Percy was back to his house in the settlement, preparing for tomorrow’s lecture. He was nervously pacing back and forth in his bedroom, trying to come up with a plan.

  There was obviously no real reason to worry, since he would merely embarrass himself a little at worst – it wasn’t like his life was on the line, nor was Percy someone to shy away from danger. That said, he had never done this sort of thing before, and he’d rather not make a fool of himself in front of his students if he could help it.

  ‘I’ll start off with a demonstration,’ he decided.

  Percy would inevitably have to deconstruct his approach and teach the alchemists all of the principles applicable to them over the following weeks, but it wasn’t a bad idea to begin with a practical session where he wouldn’t even have to talk much.

  It would help him break the ice and overcome his nervousness, while also sparking his students’ curiosity and establishing his competence. After that, they’d be more inclined to pay attention.

  ‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll start with something impossible to mess up – like brewing healing potions.’

  Even if his yield was a little lower than usual, it would still be high enough that nobody would notice. Besides, they would all be busy gawking at his oversized cauldron and all the strange techniques that he would be using.

  After that, he could pause to give them an overview of all the enchantments and alchemic principles involved – the very topics that he would be covering in greater detail over the rest of the course. Finally, he would complete the lesson with more alchemy. Compressing his potions and brewing some Aurora Dew should be impressive enough.

  ‘Orin said that the first lecture will be two hours long and be attended by around two thousand people.’

  Percy had naturally asked his mentor to arrange everything. He could have just taught the six elders and had them pass the knowledge down to the rest, but he felt that it would be more efficient to directly teach as many people as possible, as it would help his lessons spread through the settlement faster.

  Two thousand attendees were a lot for somebody who had never given a lecture before, but it was only a tiny fraction of the alchemists living in the settlement. Percy wasn’t going to personally teach everyone, so his audience would consist of only the most senior Guild members.

  Orin had emphasised that they could end the lecture early if necessary, but Percy wanted to make the most of his time. The sooner he passed his knowledge to his first-generation students, the sooner they could take over the mantle of teaching the rest while he focused on other things.

  ‘Great. As long as I can get through tomorrow without any issues, they’ll be too busy trying to pick their jaws off the floor to care if I stutter in future lessons,’ he thought, standing in front of a fancy mirror in his bedroom. ‘Now I just need to make myself presentable.’

  Drawing phantom mana to his hand, he created a small, grey blade, bringing it to his beard. It had been years since he’d last groomed his facial hair, partly because he hadn’t had any reason to care about his appearance while on the run, and partly because it had served him well as a disguise.

  That said, he knew that looking like a caveman in his lectures wouldn’t be ideal, as people had been walking on eggshells around him for a while now. The fact that he’d been a wanted criminal until recently – while also being as strong as a Violet – didn’t help, yet he knew that his appearance had contributed at least a little.

  Sadly, it was too late to take back the first impression that he’d given all the Guild members who had already seen him, but he had luckily spent most of the past year underground.

  ‘Hopefully, most of them will be able to focus on my cauldron rather than shaking in their boots.’

  Once he was happy with his trimmed beard, he cut his hair a little as well – just enough that it would look neat instead of unkempt – though he was too used to it being long to get rid of it completely.

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  After a quick shower, he tied it back before turning his Cloak corporeal. One of the best features of his enchanted clothes was that he didn’t even have to take them off to wash himself – he could easily allow soap, water, and even his skin to phase through the magical fabric if he wanted. In its ethereal state, his phantom mana was only obstructed by his soul which flowed deeper inside his body.

  ‘It doesn’t even look that bad. I can probably wear this to the lecture.’

  The Cloak’s dull grey colour was arguably a little mundane – especially to the Guild’s alchemists that had all come from noble backgrounds – but that was fine. Wearing something simple would only make Percy more approachable. Besides, the faint sheen of his magical silk coupled with the intricate runes that he’d woven into its very texture gave it a refined appearance, so he wouldn’t look like a complete vagrant. On top of that, he regularly fed phantom mana into the self-repair enchantments of his constructs to maintain them, so they always looked brand-new.

  Examining himself in the mirror, he nodded in satisfaction upon confirming that he resembled an actual person again – for the first time in Phoebe-knew how long. His slit pupils and the soft grey glow of his irises would still be a little intimidating to the uninitiated, but there was no way to completely hide his mutation, nor did he care enough to bother. At least, his eye colour wasn’t nearly as strange as it had once been.

  ‘I’ve still got over twelve hours left. I should do some test runs.’

  Percy didn’t really need to practice brewing for the lesson – it had been his bread and butter for months – but he did need to trim down his speech and figure out how to communicate the information more effectively.

  Hell, he wasn’t feeling very confident in having even a regular conversation right now, since he hadn’t socialized much recently. He’d spent most of his time either working alone or communicating with his clones and familiar through the cords.

  Thankfully, his elemental body had talked to his relatives and the people in his family’s towns over the past few months, so he wasn’t entirely out of touch. The human body had even had the occasional chats with Freddy whenever the Honey Roll vendor had brought him stuff to the hive, which was something.

  ‘Nephthys, how is the delivery coming along?’ Percy asked a few hours later, deciding to take a short break.

  He wasn’t going to spend all his time in the Guild teaching. He also had another major project to tend to – one that would hopefully increase the wasps’ nectar output somewhat: he was going to draw a massive mana-gathering array around the Fungal Spire, to contain more of the colourful motes and enrich the density of ambient mana in the hive and settlement.

  The Starry Wasps already did a good job harvesting most of the airborne mana before it leaked out of their kingdom, and the humans had enchanted the buildings in the settlement to retain and use as many of the colourful motes as possible, but Percy was confident that he could increase the mana density by another ten to twenty percent using the Vault’s potent magiscript.

  He could draw the required enchantments using his own mana, but that would make their maintenance less efficient. He would rather use some of the new runes that he’d recently mastered in the artificial world, which were less potent but could be powered automatically by ambient mana. Naturally, it made more sense to carve such enchantments on magical minerals – which the Starry Wasps had an inexhaustible supply of.

  Not all the ambient mana in the depths of the Fungal Spire could be harvested by the bugs. In fact, most of it remained trapped in the floors and walls of the hive, slowly coalescing into glowing crystals and magical metals that the insects constantly had to get rid of.

  The materials were usually just wasted – pushed aside by the creatures into an ever-expanding region around their underground kingdom – since the bugs had no use for the minerals and the humans had always avoided messing with the Starry Wasps. However, Percy saw no reason for that to continue.

  Some of the books that he had recently studied mentioned the most common magical minerals in the universe. Apparently, there weren’t too many different types, nor did they change that much from one world to another. More importantly, the kinds of enchantments that each material was suitable for were well understood, and the hive produced a nearly inexhaustible supply of most of them.

  Crafting actively-used equipment such as Percy’s clothes and weapons out of magical minerals wasn’t a great idea, since he would have to frequently feed said materials into the self-repairs to maintain them – not to mention how impractical it would be during a fight, or how poorly his tools would scale once he advanced to the higher grades.

  However, for passive enchantments like the mana-gathering array that he was going to draw, or the ones on the buildings in the settlement which only degraded slowly over time, the dust in the air was more than enough when combined with the constant flow of ambient mana.

  ‘We’ve found the colours you asked for. Our Workers and Soldiers will start funnelling the materials to the surface as soon as you give the word,’ Nephthys replied.

  ‘Alright. Hold on for now. I’ll need to coordinate with the Guild before we move on to the next step,’ Percy replied.

  He had to be the one completing each rune and pouring his willpower into them so that the enchantments would activate properly, but he could still borrow manpower from the settlement to speed up the earlier stages.

  ‘Between the alchemy lessons and runecrafting, I’ll be busy until the clones are back.’

  After that, he would not only be free to absorb his fourth trait, but Phoebe had also promised to help him segregate his memories.

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