Asteria hadn’t been pleased to hear about his little escapade, especially that he left without telling anyone, but she’d been even less happy to learn that Zinnia seemed to have fallen into petty infighting, since a position as Yue’s official apprentice was no longer available.

  “That girl! To think she would show her fangs now, amid all this chaos. She must think we're not yet ready to fight back,” she muttered, pacing in her room.

  Orion had to hold back a smile at how alike they were whenever a new problem arose, complaining while thinking things through as they burned a hole in the floor.

  “Are we?” He asked, curious. If it were up to him, he’d spend as much time in Valderun as needed to build some connections, then go back to the Sanctum, but they depended on Yue’s backroom dealings. Since they were officially adrift at the moment, they had little strength to wield unless they wanted to escalate.

  Sighing, Asteria shook her head. “No, of course not. It’s true that we are in an awkward position, but I’ve been all but officially confirmed as Master’s apprentice again. It’s just a bit difficult to come out and say it because I’m already a Magistra, and technically, I shouldn’t need to be working under anyone.”

  Humming, Orion leaned back against the wall. “That sounds like a weakness to me. Even if everyone knows, as long as it’s not official, there isn’t much that can be done to censure her. Unless we go directly to the Elder with this, but it doesn’t seem like the best option.”

  “It’s not,” Asteria acknowledged, clicking her tongue. “Yue isn’t the kind of woman to appreciate petty infighting, so she would punish her, but it would weaken our position. No, I will have to handle her myself.”

  Her tone was reluctant, and Orion knew his mother didn’t enjoy stepping into the political arena, even if it was just a small one within the embassy. However, the fierce look in her eyes told him she would be alright.

  Over the past few months, several events happened beyond her control, starting with Morliana basically forcing them out of the Sanctum and Eire’s betrayal.

  Those were all things Asteria couldn't stop. She simply lacked the political power or personal strength to even be acknowledged as a player, let alone an opponent worthy of respect.

  This little fight with Zinnia, who seemed determined to make her stay here as difficult as possible, to remind her of her role as the top dog in Valderun after the Elder, was exactly what she needed to sharpen her teeth and blow off some steam.

  It doesn’t hurt that she’s been working hard to close the gap with the real players. Zinnia will now be barely an appetizer for her, even considering the older witches she might have on her side.

  Orion knew his mother quite well. In fact, he probably knew her better than anyone, even considering her long relationship with Elder Yue.

  And he could see the fire growing within her. Asteria had suffered numerous setbacks in her life. She’d endured many injustices, all in an effort to live a simple life and shield him from the harsh currents of the Sanctum’s politics.

  That had caused many to forget who she was and who she could become. She was the youngest Magistra in a century, a potion-making prodigy unlike any other in the coven.

  And she was mad. Oh, so mad.

  It wouldn’t be long before she was ready to remind them all of the enemy they had created.

  “Just don’t kill her. We don’t want the Elder to view us unfavorably,” he said casually, earning a long glance that told him more than any words could.

  Eventually, Asteria tittered, her shoulders relaxing and her eyes softening. “Why would I ever do something like that? I just need to remind her of her place, that’s all. I’m sure she’ll be reasonable.”

  Orion smirked back. Yeah, Zinnia might be able to push him around, especially with her connections and knowledge of local mores, but she should have known that behind every cub was a lioness willing to fight much harder.

  It will be soon. It won’t be enough to drive Morliana away, considering the power she has accumulated over the centuries, but I doubt even she expected this to happen anytime soon.

  [Asteria Voidwalker - Lv 148] [Moonlit Brewmistress - B-rank]

  It was said that gaining levels became an annual task after entering the second tier, and a monumental effort thereafter.

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  The Sanctum was filled with witches who had reached the third tier but couldn't advance any further. It was the fate of most prodigies, as the lack of quick progress burned them out faster than dragon fire.

  Asteria probably wasn't on many radars. She was a well-known figure, with her main strengths being her connection to Elder Yue and her role as the head potion mistress, both of which were relatively harmless.

  It wouldn’t be long before the great game changed once more.

  Realizing that he’d been going about metamagic completely wrong was less surprising once Orion had thought it through. Of course, he was initially shocked. His success with [Maximize Magic] and [Penetrate] had made him confident in his approach, but back then, he’d just been copying what worked for others and eventually adapting it to his own needs.

  That, along with the enormous level of control his casting style gave him, meant he probably would have stayed blissfully unaware that he was casting spells without a key component for quite some time.

  Yet his failure with [Slow] had been too absolute. Usually, even complex spells that took weeks, if not months, to develop still showed some progress over time.

  [Slow] simply failed to materialize. No matter the Knowledge or Intent he used, it was just a matter of missing parts. He probably should have noticed that earlier, but even he could fall prey to his own ego.

  To be fair, it’s not entirely my fault. The Sanctum’s casting style uses faith as a stopgap for situations like these. How could I have known that the Collegium employed an entirely different approach?

  He was lucky to find out sooner rather than later. With Set’s demonstration, he managed to fix a problem that probably would have haunted him for a long time and had cast [Slow] successfully.

  “Now, if only using it to enchant crystals was as easy, it’d be great,” he grumbled, though he wasn’t actually mad.

  He’d known this endeavor would be more complicated than it looked, and even after finding a few suitable ones from the morning market, he’d only managed to maintain a spell within one for a few minutes at most.

  It was better than at first, when spells would fail immediately after he relinquished control, but he quickly realized that he needed to do the same as with wards and anchor them to the Mana Field if he wanted them to last without a direct connection.

  The problem was, unlike [Schr?dinger’s Defense], which, while extremely complicated on a conceptual level, required little mana to operate, metamagic was greedier.

  Some of it was that his Knowledge was simply lacking. When it came to pure physical matters, he was unmatched and had even managed to summon the echo of a gamma ray while at tier one, but for things that hinged entirely on the metaphysical…

  “But maybe this is yet another mistake. I’m trying to make something work with a method I know little about. I should instead think about how to adapt it to my own style,” he said as he watched the quartz shine dully under the torchlight.

  Orion was back at the Adventurer’s Guild. His mother and Magistra Kissea reassured him that he could get another room as his lab, and that it wouldn’t be taken, but he knew how to read between the lines. Those two were plotting something, probably to counterattack Zinnia’s offensive, and his presence, while useful as bait, was likely to limit their options, so he left for the day, even though he had to agree to take Pauline with him.

  The witch was currently waiting in the main hall, likely nursing a drink of some kind, which would have made him feel bad if he didn’t know she much preferred being here rather than outside among the crowds.

  The Adventurer’s Guild was a major faction, so it would normally have been one of the most dangerous places. However, its unique status as an open organization meant that members of other factions often took refuge there temporarily.

  Really, it’s one of their most valuable assets. They can gain favor with other factions if things improve, or recruit already-trained individuals if the situation gets worse. Either way, they come out ahead.

  It was a very clever method of operation that only succeeded because everyone understood that anyone who entered would be protected from harm. A single incident could result in a major loss of face, setting them back a decade of hard work.

  So, while it wasn’t his lab in the Sanctum, it was the next best thing, and he didn’t even have to dip into his savings because his mother had given him a pouch full of silver coins to pay for it. Here, he could focus entirely on advancing his craft.

  “I need to find a way to replicate [Slow] using science. The spell works as intended if I cast it directly, but I lack the Knowledge to enchant it into a crystal permanently.” It was something he was familiar with from his early attempts at magic, but where most spells could be solved by applying simple principles, [Slow] was much more complicated than it seemed.

  It wasn’t a matter of energy storage, as he initially thought. If the meta spell functioned as a battery to hold other magic until the right moment to release it, he would have already mastered it.

  But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The magic for that might exist, but it was likely tier two or above. No, [Slow] had a simpler structure that relied on a more complex idea. That idea was time.

  “I have seen only one example of time magic, and it was entirely too complicated for me to understand,” Orion admitted. It wasn’t easy to admit, but it was the truth, and any good scientist started with the truth; otherwise, the whole process would be ruined.

  That one example was when Antares had locally stopped time to prevent anyone from eavesdropping on their conversation. It was an admittedly absurd waste to use what must have been a tier four spell for such a thing, but for a man like him, it probably wasn’t that bad.

  For Orion, it was impossible, but that was neither here nor there. No, what that experience revealed to him, however, was that time dilation could be achieved through magic.

  That was his goal for this session. If he could achieve even a single second, it would serve as proof of concept, and he could develop from there.

  “There are two ways to achieve time dilation through science. One is velocity; as the faster one approaches c, the less time will pass for them outside the system. That is not applicable here. I would have to induce a constant state of movement in the magic, which would chip away at the spell’s coherence, even if I could anchor it in that state somehow. The second is gravity. The closer something is to the center of a gravity field, the slower time passes for it. I could probably rig something up, but the cost of that would be pretty steep as well.”

  Some would consider his approach oversimplified, but that was because they were influenced by pop culture. The unexpected nature of time dilation led to many misconceptions, such as believing it only affected light-based clocks and not mechanical, atomic, or biological timekeeping devices.

  Val G. Rousseau proposed an experiment called Einstein’s Cat to address this issue. It involved a device called the ‘Sync-or-Die clock’, which compared the synchronization of a light clock and a mechanical stopwatch.

  Whether a cat's life was at risk depended on the precise timing between these two clocks, as observed from different reference frames. The paradox arose when time dilation was believed to affect only the light pulse, leaving the mechanical clock unchanged.

  Based on this mistaken idea, the cat would only be expected to die if the observers moved relative to it. However, the apparent contradiction was resolved when it was recognized that both clocks were equally affected by relativistic time dilation.

  This demonstrated that the basic principle that time dilation was a universal aspect of special relativity.

  Orion had used a similar principle to create [Noether’s Lock], so he was very familiar with it. Actually, hold on a second. What if that’s the solution?