George was meditating on his bed inside the mine where he had made a home for himself, he couldn’t believe how fast one session month had passed and how much he still had to do.

‘I can’t believe how long that took, but at least the first part is done. I hope I can finish the second part before the tournament begins.’ George didn’t like to meditate; it was boring and easy, the only thing it did was take a lot of time. But luck was on his side, he still had enough energy stones left for the last part, it was primarily because of the middle-grade spirit stage refining technique.

The energy that was absorbed by the body would enter an energy crystal that would solidify at level ten. He already had enough energy to solidify it, but he knew that he had to try and expand it at least another twenty percent. The energy inside his body could be manipulated in a strange way he couldn’t explain, he had the power to condense the energy and store more before he solidified it. George had read about geniuses who were so gifted that they had twice the amount of energy stored inside their first energy crystal.

This meant that two people could be on the same level but one of them could fight twice as long. This was not something that could be bought, it depended on the person’s intelligence and understanding, George had noticed that he started to absorb the energy faster after he started to train his soul with the soul cultivation skill the prince had given him and he was wondering if it would help him with the condensing.

George wasn’t in a hurry to solidify the energy crystal; he knew that everyone would try to condense It as much as they could before the tournament and decided to do the same. Besides, he looked forward to the hard part and wanted to challenge himself to see how far he could condense it, and how he would compare to the noble kids now that their clans couldn’t give them an unfair advantage.

From what he had read in the scroll most of the students would be able to increase the energy by twenty percent with most nobles being in the thirty percent. But there were some people who had even reached the ninety percent, these people had advantages in fights but also in jobs where more elemental energy meant that they could train longer or make higher grade items. The first thing he needed to do right now was too condensed the energy enough to make room to absorb another energy stone.

George tried to condense it but he quickly found out that it was not an easy thing to do, condensing the energy was binding the energy together which made the energy strand stronger, even thought it was bigger than the original it was still smaller than two independent strings. The concentration required to just fuse two strands of energy was complicated enough to take hours, but the hard part comes after that, the more strands of energy you fuse together the harder it becomes because of the concentration needed to manipulate all of them at the same time.

But he didn't have the time to do it right now, he had already run out of credits and had to succeed today or he had to start skipping meals like the old times. He had told Tyler and Martin that he had enough money to support them for the two session months but he only said that to make sure they didn’t worry about money. Luckily for him, both of them had some credits left and could follow classes while he figured out how to make more money.

George moved his hand and a small fermentation tank appeared in front of him, it was completely white and was big enough to make one liter of wine. George was pleasantly surprised when he found the hidden world inside the storage ring he had found on Wilton's body and had found everything he needed to make wine.

George had found a lot of stuff inside the storage ring like a bed and lights to make it livable inside the mine. The more George looked through the ring the more excited he got, the ring was big enough to fit the whole of Wine village inside of it, but he didn’t have the soul power to fully control it, so he had to search it little by little.

The ring had a special feeling to it, it contained two parts, the first part was the place where George had found the scroll, it was a space that was not part of the world and he could only store items, but the second part of the ring felt like it was real and he could enter it in soul form.

George didn’t know why Wilton had not put the scroll and the memory stone in the mansion where he couldn't get access to them, but it became clearer the more he looked around. The second part was just too big, every time he entered it he was spawned in a different location which made it impossible to find anything fast. Besides, he wasn’t expecting to die anyway, so he had all the time to put the items away when he had killed Thaddeus and taken his legacy.

George didn’t find much except for long fields filled with crops he couldn’t recognize anymore, the smell almost made him sick. It looked like the crops had rotten after Wilton had died and didn't have the chance to harvest them.

The only thing he had found was a big mansion which made the Hooper Clan's mansion look like an old shed. George had searched the whole mansion and it didn’t contain anything special except for it beeing luxurious. It looked like Wilton carried his home around with him to live comfortably while he traveled. The only thing that got George's attention was the three rooms that were different from the others. Two of the three rooms were closed off with a formation and George couldn’t enter them, this was clearly where Wilton kept his most important possessions and this was his way to make sure nobody would gain access to them even if he died.

The last room was clearly something Wilton was still working on and George could see that he hadn’t finished the room jet. The room just like the rest of the mansion felt weird to George, there were computer screens in every room that George only recognized because of the screen in his home that would repeat the same messages every morning, just thinking about them made George annoyed.

There were ten fermentation tanks with five of them so big that it hit the ceiling of the room. Unfortunately, only three of them were installed and that’s why George could tell that Wilton was not done installing them. He was properly preparing this room to use when he got the memory stone from Thaddeus’s son.

When George was ready to leave, he found a small door at the end of the room that looked out of place. George opened the room and found a warehouse that had a lot of ingredients inside that to his surprise hadn’t gone bad, George didn’t know how this was possible but he didn't care, it was the last piece of the puzzle he needed to start making wine. The warehouse was bigger than he expected and was split into two parts, one part was for the ingredients and the other was made of shelf spaces to put the wine.

George had used the items in the mansion to make himself a comfortable home that he had to live in for the next two session months. He didn’t have any fresh air and it got cold at nights but it was good enough.

George had thought a lot about what he had to do and the most important thing was to make enough money. He had told Martin and Tyler that he had enough money for the two session months but he only had ninety credits left and that was only enough for one session month and that would be just for the basics. He wanted to make sure there was enough money to follow some classes and buy some good equipment for the tournament.

The only reason he had focused so much on meditating was that he needed the dark energy to make a wine Thaddeus called, nightfall, it’s a red wine that’s one of the easiest to make and you need the ingredients and dark element for it. There were energy globes George could buy later to make wine with other elements but that wasn't an option right now and this was one of the only two types of wine he could make that would sell.

The memory stone had a lot of memories, and it would take him years to watch all of them, Thaddeus had recorded at least one memory of preparing every recipe. He also talked about how he didn’t want John to use the automatic option and to add the element manually, it was a lot harder but it would increase the chance of success.

‘if I’m correct the only reason I have been failing until now was that I didn’t have enough dark energy.’ George was a little nervous, he only had four days to succeed or he didn't have enough money to pay rent for the others. Worse case was that he had to bring them to the mines but there were other problems like paying for food or going to class. He had finally trained his body enough to stay in Nash for four full days so he didn’t want to stop eating and destroy everything he had worked for the last couple of session months.

George put his hands on the small tank that was just big enough to make one liter of wine and tried to focus, the process was at least three hours and he had to keep his concentration up to not make a mistake. He was able to successfully make the wine the last time he tried, but Thaddeus had said that every wine that didn’t have stats was a failure so he had to keep trying.

The process was not a lot different from how he made wine in the factory, the only thing that made it hard was that he had to add the dark energy manually. George added the ingredients and started the aging process, he was lucky that he had found high-grade tanks that Wilton had brought or else it wouldn’t take hours but days to make it. George started the process like every other time and he knew that the end was the real challenging part, he just didn’t have enough energy to finish the aging process.

Hours went by and George was still concentrating on the tank in front of him, the most important thing was timing and he had to make sure he added the dark element in the right moment or it could fail, Thaddeus had talked about how being one second late could ruin the wine completely and that every batch would be different from the last one, that’s why even the greatest winemakers were not able to remake their best work even if they tried to.

The last part of the process came and George was almost out of energy, George started to get dizzy and knew that he only had four chances left to succeed. He had to wait a whole day before he could try again and he knew that it was now or never.

The fermentation tank started to suck more energy like it always did at the very end and George did his best to control the speed and amount that was released, just as George thought that he didn’t have enough energy left the tank stopped moving and the batch was done but had he succeeded?