Alexei woke up to the sounds of the hustle and bustle of the city and the smell of sizzling bacon and sausages.

In the isolation of the Academy waking up was usually a sudden affair, the bells would ring and a simple porridge would be served for breakfast.

Today, Alexei was allowed to drift lazily out of his sleep.

He stretched out under the slightly scratchy covers of his bed and let out a colossal yawn.

It felt wrong in all the best ways, and while he knew that there was a lot to get done over the course of the day he was content at that moment to lose himself in the smells and sounds of the morning.

Before long, though, Alexei was up and out of bed and fully dressed in the same commoner clothes he had been wearing the night before.

There really was a lot to get done.

While he had been given a bag of coin from the Academy to help see him on his way, that wasn't going to last forever.

In other words, he was going to have to figure out a way to make a living.

The usual course of action for an Initiate would be to join the Corps and go out onto the front to fight and, usually, die in the name of the kingdom.

That obviously wasn't an option for Alexei anymore.

Outcasts from the academy were rare, but on the odd occasion that it did happen the outcast Initiates had been known to become sellswords.

Mercenaries who sold their abilities to fight for various private members of society.

But Alexei's abilities were so weak that if he even considered such a thing he'd probably be laughed right out of the Mercenary Guild.

He sat down at his desk and activated his ability.

As it stood he could only combine two elements together, oxygen and hydrogen, to make something that was incredibly common. Water.

He knew that because, when he activated his power, a glowing window that only he could see opened up before him, listing the registered items around him and what he had the ability to transform them into.

Currently, there was a lot of grey on that window, but clicking through on either hydrogen or oxygen gave him the ability to merge them together and create water.

Seeing as he was thirsty he did exactly that.

As soon as Alexei made his choice a growing mass of water seemed to grow wherever he was focusing, drawing more and more hydrogen and oxygen together to create a floating orb of water.

It shocked him, and for just a moment, he lost his concentration.

The orb of water stopped growing bigger and dropped onto his desk, soaking both him and the wood.

"Shit!" He exclaimed, jumping up from his chair in shock.

If his power ever allowed him to do anything more than create steadily growing orbs of water then he was going to have to be incredibly careful about when and how he activated his ability.

With wet clothes and no spares of his own Alexei was forced to trudge down the stairs still sopping wet, leaving a trail of drips behind him as he went.

He got a few odd looks from the early morning punters as he made his way from the backrooms into the main drinking and dining area of the pub, it wasn't every morning you saw a soaking wet man traipsing his wetness through a building.

"What 'appened to you, then?" the barkeep asked. It was the same butch woman as the night before.

"Thought you weren't going to ask any questions," Alexei retorted, slumping into a bar stool.

"That was before yah came in drippin' water all over my floor," The barkeep sniped back, an eyebrow arched and her arms crossed.

Alexei stared at her pointedly before, under his breath, saying, "Tried to understand my magic, didn't exactly work."

She rolled her eyes and grunted, not pushing the point any further. Alexei was glad at that. He didn't want to have to explain his entire situation to a barkeep of all people.

"You'll be wantin' another night then?" She asked, turning away from him to fix him a bowl of stew that was warming atop an open flame.

"How'd you figure that?" Alexei replied.

The barkeep didn't say anything, she just shot a look over a her shoulder that seemed to imply she knew just about everything that was running through his head.

"Yeah, another night or two would be good," Alexei sighed.

She turned back around, nodded, and ladled out a big spoonful of the stew.

"I'll have the room cleaned up after your… accident," she said, handing Alexei the bowl before moving away to deal with a fresh pair of punters who had just walked in.

Alexei sighed and began to eat.

The bowl of mysterious meaty stew was hearty, if a little salty for his tastes.

He blinked in surprise as a new pop-up flared into life after he swallowed the mouthful of stew.

[Substance Analysis begun]

Below it was a ticking percentage counter, currently, it sat at 1% and didn't seem eager to budge.

Alexei schooled his expression, he didn't want to give off the impression that anything had gone wrong, or that he wasn't enjoying the stew. He was still pretty sure that the barkeep would snap him in half if given half a reason.

What this did reveal was that his magic, as he suspected from all those blacked-out spots in the interface, was more complicated than he or the administrar had initially given it credit for.

The pop-up sorted itself out into the corner of his vision, super-imposed but not annoying in the slightest.

He went back to eating his stew and furtively glanced at the percentage as he took another bite.

It still hadn't budged.

Whether it was just waiting or something else entirely, he had no idea how to increase the so-called substance analysis or what it would lead to.

For now he just had to focus on the present, and focus on his plan.