Wizard Lord:I can Extract Anything

"Such immense strength—so this is the power of the academy's top apprentices?" Richard marveled, watching Eric in the center of the hall. As an apprentice engaged in bloodline alchemy, Richard had a keen understanding of the apprentice who swung the staff earlier. A blow like that, if it hit, would be deadly.

Yet Eric had caught it effortlessly.

"This Eric senior, my mentor said, is the prized student of Vice Principal Elrix," Ellie commented casually. "Rumor has it he's so strong that the vice principal wants him to skip the wizard exam and directly return home to benefit from his family's resources to become a wizard."

"Family?" Richard was taken aback. "Is Eric from a wizarding family?"

Wizard families, markers of the wizarding world's early days, still existed. Compared to their former glory, today's wizard families were more discreet. Some powerful families used academies as their public face, while weaker ones aligned with grand wizards to secure a share of the expanding era.

Regardless of strength, wizard families excelled in nurturing their descendants far more than ordinary wizard heirs.

"Yes, at least that's what my mentor mentioned."

As the gathering continued, the hall's atmosphere grew lively. With music playing from an unknown source, acquainted apprentices began dancing in the center.

"Richard, want to dance?" Ellie asked, a bit bored.

This scene was familiar to her; as a merchant's daughter, she often attended noble balls.

"I'll pass on dancing." Richard declined invitations from a few apprentices who approached to chat. Despite his reclusive nature, some well-informed apprentices recognized him.

"I'm not good at it."

He regretted attending the gathering; normally, he'd be reading in his dorm or brewing potions, not wasting time with apprentices of dubious intentions.

"Let's head back. This gathering feels no different from those noble parties."

Across the hall, Joseph was holding court among a group of apprentices. Unlike Richard, who kept a low profile, Joseph, as Master Ulrich's formal apprentice and a wizard descendant, was well-known among apprentices.

"Joseph, I heard you've mastered Focus Potion making?" an apprentice flattered.

Joseph downed his drink proudly. "You're right. My teacher entrusted me with the Focus Potion formula. Ulrich's shop will stock at least fifty bottles monthly!"

His words shocked the surrounding apprentices.

Though Ulrich's alchemy shop sold Focus Potions, production was inconsistent—sometimes fifty bottles a month, sometimes just a few. This inconsistency meant Focus Potions, priced at five magic stones each, often fetched a third more in apprentice trades. In lean months, prices could double or more.

Hoarding Focus Potions had become a business.

Joseph relished the apprentices' reactions. His potion-making success rate was nearly fifty percent, earning his teacher's praise, hence Ulrich shared the formula with him.

While basking in his triumph, he noticed two apprentices leaving the hall—one looked familiar.

"Ellie?"

Alcohol clouded Joseph's mind, but before he could confirm, the two disappeared outside.

"Never mind. Even if it's her, so what?" Joseph shrugged.

He wasn't short of women now. A talented, pretty girl could play with that wild apprentice. She'd regret her shortsightedness later.

With that, Joseph resumed drinking and chatting, enjoying the adulation.

...

The gathering didn't change Richard's life. Mundane, dull, and tedious—these were the mainstays of an apprentice's, and even a wizard's, life.

Over three months, Richard devoted most of his time to potion brewing, meticulously recording data. As each potion succeeded, his dataset grew richer.

"Hmm... still no significant patterns."

After a night of research, Richard frowned at his thick notebook, filled with all his potion data. He hoped to find patterns to improve success rates and enable mass production, but his efforts seemed futile.

"Is potion-making really just about experience and intuition?" Richard was disheartened by the data.

Wizards valued facts; numbers didn't lie. No significant patterns meant none existed.

Richard tossed the notebook aside, pondering what he might have overlooked. How could he have conducted hundreds of experiments without finding a single pattern?

Just then, a knock sounded at his door.

Ellie stood outside, sporting dark circles and stifling a yawn as she handed Richard a stack of papers.

"Richard, I dismantled what you asked. This Ice Spike spell is fascinating. Most of its runes generate power, with only a few forming the ice spike.

That's almost unheard of in other elemental spells."

Richard flipped through the papers, which documented Ellie's spell deconstruction process. At the end, he found the spell model with just one circle of runes.

"This is the power source from Ice Spike. Hope it's what you needed," Ellie yawned again. She'd barely slept for days, focused on deconstructing the spell for Richard.

"Great, this helps a lot." Richard ruffled her hair. "You should rest. You've worked hard."

"Alright, I'm heading back."

With the papers in hand, Richard returned to his desk, deciding to shift his focus from potions for a while.

"Ice Spike... let's see what you can do."

Flipping through Ellie's notes, he found the rune's magic conversion efficiency.

"Sixty percent? That's high," Richard remarked. A sixty percent conversion rate meant 0.6 units of magic became kinetic energy for the ice spike per unit of magic input.

Such efficiency, applied to an internal combustion engine from his previous life, would earn a Nobel Prize.

But he soon realized this value was theoretical, varying with the runic medium's magic conductivity—the higher the efficiency, the closer to sixty percent.

"Converting magic, magic..."

Suddenly, Richard froze.

He realized what he'd overlooked.

He'd documented materials' physical and chemical changes, and countless minor data points, but not the potion's magical changes.

Blinded by past experiences, he'd ignored that in a world with magic, magic was central to potions!

Enlightened, Richard dashed out of his room, then backtracked.

The stairs were too slow!

He leapt from the balcony, sprinting toward the commercial district.

Now, he needed a little help.