That evening, after winding down for a couple hours in the dorms’ common room, Wulf returned to his room, planning to make a few potions, then sleep.

  But when he opened the door, a small box awaited him. He narrowed his eyes, then picked it up and carried it over to the desk. A note had been pinned to the top: For Wulf. From Kalee. Thanks for the potions.

  “She broke in, then,” he muttered. There was no sign of tampering with the door, and the worst part was that he hadn’t even told her which dorm was his.

  Or perhaps Ján let her in, but given the boy was still in the common room, and Wulf had been with him for the past few hours, that was unlikely.

  Still, he could hope about what was in the box.

  With a wince, he lifted the lid, unsure what to expect.

  Inside lay three fist-sized iron spheres with lines of runes along their outside. They had two hemispheres, which swivelled at the center. Suddenly, he wasn’t very tired at all.

  He smiled at the sight, then assessed the quality:

  Inactive Arcane Construct: Mana Well (Low-Bronze Quality)

  Stores mana for up to two months. Maximum storage: three mana stipends.

  Creator’s note: Align the hemispheres to fill it using your aura, and twist the runes out of alignment to empty it.

  Each was the same. They were about twice as heavy as they should’ve been, and he was somewhat curious what was inside them, but he didn’t want to break them. No, it was time to check if the hypothesis about mana storage constructs worked—that meant using them.

  “Thanks, Kalee,” he whispered, even though he was alone in his room, then quickly, brewed a simple, random-result potion with his ingredients. It came out as a magenta flesh-regeneration potion—for healing wounds. As usual, it had a slight side-effect: blindness.

  A regeneration potion would leave a nasty scar at this low level, worse than if the user let a wound heal naturally, but it’d heal fast. It also couldn’t regenerate lost limbs—the Field no longer recognized those as part of your body.

  But he just needed it for the aura. It was Low-Coal, but that’d be enough.

  He downed it in a few gulps, then directed his aura into the three constructs. The lines of runes across their surfaces flared bright blue. He twisted each hemisphere so that all the rune-lines matched, making cohesive patterns across the surface of the sphere. They’d store mana for an Ascendant.

  All three orbs began hovering. Shuddering, they rose out of the box, then hovered in the air around him, buoyed by the currents of his aura. A single bright blue line lit up a notch near their top—not a rune as best he could tell. The notch had only filled up about an eighth of the way, but was slowly ticking up.

  He walked over to his bed and sat down, then directed more aura into the orbs. The Field considered them magic objects and it considered filling them with mana as using them. Therefore…he was essentially forcing the Field to create mana in order to fill them. Regular Ascendants had to spend mana to activate magical objects, but not with Wulf’s abilities

  They didn’t fill up instantly, not like him empowering a potion, but they were taking his aura and converting it to mana.

  Finally, after a few minutes, when his aura sputtered out, the orbs fell back into the box with a clank. He hopped over and picked them up. The line on the top still glowed, signalling that they were about a quarter full, but the rest of the runes fell dim.

  Now…if he could just withdraw the mana from each of them.

  He picked up an orb and twisted the runes out of alignment. A puff of blue sparks shot out the top, and the bottom heated up. In an instant, a burst of power shot into his wrist, and his muscles all tightened in unison, clenching the orb tighter than usual. He winced and hissed in pain, but the power kept flowing.

  It was like the pain he’d felt when splitting his core, except all throughout the veins of his arm. A lot of mana was flowing in toward his core, more than was supposed to be moving through his arm.

  It felt like an eternity while it lasted, but it was probably only a few seconds before the mana flow ended.

  He concentrated on his cores. He’d never gotten too good at telling when his main core was ready to advance just by sensing it, but mana was flowing into it, that much he could tell.

  Still, the more important angle was his storage core. That one was much easier to tell how full it was.

  It was bursting at the seams.

  Energy pulsed through it, each time making it grow slightly. He pushed the mana in and out of the storage core until it’d expanded enough to hold mana comfortably.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The theory was simple: effectively, he was manipulating the Field to create mana out of nothing. He started with a potion, continually upscaling his efforts. He drank a potion that he’d created with aura, which grew a stage stronger than it regularly would and let him increase the strength of his next aura.

  Then he triggered the mana storage constructs, “fuelling” them—which was more like trapping mana within them. Turning the aura from just a buff the Field gave him into actual mana.

  And then when he drew it out, it became his.

  With that, as long as he could expand his storage core and withstand the phantom pains of absorbing too much mana, he could create a well of mana big enough to power anything for a long, long time.

  That included giant golems. Oroniths.

  Outside, the sun had completely set by now. It didn’t feel like it, but he’d probably been in his room for about an hour. But Ján still wasn’t back, and that meant there was time to keep working on his abilities.

  He’d drain the other two cores, and for as much time as he had left, he’d work on expanding his storage core. He needed a well greater than any other Pilot had before him

  The challenge…well, it sounded enticing.

  ~ ~ ~

  When it came time for Wulf’s tournament qualifying fight, he was ready.

  The fight took place on the southern reaches of the campus in an old underground storehouse. Though it was officially sanctioned, it wasn’t anywhere near as important as the main tournament fights—which happened in the arena very center of the academy’s main butte, not here.

  Wulf descended a stairway into a cavernous room. Old barrels wallpapered the room’s edges. Most were empty; their spigots were open or their caps were cracked, but they made good risers for the onlookers.

  A crowd of students gathered atop the stacked barrels. Most were first-years. Low-Wood or Middle-Wood. The TA, the mouse girl, perched at the highest point, with a clipboard and form in her hands, looking over a small arena.

  The arena itself was twenty paces by twenty, with stanchions and ropes marking its borders and a few thatched mats of the floor.

  "All contestants for the qualifying round, please enter the arena," the TA called.

  Wulf wedged his haversack into a crack between the barrels, where no one would find it unless they were looking, then stuffed his coat in afterward. He’d donned his gym clothes—there was nothing better to fight in, and most of the others had done the same. Finally, he drank his bloodlust potion. He’d probably need it.

  Over the days leading up to the fight, he’d also consumed a few more potions. Their main effect was gone, but the slight boosts lingered—for his speed and strength. It was time to see what he could really do when he let loose.

  He hopped over a stanchion, and already, he registered his legs pumping harder, and the Field letting him move faster.

  There were about twenty others who entered the arena. Most were Middle-Woods, but there were two other High-Woods with guild badges. Not Fletchers, though. He didn’t care enough to decipher what guilds they belonged to.

  Both guild kids, a human boy and girl, didn’t even try to whisper when they said, “We’ll take the others as a team.”

  Right. Wulf couldn’t expect a fair fight.

  “No killing,” the TA announced. “And try not to maim your opponent. If they yield, let them. If they step out of the arena, they’re done. The last five in the arena will fill up the bottom spots of the Low Bracket. Got it?”

  A couple students brandished blunt wooden weapons—which there was no rule against, though Wulf didn’t trust the boy with a sword to be skilled enough to not hurt someone. Maybe it wasn’t against the rules, and maybe the boy wouldn’t get in trouble, but it wasn’t ideal. Wulf would take him out first before someone got hurt. And the girl with a spear, she was next. Getting cracked on the head with a length of wood would still leave a mark. And not the good kind of Mark.

  Everyone in the crowd quieted down to a murmur, and the contestants nodded in affirmation.

  “Begin!” the TA announced.

  Wulf sprang forward, aiming for the boy with the sword. By the time he’d crossed the arena, the boy was only barely registering that Wulf was a threat.

  Wulf swatted the sword out of the boy’s weak grasp with a swipe, then punched him in the nose and pushed him back over the stanchion behind. Immediately, the crowd began whispering a little louder. A few gasps of shock rang out.

  The boy wiped his nose, smearing blood across the back of his hand. Wulf’s bloodlust potion kicked in, and his strength increased.

  Fights broke out all around Wulf, and the arena descended into a surge of messy melee. He navigated through the brawl, dodging and ducking, and occasionally, leveraging his strength to kick someone’s legs out from under them or punch them flat on their back. Occasionally, blood splattered, and he got a droplet on his shirt. Once, a flying tooth struck him in the side of the head. Every time he drew blood, he gained more strength, multiplying from an already increased base.

  These kids were vicious. More vicious than he remembered.

  When he reached the girl with the spear, he grabbed it by the haft and clenched his grip, and splintered it. The haft shattered in his grip. Her eyes widened with shock. He pulled the lower half of the spear from her grasp, then kicked her out of the arena as well.

  Someone struck him on the back, and he grunted, then whirled around and grabbed the small boy by his collar and heaved him out the arena too.

  “Hey!” the pair of High-Wood guild kids shouted. “You’re going down, dog!”

  “Ah, the nickname’s spread, then,” Wulf muttered. He rolled his wrist, spinning the haft of the wooden spear he’d stolen. Already, the fighting was dying down. Contestants huffed and rubbed their foreheads, and they threw sloppy, tired punches at each other.

  Wulf pretended to be the same, but he’d greatly improved the endurance of this form since he got here, and he didn’t even have to breathe hard.

  The moment the two guild kids converged, Wulf sprang upright and darted to the left. They were too far apart to fight together effectively, and they let him single them out. He struck one upside the chin, flinging her onto her back and sending her skidding across the arena floor, then turned about. The boy was charging, but Wulf spun to the side and clapped him behind the knees with the spear haft, before pushing him out of the arena to join his friend.

  When he brushed the dust off and stood upright again, there were only five people left in the arena—including him.

  Almost everyone stared at him, completely silent. He smiled back.