The sound of Sven’s heartbeat battled for dominance in his head with the ringing in his ear as four straight days of work quite literally blew up in his face.

  Blindly scrambling with his hand to reach for his trusty cloth, Sven let out a yelp as he accidentally touched hit hot cauldron and burned the side of his hand.

  “Darn pot!” He exclaimed as he finally found the rag and used it to wipe his face clean. Then, once he felt as though his face was no longer covered in alchemical goo, he let his eyes squint open.

  And, just as they had been the last three times he’d tried his hand at tier 2 alchemy, his eyes were met with the sight of an empty cauldron sat amidst a chaotic workspace covered in viscous fluid.

  Sven let out a disappointed sigh as he walked over to the other side of the workshop he was in to cross out a few things from his list of things that could possibly be wrong with how he did things.

  He had acquired the right ingredients, mastered the correct timing, and even made sure he kept his cauldron perfectly clean so that no other magical remnants messed with his concoction.

  So, what in the hell was wrong with his alchemy?

  It was a question that had been haunting him ever since he joined the alchemist’s guild and began to be given more and more jobs that he needed to complete.

  In the beginning, Sven had thought himself some kind of alchemical prodigy, as every time that he made a potion, he found it easier and easier to make it of a higher quality.

  For example, after making his 12th batch of Hunger Reduction potions, he’d gotten them up to an incredible [B]-rank quality, which the senior alchemists said was practically unheard of.

  The only issue was then that while they were a first step for alchemists, there wasn’t exactly a high demand for [Copper] rank/tier 1 potions as they usually did pretty generic things.

  Like, why would anyone, even the richest cultivator out there, buy a hunger reduction potion when he could just get a chef to make him some food which would taste a hundred times nicer?

  The only reason Sven had even gotten to make 12 batches was that there had been a backlog and the people requesting them were people who planned on entering closed-door cultivation.

  He had thus been forced by this lack of buyers to diversify his potion-making abilities and learn to make other tier 1 potions, such as the pain reduction potion, and the dubious “love” potion.

  The last was not a potion that made a person fall in love with you, but aided with… lovemaking.

  Sven had had no problem making these potions, but the instant that he tried to aim to make any sort of tier 2 potion, he had encountered an impenetrable wall of difficulty.

  It wasn’t just that there often, though not always, more ingredients involved, nor just the fact that a lot of the ingredients were of a higher quality, it was also that the process itself was different.

  Whereas in the tier 1 potion-making process, one needed only to say the sacred word, ‘Concoct’, if you wanted to succeed, tier 2 potions were much different.

  One needed to use a string of three different sacred words throughout the process, and while that may not sound that much harder, Sven had learned firsthand hand it made things way harder.

  It wasn’t enough to just say them at the right time, they had to “resonate” with each other, as a book he’d read described it. Which meant that timing and one’s tone became very important.

  Moreover, the difficulty of tier 2 not only came from sacred words but also from understanding how all of the alchemical process worked, not just merely knowing that certain things did work.

  No, you had to try and understand why adding certain ingredients together into a pot was conducive to making whatever type of potion you desired.

  The senior alchemists he’d spoken to said that the world didn’t expect you to have a perfect understanding, as no one had that, but you had to at least be on the right track.

  It was for this reason, as well as the added complexity of additional sacred words, that made tier 2 be considered by the Alchemists guild as the stage of true alchemists.

  Any old magician could easily become tier 1 alchemy, they said, but only a person truly dedicated to the path could ever create a true tier 2 potion.

  This was why they had also advised him to take things more slowly, as he had only been a truly dedicated student of alchemy for about a month and a half when he’d made his first tier 2 try.

  But, unlike the few young disciples that said senior alchemists had taken under their wing, he felt a tremendous affinity for alchemy that made him believe he was close to achieving his goal.

  Though, maybe, that was just his newly upgraded skill talking.

  —

  [(Mortal) Alchemical Sense (Late)] - You possess a greater instinct for the alchemical craft, allowing you to better learn from your mistakes, as well as see potential opportunities.

  —

  Re-looking at the prompt he’d received days ago, he felt much more aware of what everything all meant than he did when he’d first gotten the skill.

  As, for the most part, he had kind of ignored researching the system and its ranks when he’d done his research in the library as it was hardly that interesting in comparison to magic in general.

  But, ever since he’d got access to the first floor of the Alchemist’s guild’s private library, he’d read up on the system and now felt he understood things much better.

  For example, so far as the books were concerned, there were 4 ranks of skills and artefacts: Mortal, Profound, Earth, and, lastly, Heaven. Within these ranks, there were 4 stages: Early, Mid, Late, and Peak.

  The two big artefacts that he’d received were both profound rank artefacts, and, from what he’d so far been able to tell, they were middle-stage profound rank artefacts.

  It had taken Sven a while to get why some items, like the pills and cauldron he’d received weren’t ranked like this, but he knew now that this was because pills and cauldrons are items, not artefacts.

  The exact definitional divide between the two was still murky in mind, however, as often felt a little arbitrary from where he was standing. But, then again, what did he know?

  Regardless, items were ranked based on an entirely different scale which had nine ranks instead of four, which were: Copper, Iron, Steel, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Mithril, Jade, and Diamond.

  Professions like alchemists ordered themselves per these 9 ranks, so Sven was as of now a [Copper] rank alchemist, but upon making a tier 2 item, he’d be made a [Iron] rank.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The system judged one’s proficiency in any given class much differently, but, honestly, recalling all of the stuff he’d read was tiring him out so he just let out a sigh and let his mind relax.

  Then, after he’d recovered sufficiently, he brainstormed ideas as to how to finally succeed in his task of making a tier 2 potion.

  He managed to come up with a long list of ideas, and he’d been about to go back to clean up his workstation before trying his hand at alchemy again when he heard a loud knock on the door.

  Forgetting he was covered in alchemical goo from the neck down, Sven called out, “I’m not at work, you can come in safely!”

  A moment after he’d said this, the door to his assigned workshop swung open and one of the kids that an older alchemist was training peeped his head through and said, “You’ve been summoned.”

  Taken aback by the boy’s words, Sven asked, confused, “Whatever for?”

  The boy shrugged, but before he left to go and inform the person in the workshop next to Sven’s he said, “Something about the Lord’s son returning, I think.”

  As the door to his workshop closed behind the young lad who couldn’t be older than maybe 12 or 13 years old, Sven finally noticed the state his attire was in and quickly rushed to get out of the rough apron and tunic he wore while practising alchemy, and back into the clothes he’d worn ever since he’d arrived in this world.

  Then, once he was dressed, he scrambled out of his workshop, and up the large staircase to the guild’s ground floor, and when he reached the top he was greeted by a very unusual sight.

  The guild lobby was full of people. Or, fuller than Sven had ever seen before.

  Furthermore, despite all of the people present, the room was practically silent as more people who belonged to the guild filtered into the lobby from every direction.

  Until, at last, a tall man with a rich dark beard emerged onto the lobby’s upper balcony, his aura as intimidating as it was gargantuan as it suppressed everyone else’s in the rooms.

  It didn’t take long for Sven to realize who this man was. The Alchemist Guild’s guild master.

  All eyes fell upon the man as he then began to speak, his voice low and powerful, “Members, I am addressing you all today as I have recently received an important piece of news from the Lord.”

  Glances were exchanged between the guild’s members as the man continued, “Narses’ heir, young Godfrey Emilia Narses, shall soon be returning to the city after many years spent in the capital.”

  A few of the older alchemists in the room began to smirk at these words, clearly knowing what the next sentence would be as they began playing with the spatial storage rings gracing their fingers.

  “As such,” The guildmaster proclaimed, “a great contest of the guilds has been announced! It is, as a result, of the utmost importance that you who are gathered here return to your work. At once! It is not my desire to allow this guild full of venerable men to be outshone in any competition by the debauched artificers, ugly blacksmiths, lecherous enchanters, or, heaven forbid, that petty gang of useless talisman makers! Not now! Not ever! So, with all due respect, be gone with you all! You are hereby dismissed! Go and do your forefather alchemists proud!”

  The room was flooded with applause as every other person began to clap and cheer while on the inside Sven was wondering, ‘He summoned everyone here to tell everyone that?’

  The thought, ‘He could have just sent an email…’, briefly entered his head before it was dismissed, as, no, the man could not have just sent an email. Though, the general thought was fine.

  Why bother gathering everyone if you’re just announcing a contest? Couldn’t the boy from earlier have just told him and everyone else? Was this contest a much bigger deal than he thought?

  Sven had no idea but as he stuck around and chatted with a few people he knew, and the answer very much seemed like a yes. In fact, an emphatic yes.

  The inter-guild contest aspect wasn’t that important, what mattered was that this contest would spark a more vigorous contest within the guild itself to produce the gift/gifts.

  And, it was assumed, that whoever made the largest and best contribution to the guild’s efforts would be given access to the guild’s treasury to pick out a few super rare alchemical ingredients.

  Which was the equivalent of offering an unlimited supply of cat nip to a bunch of felines. Everyone had immediately begun to make plans about what kind of potion they were going to submit.

  Sven, however, found that he didn’t care about the contest. Not because he wouldn’t want a chance to peruse the guild’s treasury, but because he knew he just couldn’t compete.

  The Narsian Alchemists Guild had almost half a dozen [Steel] rank alchemists, all of whom were in the room, and all of whom had access to far more money and resources than did Sven.

  So, even if Sven were to somehow achieve a magical breakthrough and become a tier 2 alchemist in the next 30 seconds, he’d have to achieve yet another breakthrough before he could compete.

  Hence, after he finished catching up with a fellow old codger named Jackson, Sven returned to his workshop and got straight to work cleaning up his workspace for his next attempt at tier 2.

  And, hopefully, this time it’d be a success.

  The sound of water giants groaning had been ubiquitous and ever-present ever since Godfrey and his squad had set out from the capital toward his ailing father’s domain.

  For the last few months, he had been desperately trying not to think about everything. To focus all of his attention on concluding his training as a royal knight squire, and serving the Empire’s needs.

  Yet, no matter how much time he spent in the training fields, or trapped in a testing dungeon, the spectre of the life that fate had lined up for him haunted his every waking moment.

  If not for the specially purchased sleep potion he used every few weeks when he wanted a nap, he did not doubt that his dying father would loom large in his dreams as well.

  For months, he had had no idea what to do about this problem, as even if he hadn’t seen his mom and dad in almost 2 decades, the letters they had exchanged had kept their bond strong.

  He knew the love that they had for him. He knew the pain they had gone through when Henry did not make it home that fateful day. But, most of all, he knew how proud they were of who he was.

  Letting them down was thus not an option. But, becoming the heir that they wanted wouldn’t be easy for him. That was for sure.

  Which was why his Captain had all but ordered him to go home and speak with his father.

  At first, Godfrey had tried resisting the order, not wanting to receive special treatment, but after a worthy pretence had been found for him to return, he had been unable to refuse.

  Even if, both he and the Prince knew, the main reason behind his return wasn’t truly to deal with a rag-tag organization of desert bandits and slave traders calling themselves the Sand Maw Gang.

  This isn’t to say he wouldn’t deal with the brutish criminals, only that they likely wouldn’t occupy much of his mental space, as from what he’d heard they were a group populated only by mortals.

  Meaning, that a team of peak [Apprentice] realm cultivators like himself and his squad could defeat the barbarians without putting in that much effort.

  The sound of his horse-sized water giant groaning beneath his legs dragged Godfrey from his idle thoughts as, unlike its kin, his water giant had always been a rather quiet soul.

  “What is it, friend?” He asked as he scratched at the bottom of the large grey quadruped’s chin.

  The animal let out another groan, this one sounding more like a yawn, and Godfrey sighed as his spirit beast companion’s message was clear enough.

  “Alright, everyone!” He called out, projecting his voice to be heard over the shifting sands, “It is time to set up camp for tonight. I think our mounts need a rest.”

  His team of about 6 or 7 squad members nodded their heads in understanding before they got to dismounting their giants and pulling out their camping equipment from their storage rings.

  Godfrey soon did the same. Though, his gear was less ostentatious and ornate than his allies', who all possessed unique luxury tents which were hand-crafted by professional artificers.

  They were, after all, just like him, nobles. Yet, regardless of their tents being flashy, Godfrey had an unshakable confidence in them, and in their strength.

  Thanks to the fact that their camping equipment was almost all special artefacts, it didn’t take too long before everyone had set up everything they’d need for the night.

  For while they may not need sleep, their mounts certainly did. And, honestly, Godfrey couldn’t say he was in a rush to return home in any respect.

  Not only because he’d have to face all of the responsibilities as heir, but also because he knew the way that people like his father’s advisers and ministers thought.

  They’d try vociferously to get him to take on the mantle of lord immediately upon his return. What did it matter that his father was still alive when he wasn’t able to make most of the decisions?

  For that reason and many other, less noble, ones, they’d force him to handle all of the messes that had arisen in the years since his father had started to experience physical and mental decline.

  But, more than just exclusively lordly matters, Godfrey would be required to make a few decisions as the presumptive new head of the Narses house.

  For instance, his two younger sisters were approaching the marriageable age of 16, which meant a litany of engagement proposals had likely already piled up on his father’s former desk.

  Naturally, Godfrey felt slightly uncomfortable with marrying off his little sisters. Namely because as of that moment, he hadn’t met them, and knew nothing of their personalities or interests, etc.

  How could he possibly find them a good husband right away when he was so ignorant?

  All of which is to say, it had long since dawned on Godfrey just how much work he’d have to do as soon as he got back to Narses, and so delaying his arrival a bit, while selfish, was alright with him.

  Even Gaia herself allowed there to be calm before the storm.