The Challenger's Return: Rebirth of the Rainbow Mage

Years passed in Otto's mental space as he continued to routinely train.

Otto didn't slack off for a single day, partly because this kind of training was enjoyable for him.

Partly because Otto increasingly felt that he was running out of time, even under such an enormous time dilation.

The day of Otto's introduction to the second floor grew ever closer as his attributes and spells steadily progressed.

But at the moment, Otto was working on neither of those things.

Still, his eyes were filled with unprecedented focus.

77 ingredients were laid out in front of him.

Most were herbs of all different colors, shapes, sizes, and lusters.

Some were green and brown, what Otto thought of as traditional 'earthen' colors, while others were in various shades of yellow, blue, even red and pink.

Many more were ingredients like paws, hooves, teeth, and even hair of various monsters that could be found throughout the [Tower's] floors.

Otto began to refine them in the order they were laid out.

The batch of pills he was currently trying to concoct was one of the hardest recipes he could make at this stage of his profession.

Even with his ample experience, Otto could not guarantee his own success.

Instead, he did his best to fully focus and ensure the smallest possibility of any type of failure.

Actually, these herbs were very expensive.

Otto only had ten tries to make this batch of pills.

Well, it wasn't because they were TOO expensive for Otto to buy.

The problem was that neither of his sources for materials were able to find one specific herb: the Karia Jinnel Flower.

The flower only grew on the 7th floor, and only the strongest leeches were able to harvest it, as its location was heavily guarded by strong combatants.

Hence, the limited supply.

Otto took a deep breath and started to refine the ingredients.

His fingers ran down the side of an herb as infinitesimal amounts of mana entered its core.

His movements were smooth and flowed together with graceful ease.

Slowly, the herb began to shrivel.

At first, it was barely noticeable, but as the speed of Otto's fingers increased, more and more spots of grey liquid were emitted from the herb.

A novice would look at this process without understanding its mechanics.

Why did the herb look increasingly shriveled after being refined?

But an experienced alchemist would nod in satisfaction.

Actually, 'refining' an herb almost never made the plant itself look more appealing.

As refining it would secrete both the 'useless' water within and the generally grey-ish impurities throughout the plant.

After a perfect refinement finished, an herb would look much smaller in length and volume and exceedingly withered.

But its color would intensify many times over. The herb's color should also be perfectly, or close to perfectly uniform.

Of course, there were many exceptions to this rule, but one thing never changed.

Its medicinal properties would be greatly enhanced after refinement.

For example, the herb that Otto held now was almost 6x more powerful than the herb he began with.

Otto firmly believed that this was the beauty of alchemy.

He set the shriveled plant to the side and began to work with the other ingredients, one by one.

Normally, he could complete the entire process in under 10 minutes, but for now, Otto took his time, meticulously checking over each ingredient one by one to ensure that they were absolutely impeccable in quality before he used them.

Then, it was time for concoction.

Otto first used his alchemical flame to heat the cauldron.

The alchemical flame was not an offensive flame.

It would never deal damage to another living being, even if Otto burned them with it for hours on end.

Nevertheless, it was still very hot. Within three seconds of heating the cauldron, Otto determined with experienced eyes that the cauldron was at a suitable temperature.

He threw a few ounces of water in before he began to toss in his ingredients.

One by one, occasionally in pairs or large batches, the ingredients, some whole, some chopped, some finely minced, some even ground into powder, entered the cauldron.

Otto used his mana to carefully manipulate the liquid inside.

He made sure the cauldron was slightly tilted so the liquid covered some of the herbs to extract their medicine, while it avoided others, to let them heat dry.

He also added other herbs and materials at specific times.

Ten minutes passed as the liquid's color changed from scarlet to orange, then to a pale reddish pink.

Beads of sweat covered Otto's forehead as he struggled to control the fire down to a degree of heat.

Finally, he took out a golden colored herb. It was the last ingredient in the pile.

He dropped it in.

Otto's concentration peaked.

There was barely even time to blink.

Before gravity dropped the herb into the solution, Otto's mana moved to suspend it less than a millimeter over the now thick paste-liquid, until it slowly melted from the residual heat and six brilliant golden drops were added to the mixture.

Otto instantly revolved his mana to put out the fire while he let the golden liquid intermix with remaining paste.

The paste began to take on a vivid gold color.

After another 73 seconds, Otto molded the paste into a batch of 28 bright golden pills.

He hurriedly looked inside.

And revealed a wide grin.

Success!

A notification emerged in front of his eyes.

[Congratulations. You have made an exceptional achievement.]

[Achievement Type: Racial First]

Description: First in the race to create a new Grade 2 pill as a Beginner Alchemist.

AP +20

[Congratulations. You have been promoted to Apprentice Alchemist.]

A torrent of knowledge flowed into his mind as he gained the Alchemist skill [Grade 2 Ingredient Properties].

Alas, Otto already knew all of this information.

Since he'd been through the Apprentice Alchemist stage once before.

Still, the next few Grade 2 pills Otto made would be significantly easier than this.

He used [Analyze] and found that he'd made 5 High Quality pills, 10 Medium-High Quality pills, and 13 Medium Quality pills.

He breathed deeply and patted himself on the back. It was a great haul for a mere beginner!

[Otto's New Grade 2 Pill: Unnamed]

High Quality

Uses the ambient energy in the atmosphere to highlight all life forms in a 100m radius after consumption. Strength of light corresponds to relative strength of life form. Lasts for 45 minutes.

"Call it Toto's Energy Life Sense."

[Pill Named: Toto's Energy Life Sense Pill]

[Verified Grade 2 Pill.]

[Added to [Tower] database.]

Otto stretched and took a deep breath to relax for a few minutes and regain some of his concentration.

He still had one remaining task to complete for the day.

***********************************************************

"That was an excellent run."

Four kids stood in front of Ramesthes, who looked exceptionally pleased with their performance.

"A stroke of brilliance from you, Mirabelle, to use that buff a second earlier, giving them additional inertia when falling onto that wolf."

"Yes, thank you!" A charming voice emerged from the smallest figure in front of him.

"Elliott, I'm impressed with your improvement. You're really starting to get the hang of those numbers. Good interference, and good communication, too."

Elliott nodded, deep in thought, and didn't reply.

"Julia, you got in front of that last hit just in time to save your teammate. Good hustle there, even though I know that one must have hurt."

Julia grinned widely and winked at Jeremy, who merely pouted at her before revealing a grin of his own.

"Jeremy, you need to be a little faster in escaping next time, okay?"

"Yes sir!"

"But, that extra damage when you used your second knife to drive the dagger further down into his skull was absolutely key to this victory."

"As a reward…"

The four of them looked at Ramesthes with anticipation.

"You will now be faced with an assortment of past challengers from Area 1…"

Their faces fell slightly.

They were hoping for a break!

"With Otto leading you into battle."

Mirabelle was the first to reply, hands moving rapidly to form gestures.

The group's translators heard her exclaim in a young, chirpy 'voice.'

"Yay! Big leader will see our improvement!"

The rest stifled their own exclamations as a boy's figure appeared in the room.

Otto knew that training with his actual team was also an important part of training, both for him to get used to them and vice versa.

Thus, every six months or so (which was once every couple weeks for them), he came down and spent a couple hours fighting together with them.

But that was merely practice. They had never fought in an official virtual match!

Otto shot a slight smile at the group.

"I am definitely looking forward to your improvement."

He looked each kid up and down before stating calmly,

"Hmm, let's pick from the elite of the elite teams for this challenge."

Otto took a look at the list of potential virtual opponents.

His gaze roamed over big names like Ofrand, Akoeah, Rimmar (The Tyrant), Deathsaw, Vanaxx, Obeus…

They were some of the strongest challengers from the past that the arena allowed them to fight against.

Of course, this list wasn't available to the 'common rabble.'

It was by virtue of Otto's top of the line virtual lifetime subscription that he had access to all of this.

The list went on and on.

Actually, other than Ofrand himself, the names of the topmost elite teams in the arena were all completely unknown to him.

However, after attending the Golden Club auction, Otto no longer found this surprising.

He knew that there was an entirely different echelon of people to whom the him of his past life was not privy.

"Are you all ready?"

"I've chosen a team around the 5,000s rank for now. I…believe we should be able to handle it."

Otto smirked at the expressions of horror that momentarily crossed their faces.

As individuals, each of the three kids were ranked far into the dozens of millions in the virtual arena.

Only Jeremy had breached the top ten million contestants as of yet.

But the thousands?

They didn't dare to dream of it.

The four of them glanced at each other, a similar fire visible from their expressions.

"Bring it on!"