Cal pushed out through the front doors of the Adventurer's Hall, the cool forest air replacing the boisterous warmth. His coin purse was two gold lighter. He'd earned fifty silver for the contract completion and another fifty for the bear fat. Harvesting a red spirit stone from the beast's core had allowed him to trade it to Felicity for a blue one. Luckily, she'd agreed to sell him another healing potion at cost.

  His jaw worked as he walked down the cobbled road toward The Golden Mortar. The figures assembled themselves in his head like a budget report covered in red ink.

  This is a failing business model. He needed revenue to outpace expenses.

  He'd barely scraped through the mosshide bear fight and the victory had cost him more than he'd earned. The single use of [Flicker Step] left his channels in worse shape than before the contract began. He couldn't keep burning money and health on every contract; an efficiency upgrade was the only way to tip the scales back in his favor.

  The Golden Mortar's dark whispershroud pine facade came into view. Cal stepped into the austere showroom and saw Selara standing behind the black granite counter, sorting some spirit herbs from a wicker basket. Her silver-blond hair was tied back in a loose bun, and she looked up as the door swung shut behind him.

  "Back already?" She set a soft white petaled flower down, carefully brushing dirt from her hands. "I didn't think we'd see you until tomorrow. How'd the hunt go?" Her eyes darted to the dried blood on his armor. "You're walking, so I assume you're not dead."

  "Barely." Cal stopped at the counter with a chuckle, his hand drifting to the hilt of his knife before he forced it to still. "The bear was faster than I expected. Smarter, too. It used Mana to lock down my spear mid-fight."

  Her brow furrowed. "An F-tier mosshide? Using active magic?"

  "Trapped my weapon in its moss like a vice." He shifted his pack off his back and set it on the floor. "I had to use [Flicker Step] to get clear… nearly got my head caved in."

  Selara's expression darkened. "You used Stamina? With your channels already damaged?"

  "Didn't have a choice. It was that or die."

  She exhaled slowly. "How bad is it now?"

  [Channel Erosion: 17.50%]

  Selara stared at the notification for a long moment, then shook her head. "You're going to kill yourself at this rate. You know that, right?"

  "I know." Cal offered no protest, his thoughts already moving ahead. "That's why I need to talk to Aurelian."

  She crossed her arms, concern bleeding away to reveal wary curiosity. "About what?"

  "My channels. See if there's something—anything—he can do. And I want to discuss the Guild board too."

  Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting slightly, clearly waiting for him to explain further.

  "I'll explain when he gets here. You both need to hear it."

  Selara studied him for a moment longer, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then gave a curt nod. "Fine. Wait here."

  Shortly after she disappeared through the door at the back the sound of muffled voices and an annoyed exchange of words reached Cal. The door creaked open again and Aurelian emerged first, his expression already sour and his dark robes immaculate despite whatever alchemical chaos he'd been managing.

  "Ah, the newly minted Mr. Valorn," he said in a clipped tone. "Selara informs me you have questions about your spiritual channels and some likely misguided notion involving the Guild. This should be entertaining."

  Cal gave Aurelian a tight smile. "A mosshide bear nearly killed me this morning because I wasn't able to access my Stamina like I need to. I used an emergency movement technique and eroded my channels further."

  Aurelian's dark eyes narrowing. "You've managed to damage them already?" He paused. "Show me your status."

  Cal pulled up his mental display and shared the relevant section.

  Aurelian stared at the notification for a long moment, then let out a humorless laugh. "Seventeen and a half percent." He shook his head, his lips thinning into a contemptuous line. "Impressive, in the worst possible sense. Channel Erosion is a rarefied affliction, Mr. Valorn. It requires a paradoxical sort of incompetence—one must be talented enough to summon the requisite power, yet stupid enough to actually do it."

  Cal kept his voice level. "Can you fix it?"

  "No." Aurelian's answer was immediate. "Erosion is structural damage to the spiritual pathways. The easiest cure is to advance to D-tier and use that breakthrough to renew and fortify the channels. The only other options are incredibly rare natural treasures or literal years of healing. Until then, the best you can do is avoid making it worse."

  "I need to keep growing. My status as a Sovereign Aspirant demands steady advancement, but I can't make progress if my contracts cost me more than I earn. There has to be a stop-gap. Please."

  Aurelian's expression grew thoughtful. "There… is. A type of elixir referred to as a meridian liner. They coat the pathways, providing a temporary buffer against further damage. However, the coating introduces spiritual drag—an input lag, if you will. Your Abilities will execute slower."

  "I'll take it."

  "There's nothing to take." Aurelian waved a hand, his tone dismissive. "I don't waste time brewing niche alchemy for F-tiers. Furthermore, such an item likely doesn't exist anywhere in Deadfall. The adventurers here are too unskilled to pull off the scenarios required for Erosion. No one stocks inventory for those kinds of anomalies."

  Cal grimaced. He'd expected resistance—Aurelian's arrogance was as predictable as the sunrise—but the casual dismissal still stung like salt in a wound. The alchemist held knowledge Cal desperately needed, formulas that could solve his Erosion problem, allowing him to continue to progress on the Path. Pushing back now, satisfying as it might feel, would slam doors he couldn't afford to close.

  Bite your tongue. Play the long game.

  He exhaled slowly, letting the frustration bleed out through his breath, shifting his approach. "Then let me ask about something else: the Guild board."

  "What about it?"

  "Your shop doesn't post contracts there. I know why—Zarven's blockade cuts off your supply chain. I can help with that."

  "Can you." Aurelian's tone was utterly bland.

  "I'm offering to forage for you. Whatever you need to restock your shelves."

  Aurelian scoffed. "All you're fit to gather are common weeds. I have no interest in pedestrian alchemy, as you well know. If you wish to be useful bring me D-tier spirit herbs or rare E-tier finds. Like that carrion bloom you provided previously—that is the baseline for acceptability. Your utility depends entirely on your ability to survive in the locations where true value grows."

  Selara finally interjected. "Aurelian, stop being an ass."

  Her brother didn't flinch. "I'm being practical."

  "You're being shortsighted." She turned to Cal, her tone softening slightly. "Ignore him. You need to focus on resources that benefit your own growth right now. Leave the shop's inventory concerns for when you're strong enough to venture into the deep woods without getting yourself killed."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Cal nodded slowly, adjusting his approach. "What if I work the contracts posted by The Verdant Phial instead? Through the Guild. Which is basically all the listed foraging bounties, by the way. I need to build strength before I can harvest the D-tier stock you want, and Zarven's the only shop in town posting foraging work."

  Selara's eyes narrowed, her head tilting slightly as she studied him. "You want to work for our competitor?"

  "I want to work contracts that pay. The Guild board is public and Zarven posts them because his intimidation tactics keep the local foragers too scared to work for anyone else. But if I'm the one fulfilling his orders, he and Loric have less reason to keep pressuring me. They get their reagents. I get paid. Everyone backs off."

  Selara's fingers drummed against her crossed arms. "You think filling a few foraging contracts will make them leave you alone?"

  "I think it removes their justification for direct confrontation. Right now I'm a potential problem they need to solve. If I become a useful resource instead the calculation shifts." Cal met her stare. "Zarven's a businessman. He'll tolerate me as long as I'm profitable."

  She glanced at her brother. "Aurelian?"

  The alchemist waved one hand dismissively, his attention on a notebook he'd manifested. "I don't care where he sells his pickings, so long as he doesn't waste my time with pedestrian flora."

  "There's your answer." Selara turned back to Cal, offering a weary half-smile. "You operate through the Guild. No direct contact with Zarven or his people. Understood?"

  "Understood."

  Cal hesitated, then pressed forward. "There's one more thing. I'd like the ingredient lists for the meridian liner and the purification draughts. So I can start stockpiling materials."

  Aurelian's gaze snapped back to him instantly. "Stockpiling materials. For potions I have no intention of brewing for you."

  "Not for you to brew. For when I become your apprentice."

  Aurelian stared at him, his expression shifting from irritation to something more calculating. "My… apprentice."

  "You said I needed to learn the basic alchemical Spells in the grimoires you loaned me. You remember? I'm working towards it. But I also need to manage my Erosion and Contamination in the future, or I won't survive long enough to deliver D-tier reagents. Stockpiling the ingredients now means I can brew them myself once I've learned the Spells. Practical preparation."

  Aurelian's sneered, looking down his nose. "You presume much, boy."

  "I presume I'll succeed." Cal met his eyes without flinching. "You wouldn't have given me the grimoires if you thought I'd fail."

  Selara made a quiet sound that might have been a suppressed laugh, her hand rising to cover her mouth. Aurelian shot her a withering glare before turning back to Cal.

  "My formulae are proprietary, not common recipes to be handed out like market pamphlets. They are earned, not requested."

  Selara sighed, pushing a stray strand of silver-blond hair behind her ear. "Oh, stop being so dramatic, brother. He needs to learn. If you won't teach him, the least you can do is allow him the ingredient list."

  A vein throbbed on Aurelian's forehead before he finally relented. "Fine. Selara, recite the lists before this overconfident whelp convinces himself he's already a master alchemist."

  She turned to Cal, her voice shifting from stifled amusement to the flat tone of someone reciting a tedious inventory. "For the purification draughts, you'll need glimmerdew moss, purewater pearls, verdant moss, sap from a riverveil birch, and moonbell petals."

  His mind catalogued the names, each one a known entry cross-referenced between Thalorin's memories and the texts he'd been studying.

  "As for the meridian liner," Selara continued, "that requires ironbark buds, resinheart cedar resin, stone root shoots, shavings from a spinecrown cypress, and a bit of dampwood salamander mucus."

  Cal nodded. "Got it. Thank you." Then he hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to proceed with the last thing on his mind. "There's something else..."

  Selara motioned for him to continue.

  "As I mentioned before, the mosshide bear I fought today—it used Mana. But it didn't use runes." Cal gestured, trying to articulate the anomaly. "The air smelled charged during the fight. I felt the Mana moving when the moss on its body seized my spear after I stabbed it. But when I examined the corpse there were no runes. Nothing."

  "And you're wondering how it cast without a runic framework." Selara's tone shifted, taking on the quality of a teacher recognizing a student's genuine curiosity. "That's a good question, although I'm a bit surprised your studies haven't covered this by now."

  Aurelian made a dismissive sound. "A question any properly educated apprentice would already know the answer to."

  "Then it's fortunate we have the opportunity to correct that gap." Selara shot her brother a frown before turning back to Cal. "The answer lies in understanding the spectrum of magical usage."

  Selara leaned against the counter, her posture shifting to something more instructional, her hands resting on the edge. "Magic requires two things: power and direction. The power is Mana. That direction exists on a spectrum, with two extremes."

  She paused, letting her aura flare slightly. Cal felt the shift immediately—a faint pressure in the air, tinged with an aggressive red resonance that made the hairs on his arms stand up.

  "On one end, you have pure Intent," Selara continued. "Most spirit beasts operate on instinct. Hunger. Rage. Joy. That raw, unfiltered emotion produces a powerful Intent. It commands the Mana to move, and the Mana obeys because the emotion is a strong enough motivator. The mosshide bear didn't need runes because its Intent was primal and unequivocal. Its entire being was bent towards doing what it wanted. No arbitrary thoughts or distractions. In that moment, it desired nothing more than to trap you, and so it did."

  Cal stared ahead raptly.

  "On the other end of the spectrum," Selara said, her tone cooling, her aura fading back to baseline, "you have pure structure. Have you ever heard of a gnomish automaton?"

  He shook his head.

  "It's a construct of metal and gears from the dwarven lands. No self awareness or consciousness. They move because a million tiny runes define every gear turn. It's pure structure. Rigid. Logical. Operating on pre-programmed instructions."

  She straightened. "We—people—exist in the middle. Think of a classic Spell like the fireball. Runes build the vessel, telling the Mana 'be fire' and 'be a ball.' Intent then fills that vessel and guides it, commanding it 'go there' and 'detonate.' It's a combination of structure and will. That's the balance."

  Cal felt the pieces clicking into place, but his mind was already translating the framework into something more familiar.

  Analog versus digital.

  The beast was an analog signal, a continuous high-voltage wave. Like a natural sine wave of sound—powerful, infinite in variance, messy and prone to noise. It was a surge of pure rage or hunger, unfiltered and chaotic.

  The golem was digital, like hardware running on machine language. A series of logic gates—If/Then statements hardcoded into metal and rune.

  People were more like a person triggering an executable.

  Runes were the syntax, the code that defined the parameters—shape, temperature, payload.

  Intent was the user input, the configuration settings that guided the program.

  Mana was the device that everything ran on.

  Magic isn't mystical. It's just Merlin's version of an engineering problem.

  Selara's voice pulled him back. "There are rarified examples of people bypassing the need for runes entirely. Intense emotional trauma can create a temporary state where Intent becomes strong enough to act alone. There's a story about a Mythren'dir Queen who destroyed an entire army when her husband was killed defending their mountain home. She had devoted her many years to the healing arts, mastering the preservation of life with unsurpassed talent. But when her husband was cut down in front of her… all of that magical might was bent towards destruction. The fire her rage called from the sky was apocalyptic. Everything burned. The enemy. The mountain. Even her city."

  Cal shivered as he tucked the warning away, his mind still on the core theory.

  Selara studied him for a moment, lips pursed in thought. "Your aura."

  He blinked.

  She tilted her head. "You've invested in your Mind. I can feel the shift in your aura's color. How much?"

  "Five percent into Intelligence. From a spirit stone. I was going to do Wisdom next once my Contamination drops."

  Selara furrowed her brow, her lips parting slightly. "Why haven't you attuned Willpower?"

  "Why would I need to put it into Willpower?"

  Her eyes widened in slow realization until she fixed her brother with a weary stare. "Aurelian."

  The alchemist didn't bother looking up from his notebook. "What."

  "He doesn't know why he needs Willpower," she said, her voice flat. "Your grimoires. Did they cover the absolute basics?"

  Aurelian sniffed, setting down his notebook with exaggerated patience. "The grimoires are comprehensive texts. Any competent novice would grasp the inherent principles of spellcasting."

  "But he's not a novice, is he? He's a beginner," Selara countered. "He's trying to learn advanced theory without any foundational instruction."

  "Standards exist for a reason, Selara. I will not dilute the craft by—"

  "Oh, stop." She cut him off, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "This isn't the Academy. You can't just hand someone a masterwork and expect them to reverse-engineer the fundamentals." She let out a heavy sigh. "Give him Pangolin's Primer."

  Aurelian went rigid. "That book is—"

  "Essential," she finished. "And you know it. Give it to him."

  Off to the side, Cal watched with a mixture of fascination and mild alarm as the siblings stared at each other. With an aggrieved sigh, Aurelian stalked toward the counter, waving one hand over the surface with a thoroughly put-upon expression. A small, battered volume materialized in the air and dropped onto the black granite.

  "There." Aurelian spat the word like a curse. "That book is priceless. Try not to destroy it."

  Taking the primer Cal noted the worn leather, smoothed with use. He opened the small book to the first page and began scanning the introduction.

  Chapter One: The Seven Attributes and Their Role in the Mystic Arts.

  He looked up at Selara. "Thank you."

  She nodded curtly, then turned back to her brother, her stern demeanor softening into tired exasperation. "Next time, try teaching instead of gatekeeping."

  Aurelian muttered something under his breath as he walked off, too low for Cal to catch.

  Cal clutched the book, the true manual he'd been missing, and felt a surge of anticipation spreading through his chest. This was the key. The very foundation he needed.

  He left for the archive with the primer tucked under his arm, his mind already racing ahead to what he'd learn.