Max nodded.

"Yeah. If I have the ingredients and enough system points, I can make hundreds of them..." he said.

The effect was immediate.

The excited smile snapped right back onto Zerena’s face.

"Excellent," she said. "Then we’re getting rich soon..."

Then she grabbed his shoulder, eyes practically glowing with dangerous entrepreneurial energy.

"No—forget rich."

Her smile widened.

"Filthy rich."

A dramatic pause.

"Law-bending rich."

Max stared at her.

...What?

For a second, he genuinely wondered if his Main Character Syndrome had somehow become contagious.

Because yes, he knew potions sold for absurd prices.

And sure, the higher-end stuff could buy favors from powerful people.

But Zerena?

She had skipped several logical steps and launched straight into billionaire-villain territory.

Law-bending rich?

What was next?

Building a private island?

Buying politicians?

Opening a suspiciously successful pharmaceutical empire?

Still—

His curiosity won.

"...How?" he asked cautiously.

"Turns out, the army is desperate for potions right now," Zerena said, practically vibrating with excitement. "Their soldiers are constantly dealing with magic beasts, new magical creatures, and all those magical phenomena that started appearing after the Awakening..."

She took another drag from her cigarette, eyes shining with pure business greed.

"They’re putting out massive orders for supplies. Massive."

Then her smile sharpened.

"And if you fulfill enough of them? Large enough quantities?"

She leaned closer slightly.

"They grant access to more restricted magical knowledge."

A pause.

"Even classified potion recipes."

Her grin widened even more.

"The kind that can let people live for hundreds of years."

That finally made Max perk up.

Not because of the classified magic.

Not because of the immortality-adjacent potion recipes either.

No.

His excitement came from something far more immediate.

’...She is extremely motivated right now.’

And an motivated, profit-driven Zerena?

That was useful.

Potentially very useful.

He buried that thought quickly behind an appropriate expression of surprise. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Really?"

"Yeah!" Zerena said, growing even more animated. "They even allow certain potion makers to enter spatial tears to gather ingredients directly..."

Her eyes practically gleamed now.

"You know what that means, right?"

Of course Max knew.

Ever since mana had appeared in the world, those spatial tears had started showing up too.

Technically, they were fractured pieces of other worlds connected to Earth’s dimensional space.

Not much information about Spatial Tears was public.

Only the mages and explorers who had actually ventured inside truly knew what they were like—and almost all of them kept their mouths firmly shut about what they found there.

Still, people knew enough to understand one thing:

Spatial Tears were special.

Dangerous places.

Unstable places.

But valuable beyond imagination.

Those who entered them—if they managed to come back alive—almost always returned stronger.

Sometimes much stronger.

And they didn’t just bring back power.

They brought back strange magical materials, impossible plants, bizarre creatures, and miraculous artifacts capable of things that bordered on fantasy even in a mana-awakened world.

Healing miracles.

Life extension.

Rare magical breakthroughs.

The kind of things powerful organizations killed to obtain.

Which was exactly why information about them stayed hidden behind locked doors, military walls, and tight lips.

But some examples of what came out of Spatial Tears were famous enough that even ordinary people knew about them.

Max knew one personally.

A few years ago, an army installation had been revealed right in the middle of the city.

At first glance, it looked like a small metallic structure.

Compact enough to fit in one hand.

But once activated?

The thing expanded into a massive military complex covering several square kilometers.

A genuine Spatial Artifact.

Technology fused with spatial magic.

Even after years, people still talked about it like it was science fiction forced into reality.

Max also wanted to see it as If he could get close enough to examine the thing properly...

Could his ability work on it?

Could that strange talent that let him instinctively understand runes also decode something built with advanced spatial technology?

The thought alone made him curious.

"That’s fantastic..." Max said, sounding genuinely excited now that he finally understood why Zerena looked so fired up.

This wasn’t just about money.

Not really.

It was about power too.

And that part mattered.

Max knew enough about her situation to understand why.

Zerena had been stuck for years.

Barely managing to reach First-ring Mage rank—and even there, she sat close to the bottom.

Which honestly made little sense.

Because her knowledge?

Her knowledge was far above her actual rank.

He had seen it firsthand.

The way she explained theory.

The way she understood formulas, mana behavior, and rune structures.

Yet when it came to actual control?

She struggled.

Even handling mana smoothly sometimes looked harder for her than it should have been.

The gap between what she knew and what she could actually do was strangely wide.

And a Spatial Tear?

That could change everything.

Rare ingredients.

Strange environments saturated with mana.

Unknown magical resources.

Opportunities.

The kind of opportunities that could let someone start progressing again.

Which explained her excitement a lot better than simple greed ever could.

"Yeah, it is fantastic..." Zerena said, still visibly energized. "Though you need to be around have three rings before they even consider letting people enter, so that part is still far in the future."

She waved her hand slightly.

"But even having a chance at getting into one someday is huge."

Then, mid-thought, she paused and looked at him.

"That said... how many rings have you formed, exactly?"

Max gave her an awkward smile.

The kind of smile that usually preceded terrible news.

"...I don’t know."

Silence.

"You don’t know?" Zerena repeated, her voice jumping up an octave in pure disbelief.

She stared at him.

Then her expression shifted.

Fast.

Like several horrifying realizations had just connected together inside her head at once.

"Wait."

A pause.

Her eyes narrowed.

"...Don’t tell me you don’t actually know how to make those? did you even made a core yet."

Max looked genuinely confused.

He had read about rings before.

Quite a bit, actually.

But nowhere did he remember anything about making them.

He had always assumed the rings were just ranks, a way of classifying a mage’s overall knowledge, skill, and magical ability.

Simple.

Logical.

Apparently—

Completely wrong.

The look on his face told Zerena everything she needed to know.

Smack.

The back of his head paid the price immediately.

Max whipped around, glaring at her for a solid two seconds—

Then quickly looked away before she noticed.

"...You stupid boy," Zerena muttered, rubbing her forehead. "Of course you don’t know..."

The tone wasn’t even angry anymore.

Just exhausted.

Deeply exhausted.

Like a teacher discovering her student had somehow skipped the first ten Chapters and still wandered into advanced coursework with confidence.

It wasn’t Max’s fault he hadn’t learned it. He had tried to—but there had been practically no material explaining how to do it.

She, however, seemed to have something on the subject.

Bending down, she reached under the table and pulled out a book.

A book Max had seen before.

Several times, actually.

He had deliberately ignored it every single time because the title sounded unbelievably stupid.

Want To Be A Mage? Read This.

Yeah.

That title alone had screamed beginner trap to him.

The magical equivalent of those suspicious internet ads promising "Learn Rune Mastery in 7 Easy Steps!"

Which made this even worse in Max’s eyes.

He was already a mage.

Or at least, he considered himself one.

And the book? The cover looked ridiculously childish. Worse, it was thin.

Suspiciously thin.

Most magic books worth taking seriously started at a minimum thickness of half a finger.

Preferably thicker.

The kind of books capable of causing emotional damage just from being dropped on your foot.

This thing? It looked like a glorified pamphlet.

"Read this," Zerena said, shoving it toward him before immediately turning toward her bookshelf and rummaging through more books.

Her movements had picked up speed now.

Faster.

Sharper.

Excited.

Almost desperate.

"Focus on making core and then First ring," she said while pulling out volumes from the shelf. "Once you do, you can stop engraving pipes."

That caught Max’s attention.

Stop engraving?

Now that sounded dangerously attractive.

Meanwhile, Zerena was already halfway into planning mode.

"I’ll go to the government office tomorrow and get a potion-making permit," she continued rapidly. "I’ll secure some basic recipes... ingredients too..."

Then she paused for a brief second.

Her voice lowered slightly.

"I don’t want to stay behind anymore."

That line landed differently.

Less excitement.

More... frustration.

Old frustration.

"It’s not that hard to make a core," Zerena said matter-of-factly. "Get it done by morning."

Max looked up from the suspiciously thin beginner book.

...By morning?

She said that with the confidence of someone assigning a simple household chore.

’Pick up some milk. Become First ring, Don’t forget.’

"I’m going out to get a few things for tomorrow," she added before heading toward the door.

And just like that, she left him alone in the room.

Max looked down at the book in his hands.

Confused.

Mildly offended by the cover design.

Outside the room, though—

Zerena’s expression changed the moment the door closed behind her.

The excitement faded.

The casual confidence vanished.

She stopped walking, slowly turning back to glance at him through the window.

Shock spread across her face.

Actual shock.

"He’s didn’t not even have a core..." she muttered under her breath.

Her gaze lingered on him.

"...And he can already perform elemental manifestation..."

That wasn’t normal.

Not even remotely normal.

Which brought her mind back to the one explanation she had been trying not to fully accept.

The system.

That ridiculous system.

Her expression tightened slightly.

"...That thing might actually be real."

A short pause.

Then, quieter—

"And far more powerful than I thought."