Rick continued to experiment with volatile mana himself. After a few minutes of experimenting he no longer needed Ryan to send him a [Volatile Antimagic Throw] at his head. Now he was capable of creating and holding the orb of white mana himself.

  The third explosion in Rick’s face, however, did very little to inspire confidence.

  “It doesn’t look like you’re making progress on the mana core bit. Besides, even if can make it form it doesn’t mean I’ll be able to succeed.”

  Ryan didn’t even understand half of what Rick was doing. When he tried to just hold the volatile energy in place it either dissipated or rebounded straight back into his arm.

  Rick threw away the core in his hand and snapped his attention to the fourther that dared to be dubious of his great genius.

  “That’s why I said your concepts matter. That will be the thing that binds everything together, naturally forming a core for you. It’s the reason why your arm works at all.”

  Ryan thought. It was possible that Ryan just didn’t have that many concepts being settled around him at that time. Or it was possible that Rick really had no idea what he was doing and was completely winging it.

  Neither sounded right in Ryan’s opinion.

  “And why do my concepts sound like they will naturally form an explosive mana core?”

  Rick looked at Ryan like he was the dumbest person in the world. “It’s already happening to the ambient mana around you. Do you not feel it?”

  Ryan blinked. He tried to get a better sense for the mana around him, but all he felt was the oppressive mana of Sector Four.

  “No.”

  “Shame.” Rick shook his head, disappointed that a fourther couldn’t pick up on such minute changes. “The ambient mana around you is already catalyzing around you. It might not be as strong as the concepts you have working with your arm, but it is already far, far more than anything a fourther should have.”

  “You’re saying I already have the concepts of making mana blow up.”

  Rick took a closer look at the mana around Ryan. His eyes peering uncomfortably deep into his chest. “There’s a little more than that.”

  The simplest of spell circles appeared next to Ryan. It was quite literally a circle with three runes spinning slowly in a circle. As it got closer to Ryan’s body it started to fall apart. When it touched his skin, there was a bright pop and a flash and it disappeared.

  “The concept around you causes magical formations to fall apart. This combined with the volatility concept will make you an excellent mage-killer.”

  Ryan stopped to think. Pinkie was a shapeshifter that could take on both a dragon’s forms and others forms. A person didn’t have to be just one concept. For example, Ryan was both a [Rogue] and an [Aura Tyrant]. While he had been leaning heavily on the [Aura Tyrant] as of late, he couldn’t deny that being a [Rogue] was something that came unusually naturally to him.

  Then he remembered something. There were classes offered to him that he’d rejected. The [Tactician] and the [Saboteur].

  “So… classes that are offered by the Trial System. Do you think these concepts surround the people before they get it offered as class orbs?”

  “ you can’t be offered the class if you have no essence for it.”

  Ryan didn’t say out loud.

  His concept had to go further than just breaking down magical formations. After all, what was a [Saboteur] but a ruiner of plans and structures? It was very likely that Rick was only detecting how his own concepts were interacting with mana.

  After a couple more minutes Rick was finally starting to make measurable progress with his explosive mana orb. It almost looked stable.

  The mad one-eyed [Arcane Seeker] looked up with a grin at him. Ryan just pretended to look fascinated at the fancy dragonshit show of lights that this [Mage] was trying to display to him.

  Ryan scratched his chin, “You have the [Savant] title, don’t you Rick?”

  “Of course!” Rick puffed up his chest in pride. “It proves that I care for nothing else but the progress of magic. I doubt that ‘ has the [Savant] title.”

  They continued for another thirty minutes in the dark. Rick was making measurable progress in his construction of the mana sphere. Ryan? He was sitting, seeing if it was possible to wrap his own mana in his aura. It was an idea he had been coming up with on how to use his golem heart as a portable explosive.

  His volatile mana didn’t immediately explode when it was completely surrounded by aura, Ryan just wondered how much more he could push it. Would the explosive golem heart overwhelm his aura and explode in his hands? Or would it stay stored until the aura cracked?

  How much would the skill compensate for it?

  All of these questions reminded him that, despite how strong he was, he still hadn’t truly sat down to test his limits and consolidate.

  Well, now was as good a time as any to practice.

  Ryan picked up a rock and imbued it with [Volatile Antimagic Throw]. He kept adding his energy to it until the pieces of the rock started flaking off. When it started to shake he wrapped his aura around it with [Aura Command]. The red hue encompassing it entirely.

  For a moment both Ryan and Rick stared at the white volatile orb inside a thick border of red. After five seconds it started to shake. Then the mana exploded within the orb. While Ryan’s aura was too strong for it to break through. The volatile mana simply exploded within the sphere of aura.

  “Hah!” Rick laughed. “Do you think it would be that easy to keep volatile mana controlled like that?”

  Ryan tried it again, this time minimizing the distance between his mana and his aura, he used [Aura Command] and [Aura Condensation] to compress the globule of volatile energy as much as it could go. He pushed and pushed until the energy was a tenth the size of his fist.

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  Both Rick and Ryan had their own orbs of white mana. Ryan’s lasted for three minutes until it spiked outwards, shattering pieces into his condensed aura.

  Rick’s one exploded a couple seconds later.

  “Hah!”

  “Well that was attempt two, at the tenth realm.” Ryan taunted. “Now, ”

  His problem just then had been that his aura wasn’t condensed enough. Despite [Aura Condensation] it was still somewhat gaseous in nature which meant there were gaps that the mana could inevitably spike through, given enough pressure.

  He just had to solidify it even further.

  Ryan formed the volatile energy with his left hand and then transferred it to his right arm.

  [Aura Command: Condensation Orb]

  he used the Epic skill to solidify the surrounding aura as much as possible. It went further than the Rare skill [Aura Condensation]. It was to the point where the orb looked more like red glass, holding a bright light within.

  Now, it looked completely stable.

  Ryan gave Rick a grin.“So, if I can do this, what need do I have of you?”

  “Hmph.” Rick created his own orb of volatile mana and put it next to Ryan’s.

  The [Savant] sneered. “How much focus are you using to keep it like that? Do you think you will last through an entire realm evolution? ”

  “I don’t know. But even if it’s imperfect, I just have to make sure to get a class. Then when I get to the fifth realm, the Trial System will fix all the pathways for me, isn’t that right?”

  Ryan gave the [Mage] a mad grin himself. Trying to hide the struggle with which he was doing it. Rick wasn’t wrong, making aura into a solid form was taking far, far more effort than he had first expected.

  Both of their orbs floated in the gray haze. Rick adding more mana to his orb to make it more impressive.

  Then ten. A bead of sweat ran down the side of Ryan’s head. He finally lost focus and threw the orb into the distance. It hit the ground and exploded a moment later.

  Rick’s orb was victoriously dancing in the air.

  “You win.” Ryan gasped.

  Rick looked smug, happy to have risen to the challenge against a fourther. Ryan naturally didn’t miss how Rick had ‘all of a sudden’ progressed his capability in stabilizing volatile mana so quickly. Ryan was smug internally.

  Much of Rick’s words hadn’t added up, and this was the final nail in the coffin confirming that Rick was up to something. Ryan was no longer a stupid idiot that could be sidetracked by shiny promises while ignoring other inconsistencies.

  It was a theory that was thrown around on the internet a lot. While the benefits of the famed title was different from person to person, the holders of that title always tended to be hyperfocused to the point of abject stupidity in other areas.

  Though people like Mahjit that lied about gaining the [Savant] title did confuse the statistics, he had a feeling that the general consensus was right.

  For a tenth realm [Mage], One-Eyed Rick was really bad at deception.

  It was something funny Ryan had figured out about the dead Tyrant’s daughter himself. She didn’t bother to plot things more than one layer deep, probably too used to brute forcing everything with raw magical talent.

  At least Gamielle could tell when she’d messed up a plan. Rick however didn’t know Ryan enough to be suspicious at all.

  Ryan internally mused. Maybe that wasn’t completely true, Rick did end up dying to her after all. Perhaps this level of deception would have worked well on someone that didn’t have all the experience with upgrading the arm like he did.

  “Seems like you’ve got it stable.”

  Rick snapped out of his smug demeanor and nodded. “Yes.” Rick even took a pause to process how to move to the next topic. “Well, now I know how to do this, we can move onto the next step. Your mana core will generate volatile mana for you, but the rest of your body must be primed to handle it. This is where we’ll move onto the next step. I call it the Great Essence Restructuring.”

  “I think we just call it the magical circulatory system.”

  “Damnable! No! We will be using the essence– to guide your circulatory system. I know elves have their own structures but we can surpass that if we use your concepts instead.”

  Ryan pretended to take some time to think about it. “About that, what if the concepts surrounding me aren't actually good for me? Let’s say my concepts tend towards [Volatile Mana Martyr] or something?”

  “, you see. I have come up with a spell that inspects the concepts that surround you. With it, I’ll be able to tell you exactly what concepts are likely to occur.”

  “Really? That sounds like an incredibly useful spell. What’s it called?”

  “[Conceptual Inspection]. A Trial skill I obtained when I passed the Tenth Trial. Now, you’ll have to calm yourself, I recommend meditating.”

  “No need, I'm plenty calm already.”

  The elf hesitated, then shrugged.

  “This might take a moment.”

  [Conceptual Inspection]

  –

  Rick entered the space of the guileless fourther in front of him. The [Arcane Seeker] was smiling. A simple brute, well-fitting for a fourther at the apex. Perhaps necessary even, to surpass the Passives Pioneer.

  But in the end a brute was all that he was.

  The [Arcane Seeker] stood silently in a bustling city of half-formed people. He observed the only person in focus, hooded in a black cloak, staring up at a massive statue wearing a porcelain mask.

  It didn’t really matter. Rick moved away and out of sight of the hooded figure. He walked far away, hiding away into a dark alleyway.

  He sat down in an alley, scrawling on the air with his mana. Structuring the spell. Crafting it together from both the magic he knew and the magic he saw.

  The first ritual would take awhile.

  One-Eyed Rick’s one good eye was pure madness, true madness that

  He gave himself to his class. Seeking further into what he knew had been created before.

  The spell for [Conceptual Parasite] began to form.

  Rick had no desire to live as a shade. A mere skill given form. Oh, [Remembrance of the Fallen] was a glorious Legend. Rick knew such skills were possible, but understanding that would have been the work of several lifetimes. The fact that the Witch Pioneer had even achieved such a feat, Trial System assistance or not, meant that she had truly dove deep into her class.

  But no, he could never be at her mercy. Given her attitude, there was no way she wouldn’t limit his actions or simply wipe him out of existence if he truly became a threat.

  There was also the fact that he couldn’t complete the Trials anymore. While Rick still had his Trial skills, he instinctively knew that he could not travel into a Trial entrance, not unless the Witch Tyrant entered with him.

  While Rick believed he could progress without the Trial System, the benefits it gave were too much for him to ignore.

  So? What happened when a guileless fourther came along who was an apex and had trusted him so wholly? Why take over him, of course.

  Whatever this fourther had done to his own mana, it was practically begging Rick to take it over and start puppeteering him.

  But again, that wasn’t enough for Rick. He wanted more. He would take over the mind and very essence of this fourther.

  The first part, of course, was tainting the fourther’s essence with his own.

  The first line of the ritual began, intent on infecting the conceptual space with his own. The dark blue magical circle ripping away at the space as more and more words began to form.

  Magic still worked here. After all, magic was a concept in and of itself. In fact, Rick would say that magic was the greatest tool in existence in understanding the wide array of concepts.

  The humblest of spells structures written into the very universe itself.

  “And all they do is memorize them! If only they knew!”

  The first circle formed, blue streaks ripping forward infecting…

  Rick frowned, it was… infecting a lot less of the conceptual space than he had first expected. . Or maybe it was that the fourther’s class was bigger than–

  A sigh echoed out from behind him.

  “So, this was your plan. Well, thanks for making my job easy for me.”

  And a shiver went down One-Eyed Rick’s spine.

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