a spotlight on you and not just from your local powers but those behind the attacks as well. I thought it easier to just keep you a continent away while you focus on gaining levels without being pulled into an interrogation every five minutes to find out how you survived. Before you ask, I will not tell you about my boss."

"So if I have this right, you are breaking a bunch of space laws in the hope that I will be some kind of key to solving all your problems. And you're feeding me like a pig to fatten up, so I can Ascend and come help you and your boss? But as long as I help you, I will receive support for my goals for my family in return?"

"Yes."

"So onto training, then?" I asked.

" Let us proceed."

"So I have three months to get Novice but I plan on getting as close to Journeyman as possible before classes. I need to get familiar with Alchemy and Enchanting. I want to clear one of the Novice dungeons myself, as well as the first floor of the Journeyman. Those are the goals I set for myself before I request the Duke to set up regular excursions to clear them out. As long as I meet my goals you can add whatever else you think I will need to fill my time. I am also mostly in the library with the time dilation, so I can spend more hours out of the day rested and ready to keep training."

"I like your enthusiasm, and as entertaining as you playing politics with the Duke would be, I have already asked him on your behalf. I simply told him it would be a useful training ground for his personal forces, and he agreed. All I asked was that they only train with the excess land summons outside of the dungeons until the dungeons themselves have fulfilled their usefulness to you. He grumbled a bit about that, with the Beginner tier creatures giving next to no Experience, but I told him it would be good practice for maneuvers in a somewhat safe environment."

"Very prudent of you, thank you," I said sincerely. I hated politics and had a bad habit of saying the wrong thing in front of people in authority positions, even with my etiquette lessons when I was a boy. That just saved me a whole headache later and I was grateful.

"As for the program, you have already started it, and your goals align with the first steps rather well. This first week, you will be doing Alchemy and Enchanting basics for ten hours each, with a two-hour rest between. After the first week, you will cut these numbers in half, and gather a small team to begin clearing the lower dungeons, your goal is to solo clear the first three floors of three of the lower-tiered dungeons. Once you have solo cleared the first three levels, these times will be further reduced. With the rest of your day, you can go in with a team until all of them are cleared or spent in meditation working in your Lab at Novice. I will be popping in from time to time to check in but I have other arrangements to make, while I am here. One week before you are to depart for classes, you will come back here to the estate and I will give you the itinerary for your trip. At that time I will provide a list of the offered classes, but do not worry about preparation time, this period is to find what you shape your Path to be, not what you want to mold it into."

"Not too hard to understand, just level quickly, find my rhythm, and plan from there. Anything else?"

"Nothing else, you may start right away or get some rest first if you choose, it is up to you. Is there anything else you wanted to ask before the wards come down?"

"Yeah, I do, actually, two questions." I did remember one important detail I had thought of briefly when I was expecting a fight in the village. "Where is my sword?"

"Your sword?"

"You told me not to purchase a sword because you had something special for me."

"Ah yes, well my original plan was to take you to another dungeon to the north and have you do something similar to our current plan. There will be a high-level drop from the bosses and their guards, mostly crafting goods but at Journeyman they start dropping items. Again the system, no idea how or why. All anyone knows is that if you kill a high tier of creature that had been born in a dungeon, say a giant leech queen for example. It will, for some reason, have a tower shield or something equally confusing, hidden away in a secret pocket that you gain as loot whenever you defeat it. It's absurd, but it's good loot, so who would complain? It's more system shenanigans, and I wouldn't think too hard on it if I were you."

"So your plan was; just to throw me at high-level creatures until they drop something that's useful for me?"

"No, it's usually pretty tailored to the person that killed it. It's calculated by a number of factors that nobody can accurately pin down, but it does include damage dealt overall. So you can't have your loot stolen by the guy hiding in the corner who does the last hundred damage with an accidental arrow." He said, his face darkening before he schooled his features just as quickly.

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

He waved it off, his normal wrinkled smile coming back. "It was back when I was in Expert tier, so it is nothing that I should be holding a grudge over. No matter, you had another question?"

"Yeah, what if I want to bring someone with me, like if I find someone or a team that I want to bring with me to the multiverse?"

"What specifically? Enough resources? Most likely. If you keep a short list, it shouldn't really impact anything here on the planet. If people will take notice? I doubt it, the multiverse is vast. Imagine finding out five new droplets of water were added to the ocean. Except the ocean is the size of your entire Solar system. My advice; keep it close. I support you bringing someone you can trust, as the multiverse is a strange and unfamiliar territory to the newly Ascended. But be cautious, do not spend resources and time on someone who won't make it. I think the Duke's boy will make it on his own someday if his family ever lets him out of the house. Does that mean you should start training with him right away? I do not know the answer to that, just be cautious about those you tell. I could see a Master trying to torture you for secrets if they knew you had a path out of this fishbowl. I will not be able to interfere, again, for the political reasons I stated earlier."

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"Alright, I'll keep that in mind, for now though, there is no point in wasting more time. I'll get started with Enchanting."

Osiph tapped his ring on the wooden armrest and the door to the entrance hall opened revealing Lenox Bowing in the doorway. "Lenox here will help you find the Enchanter's facility located in the basement. The Alchemy Laboratory is located across the hall from there, so once you are down there you shouldn't have any issue finding it."

"Thank you." I bowed and walked over to meet Lenox, getting the butler as I exited the library.

Following the man, we walked the middle of the two staircases leading up. Tucked away beneath the stairs was a hidden door that I would only have found if I had made the decision to inspect the suits of armor against this far wall.

Descending down a set of spiral stone steps, we came out in a dim hallway that looked like it spanned the entire length of the structure. An iron gate lay at the end of the hall and about halfway down there were two doors. One a light brown, the other a painted black, each with a bell placed on the wall next to them.

Lenox bowed once more. "The red door is the Enchanter's facility and the black, the Alchemist's Laboratory. The gate at the end is the entrance to the dungeons, currently empty, but available should you need to question any persons who are unwilling to comply. You will find the Alchemy recipes and Enchanting schematics in the studies attached to each room along with lavatories that can be found in both rooms, attached to the studies. I will have Trucia, one of the maids, bring you food in five hours as instructed by the Lord. She will be stationed in the Hall and there are bells to call for assistance. Simply press the red button that is on the tables and it will inform the staff you wish to speak with one of them or are in need of a service. If you have an emergency, there is a short-range teleportation array in the corner. Simply press the button three times in quick succession, it will activate a lockdown ward and bring you to safety."

"Thank you, Lenox. I will get to it then."

"Very well young sir. I wish you luck in your studies." He turned and ascended the staircase back to the first floor.

"How are those books on Runes and Alchemy going?" I asked Mel.

"Better than planned. I've been prioritizing immediate goals with general knowledge over everything else, so we have at least five Beginner tier fundamentals for each, already absorbed."

"Why don't I feel like I know it? I thought the point of the Ability was to absorb knowledge. I don't feel very knowledgeable about either subject." I voiced my complaints as I opened the red door and stepped in.

The room was surprisingly smaller than I expected. It was a perfect cube, each side twenty feet long, there was a door on the back wall that most likely led to the study. In the center of the room was an Enchanter's table, a proper one, sitting underneath a large bulbed lighting artifact.

There were pitted spaces all over the surface for beast Cores and mana crystals to be placed in, while a metal sketch pad and engraving rod for drawing Runes, was laid off to the side of the workstation.

"That's not quite how it works," Mel said as I made my way across the room, examining the table closer. "For me or works like that yes, but for you and how your mind works, it can't have information just shoved into it. You will need to use the information and gain actual experience in whatever field of study you are trying to learn. It's more that the information will be in your brain, but the techniques, experience, and understanding must come through hard work."

"But, you know it?"

"Yes, I currently have twelve percent of the books absorbed. Including those we discussed."

"All I have to do is have you teach me and I can gain the experience myself."

"Yes, though it's not going to be that simple. In the same way, I could teach you to apply paint to a canvas, but can't teach you to be an artist. You will have to understand the fundamentals yourself, and that will take time, patience, and effort."

"We better get started then."

***

"Now try to pull the Mana from the pure Mana crystal and guide it into the channel leading to the next crystal in the table."

I did as instructed but for the fourth consecutive attempt, it ended in failure as the Mana dissipated.

We hadn't tried an actual schematic yet or even looked at the study. There were some basic exercises in the textbooks in my Library that I would need to grasp before attempting the real thing.

If I just jumped right into it, I would waste more resources and possibly blow myself up.

I pulled out another pure Mana crystal and placed it into the center pit.

My goal was to take the Mana from a pure Mana crystal and infuse it into a Fire Affinity one.

On the fourteenth attempt, I managed to get the Mana to the next pit but it wouldn't merge before I lost the connection and the crystal lost its vibrant color.

Looking at the clock, I had taken almost the entire ten hours and accomplished next to nothing. Descending into meditation, I arrived in my room.

" I wouldn't be so hard on yourself. You made noticeable progress." Mel said laying on my bed, one arm propping up her head.

"I should have been able to do it already. By level 10 I should be able to craft a common rarity item. I have the stats of someone twice my level, and I'm great at Mana manipulation. I just thought it would come easier, you know?"

"Having higher Stats will help with the quality of the final product but it won't help you learn faster. I will suggest maybe you spend some time with the textbooks before jumping straight into it from now until you have a better handle on the principles."

Exiting my room, we entered the main hall and with little effort, I located the first of the Alchemy textbooks.

[An Introduction to Beginner's Alchemy]

With a hundred and thirty-four hours for every hour that passed in the real world, I got to work. I read and reread each of the textbooks on Alchemy over and over until I could recite each of them by heart.

That had only taken half the time, I now knew how the process infused Mana into the ingredients, so I spent the remainder actually meditating on the concepts to better understand why they happened the way they did.

To say I had some great epiphany or breakthrough would be a gross misrepresentation of what I had actually accomplished. On the fourth day, I had an errant thought.

It isn't about just mixing the ingredients, it's about finding the balance between separate Mana Matrix's and bringing them together without them rejecting each other. It's like whittling down a square peg to fit into a round hole. That's why incorporating two Fire Affinity ingredients is less complex than two less similar components.

"Why couldn't they just say that?" I asked out loud to Mel.

After a few seconds of silence, Mel responded. "They do in the Novice Alchemy textbooks that you haven't read yet. I assume it's because the want you to figure that out yourself, or that you would be expected to have been taught this at the academy you were supposed to attend originally."

"Well, I have about thirty hours left, can you do a check on the Novice books to see if they contain anything else that might seem useful before we start? I'm going to start going over the Enchanting textbooks thoroughly to get a headstart on the next crafting session."

"Doesn't appear to be anything else that isn't common knowledge; it's mostly the use of more complicated aspects of Alchemy such as mixing affinities and how to remove unwanted effects from certain herbs to improve the quality of the yield. I think I'll continue focusing on indexing the information in these books. I'm hoping I'm done before you tier up so that we can add a whole new collection immediately."

"Sounds good, I'll get started on those on my next meditation break. For now, I'll finish reading over the Enchanting books until I run out of time here then give it another go. I think I'm ready to try a minor potion recipe. Honestly, I should have taken the time to gather information first. It would have saved me quite a few Mana crystals."

"Yes, but the mistakes we make shape our ability to react to future problems. Maybe going straight into it will help cement some of the understanding deeper into you, making future breakthroughs easier."

"Is that how it works?"

"No idea but I thought it sounded good," Mel said with a grin.

Shaking my head, I set off around the Library to collect the textbooks I wanted to study.