Progress was much slower than Percy would have liked, though his efforts weren’t entirely fruitless. Seemingly every few days, he managed to learn something new.

  For example, he had known for a long time that water mana had a chilling effect on other elements, slowing down their flow. This was something that he experienced every time he used his ice core. However, it was only recently that he had discovered a few implications of that in alchemy.

  There were several ways to dissolve solid lumps inside a concoction: raising the temperature, increasing the pressure, or stirring the mixture. Evidently, the first method was slightly less effective than the latter two when a water or water-adjacent ingredient was involved.

  It was common knowledge that this applied to pacification, since it involved secondary ingredients of the ice affinity, but Percy had confirmed that a lesser version of that applied to brews with water and mud ingredients – which were actually used frequently with the restructuring principle. The difference was too small to notice if one wasn’t actively looking for it, which would explain why he hadn’t come across the information in his studies.

  Another thing he learned was why ingredients with composite mana types induced more chaotic reactions. Apparently, their seemingly random behaviour could be easily explained by considering the common elements that the composite affinities were composed of. They affected not only each other, but also the final ingredient in the mixture, resulting in a long chain of cascading reactions.

  Of course, understanding how this erratic behaviour came to be didn’t make it any less problematic to unpack and deal with, but it did add yet another tool in Percy’s growing bag of tricks.

  Each discovery was minor, and not always something that could be acted upon. Even three months later, Percy didn’t feel that his brewing yield had improved. That said, he didn’t give up, having noticed some subtle changes during his experiments.

  Whenever he watched two ingredients interacting, he played a little game: he tried to guess where the lumps would appear, and even how large they would be. In the beginning, his predictions had been laughably inaccurate, though he seemed to have grown markedly better over time.

  The same applied to the drifting motes. Using all the knowledge he had accumulated, he tried to predict when a particle was about to change direction, accelerate or slow down. At first, he had gotten it wrong every single time, though his predictions eventually grew about as accurate as dice rolls.

  ‘It’s better, but not nearly enough,’ he thought one day.

  The improvements were undeniable, but they seemed to have plateaued, and he had yet to experience any tangible benefits in his alchemy. He didn’t doubt that the rules and insights that he had drawn were correlated with the predictions that he wanted to be capable of, but the link was faint and muddled at best.

  It was like trying to guess what someone would have for dinner by looking into their favourite meals. The information would help, but there were no guarantees. Granted, his predictions were more accurate than before, and if he acted upon them swiftly, he could often eliminate a solid lump effectively.

  On the flipside, whenever he got it wrong, his actions could easily harm his yield more than if he had done nothing. After all, raising the temperature of the concoction for no reason would needlessly consume some of the ingredients. All things considered, his gains simply didn’t outweigh his losses.

  ‘Maybe I should change my approach slightly. This is alchemy, after all… not combat.’

  During a fight, Percy had a lot more information to base his predictions on, but he also required his guesses to be far more accurate. Each of his opponent’s potential moves had to be handled in a vastly different way, and guessing wrong could easily spell Percy’s death.

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  Complete certainty was harder to achieve during a process as messy as brewing, but the potential actions that he could take at any given time were easier to enumerate. Even better, it should be possible to act with more caution, to minimize the damage when he guessed wrong.

  ‘It’s worth a shot. Whether or not I manage to upgrade the spell, I’m certainly learning something interesting. Worst-case scenario, Nephthys and the Starry Queen will eventually increase their output anyway, so I’ll end up with enough Gloomy Dawn for my cores sooner or later.’

  Tuning out the noise, Percy reconsidered his approach. His guesses already felt about as accurate as they were going to get, so the next step was to optimize how he acted upon them.

  If he could just pick the three or four most likely outcomes rather than just the one, and he chose a strategy somewhat suitable for each of them – like raising the temperature of his cauldron by a few degrees in the area between the potential lumps, or inducing a gentle rotation – he might be able to place himself in a better position, without painting himself into a corner.

  Percy went back to work, putting his new idea to the test. Essentially, his job was to prepare for several likely scenarios rather than hinging on whether he could accurately predict the one that ended up occurring. Instead of guessing the future, he wanted to merely guide his concoctions through more favourable routes.

  Progress picked up again as he honed this new skill.

  Slowly but surely, he developed a sense for the most likely spots inside the cauldron where the next set of lumps would emerge. He wouldn’t quite call it a “vision” because his eyes had yet to register anything. It was more like a vague feeling gnawing at the edge of his mind which grew more pronounced every single day.

  Percy was elated to experience that, as it reminded him of what he had felt just before he registered his other Wild Arts. It was clearly an indication that he was on the right track, though this upgrade was taking a lot longer to snap into place than the previous ones.

  These… self-induced hallucinations – for lack of a better phrase – were blurry and transparent, likely to indicate his lack of certainty. They pointed to several regions inside the mixture, and even to the sizes and shapes of the potential lumps, giving Percy enough information to deal with most of them as effectively as possible.

  No longer concerned with narrowing down his guesses, he tried to select the strategy that would eliminate the greatest number of lumps each time, priming his cauldron’s enchantments in preparation.

  Sometimes, all of his predictions turned out wrong, forcing him to eat unnecessary losses. Gradually, he learned to minimize the impact of such instances by acting more cautiously. For example, he avoided heating the concoction up too much, so that he could always dial it back down without slashing his yield more than necessary if no lumps ended up forming.

  It was a fine line that he had to tread – one of maximizing his expected gains while minimizing his expected losses.

  Several more months passed.

  Percy had already attempted to apply his new spell to actual brews instead of his sloppy experiments – with mixed results. He had at least reached a point where his actions never negatively affected his output, though the benefits were still marginal.

  That said, he knew that he was on the cusp of a breakthrough. As soon as his Status recognized his efforts, the virtuous cycle between his mutation, the new entry, and Phoebe’s Decree would amplify the Wild Art.

  Percy even felt his eyes resonate with his budding understanding and elaborate strategy from time to time. Once in a while, he could swear that faint shapes appeared in his vision too, though they were always fleeting. Regardless, he was confident that he was just a single push away from his goal.

  Still…

  ‘Come on… it’s been two weeks since I stopped improving!’ he thought, feeling the urge to tear his hair out.

  As close as he was, the final step kept eluding him. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he figured something out, though he couldn’t help but lament every wasted day of core cleansing for his ice core.

  Well… alright. Micky was still drinking Aurora Dew three times a day, so he wasn’t really “falling behind”. The rest of Remior was still stuck with the cyan paste, so Percy probably shouldn’t be complaining. Besides, he hadn’t even known about the existence of royal jelly until somewhat recently.

  Accepting that he had to be patient, he resumed brewing, resolving himself to invest however long it took for the new spell to click in his mind.

  Luckily, inspiration arrived when he least expected it, in the form of the first batch of clones returning from the Vault. They brought several valuable things back from the artificial world – each worth salivating over – though there was something in particular that took the cake.

  It was precisely the catalyst that Percy needed right now: a new alchemic principle.

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