I had a horrible dream.

I was at my boss’s party where there were many famous people. I felt completely out of place. Everyone was calling me chairman because I knocked out that guy using an office chair. My arm muscles were still a little sore for exceeding their capabilities.

I guess I must thank my boss’s secretary for leaking the gossip faster than light. Damn her.

We were in some kind of nightclub. There were annoying music, chaotic lights, and pretty half-naked pole dancing girls. The latter was the only pro.

The other almost positive thing is that those nutjobs didn’t talk about boring mundane things like my coworkers. No… famous people were all fucking crazy. They raved about their inane experiences, drugs parties, and orgies. I kept my straight corporate face on and tried not to run away screaming from that nest of insanity. Were they telling me all that so they had a reason to murder me afterward?

I was especially wary of one silent guy who had been introduced to me as a politician. He had the serial killer face, that one.

Thankfully, the dream skipped some parts of the experience, among some of my blunders, and I woke up before long.

I debated whether to classify it as a nightmare or just as a bad memory.

That had been the first of many wasted nights I could have better spent playing with my clan mates or watching a good movie. I think even a bad movie would have been better. The pole dancing girls and the booze could only do so much, the surreal atmosphere and the uneasy company prevented me to get any enjoyment out of it.

Especially that creepy politician guy. I swear he was stealing glances at me.

I don’t know why my boss was so dead set in bringing me around. I faked enjoyment out of politeness, but if anything, whatever dream of fame and glory I still had in my bleak outlook of life, it was lost hearing these people’s tales. Better to remain a nobody than becoming one of them.

Just imagine… you’re eating at a restaurant and you take a moment to walk to the toilet because you can’t keep it any longer. But as you start approaching your destination, suddenly a fan appears asking for your signature and showering you with dumb questions. Then another and another, while all you wanted was just to take a fucking piss. Paparazzi hiding under the rocks, people gossiping about you. What a nightmare.

I would probably have punched them all in the face, ruining my career and flat-lining my public image.

I stared at the ceiling for some time, feeling too lazy to get up. I had to 【Resolve】 myself to rise from the bed.

I joined the trio for breakfast. Namrick and Ellin looked in a sour mood and weren’t eating their food with the usual enthusiasm, unlike Grastel who had no qualms in eagerly filling his belly.

Ellin said she had experienced a disturbing nightmare about headless people chasing her while blood rose from the ground. She woke the moment she became lucid and spent the rest of the night awake in fear of slipping back to that same dream. It sounded like a pretty mild nightmare to me but I refrained from making more headless jokes, this time. I still reminded her that she should use lucid nightmares to practice her dream control.

Namrick… Well, he didn’t feel like talking. Was he still seething about losing in sword skills?

I excused myself and walked toward the Academy, Grastel joined me for a short walk.

「Allen: What’s the deal with Namrick? Why is he so gloomy today?」

I asked out of curiosity. Grastel grinned and answered.

「Grastel: Heh… there’s more than one reason. One I’m not telling but you can figure it out. The other, well…」

He turned serious.

「Grastel: You see, Namrick is a good guy. He holds back when it comes to harming other people… He could have delivered several killing blows against those bandits, but he hesitated instead trying to incapacitate them. I admire his spirit…」

That lingering pause was obviously inviting a ‘but’.

「Allen: But?」

He averted his gaze.

「Grastel: … But when your life is on the line, you can’t afford to hesitate. I learned that the hard way.」

「Allen: You mean, you killed people before?」

Grastel walked in silence for some time.

「Grastel: … I’m not proud of it.」

He said with a faint shrug.

「Allen: Do you ever regret it? Taking someone’s life.」

Would I?

He shot me a glance.

「Grastel: You never killed anyone, did you?」

He guessed right.

「Allen: No… Not yet. I only killed monsters and hunted animals.」

I admitted.

「Grastel: The first time is the worst. But if you have no other choice, and it is to protect yourself and the ones you care about, you won’t regret it. That’s what I tell myself, at least…」

He glanced to his left.

「Grastel: I’m turning here… Bye.」

He restored his usual grin and made to turn. I gave him a shoulder slap for encouragement.

「Grastel: Ah, come and train with us once a while!」

He added returning the slap.

「Allen: One of these days.」

I promised before resuming my walk.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to train seriously against them. I mean, my fighting prowess mainly consisted into bashing skulls to a pulp. But I could try. We had done it in the recruit training, although I felt like I learned more the hard way with Vallachio.

We’ll see how it goes, I guess.

I attended the lessons at the Academy.

In the Alchemy class, we were given the recipe for 【Night Sight Potion】, which would be the topic of the exam. Some of the reagents required were expensive and the time to practice too strict. I had planned to take the exam in the next round, so… whatever.

One of the things that bothered me in Alchemy was the lack of a clear standard in measurements. It all felt so approximative. No flask or cup was created equal, you had to get a feel for your own equipment when it came down to dosages. A pinch of this, a half a cup of that, a spoonful of Merriam’s certified alchemist’s spoon… I did not like it. Not at all.

Grohm’s lessons continued bearing fruits. He made me analyze a dozen enchanted tools asking me to figure out their usage. For many of them, I drew a blank, simply because I had never encountered the type of magic they contained.

Spells are like flavor, you can taste it in your mouth but that alone won’t help you decipher the single ingredients, especially if you never saw them firsthand.

I inquired about the vertical farming project. I was disappointed in hearing that Lord Tareus was repurposing the project so he could grow fresh produce to sell to the nobility, but Grohm assured me that there would be no shortages of food. He didn’t expand on the reason. I hoped he was right but my sense of bad management decisions was ringing at full swing.

Well, in any case, I was safe. I had built a simple freezer for me and Corgas so we could stockpile our reserves. It sucked a lot of mana to keep running, at least until the temperatures dropped. For the moment, we had to regularly pay magicians to fill up the Aetherium crystals we used as batteries, but I think it was worth it.

Finally, I stopped at the Academy’s library and asked a librarian for books about magic power classifications and something that listed the prominent Gods. He gave me three books.

The first was 【Baridmor’s Twelve Steps to Power】. It sounded like some kind of scammy self-help advertising, but I read it anyway. What I learned was that a magician’s potential power was directly related his own body mass, more or less. The amount of mana one could hold depended on height and muscular tone. Body fat had little to no effect on the capability to store mana.

The other interesting bits were that, depending on how dense one’s own mana was, the magician would gain some perks along with the increased mana.

A Step was basically one full volume of your mana body. The first Step would be when you reached the level where you couldn’t hold more mana without it overflowing. The subsequent Steps were based on how many times you could hold that amount.

Then there were the Circles. Every fourth Step there would be a jump in the range you could manifest magical effects. Sudden jumps… like electron orbitals?

In total there where twelve Steps and three Circles. Upon reaching the last step in the current Circle, the difficulty in taking the next Step would increase several times.

Why twelve? It seemed to be a physical limit. I guess you can only hold so many atmospheres inside your spiritual body.

The perks that you could gain were directly related to how much mana you were holding inside. The denser your mana, the more aware the spiritual body. Consuming all your mana would temporarily turn you into an ordinary human. Mana is the life source of spirit beings after all.

The benefits were astounding, resistance to diseases, increased lifespan, slowed down aging, faster healing… the spirit body would gradually grow becoming able to actively assist the magician.

This is indeed like Cultivation. Not exactly like in the novels, but close.

The problem was making your spirit strong enough to hold all that mana without rupturing. How to do so had been conveniently left out, with only an exhortation to seek the assistance of a certified practitioner. This book was indeed advertisement for this long dead Baridmor.

What followed were historical records of people who had walked the Steps, how long they had lived and what they could do.

There were also mentions of how the dwarves would grow naturally into the second Step, while elves into the third Step. There were also mentions of their lifespan if they were mana dead or had a damaged spirit.

Now it all made sense. This is why they lived longer than humans! Without mana, even they would have a shorter lifespan. They still lived longer by a decade or two, but the true trick to their long life was the same. More mana.

Humans started disadvantaged but they too could reach the peak with the same benefits. The oldest human magician on record had lived for 1819 years, while the oldest elf died 2160 years old. That was a lot in both cases, even though, it had to be noted, they had capped their magic potential.

That was important information, I wrote it all down inside my ring. I could use these numbers to extrapolate a formula.

Those jumps every fourth Step seemed like one of the pivotal parts of the equation.

Only one thing was making me uncomfortable. This classification of Steps and Circles was so… dull. I wanted something cooler sounding.

I moved to the second book. This one was about how magic power was ranked in different cultures around the world and various short biographies of their renowned magicians.

Between those pages I found what I was looking for, I grinned the moment I read it.

The Ashan people had come up with just the right nomenclature. I took notes.

Realm Rank Title Mortal Realm 1 Awakened 2 Adept 3 Master 4 Grandmaster Heavenly Realm 5 Ascendant 6 Enlightened 7 Exalted 8 Transcendent Transcendental Realm 9 Sage 10 Peerless 11 Saint 12 Living God

Yeah, now we’re talking. This was a proper Cultivation ranking. Look at those boastful titles, I already feel more motivated.

I hoped the librarian did not see me grinning like a damn idiot.

The third book was the one about Gods, it was pretty short so I breezed through it.

So let’s see… The five Greater Light Gods are…

AnAn, The First Spirit, God of Existence, aka The Sleeping God (there were no record of anyone succeeding in communicating with it)

AnAlher, Elven Goddess of Nature (currently standing very low in my rankings)

AnHelm, Spirit God of Virtue (also known as the Silent God)

AnDareth, Dwarven God of Crafting (a midget Hephaestus, heh)

AnTarran, Human God of Martial Mastery (dislikes mages)

Dislikes mages. I narrowed my eyes at that.

Then their major counterparts, the five Greater Dark Gods are…

ExFeras, Demon God of Nightmares (Fear)

EsArix, Demon Goddess of Pain and Pleasure (sounds like she’s into BDSM)

EsUlmar, Elven God of Pride

ExDriel, Spirit God of Envy

Wait… Where’s the fifth? I glanced back at the previous passage.

… the four Greater Dark Gods are…

I sighed. The tiredness was getting to me.

One passage, in particular, caught my eye. A God shapes the will of its believers as much as the believers shape their God. But a believer can, with effort, align himself with any God of his choosing, while a God cannot choose his believers.

So, not only these Gods snoop into your mind, they also project their insecurities onto their believers. Is this why Namrick is so butthurt when I say that he’s basically a combat mage? Is AnTarran projecting his dislike for magicians onto him?

Namrick is all about swordsmanship, so ending up aligned with the God of Martial Mastery wasn’t exactly a surprising outcome.

Fucking Gods.

Not you Creator. Please don’t kill me. Thanks.

I finished the book and gave it back to the librarian who walked off in pursuit of their rightful places.

I eagerly walked back to the inn and secluded myself in my room with some food as fuel. I wanted no distractions.

I was pumped about Cultivation so I started doing the math using the calculator in my ring. I approximated my likely mana body volume, the ranks were the density, so multiplying them together would give me the mana mass. Then… the casting range is a sphere… there was a formula to calculate the radius from a mass, what was it? It took me some time to remember what it was, but I figured it out.

After several adjustments to take into account the actual range and the jumping growth from the three Circles/Realms, I was reasonably satisfied with the fidelity. Nothing would stop me from better refining the formulas in the future.

It was time to put it to test. I fed the information to the ring and manually adjusted the parts my 【Magic Constructs】 couldn’t handle on their own.

I rubbed my hands and called up the window I had built for mana related information.

【SHOW MANA STATUS】

Mana: 117/133

Cast range: 3.3 m

Mana volume: 74

Mana density: 0.6

Mana efficiency: 0.6

Mana regen: 0.67 mana/min

Mana drain: -0.12 mana/min

I thought my mana density was higher but this is the value my Constructs were getting from the spirit body.

Mana efficiency was self-explanatory, it would reach 1 once my spirit body learned to cast spells without wasting mana.

According to Gregoris, without 【Aura Control】 the density wouldn’t go above one, if not by a small margin.

I wondered what Ellin’s stats were. She had been practicing since she was younger but she had never been taught how to control her aura. I should teach her, while I try climbing the Ranks of the Mortal Realm.

Quest completed (Research ways to measure power) +25 EXP

Feels good.

Spurred by my achievements I pulled more numbers out of the blue to give my status window a more proper look, then called up the status window.

【SHOW STATUS】

Allen Smith

Age: 30

LV: 6

Class: Yes-man Informagic Developer

HP: 240/240

MP: 118/133

SP: 50/62

Magic Stats

Rank: 0.6 (Mortal)

Cast range: 3.3 m

Skills

-Magic-

Alchemy: Lv 3

Anti-Magic Field: Lv 1

Aura Control: Lv 2

Force Field: Lv 4

Hallucination: Lv 4

Illusion: Lv 3

Mana Infusion: Lv 5

Hardening: Lv 6

Projecting Emotion: Lv 3

Proxy Magic: Lv 10 (Oathbound)

Spirit Walking: Lv 2

Temperature Manipulation: Lv 4

Telekinesis: Lv 1

Triggers: Lv 9

-Combat-

Military Techniques: Lv 3

Maces: Lv 4

Swords: Lv 2

Spears: Lv 2

Shields: Lv 2

Unarmed: Lv 3

-Other-

Corporate/Poker Face: Lv 9

Drawing: Lv 2

Storytelling: Lv 1

Developer: Lv 10

Engineering: Lv 4

Oneironautics: Lv 6

Cooking: Lv 8

Cynicism: Lv 10

Sarcasm: Lv 10

Swearing: Lv 10

Ma–

TOO MANY FUCKING SKILLS!

Besides, there was no way my cooking was at level 8.

At best it could be 6 or 7.

I had to come up a way to filter out the excess skills. But whatever, today I did good work.

A strong lethargy overcame my senses. I had completely lost track of time.

I think… yes… I’ll take a little nap.

Fighting the sleepiness and blurring vision, I walked the unending distance toward my bed and slumped in its soft embrace.

I closed my eyes and slipped into a dreamless sleep.