PART 1

Lying on the bed, I make myself ready to face my reward and also going through my story again. Not that I have used some super-secret techniques, but it never hurts to be careful. Then I stand up and thank the medic guy.

Following the directions from before, I make my way to the reward zone. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of people got any of the enemy badges. I am one of the few who has one. Only one guy has two badges. One of the rock trio. Some other people are spectating with unknown intentions. After 6 minutes, I get to know this Henry guy. He is the person who had been fighting, or taking a beating opinionwise, against the three invaders. In front of his desk are some of the more valuable resources. Is he the quartermaster? Who knows.

“badge,” he says, clearly very annoyed with his job. I speculate that the normal quartermaster had been killed and they hadn’t appointed a new one yet, so better don’t piss him off.

“Here, Sir,” I said politely while handing him my badge. I make sure to appear extra humble. Something he seems to like.

“So pick something from the desk, and give me your badge. Oh and don’t forget the other badges. I suppose they were the victims from that guy” he said.

After taking my badge, he, without any change in expression, takes off al the points from the other badges and transfers it into his own. No idea why.

“Problem?” He askes me and provocatively raises his left eyebrow.

“No Sir,” I said and directed my attention into the tables of valuables. There were some raw materials, potions, scrolls and artificer products.

The scrolls was a very valuable one, but not on the mage level, so I can do without it. There were some interesting ingredients like shadow crucifix, thunder iron or flaming glass, but the one thing which I found the most valuable for the current me was a potion. I read about it and was planning to get one one way or another. It is called the formless mage potion. A strange name, but it is basically a potion for first stage mage apprentice like me as an aid for breaking through. Expensive to make and normally not very worth it. Apprentice either accumulate and slowly breakthrough, try that in a battle or use a potion of their respective element(s). That is not a problem for most people. Having a dual affinity is rare. But for them and people like me with a special affinity, we need a potion like that. No chance in getting something more attuned with our elements. The person behind me is also eyeing this potion.

“This potion, Sir,” I said and point at it.

“Well whatever, here are your extra points,” he said and handed my badge back to me. It got richer with 36 points in both contribution and wisdom as well. So normal rate would be like 25. Not a lot, but enough to motivate people. Today, their generousness should be because of the quality of the attacking force, maybe the formless potion was put in because someone noticed me? I will never know. I don’t think we will get anything for killing normal guys.

“If you want more stuff like that, there is the wanted list,” he said and went back to whatever he was doing before being disrupted by me. On the other side of the hall, is a board choke-full of wanted posters. It was about strong people like the apprentice leaders or special talents, which the enemy might choose to nurture in the future. You have to know that elevating someone to the official mage level is possible, but so expensive, that it gets extremely rarely done. Another fact I noticed while mingling a bit on the ship, is that being talented in the path of the mage, speaking speed, breakthroughs and spell power, doesn’t really have anything to do with other talents. For example, a genius in making new spells might have a higher chance of having a breakthrough and in spell power, but that knowledge does nothing in terms of speed. They likely remain as an apprentice forever. The same goes to golem makers, artificer aka Engineers and other magical professions. Especially artificer and alchemists have it hard.

And those lucky few, the Organization might help them becoming a mage. Of course, there are some cons to it. Progressing later would become very hard and the organizations wouldn’t let them go easily. I think that they would work them to the bones, but that isn’t something they would advertise.

Being deep in my thoughts, I nearly run into a small blockade in front of me. Four men at both sides and the guy who eyed the formless potion from before.

“Good morning to you. Would it be possible to sell that potion you just acquired to me? I would pay a good price for it” he said. Some of the men beside him glared at me a bit, but nothing that I cant shrug off.

“No,” I said, not bothering with him. To this, one of the lackeys growls and is ready to shout .”Do you know who …”

Before he could end his sentence, the leader of the small group cuts into his words.

“Jeff, no need to be a dick about this, we can talk,” He said, still smiling like an innocent teenager. A rather dangerous person in my books. Calm and not unreasonable. So dangerous

“You sure you won’t sell it? I can give you these” Than he winks at a women behind the wall of flesh and forwards her with a tray in her hands. On it were some of the same materials than in the desk from before and some which are completely foreign.

They looked useful, but nothing I need more over the bottle. About to show disinterest, I catch sight of an amulet, not like my storage one, but closer to the one used by the ambusher, but it has despite the similarities, very distinguishable design and look. I am also able to feel some kind of familiarity from it.

Something I am interested in, but not enough to delay my progress. Showing disinterest, I shoo her away.

“Unfortunate, but expected” he said “Anyways if you get another potion, or a formless ginger than inform me and you can have anything from here. Or if you need a potion, I also can provide some. Name is Jeral by the way” He said, politely bowed and left with his entourage.

I mean, I didn’t expect it to go that way. Forgetting the little episode, I go back to my room.

PART 2

Back in my room, I decide to continue my cooping in the room. That much social interactions were enough for me. I also take a note of that Jeral guy, he might be useful in the future. You never know what you get from your slain foes.

Apropo slain foes, I still have to go through my loot from the enemy and the other ‘unfortunate’ victims. This makes me instantly happy. Before I were to consume that potion, I go meditate and make preparations.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Sometime later.

I changed the arrays on the door to the do not disturb mode. I mean, I have no idea what the actual name of it is, but whatever.

Having my mana refilled and being in my most optimum state, I open the potion and glug it down.

It has a bittersweet taste, not unpleasant but also not pleasant. Do you know Chinese food? It is the feeling of not knowing whether you like the taste or not and need a couple of bites to be sure. That is the feeling I have right now. Luckily, I don’t feel it very long, before a very strange feeling overcomes me. My whole body is being overloaded in terms of pain and feelings. Apparently, when you breakthrough, you experience and get baptized by your affinity or affinities. Now the problem with arcane is, that it can be pretty much any other kind of affinity, so following this logic, I have to feel through a whole range of different elements. Some wich are easy to categorize like fire, earth, metal and such. Now there are the weird ones like dimension, Ink and sop on. They don’t hurt or anything like this, they are just a very strange experience, which is hard to explain. Dimension, for example, felt like being part of something bigger at the same time as feeling minuscule. Then there are the frightening ones, some are painful, some are stuff straight out of horror movies. For fire, I felt myself burning, something I can identify and categorize. But the feeling void game was like gazing into the abyss in its literal form. Very horrifying and very damaging to the ego of anyone. I also got to know some other affinities with unknown names. They had often psychological effects of horror, despair and the like. After 40 minutes of sensual overload, this part stopped, then the rest went pretty smoothly.

The feeling after the breakthrough is very serene and refreshing, like having a nice rest and boosting that feeling by 100 times for 5 – 6 minutes straight. I can’t complain, can I? So after my breakthrough high wears off, I inspect my body and the changes it underwent.

The biggest and most glaring thing was the colour of my blood. It isn’t as blood-red than before, it is somewhat more like neon red with occasional violet streaks in it. I presume that that means that it becomes either more magically attuned, or my blood becomes magical. I lean to the latter. The infusion method I learned a while back seems to be one of the reasons of this phenomenon. I have seen some blood over my short time on this world, but they never had any other streaks of colour. It was more of a different colouration of red. The fire user I met in the forest hat brighter blood then the dark mage comrade of his. An interesting discovery, but nothing useful for now. Except having more efficient mana usage.

After another 2 hours of experiment, I managed to differentiate the two blood types. Another thing I confirmed is that mana comes from the blood, and mana regeneration is nothing more than the production of blood. Not sure yet which component is exactly responsible for mana, but that can wait.

So back to the two types of blood. With the normal mana, I use spells like before. It got stronger and able to store more, but in terms of efficiency, nothing changed. The other blood I call violet cells. They are a kind of supercharged mana. Very strong, much more efficient, but a lot less than the normal mana. The normal spells got 30-40 per cent stronger using this kind of mana, which isn’t very surprising after the discovery, what made me near ecstatic is its effect on arcane spells like the arcane bolt.

The penetration effects of it went through the roof. It got smaller and more condensed. It felt like shooting a pistol. An idea for the later me.

The only thing stopping me from celebrating with a good sandwich is the fact that I don’t have any arcane spells except that bolt. And I highly doubt that that guy had the spell booklet with himself.

Such a pain in the ass. I can only hope that he has another of those scrolls, then at least I can copy those scrolls…

I am a retard, why haven’t I thought of this? I thing and slap my hand. I hastily get out some of my magic scroll making supplies and meticulously make an arcane bolt scrolls- Nothing is different while writing it, but when I add the magic power and instead of the normal one I use the better one, the scrolls instantly absorbs it.

Slowly waiting for it to fill up, I forget to stop grinning when.

*BOOOOM*

It explodes in my face. Dumbfounded, I stare for a minute or two at my hands. Luckily without any damage, the defence artefact barely manage to keep the damage away from me. That cannot be said about my ego. Not being right is a big hit.

After three minutes of being dumbfounded and another 2 minutes of thinking, I conclude that the scroll and ink were unable to handle that much-concentrated power. A fact which becomes more and more logical the longer I think about it. In hindsight, I could facepalm myself for being such an idiot and not thinking about something like this. The room is still in the do not disturb mode, so, fortunately, no one heard my failure. After calming down, I do the thing which helps me calm down the best. A good ham sandwich with some very tasty fruit juice before taking a nap