Tom was certain what he had was a roadmap. With growing excitement, he traced the connections from the trash spells up to the two best in the tier.

Heal Minor Scratches and Alleviate Surface Bruising could be combined into Heal Skin.

Stitch Wound and Internal Mending together created Triage Cut.

Remove Dead Tissue Minor and Sterilize Open Wound merged to form Purified Tissue Minor.

Triage Cut, Heal Skin and Purified Tissue Minor became Heal Cut.

Heal Cut, Tom knew, was a very efficient spell whose only weakness was how niche it was. But if a sword sliced your thigh open, that was what you wanted to use. For slashing wounds on an even level basis, Heal Cut was better than anything else in tier zero, as well as outperforming most of the tier one and two alternatives.

He licked his lips and traced the information down further.

There were similar evolution trees for Heal Organs, Mend Bone, Purge Foreign Substances, Replenish Flesh and Blood and then a much smaller tree that clearly represented the prerequisites for healing missile. Out of all six trees, Heal Organ had the most components feeding into it. This was because every organ was different, with each of them needing at least one unique twist to the magic that fixed them. The pathway to fix the lungs required inflating it, intestines had to cater for the removal of waste product, and the heart had an extra pressure-containment module that was not needed for anything else.

Then, once you had all five of them, or six, if you wanted the missile option, they rolled into the ultimate tier zero spell. Tom had, of course, known how flexible Touch Heal was, but he hadn’t realised how many components fed into it. He flipped the page and was unsurprised to find the two core tier zero spells constituted pre-requisites for everything in the tier 1 tree.

Thankfully, there were only half the number of entries in the tables for tier one. Tier two spells had fewer still. The higher you got, the easier it grew - at least, from the numbers’ perspective. Tom wasn’t fooled. Each individual transformation got more than twice as difficult with each step up the tiers.

“Absolutely unbelievable,” he said. He knew some people might consider him crazy for talking to himself, but it had always helped him reason things out – besides, this was the only time he could talk like a normal adult. Outside this room he was Ta, and that was a drag.

Given his plan to evolve crappy spells into better ones, the knowledge on this sheet was extraordinary.

It was a guide. And it was exactly what he needed, and he would kiss whoever had thought to produce this information. They were currently Tom’s favourite person in the world.

Better still, Tom was experienced enough to recognise this was a carefully curated knowledge. There were no specific instructions anywhere. There were no words or diagrams to help interpret the data. You had to tease the insights out by reading between the lines. They might as well have written in bold on the first sheet, that this package has been ‘designed not to interfere with the title acquisition.’ Between the way this information was presented and everything else he had learnt, he was certain that there were juicy titles available, and that they were awarded for acquiring multiple skills and spells before maturity. Not after one spell, obviously, but, perhaps, after four? Or maybe eight? Possibly it required a spell higher than tier one, or maybe they functioned under some weighted criteria that recognised that a tier two ability was worth at least ten tier zero abilities, or something like that.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Tom squeezed the sheaf of pages for a moment. There were around fifty of them, and the first one alone had contained a massive wealth of information.

What else is hiding in there? He wondered.

Reverently, he flipped the pages open, and saw that the next one covered the tier one paths like he had already determined. The next few pages took that journey all the way up to tier six, where the progression ended in a Healing Domain, Basic Resurrection or Restore to Optimal State. Each of these three spells was special.

Basic Resurrection did exactly what its name implied, but it was highly restrictive. Basically, it was a spell that had to be triggered within a minute of death and, when someone died in battle, there was rarely time to do that. Out of the three, Tom saw that as the weakest. The Restore to Optimal State, in addition to healing grievous injuries, could also purge powerful poisons, venoms, curses, and hostile energy types. Over hundreds of pitched battles, it would save far more lives than the limited Basic Resurrection Spell; of that, he was sure. As for the final spell, well, the usefulness of the Healing Domain heavily depended on its exact features. The basic versions Tom had seen would provide continuous low-level healing for free, as well as boost your own healing spells within the domain range. Visibly, it would not save as many lives as Restore to Optimal State, but in an extended battle of attrition Tom knew which one he would want on his side - and it was not the mana-hungry, one-use, heal-all ability.

If Tom’s ambition was to be the best healer ever, then following this guide was how to do it. If he could have two of those tier six spells without spending a point of experience, it was hard to imagine the type of class he would be awarded. It would be a legendary level at a minimum, and might let him find hidden titles like Deliver a Million Units of Healing before getting a class.

He tore his mind away from these daydreams.

“That is not your path,” he snapped at himself. He would not try to do that, even if thinking about it made him wet his lips. He had a build that he had decided on, and that was the one he would follow. For him, the plan for healing was always only to progress far enough to be confident that he could keep himself alive when things went wrong.

Once more, he tapped the paper and considered the hidden information contained in the drawers. The folders were filled with knowledge, but what was implied was as important as the specifics. The level of detail provided was, to put it lightly, interesting. Why did they choose to go up to tier six - why not tier four or eight? The fact they had included those extra steps, but not further, suggested that someone obviously thought it was possible to develop a domain before getting access to the experience shop.

I’ll get three, Tom promised himself. He had developed one in six months, though, admittedly, off a far higher base, which had given him far more mana and fate to invest into the effort. He had done it once, so he was confident he could do it again.

As his fingers flipped over the first few pages of the Healing Domain, the complexity really drove home how hard gaining a domain was. Last time, he had cheated heavily by using both high tier and significantly levelled spells. This time, he would need to start with nothing. He would need to create almost a hundred base spells, ranging from tier zero to tier two. They would then have to be pushed through a couple of hundred evolutions. He did the mathematics in his head. Ten years, twelve months per year that gave him a hundred and twenty months, which meant getting the domain would require him to evolve or create a spell almost every week!

Tom whistled at that requirement.

To get three…

He frowned. That was more challenging, but he moved on.