It took another thirty minutes to fill the organs, but they needed much longer to be reconstructed.

Knowing that beforehand, I paid to extend my stay. Same thing as a shop in the System, you buy more time, and the Crystals get whisked away from your inventory.

This part of the advancement was harder, as you had to give the message to each and every organ to reconstruct itself, including the “outer” ones, like the nose, the eyes, and all that.

Just like before, everything slowly disintegrated.

Oh, but it was much worse. Don’t ask me how I still survived but every single organ just went away, including the brain and the heart, which… you know… are pretty important.

I couldn’t breathe, see, hear, speak, only feel the clothes touching my skin, or my skin touching the bed sheets. I could even feel my hair growing out of my scalp.

I know they say a lot that if you lack one of the five senses the others become a lot better but this was ridiculous. I could feel something flowing within, and it was either the blood that was still somehow moving without the heart, or the Mana in the channels. Fascinating.

Either way, nothing made sense.

This persisted for what felt like hours, but was apparently only a few minutes, until the new, improved organs “grew back”.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, I snapped my eyes open and started taking in all the air I could while blinking quickly. Looking around, I remember where I was and what I was doing and finally calmed down.

“Holy shit”

“It is indeed incredible,” a voice said, and I jumped.

Looking behind, I calmed down. I actually forgot about this guy. He might as well have been a ghost.

Well…

“Didn’t you say even monkeys start higher?” I scoffed.

“Indeed, but they are not born that way. Not even me, as great as I am. I was already mature at birth, unlike other species, and I went through all the steps subconsciously in an instant, but I could still remember it. The Formation Stage is the most unforgettable one out of all the body transformations,” he said.

“There’s more?” I asked, but I had my suspicions.

“Indeed, your Mana System does evolve with Level, but your body always lags behind. Most try to keep a balance, while other, more special individuals manage to advance their body beyond their Core. Even then, the other body transformation stages are definitely beneficial, even if some choose to skip it,” he explained.

“Damn,” I nodded. “Also, you’re awfully talkative today”

“The journey of magic is a wonderful thing, even for a man of my caliber,” he said.

“Care to teach me more, then?” I smiled tentatively.

The old man just snorted and turned away.

“Oh well, guess I’ll keep going since I paid this much,” I stretched and sat back down.

“I am surprised you thought about that after what happened,” he said.

“What do you mean?“ I tilted my head.

“I have heard mortal races tend to contemplate more on the experiences that are outstanding to their fickle minds, instead of thinking about their current situation.”

“I mean it’s interesting, but nothing too crazy. Also, I’ll gain nothing by thinking about it more so it doesn’t help,” I shrugged.

He made a “huh” sound, but said nothing else.

Shrugging again, I got back into a meditative position and continued. Same as before, energy started going through the channels, to the Core, and where I needed it, to the muscles.

At this point, there’s the argument about whether muscles or skin were better to do first. Some might say the skin needs to be weaker of the muscles to expand and form again, which would be hard if the skin was tougher.

Others might say the skin was better, because the muscles release energy when reforming and might rupture the skin, since it was weaker.

Truthfully, it didn’t matter. Since this system was popularized nobody failed because they picked either one so the argument was pointless. In my case, I thought making my way from the inside to the outside was better so I went with muscles. The invisible million-year-old man didn’t offer one piece of advice, even when asking, thus I was on my own.

‘Brilliant.’

Taking a deep breath, I directed all the Mana into the muscles, carefully going to each and every one. The job was done in an hour this time.

As the muscles disintegrated, my skin sunk in, and I was powerless again, but we heard enough of that. Nothing special happened, they grew back tougher, bigger, and denser.

An interesting thing to note was that when you do this you don’t get too buff, they know exactly when to stop, so you just get a little bigger, but that’s it. Though I’m pretty sure I got quite a bit taller, and with my initial 1,90 meters (6’2”) I was terrifyingly close to two meters after this.

But it wasn’t actually that much of a problem. This happens a lot to Mages, even later on, and some are even at three meters (9’8”), which is ridiculous.

Anyway, I was done with that and it was time for the skin. Now, this time, I was really curious what would happen, so I got a camera that would do circles around me. An engineering miracle, this thing. I pushed the button, tossed it up, and it just started doing circles.

The other parts were happening inside, but now I could actually see. Would I bleed all over? Otherwise everyone else would die, so probably not. But what if everyone was lying and they were all taking something? Ridiculous, but not impossible.

So I needed to see for myself.

Taking another deep breath, I closed my eyes and pushed the last bit of mana into the skin. The process was almost instant this time, as I felt it just disappear, and I got colder. Then every part that was touching something started itching (I got fully naked for this, by the way. Let’s hope the old guy has an interest in women).

It was an infuriating itch. I obviously couldn’t scratch it, and it was so strong.

Strong itch? Whatever.

It all instantly came back, and akin to a wave, it was back in place, like it never disappeared.

‘Huh’

Was there a reason the skin came back faster than the others? Guess we’ll find out later. Maybe steal a magical biology book or something.

Opening my eyes, I smiled and put new clothes on, as a new man at the Apprentice Stage. At least at this point, there were no “breakthroughs” between Stages, just in name.

Let’s talk about the Apprentice Stage. For starters, structured spells actually do something, you can start practicing your Affinities, you can do transmutations, infusing, and others.

But what do you do now, to rise in Level? Well, we leave the body alone for the moment, only focusing on the Core.

Mana usually comes in gaseous form, as it’s widely known, and it stays like that while inside you. Well, now, we need to compress it, condense it and liquify it. What physics has taught me in school is that when there’s a lot of gas in a chamber, it turns to liquid.

So when I managed to turn all the Mana in the core into liquid, I would officially be done with this Stage. The Levels, one to ten, meant the percentage of liquid in your Core.

Which sounded easy, but it really was not. If we’re talking chemistry, you basically smash a Mana molecule into the other until it turns into liquid, meaning you need a lot of those molecules and a lot of work, and time.

But I didn’t mind it. It was fascinating, and I had plenty of time.

Did I mention rising in Level expands your lifespan? Since I was past the first Stage, I could live another fifty years. The next one was a hundred, while the one after was five hundred, but I’m not sure.

Either way, life was gonna be good from now on.

Going back to my current situation, I had another five hours left in the room. Renting another one for the next Stage was too expensive for me, and if the returns were the same as this one, then no thank you. So I spent those five hours turning that Mana into liquid, managing 9% of the whole thing. It was the last time in a while that I would make such progress, sadly.

After I was done, I left the elevator, smiled and waved at the receptionist lady, then walked out. I thought she would be surprised I lived, but probably she just didn’t care.

Now where was I gonna stay? I left the hotel thinking I would stay much longer in the Mana chamber thingies, and now it would be awkward to go back and take the same room again. Not that I cared, really, but since that happened I thought I would go to another one, to try something new.

Actually, change of plans.

I took another carriage to the city gate, scanned my identity again and made my way out in the wilderness.

Ok, change of plans again, I went back in.

“What in my name are you doing?” Darros asked.

“I planned to kill myself but got another idea,” I nonchalantly answered.

“What?” he shouted.

“Oh, shut up. I know you probably can’t survive without me, so don’t worry, it’s not what I mean,” I said as I covered the ear that was closest to him.

“Oh”

“Yeah, ‘oh’. By the way, what do you mean by ‘what in my name’?” I inquired. “Is that like how people usually say ‘in God’s name?’”

“It is,” he casually nodded.

“I hate you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“Fuck off.”

“I cannot.”

I went to a cafe, sat down, ordered a massive latte, and went online. Half an hour later, the person I contacted came in and sat down as well.

“My name is Lindsey, pleased to meet you,” he extended a hand.

“Awfully feminine man for such a masculine person,” I remarked, and he didn’t seem to mind. He had something of a stubble, a buzz cut, and a defined jawline, like he chewed steel all day. The guy was the definition of masculine.

“I get told that a lot, so I don’t really care anymore,” he shrugged.

“Do you resent your parents for choosing such a name?”

“Now, this isn’t really about me, mister Clay, is it?” he gave a polite smile.

I grimaced.

“Why does everyone know me?”

“Your entrance was very spectacular, as I’m sure you know. Many parties are interested in you”

“Then why didn’t anyone come and talk to me?” I raised my brows and leaned back.

“You are merely interesting for now, a person to be looked out for”

“Well whatever, let’s get down to business,” I got closer, all serious.

“How may I assist you?”

“I want your biggest loan. The absolute biggest you can give.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, before leaning back in the chair and exhaling.

“How big are we talking?”

“No idea, you know your stuff”

He frowned, eyes turning blurry, most likely looking at a System window.

“The best I can give you is twenty thousand, but it comes with a blood contract,” he said after a while.

Well, that was a bummer. But I could still try.

“What does that entail, though?”

“I suppose you know that a blood contract is, so we will pass that. The contract itself is based on name, of course, and you have to bind it in blood. If you breach the contract we can use it to track you, or enact remote punishment,” he explained.

“Huh.” Bingo.

“I’ll take it,” I grinned.

That done, I paid for both of our drinks - I am a gentleman after all - and we got into a carriage, heading towards the city center.

“I hope you know this is a lot of money,” he said a few minutes into the ride.

“I know,” I nodded.

“Why do you need this so much?”

“I have a way to get some very valuable things, and some really angry people are coming for me.”

Remember kids, always tell the truth.

“Are you sure you can pay back this loan, though?” he grimly asked.

I liked this guy. Kind of felt bad now.

“I am, but I’m still surprised you give such a sum to someone that doesn’t have much of a history.”

“The Blood Contract is flawless, if this doesn’t work then I don’t know what will.”

“You said it works based on names, right?” I asked, to which he nodded.

“So names really do have power, as they say?”

“Indeed”

“Huh”

We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes.

“So what if someone is lying about their name?”

He shook his head.

“You can’t. The System registers your true name, even if you legally change it. It is the name you were given at birth, and it has unimaginable power.”

“Can’t you get more identities in the System?” I tilted my head.

He pursed his lips.

“Hmm… Well, I have indeed heard of something similar, but it’s only a myth, I personally don’t think it’s even real. And even if it is, it must be extremely rare.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I blankly nodded.

Then why did I have three of them?

Let’s bring up the message I got after robbing that castle.

[Congratulations! You have achieved something that very few have even tried.]

[As a reward, you have been granted a different Status, customize it as you see fit! And make sure you don’t get caught!]

So yeah, I had three.

The plan for Lukas was to bury him in the deep dark depths of the System, never to be seen again. Clay would also disappear for a while, only to make an epic comeback. The last one though, was about to be the cheeky one. I had great plans for number 3.

I also had to come up with a cool name.

We got to our destination a bit later; a mansion in the middle of the city. It wasn’t the huge, lavish kind, there were no gardens or any of the stuff rich people usually had. We went right in through the gate, past the guards. Inside, in a tastefully decorated hall, stood a middle aged man on a leather couch, facing a rustic tea table. Lindsey left me at the door, and shut it right as I stepped in.

As I took small steps, I admired the walls and the decor, not minding the man casually sipping tea in the middle of the room.

Realizing that he wasn’t gonna say anything, I stopped and sat on the other couch. Taking out a cup of tea for myself, I leaned back.

“Hi,” I grinned.

“Hello”

“I need money”

“So I’ve heard”

“Heard you’ve got some”

“I do”

“You sure? The house doesn’t seem too exciting. Thought you would have a bigger one,” I looked around.

“I can assure you that I do have what you need,” he calmly said.

“‘Kay, let’s sign the thing,” I put a leg on top of the other.

He pulled a paper out of thin air and gently put it on the table.

“Wait, that’s it?”

“It isn’t what you wanted?” he asked, clearly confused.

“Oh, I just thought we would go through a whole lot of unnecessary paper and stuff.”

“None of this is official business, so we will be having none of that,” he calmly said.

“Okay, whatever.”

I took the paper and looked through it. It looked like plain white A4 paper, but I was sure it was some magical stuff.

It was the basic ordeal, you don’t pay we find you or we kill you, huge interest rate and all that. It all fit on one paper.

I really didn’t stress enough how much money this was. What I got from Alinna was more than someone at my Stage would make in their entire life. Not to mention the interest, it went up 10 percent every year, adding a double in the next year. So the next one was 20, and plus the previous ten you had to pay 30% more.

This was a loan that wasn’t even meant to be taken. They probably wouldn’t even be talking to me if I hadn’t appeared in a flash of light.

“So what happens if they don’t pay and you can’t find them?” I looked up from the paper.

“We issue a bounty in all Kingdoms, of course.”

“What if whoever kills them finds the money still on them and doesn’t want to give it back?”

“We will deal with it accordingly, but it never comes to that. Our customers usually deal with it somehow before it comes to activating the contract. Nobody wants to die, after all,” he calmly explained.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t think of that,” I narrowed my eyes.

I really needed to get out of there, this guy was giving me the chills.

He handed me a pen and explained.

“It is especially made for this. Poke your finger with it and it will have just enough to write your name,” he smiled, finally showing some emotion.

‘Do you know if this guy is a vampire? He’s pretty excited by some blood,’ I asked the invisible guy. ‘Actually, do you know what vampires are?’

‘Of course I know!’ he said as he stopped looking out the window. ‘But I do also think he is a vampire.’

‘Oh, you weren’t even looking at him, shut up’.

‘For your small brain, it might not make sense, but you do not need eyes to see, I will have you know.’

Damn. Whatever.

Now, here comes another problem. Well, not really a problem.

My blood had two forms, poison and immunity. So it’s either the regular red one but with a lot of immunities, or the one with one or more poisons.

I couldn’t turn it into normal blood, as far as I knew.

Having a bit of poison or just one immunity in your system wasn’t that crazy, I wasn’t the only one with such powers, but having immunity to everything was kind of weird. So I chose a shitty low level toxin and infused it, making any kind of immunity disappear. The previous toxins still couldn’t hurt me, just that the immunity didn’t appear in the blood.

‘Actually I don’t even know man, my brain hurts just from thinking about it.’

Not that anyone was really going to analyze the fucking blood, but still.

I poked my pointer finger, and wrote Clay Lusac in the best cursive I was capable of. It looked like a monkey did it, but I’ll take it.

Shaking his hand, I went outside, where Lindsey handed me a ring, containing exactly twenty thousand Crystals.

Lovely.

I shook his hand as well.

“I'll see you at some point to pay this back,” I grinned.

“I’m sure you will.”

He let go of my hand, and I made my way to the street and called a carriage, going straight to the gate.

On the way, I kept licking that wound from the poke. It was the first time I had done something like this, and it was kind of thrilling.

The whole part about writing your name in blood was bullshit, and the contract itself was useless, from what the Dark Web told me. They just needed your name to do a spell and either find you, curse you or kill you, which they get from the guard at the gate.

How do you protect yourself from something like this if they know your name, you say? Well, you pray they don’t know Blood Magic.

Getting that out of my head, I headed out the main gate again and right into the wilderness. When the sprawling wall could barely be seen in the distance, I sighed and continued.. I’d miss this city. It was nice.

Maybe I could’ve stolen from someone, or won a fortune in a casino, but besides not knowing any poker or anything similar, I sucked at gamlbing. Not to mention there were no suitable targets to take from.

So I left. I’d be back someday.

Now to kill myself.

The problem was where. Ideally, it would be somewhere far, far away, so nobody could see me, but I still needed to get back here after, and it would be a pain. But I also didn’t have any magical senses, besides what I got after the transformation, which were honestly shit.

All in all, I needed to hide myself well, hide for a few days and come back as Lukas nr. 3, whatever his name was gonna be. My friend didn’t want to help, by the way, not even with scouting.

I walked on the main road for about two hours, listening to music in the System. Since others couldn’t see your System screen, listening to music was possible without annoying anyone.

Following that, I entered the forest, casually making my way through the trees for another two hours.

‘I should really get a mount.‘

I battled some Half-Beasts once in a while, quickly dispatching each one with the humidifier thing and a sword if necessary. I was really clunky with a normal sword, and I really was looking forward to getting back and buying my type of weapon.

The best place to change happened to appear in the form of a cave. Well, more like a mound in the middle of the forest, with a small burrow inside.

I set up the Formation, by first plopping it down, activating it, and running away, before waiting ten seconds to run back to it. It basically took a photo of the area and no matter what happened after, the image wouldn’t change. Every Concealing Formation was set at 10 seconds, more than enough to run out of the area.

The “cave” barely went five meters in and the width was just enough for me to turn, but it was just enough to keep me hidden for a while. First I got an idea to use magic for once and seal it, but then realized I was a human and humans needed oxygen.

“Do you need oxygen, Darry?” I asked my grumpy stalker.

“I do not. And do not call me that.”

“‘Kay.”

Chuckling, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, as usual.

Here’s the plan. Mixing different substances will almost always make something new. Sometimes, mixing a poisonous substance makes one that is safe to consume, maybe even beneficial.

You’ve heard of alchemy, you know what I’m talking about. The thing is though, that my Trait wouldn’t let any kind of poison do any visible effects unless I constantly controlled it, which was a pain. So, I got an idea. Why not combine some of the poison in me and make something non-toxic and maybe beneficial?

Well, I managed part one, but not two. Kind of.

You see, what I came up with will not give me any power-up, or any buffs. But it will certainly have visible effects. Namely, changing the color of my hair. If you remember, when I was getting experimented on, the color changed, as I let it.

It was just two toxins that were apparently still in my body and so they combined. I wasn’t told any of that, Aizen will never admit to making a mistake, but I deduced it.

So I planned to use it.

Slowly, I brought the first one into the blood. It was a weak psychedelic, nothing much. I let it course through the veins as I brought out the second one - another drug, but with different effects, from what I was told. Then the third one, that gives you literal diarrhea. Kind of seeing a trend here.

I guided all three to just before the brain, where I slowly combined everything. I couldn’t actually see it, so I didn’t know the color, but I guided it to the blood vessels in the scalp anyway, where I left it like that.

Next, something else I invented. Still for the hair, it would make it grow really fast. Like, back to the same length in a few seconds. The stuff I put in the scalp would change the color, but it was still blonde now, just the next part would grow another color.

So I brought out a clipper, only to get an idea. Why not leave a bit of blonde? It was cooler.

So I used scissors instead, giving myself the most horrendous haircut ever. My beautiful long blonde hair was now all over the ground. I of course picked it up, we recycle like good citizens. And it said the Trait worked full body, so who knows.

Next, I took that new “potion” up to the scalp, like before, and let it do its thing. Like a waterfall, a dull gray color started flowing all around, until I quickly stopped it at elbow-height.

I took a few strands and inspected my new mane. The color was a dull, boring gray, closer to black than white, while about five centimeters at the end were blonde. Honestly, it looked ridiculous, but I loved it.

While on Earth, my mother never let me have long hair; only at the end, when I was pretty much an adult. And here, in my past life, long hair was a pain to maintain, with no good shampoos or whatever else was needed. Even more, it was gray, the most edgy color you can get, satisfying my dreams of being the cool, nonchalant guy, with long beautiful hair. Lovely.

Figuring I would still be found like this, I took out an ointment that did the same as what I invented for the hair. It would’ve been a pain to use on the whole head, so don’t judge.

The problem was that it worked anywhere it was put on, whether hair normally grew there or not. So I carefully spread it on my chin, on the sides and around the mouth. Now I was a cave-man with edgy hair. Oh, the beard stayed blonde, making it look even more ridiculous. Beautiful.

It was more about shits and giggles, since it actually exposed me more, having the same color as the hair I had before. But being careful with everything was tiring, and extremely boring.

My appearance wasn’t even that unusual, there were a multitude of people who had hair of exotic colors, depending on the element they focused on. We’ll talk about that later. Point is, I wouldn’t stand out that much.

I always wanted a beard. Mine was always patchy.

Heaving a sigh and holding my knees like an old man (which I was) I got up and packed the pillow and the Formation.

Looking up, I saw Darry floating five meters above me, watching my new appearance with disgust written all over his face.

“What is that?” he grimaced.

“My new look, like it? Now my name is uh… I’ll think of something,” I smiled as I looked up at him.

He made an “ugh” sound, shook his head and floated the other way.