Once again the crowd was silent in his head while Alan focused on his opponent. He had already cut one of the insectoid’s legs off, but was having trouble scoring another hit. Its skill with a staff was impressive and those fire lances just kept coming. At least the power behind them wasn’t much to talk about.

  Suddenly an idea occurred to him. All he needed was a distraction and since the strange bug creature had already shown itself resistant to his prismatic orb he needed to find something else. Using conjure water he summoned a huge flow that created a muddy mess when it mixed with the arena’s dirt floor as it swept the Nivex’s feet out from under it and left it vulnerable. A couple of blows from his daggers and then a quick scissor attack and he had taken its head off.

  He suddenly got a feeling like death was lurking over his shoulder and quickly spun around bringing his hand up. It was the large cat person, Afilada. Her strange blue sword was already slicing toward his neck so he sent a prismatic orb into her face and tried to dodge to the side.

  The orb exploded but it seemed to have no effect on her and his eyes locked on to the edge of her sword as it finished its arc at the side of his head. He could feel it cut into his skin and then there was a moment of pressure when it hit his skull but that blade must have been sharp. The pressure disappeared as he felt the top of his head peeled away and then the sword was cutting through his brain. There was a brief moment where he actually saw the blade slicing through one of his eyes before everything went dark.

  The next moment he found himself sitting back on his bed as if nothing had happened. Standing in the door to his room in the tower was his mentor.

  “Welcome back. Take a moment, I’m sure that was jarring,” he said to Alan.

  “What the actual fuck!”

  Dracon sighed, “Or sure, we can do this now.”

  “Was that a dream, what the hell?”

  “So, no, that was not a dream. This was a limited opportunity by the Network and it resurrected all of the competitors back with their mentors after they were killed.”

  “So wait, I didn’t actually kill anyone?” He asked hopefully.

  “That’s the part you focus on? Technically, yes you did kill them, but they were resurrected by the Network after, so I guess the real answer would be no.”

  “That was very messed up. Have you come to complain that I didn't win?”

  Dracon broke out in a big smile. “Are you kidding? You did better than expected. Mage’s usually do not do very well this early in their Path. Their spells usually kinda suck and without anyone to support them the first fighter to get close ends them. The fact that you won your first group and managed to kill someone in round two is a great achievement.”

  “Well I’m glad that worked out for you. Me, I just felt a sword slice my brain in half.”

  “Yeah, I get that, it’s why I said you should take a moment.”

  “Yeah, sorry…no, screw that, I’m not sorry. That was a shit show. What was even the point if we all lived anyway.” Alan was pissed, no two ways about it.

  “You did get a nice title out of it and a class stone.”

  “They also gave me a nice sword.” he mumbled lamely after checking his notifications and setting his reward next to himself on the bed. His identify seemed to be working in the tower again.

  Steel Gladius (Uncommon): A steel short sword designed as a thrusting weapon but also capable of cutting. The blade is about 75 centimeters long and double edged.

  “Ooo, very shiny. About that class stone. You haven’t used it yet, have you?” Dracon asked.

  “No, my fighter class isn’t high enough. Neither is my rogue class. My mage class is at 100% though if you wanna give me a class stone for it.”

  “I actually do have a class stone to reward you with, but I strongly suggest that you don’t use it right now.” He held out his hand and in it was an opal stone with a cloaked figure surrounded by the different glyphs representing the six basic mana types.

  Item: Opal Sorcerer Class Stone, rarity Rare. This stone can be used to upgrade the mage class to the opal class Sorcerer, an intelligence based class that specializes in harnessing the mana flowing throughout their own body. Requirements: at least three mage mana talents

  Alan felt a little better about all he had gone through after getting this. He now had three opal class stones and two were rare. While it had been an ordeal, the rewards were also impressive. He was unsure of something though.

  “Why would you not want me to upgrade my class?”

  Dracon flicked his hand and an ornate padded chair appeared in the room. He sat down on it and took a deep breath. “This part is gonna get kinda mystical, so bear with me. Some people will tell you to get as strong as possible as fast as possible. At the early stages it pays off with huge dividends. That Afilada who was such a monster in the arena had already upgraded her warrior class.”

  “Seems like a good idea to me. I can tell you how her sword feels inside your body.”

  “Hush, the grown-ups are talking.” Alan stuck up his middle finger. Dracon couldn’t help smiling as he continued. “The thing is, it isn’t as good in the long run. Remember how I said that your time as a doctor helped explain your aura skill? Most people in our universe cannot take a class until their mid teens, however, their Path begins from birth. Things you do before getting your class help pave your way forward.

  “A child who trains everyday with a sword will never gain the skill for swords. But as soon as they get old enough that their body is ready to form its pathways they will find that not only do they quickly gain that skill but its growth is off the charts. Think of the early work they did as digging a new path for a river. The Network leaves a dam of dirt at the mouth of the river as you dig out the future path. Then once your pathways form the Network removes that dam and the water pours forth, filling all that you have dug.”

  “You’re saying that when their body starts to use energy that’s like the water being released?” Alan asked.

  “Exactly. It works in a similar manner with attributes, and not just for the young. I noticed you and Simon lifting weights in the morning. No matter how much you lift, your strength stat will never go up. But what you are doing is digging a trench for future growth. You will find that your strength classes will increase at a faster rate after such exercise. You have prepared your body so that it can better use the energy it gains from your achievements as a fighter. It is not a huge increase, but it is noticeable.”

  “So what does this have to do with me being a doctor?”

  “When you described being a doctor to me it sounded an awful lot like you were trying to peer inside of people and see how their bodies were working, or not working. There are parallels between that and how aura sensing works. All those years as a doctor would have helped prepare your body for the aura reading skill.”

  “If that’s true, then why don’t more people end up with it. On earth alone there have to be thousands of doctors.”

  “You will find that planets in the Network do not have doctors as you think of them, we use magical healing. And many worlds that are integrated are not at a level where true doctors really exist. But even if they did, that alone is not enough. Going back to our river analogy, some skills are easy to unlock, like swords. You don’t even need a class to gain skill levels in such a thing.

  “Other skills are much harder to learn, like aura reading. Few can unlock that skill before reaching the opal level, and many who unlock it don’t do so until they reach a red level. In order to break the dam at the river it is much harder. Instead of a dirt dam, think of it as being made of stone or metal depending on how difficult it is to learn the skill. As your power increases it will be easier to unlock them as your ‘shovel’ gets stronger.”

  “Ok, so my being a doctor helped prepare my body to learn the aura reading skill, but at my level I shouldn’t have been able to unlock it. So how did I?”

  “I think another major reason was the fact you killed the octospatium. As I told you earlier, they hunt using a version of aura reading. When you kill something you become linked with their achievements and absorb some of their energy. That's a big reason why combat is a great way of leveling up. When you ‘killed’ it, some of that energy was linked to your aura reading skill and so you ended up partially breaking through that dam. Your practice of Tai Chi, which is tied to your bodies energy, and the experience you had when creating your whetstone were, I think, the final elements that unlocked it.”

  Alan thought for a moment. “Ok, I can kinda see what you mean. But what does this have to do with upgrading my class to opal?”

  “I’m really abusing this river analogy, but every time you increase your level you are improving your shovel, but also making the dirt stronger, making it harder to dig new pathways. This is where the metaphor breaks down. It takes two things to unlock a new skill. Preparing pathways for the skill to link to you and then unlocking those pathways. At a higher level it is harder to prepare the pathways, but easier to unlock them. By working at lower levels you can prepare many skills that can then be easily unlocked at a higher level. And sometimes you manage to unlock those higher skills early, like your mana enhancement. Luckily for you the difference between someone with a quartz class and no class is almost nothing when it comes to creating new skills. However, there is a significant difference between quartz and opal. It doesn’t mean you can't develop new skills, but it makes it much harder. This is all relative of course, as an opal class is still early and would have a much easier time than my emerald level. All that being said, I would recommend waiting until just before this tier ends to upgrade your classes if possible.”

  “I’m not sure I really understand why this matters. Why would I need so many new skills?”

  “Right now I see you are very comfortable with those daggers, but you just got a shiny new sword. What if you decided to switch to that as your new main weapon. If you don’t already have the sword skill, being at a higher level would make it harder to get. That’s not a great example because of how easy it is to learn swords, but that’s only part of the issue. The other part is that by waiting to upgrade you can dig pathways you don’t even know about until you unlock them when you evolve later, just like you ended up getting aura reading at a much earlier level than you should have. There’s no way to know what experiences will cause this, but the effect is lessened the higher your level. It’s partly because as you level, your soul begins to lock in your Path.”

  “So you are saying that by waiting to upgrade I could gain access to some really cool skills later on. I presume that will also make it easier for you to teach me stuff now.”

  Dracon clapped his hands in delight. “See, I knew you weren’t as dumb as you looked. And speaking of teaching you, it’s time we figured out what to focus on.”

  The next half an hour was spent with them going back and forth over things Alan could learn. After his fight today he was hoping for some more impressive offensive spells, or cool buffing spells like levitation or invisibility. Dracon felt that his time would be better spent working on something no one else in his tutorial would be able to do.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Look, you managed to create a pretty cool spell all on your own. If you want better spells you know how to make them. Sure, I could save you a lot of time with that, but wouldn’t you rather learn something that you probably couldn’t do by yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your advantages over others here were your aura sensing and your mana handling. You also have mana enhancement. The fact that you unlocked this boggles my mind. This is a skill unheard of for a white level person. I don’t know what they are, but I am sure that there is some incredible series of events in your past that helped you unlock this. With the skill mana enhancement you unlock two future paths that no one else will be able to match for a long time. Engraving and Enchantment.”

  “You’re talking about making magic items?” Alan asked.

  “Exactly. These two fields are very different in their details, so you will probably find yourself choosing one over the other eventually, but I would like to start you off with some knowledge of both. I won’t be able to take you that far in your learning unfortunately. Our time is limited, you can only stay for a couple of months before we both have to return to our own worlds. That means once I have shown you the basics of both, I will only have a little time to give you more advanced instruction. Because of that you will have to pick one to work on.”

  “Why so little time?”

  “You should be thankful it’s that long. Because of the huge deficit most integrated worlds have in magical knowledge I am given more time to work with you than others. A fighter would only have a few weeks with their mentor since they are assumed to start with a similar level of understanding as someone raised in the Network.”

  Alan quickly agreed with his mentor’s plans. The thought of making magic items was pretty awesome. The reality turned out to be less interesting. Apparently a large part of both methods of improving items were tied to mana drawing. Before he could learn how to engrave an item or add an enchantment he would have to spend a couple of weeks working with various magic circles.

  The upside was that having a better understanding of how magic circles worked would also help him when it came to creating and modifying diagrams for spells. Whereas ‘the Master’ had been very hands off when it came to instruction, Dracon was an involved teacher. Not only did he provide the tasks to be completed but he offered tips and suggestions throughout. He still tended to avoid just telling Alan how to do it, something about how figuring it out yourself made the achievement greater.

  Every time his mentor said achievement Alan felt like he could hear a capital A. These were the opportunities to dig new trenches that he had been talking about before. By determining his own way of doing things it would help him expand his repertoire later in his evolution.

  Alan also found the magical circles to be fascinating. The way that subtle changes in the design could have drastic effects on the result was incredible. If he was put in the mage’s dungeon again he would be able to do so much better. By the end of the two weeks he had only learned about thirty different circles, but he had learned how he could modify them to change their effects, and he was confident he could at least attempt to create his own circles to do things he didn’t know were possible yet.

  With just over a quarter of their time together already spent, he dove into the next part of his instruction. Before he could engrave something or enhance it he needed to sense its aura. This is why he was able to make some items stronger by modifying their energy flows, but had been unable to do anything to his daggers. He had never been able to sense their flows so he couldn’t modify them.

  It turned out that the more natural something was, the easier it was to sense their aura. Also, the more dense a material the harder it was to see the energy inside. This is why Alan could easily see the aura inside of the grass or a tree, but had to work to see the aura of a stone. Metal was denser than many types of stone as well. To make it worse, his daggers had been worked on by smiths. That processing locked the aura away making it even harder to see.

  Part of each day was spent with Alan trying to sense the aura of increasingly difficult materials. The rest was spent actually enhancing stones and branches, items he had no trouble sensing. He soon learned that when he was imparting his mana into items previously he was instinctually using the easiest source he had, light mana since he was a light spinner. Now he was working on imparting them with different types of mana. He hadn’t started engraving yet since it was a little more complicated than enchantment, which was basically a fancy word for mana enhancement.

  He now had a series of stones that were hot to hold, were incredibly light, glowed, were extra hard, and even one that just always felt damp. This was the idea of enchantment. Adding mana to an object to give it special properties. Eventually he would add that mana in a special pattern to give better effects. What Alan had accomplished so far was enough for Dracon to feel that he had the basics of enchantment figured out.

  It wasn’t until the start of the second month that he started working on engraving. In concept it was similar to enchantment. You would add a symbol to the item giving it a power. In practice there were some differences in what could be done. Alan still wasn’t exactly sure what all the differences were, but a major one was that you had to channel energy into an engraving whenever you wanted to activate it.

  The first engraving he managed was a simple fire diagram on the top of a stone. If you channeled energy into the engraving it would briefly become surrounded in flames. It may not sound that impressive, a flaming rock would maybe make starting fires easier, but a flaming sword could be a great weapon. Unfortunately, just because he could draw the engraving on a rock didn’t mean he could draw it on one of his daggers. The diagram would have to change subtly depending on the energy flows inside the item. That was why it was so important he improved his aura skill to where he could sense them in worked iron or even steel.

  One day after they had made some good progress on his aura reading Dracon sat him down for a talk.

  “I’ve been meaning to have this discussion for a while, but I keep getting distracted by your progress. I don’t want to wait any longer though because it is important we talk about this before we become separated.”

  Alan could tell that he was serious about whatever this was, so he gave him his full attention.

  “I have noticed how much faster you can access your light mana compared with anything else. I know this isn’t simply your talent since you have talents in multiple mana types. Did you create a separate mana pool for your light mana?”

  “I did, why is that good?”

  A wry smile appeared on his mentor’s face, “It’s your favorite answer again…it’s complicated. It is actually something that most mages do, and the fact that you managed already is a testament to your abilities.”

  “But…”

  With a more serious look his mentor continued. “But, it is too early for you to do this. Unfortunately the process is irreversible, so there is nothing you can do about it. But I wanted to warn you about the issue before you tried it with your other mana. You probably noticed that your general mana pool has gotten smaller since you created your special pool.”

  “Yes, but it still refills at the normal rate.”

  “Indeed it does. The problem is that if you were to create separate pools for all your mana types you would have almost no general mana left. This isn’t a problem for higher level mages since their mana pool is so much bigger to begin with.”

  “Is it a problem to have less general mana? Couldn’t I just merge the other types of mana together to reform it if needed?” Alan was not sure what his mentor was trying to tell him.

  “No, actually, you can’t do that. That is why it’s a problem. Mana can be split into an almost infinite number of strands as your level grows. For example a fire mana can be split into further concepts like heat and ignition which can then be further broken down. The issue is that no matter how high a level you get, or how you improve your mana handling, it is impossible to merge mana together. You might have noticed while creating your new spells that you cannot allow the different mana strands to touch.

  “It is one of the major limiters in magic that mana can be split but never combined. The only way to get general mana is from a source. The only sources we have ever encountered are stars, dungeons, and your soul.”

  This was getting a little too mystical for Alan, but his takeaway was that he shouldn’t create other special mana pools until he had gotten a much larger general pool. The other thing it made him consider is that he had never tried to replicate Valori and Ezra’s talent with fire and dark mana.

  That night as he sat in his room he tried to remember what they had done. It was hard because his brain had been crammed with a lot of knowledge since then. It wasn’t until the sun was rising that he had finally unlocked both talents.

  New Mage Talent unlocked: Fire Starter

  New Mage Talent unlocked: Dark Spreader

  He was so exhausted that day that he made no progress in any of his tasks. Dracon thought he was being lazy, but when he explained what had kept him up late his mentor took the time to show him how to properly handle air mana. Apparently even he hadn’t known that mage talents could be learned. It was nice, but also a little worrying, to know that the man wasn’t infallible.

  New Mage Talent unlocked: Air Bender

  With two weeks before he would have to return he had finally reached the point where he could see the aura on his iron weapons. He didn’t want to experiment on his daggers as mistakes could ruin the weapon and at the very least would prevent him from trying to engrave them again. Instead his first try was on the kobold scimitar he was still carrying around.

  Its energy flow was all snarled up from the poor state of the weapon. There wasn’t much he could do to fix that, so he would have to do the best he could. For his first engraving he would try to add a light effect to it. It wasn’t necessarily the most useful engraving he knew, but it was low risk to him if he messed it up.

  It turned out that the fluctuating energy field of the poorly maintained scimitar was too difficult to work with. Just when he thought he had figured it out the field would change and he would have to start all over again. Luckily he had a mentor who had plenty of resources compared to him. He wouldn’t be allowed to take any of these pieces with him, but he could take the knowledge he gained.

  Over the next week he engraved piece after piece. Daggers, swords, shields, helmets, grieves, plates, spoons, decorative balls. If it was made of iron he put his mark on it, literally. He had figured out engravings to provide effects like the flaming rock or one to make an item bright with light. He also made one that blasted wind from the tip of the sword it was engraved on.

  Alan had also been working on engravings that simply enhanced the weapon. It made it heavier, sharper, or more durable so that it was less likely to break. His latest attempts involved putting two engravings on the same weapon. This was only possible on uncommon or higher rarity items. The rarer the item the more energy was contained in its make-up and this made it better able to handle engravings. That meant he could only try this out a few times as his mentor didn’t have too many of these lying around.

  It was at this point that Alan had to make his choice. He had the basics of both enchantment and engraving figured out. Enough so that he could add low level versions to items. With the little time he had left he would have to choose one to focus on. Both had their pros and cons, but Alan felt that he would have an easier time figuring out enchantments on his own. In the end he and Dracon focused on his engravings.

  His mentor had another book for him. A primer on engravings. Much of it would be worthless until Alan learned to separate mana into more types, but there was still a lot he could work with. He spent a few days working on engravings that combined two types of mana. This greatly increased what they could accomplish, but also was exponentially more difficult. And not the early part of exponential where the increase was small, this was the part of exponential where the increases were staggering. He had some limited success and Dracon was able to guide him past some of the common mistakes.

  With only three days left before they both were sent home, Dracon enforced a rest period. His stated reason was that there wasn’t much else he could teach him in that time and he would be better off being fresh when he left the dungeon. In reality, it was because he wanted to spend some time just seeing what kind of person his apprentice was. Also, he had a few last nuggets of information to impart to him.

  “Remember that when we leave here, I will still be your mentor and you will be my apprentice. It won’t mean much while you are locked in the tutorial. Other than that I will get to share in the gains of your successes, so don’t screw up. However, after the tutorial is over I will try and find you so that I can help you on your journey some more.”

  Alan thanked his mentor. “I appreciate everything you’ve done so far. I have learned a lot, but I do worry how effective this will be for me as I move forward in the tiers. A lot of these items will make my life easier, but I can’t make powerful enough enhancements to make a significant difference in my combat ability yet.”

  “That’s another thing I wanted to share with you. Each tutorial is slightly different, so I don’t know the details of yours, but I can tell you in general what to expect. Once you start competing with the other races you will be trying to control increasingly large areas. First is usually some kind of small village or town. Each tier will require you to end up controlling a larger and larger space until eventually you rule over the entire disk.

  “A common theme in these challenges is to either conquer the area or somehow outperform against the other towns or cities. Your enhancements can help with both. A magical item, even a weak one, can sell for a tremendous amount of money giving you a valuable commodity to leverage. If you choose the conquest route they can make a big difference in your armies as well. While a minor enhancement might not make a huge difference for one powerhouse, a thousand low level soldiers with better equipment than their opponent can make a big difference. And remember, the more you work on these, the more powerful your enhancements will become.”

  What he was saying made a lot of sense. And the tip on what was coming up was incredible as well. He was sure that Tamee would make an announcement about how tier three would work before tier two was over, but the mental headstart he had just been given would do a lot to ease his worries. And also allow him to plan.

  As they hung out more, Alan and Dracon found that they fit together well. They were not the same person, Dracon had a flair for the dramatic that Alan found off putting, and Alan’s reliance on melee weapons was something Dracon would never understand, but they had similar ideals.

  Dracon was very impressed when he learned how upset Alan was when he thought he had actually killed his fellow humans. He also admired how driven Alan was to grow stronger so he could help save his race. Dracon did warn him to harden his heart some as there would be a lot of killing in the time to come. The Network was not a peaceful society.

  Finally it was time to go and they were ready. The last two months had been a great time for both of them, but they were each eager to continue on their own journeys. No exit portal appeared, instead one moment Alan was looking out from the observation floor at another beautiful sunset over the surrounding forest, and the next he found himself back in front of the smaller version of the tower that had been the entrance. He walked over and tried to open the door but found it locked. No amount of pulling would open it. With a sigh he got his bearings again. Time to work.