Honestly, Jacob had been quite lucky. He had expected to spend at least several hours before getting the needed result. Instead, it had taken less than half an hour.

Now, he had arranged a small Formation with some of the materials that Hektor had brought with him. It was something only he could activate and, in a sense, power. But the Mana part of the Formation could be powered by another person or by some reagent.

In this case, Jacob just asked one of the two freaks with him to help. They both had enough Mana to help him activate it.

“What Formation is this?” the Vermillion Tyrant looked at some obscure runes that looked almost tridimensional on nine pieces of parchment spread around a bare patch of ground.

“Well, this is my specialty,” Jacob smirked, “someone here might be forgetting it since I’m still just at the Cockroach Realm, but being the Sword Tyrant wasn’t my only gimmick, was it?”

“WOAH! Is this some weird Time Formation!” the Vermillion Tyrant’s eyes glittered.

“You can count on it,” Jacob winked, truly happy to finally showcase his main talent.

Jacob set the grafted root on in the soil patch and directed the Vermillion Tyrant to one corner of the small Formation.

“Touch that drop of blood in the middle and pour as much Mana as possible in it.”

“Are you not afraid that it will be too much? I’m just at the Hound Realm, but this Formation doesn’t seem too high-leveled,” the Vermillion Tyrant asked, confused.

“It’s not going to break the Formation nor the root. This Formation makes a plant germinate and stops working when the plant has produced some buddings that I can plant once again. We are going to do this three or four times, until I have enough buddings that I can re-plant and then attempt grafting with the Honey Marrow Flower.”

“Oh, and we have to talk about the Cultivation Techniques later, Hektor,” Jacob announced to the man, who suddenly cringed.

“Aw, really? What was I supposed to do? I already said that if they cause any problem—”

“Later, Hektor. Not now, please. Let me have my little fun with Alchemy before I get back to humans, please.”

The Vermillion Tyrant pouted and snorted, but chose to stay silent.

A big child is the strongest human on the planet. Always my luck.

Jacob sighed and activated the Formation. He didn’t need to pour Mana inside of it, he just needed to manipulate the very Law of Time.

Your regular stuff, see?

Jacob felt the tug of Time from his very Soul. It was a familiar touch, something he had missed since he had been reincarnated. But Time was not a simple Affinity nor puny Magic. There was no messing with the Laws of Time without the risk of killing yourself.

The amount of energy that even the smallest manipulation took was insane. At the higher levels, the proverbial endgame, it was truly overpowered; but right now Jacob could barely accelerate his speed, and it wasn’t even proper Time manipulation per se.

And that was what Hektor was there for.

As soon as he activated the Formation, he saw Hektor start sweating.

“This thing consumes a lot of Mana,” the man breathed hard.

“Yep, Time Magic is the most powerful Law,” Jacob said with a smug face. He was the only person who had ever mastered that branch of Cultivation.

“Time Magic is the most powerful Law,” Epagogia repeated in a silly voice from afar.

Jacob ignored her. She was just jealous.

There were no other Time Cultivators. There were a bunch of Phoenix and Vermillion Bird cultivators with various degrees of legacy-purity, but there was no Time Cultivator apart from Jacob.

Jacob saw the root starting to sprout and germinate new cuttings after half a minute.

He stopped the Formation and started separating the cuttings and planting them again in the ground. The nearby energy in the air had been almost halved. The Time Formation had accelerated the process at the expense of the energy, the soil richness and Hektor’s Mana.

“Woah, Jacob, that was a lot of Mana. How much Mana do you even know to activate a Spell or a Martial Technique based on Time?” Hektor asked with wide eyes.

“A lot of it. Time is a superior Law, Hektor. It’s not just Magic. It’s a fundamental force in the universe. When you start messing with Time, you create ripples in everything. Look at the soil, for example. After I’m done, it will become sterile. And even if you poured reagents, elixirs and God knows what on it, it still wouldn’t gain any richness from them. Time is messing up with this little patch of soil and that change is going to be permanent. When you use this Magic, you cannot be willy-nilly.”

The last part was an admonishment toward Hektor, who blushed a bit.

But they were on different paths.

While Jacob was a very meditative person, Hektor was the complete opposite. The Blady Tyrant evaluated every single move carefully, whereas the Vermillion Tyrant blazed a path through anything.

There wasn’t necessarily a right and a wrong answer there. They were different, and that was all that it needed to be said.

“Well, let’s get to work again.”

It took both a bit to generate enough cuttings for Jacob.

Our guy suspected that the second part of the process would take much more than the first, sadly.