Arthur’s grip locked onto the leather-wrapped pommel of his sword, his knuckles turning a bloodless white with every step down the corridor.

  I must be of use to him! The desperate vow echoed in his skull. Yet, whenever the distance closed and the opportunity presented itself, his nerve shattered into dust.

  "Commence preparations." Vigo didn't even turn his head. He swept past the heavy iron doorway, his strides eating up the floorboards as he marched toward a desk buried beneath towering stacks of un-graded exams.

  "All done?" Vigo’s voice sliced through the silence precisely thirty minutes after he had taken his seat.

  "Yes. All stations are sterile. I’ve synthesized the compounds detailed in your notes."

  Arthur’s hand remained glued to his sword. He commanded his lungs to draw a steady breath, searching for a scrap of bravery, but found only hollow air.

  "There's something you want to tell me, isn't there?" Vigo’s gaze snapped up, pinning Arthur under a microscopic stare.

  Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat, scrambling to construct the perfect lie. The world, however, refused to grant him a single second of mercy.

  "So, Orrin didn't leave anything to me, huh?" Vigo snickered. The sound rattled in his chest, threatening to boil over into a maniacal fit, but it died as quickly as it sparked. "Fine. That is fine. I—no, we—can complete my Magnum Opus without the Headmaster's seat."

  The Headmaster is… gone? Is that why I haven’t seen him since that evening at the dorm? How long has he been missing? What was he even doing there?

  The frantic questions hammered against his skull, splintering his focus. Yet, the invisible iron collar choking his windpipe suddenly snapped open. He lunged at the opening.

  "Bring the compounds down to floor two," Vigo instructed, "and grab materials from cabinets 2-12, 4-9, 6-39, 5-2—"

  "Actually, I have something to tell you." Arthur cut him off, the words tumbling out in a rush. "I’m good with the sword. Really good. I’m… I'm not so proficient with magic anymore. Not since the incident traum—"

  Vigo’s glare slammed into him—a dead, hollow stare consumed entirely by a singular obsession. The invisible collar clamped back down around Arthur’s neck, dragging a dozen heavy shackles with it.

  Ah… I interrupted him. How could I show such staggering ingratitude to the only person in this academy who acknowledges me?

  Vigo dragged in a harsh breath and let it out as a hiss. He slicked his hair back with trembling fingers, a desperate physical tic to leash the madness clawing at his mind.

  "Cedric." Vigo’s voice dropped to a dangerous hum. "Our relationship operates on a mutually beneficial compact. This potion—my Magnum Opus—will forge you into the strongest mage alive. But to wield that supremacy, you must hunger for it. So do not stand there and tell me you are giving up."

  "Take your sword." Vigo stepped forward, wrapping his hand around the hilt and ripping the blade from Arthur’s scabbard. "Swing it around." He carved a crude, mocking arc through the air. "And be done with it."

  The metal clattered violently against the stone floor as he discarded it.

  "Am I understood?" He loomed over Arthur, staring down at the boy's bowed head.

  "Yes… Head Instructor." Arthur kept his gaze riveted to the discarded steel at his boots.

  "I will prepare the ingredients from 2-12, 4-9, 6-39, and—"

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  "No. Forget the preparatory phases." Vigo pivoted away. "We are accelerating the timeline. Testing begins immediately."

  He snapped his hand toward a nearby shelf, ripping a heavy tome from its resting place. Its cracked, mud-brown leather spine bore a faded title: Speculum Alchemiae, Book 7. His thumb blurred against the edge, flipping past dozens of pages before freezing. With a sharp, sudden motion, he tore a single leaf free from the binding.

  "Gather these." He thrust the parchment forward. The double-sided sheet was choked with ink—a relentless cascade of bullet points crammed together without a single paragraph break.

  One, two, three… fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five. Fifty-five ingredients. I haven't even handled ten at once. Half of these names are complete gibberish to me, and the other half are incredibly unstable. Mapping the chemical interactions between this many variables must have consumed decades! Just what kind of abomination is he trying to brew?

  It took fifteen agonizing minutes to haul the materials to the bench. Vigo moved like a machine, flawlessly preparing, mixing, and compounding every vial I handed him. By the time he introduced the tenth ingredient, his methods eclipsed my understanding entirely. I must watch him more closely next time.

  "Is it finished?" Arthur asked, watching Vigo wipe down the brass instruments and shove them into a drawer before moving to scrub his hands.

  "Finished?" Vigo scoffed. "This vial holds five decades of my bleeding life, stacked upon thousands of years of arcane advancement. In its current state, it remains highly volatile. It functions purely as a catalyst that forcibly converts raw life energy into mana, triggering a massive shockwave. The pursuit of the perfect ratio and dosage starts now."

  He snatched up the one-to-one mixture and stalked toward a crystalline pod. Suspended inside floated a small aquatic creature—a seaman merely a third the size of the others lining the walls. It had a round, soft face, plump blue skin, and oversized, dark eyes.

  Is… is that a child?

  It bobbed gently in the viscous fluid, eyes shut tight, caught in a state between deep slumber and suspended animation. Vigo drew the shimmering concoction into a massive iron syringe. He aligned the needle with a yellow seal on the pod's exterior and plunged it through, injecting the formula directly into the tank's supply lines without a hint of hesitation.

  Wait, he’s just going to administer it straight into the tank? Didn’t he explicitly say it would trigger a blast?

  Inside the glass, a web of dark, bruised-looking veins spidered across the creature's semi-transparent skin as it absorbed the tainted fluid. Suddenly, the small creature thrashed awake. A silent shock rippled through the liquid. Its large eyes flared with a blinding, unnatural light as the arcane energy overloaded its system.

  A searing nova of pure white light erupted from the pod, washing the laboratory in a blistering wave of heat. Then, in the blink of an eye, the brilliance collapsed into nothingness.

  "Anything less than three units of each will fail to produce a reaction," Vigo noted, his voice devoid of a single ounce of empathy.

  He stared coldly at the empty glass housing. The fluid, and the creature within it, had vaporized without a trace.

  The geometric rune-tunnels carved into the stone floor ignited. They drank in the explosive surplus of mana from the blast, channeling the glowing currents into a central intersection at the heart of the laboratory.

  "Conversely, anything exceeding nine units triggers a mana detonation before it even breaches the organism's bloodstream. What can you infer from this display?"

  "It means at least two of your materials possess differing concentrations of active ingredients," Arthur said, the analytical portion of his mind taking over. "When you push past nine units, the interaction between those increasingly disproportionate compounds forces a critical failure."

  "Astute. And how do you propose we correct this imbalance?"

  Arthur pressed a finger against his chin, sliding his eyes shut to visualize the variables.

  "The most straightforward method would be isolating and weighing each component prior to compounding, systematically removing trace amounts until the reaction stabilizes. However, I’ve audited your stock. You lack the sheer volume of materials required for even fifty incremental alterations, let alone combinations numbering in the millions. Attempting this through trial and error would outlast several generations."

  "Are you hypothesizing, then, that locking down the minimum viable ratio yields the perfected mixture?"

  "I operated under that assumption," Vigo murmured. "But I have already isolated that minimum ratio. And it did not require millions of tests to deduce. It took me exactly sixty-two. The true crucible was never balancing a fifty-two-variable ratio. It was discovering the existence of the ingredients to begin with."

  "How did you even know what to search for?"

  "I received a revelation from a god. And from that exact moment, this became my sole purpose."

  A… god?

  "I know exactly what you are wondering," Vigo said, anticipating the doubt. "And no, I cannot tell you which one. Its formless silhouette matched nothing recorded in the ancient texts. But I felt its divinity. Its mana dwarfed every living entity in existence—eclipsing even the God-rank Magic Tower Masters and Swordmasters."