Wulf held up his water canteen. If every potion he made would have a random effect…he could use that to his advantage in the short term. It didn’t matter what he put in. He’d at least get something out of it.

  Though it would need some tweaking in the future, he could figure the rest out as it came.

  He glanced back at the golem. If he made something that the Field registered as a potion, then consuming it would create an aura that fuelled magic objects nearby. A golem wasn’t necessarily a magic object, but its core was.

  Where a stone-aspect Ascendant—a Pilot—would direct their mana into the golem’s core to control it, Wulf could do the same with his aura. It wouldn’t be pretty, but he could make the golem move. And if he could make it move, he could beat Harrel.

  He patted himself down, searching for any sort of herbs or alchemical ingredients. He’d never been interested in how alchemy worked in his past life, and this branch of the Academy didn’t offer any alchemy courses. It was too rare of a Class.

  But as he’d gotten older, he’d gotten used to drinking potions. At points, he’d taken to buying powders from the odd wandering alchemist, which he could mix with water, and they made excellent painkillers.

  That meant he could mix an ingredient with a base of water. The Field just had to recognize it as a potion.

  Problem was, he only had the ashes of his old master from his past life, and he wasn’t going to drink that.

  But his academy-issued haversack lay across the gym, leaning against the wall. He scrambled over to it, well aware of the countless gazes following him. He had five minutes, so he couldn’t exactly run across campus, but if he remembered correctly…

  He ripped open the front pouch of his leather haversack, revealing a row of four glass canisters with metal caps, each about the size of a sword’s hilt. They each held dried herbs and spices.

  His mother had said, I heard the food at the academy is so bland! On the last day before he departed for the academy, she’d been fussing. She’d been certain to pack his bag with herbs from their garden, against his will.

  Judging by the lime-green and slightly yellow colour of the trees outside the window, this was only a few weeks from then. Classes had only just started, and he was back in his first year—and first semester.

  Wulf pulled out the herb containers and held them up. Sage, thyme, lavender, and dill. He considered just dumping them all into his water canteen, but that wouldn’t do. It’d just be tea. Really awful, lukewarm tea. Anyone could make tea

  No, he needed to infuse it with a little mana.

  He unscrewed the caps of his jars, then tapped a little dill, sage, and thyme into his water canteen. Not too much—those were savoury flavours back home. Then, finally, he added a much higher concentration of lavender.

  Nothing happened.

  It was just leaf-infused water.

  To infuse it with mana would’ve been hard for anyone at nineteen years old, and Wulf’s past self would’ve never mustered the fine mana control needed for another decade.

  But mana control was knowledge, and he hadn’t unlearned the progress he’d made in his last life. He knew how to infuse stone with his mana, turn it into an extension of his will, or how to pump mana into his war-hammer to empower his strikes.

  Just this time…don’t push as much mana.

  Fuelling magic items was a difficult process that required years of refinement, especially if you wanted the mana back, but simply giving your mana to an object was more natural.

  He shut his eyes and drew air in through his nose, then exhaled, and with the breath, pushed mana out into the canteen. His hand warmed up, and the signature tingle of the Field activating thrummed against his skin.

  When he opened his eyes, the letters on his bracer had shifted into a new message:

  Poisonous Potion (Low-Wood Quality)

  Poisons the consumer with weak nausea for ten minutes.

  [By crafting a potion, you have increased your mana. Advancement progress: 10%]

  Wulf snorted. No one would notice that it was actually magic, not at the level of the other students. They all wore leather bracers, too, each with a slip of enchanted paper to help them interface with the Field, but without putting their hand on his canteen, they wouldn’t detect a thing. Him being an alchemist by Class wouldn’t even be in the fronts of their minds.

  Besides…the potion wasn’t very strong. There was only one tier of item weaker than Low-Wood, and the Field registered it simply as “Scrap.” He doubted he’d be able to make a potion that weak, not with his main ability, but it was possible for other items. His ingredients had definitely been Scrap quality.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Now he simply had a poison potion. Which he could resist with his Mark. Hopefully.

  There was no time to doubt, and he’d never been one for second thoughts.

  He brought the potion up to his lips and took a long swig of the herb-infused water. It trickled down his throat with a tingle, then sloshed into his stomach. Nowhere near as strong as the High-Iron tier potions he’d been taking in his past life, and it didn’t send lances of power streaking out through his body, but it was there, swirling around his stomach.

  He tried not to taste it. His tongue had other ideas. Turns out, not all four of those herbs were compatible flavour-wise. He wanted to retch, but he held it in.

  For a second, he shut his eyes, searching inside, looking for any sign of deeper nausea.

  Nothing.

  Then, a slightly cool aura erupted around him, stretching for a few feet with a slight tingle. It was searching for magical objects.

  “Five minutes are over, dog!” Harrel called. “You ready to go again, or are you giving up?”

  Chances were, they’d already fought two rounds. If Wulf couldn’t beat Harrel this time, then he’d lose the challenge anyway. Hell, if Wulf didn’t knock the guy out cold, it’d count as a loss.

  With a groan, Wulf tucked his herbs back into his haversack and sealed up his canteen, then marched back to his golem.

  Just fuel the core a few times, and hit him hard. That’s all.

  Wulf approached his downed golem. It lay flat on its back in the center of the ring of students, still waiting for a Pilot.

  “Ah, he can still move,” Harrel sneered. “Well, let’s finish this off. Farm-sons from Carolaign don’t deserve to pilot golems, much less Oroniths.”

  Wulf said nothing. He slid into the golem, slotting his legs into the waiting suit of deepstone armour. It was a special stone found deep beneath the surface, which had spent so millennia basking in the Field and being altered by it. It responded easily to Ascendants with a Pilot Class.

  But now, without his mana, the golem was unwilling to move, even at the joints. Where previously, stones would shift, his mana operating them, they now resisted. He had to ram his legs in.

  The aura around him made the stones shudder, sure, and it loosened them slightly, but he didn’t have a Pilot Class or Skills anymore. In his last life, after unlocking his Class—Pilot—his first Skill had allowed him to control a weak golem for a short period of time. Harrel probably had the same.

  Wulf laid flat in the golem’s back and rammed his arms in. He wrapped his fingers around bars at the end of the arms, then tucked his head up into the helmet.

  The golem’s core was right behind him, at the back of his neck. Eventually, Pilots would implant a dream-link, which would allow them to better communicate with golems and conduct their Skills, but he didn’t have that right now. Maybe he could accomplish something along those lines with alchemy—after all, alchemy wasn’t just potion-making, but also transmuting metals and creating permanent structures with natural and arcane elements.

  But, he reminded himself, problems for the future. Stop getting ahead of yourself.

  Right now, he had to make this golem work. He could sense a perfectly round, marble-sized stone. Behind his neck. Between his shoulders. It vibrated in the aura of power he was putting out, and he envisioned it in his mind.

  Etched runes covered its surface, the stone itself was a magical item. It was an artificially implanted core that made golems docile and usable by humans.

  At nineteen, a Pilot wouldn’t have been able to manipulate the core directly. They’d have just relied on Skills to flood the golem’s form with mana.

  But thankfully, Wulf had four decades’ experience working with golems—both small and large.

  He concentrated on the lower half of the marble sphere, then pushed up with his mana, fuelling the core how he wanted. The golem closed up. Gravel shifted to guard his chest, and panels of stone armour sealed overtop. His helmet closed.

  Then he willed the golem to stand up. Nothing happened.

  He couldn’t just will it. He had to direct the aura. He had to focus on different parts of the golem’s core, and…

  A rune line lit up along the side of the core. The golem heaved itself up. Stone clacked against stone, and panels groaned, but it moved.

  His aura dimmed and shuddered. He’d only get about three more movements out of the golem before the aura sputtered out completely.

  Before Wulf could even adjust, Harrel sprinted at him, sealed inside his golem, arm pulled back to punch. Fast, angry, visually impressive.

  Wulf blinked. The punch was sloppy. He could tell by Harrel’s stance, by the way his body was turned, by the way he stepped.

  Wulf ordered his golem to angle its shoulder to the side, directing a different rune-line on the golem’s core, and it worked. Harrel’s fist glanced off, and the man stumbled.

  Two movements left.

  Planting his feet, Wulf ordered the golem to face Harrel as he stumbled, then he directed the rest of his aura into the last rune-line. A line of bright blue mana flashed out the back of the golem’s neck. Wulf’s golem punched Harrel in the back of the head.

  Harrel’s helmet shattered, and the man collapsed in a heap. The rest of Harrel’s golem held together, and the boy still breathed—the back of his golem shifted with every inhale and exhale—but he wasn’t getting up any time soon.

  Wulf’s golem, now out of power, froze standing up. The chest opened halfway before stalling. It was just enough that Wulf could squeeze out.

  The entire crowd was silent, save for a few murmurs. Finally, one girl whispered, “Where did that come from?”

  Wulf shook out his arms, then glanced back at the golem. It had no markings, no decoration. Chances were, it was school property. He brushed a scuff off one of the chest plates.

  “Thank the Field,” he muttered, out of habit more than anything. But a burst of relief and satisfaction followed, and he smiled.

  But before he could go retrieve his bags and orient himself, a boom sounded at the end of the gym hall. The doors flew open, and a troop of two older men and two older women marched in. They wore the brown gambesons of faculty staff, and wore metal vambraces on their right arms—each with a sheet of enchanted parchment clipped to them.

  The crowd murmured, and someone whispered, “Headmaster.”

  One older man marched forward faster than the others. He had long, gray-brown hair and glasses, and a green cloak fluttered behind him. “Everyone, disperse. Everyone except you, Mr. Hrothen.”

  Wulf gulped. That was his family name.

  He winced, then looked the headmaster in the eyes. “Yes?”

  “To my office. Now.”