After the deal was made, Jacob was given a guest room within the Alchemy Guild to live. While in truth, it was done so he couldn't run away until Sofie's arrived, and Curtis was in charge of making sure of it.
However, what both Sofie and Curtis didn't know was Jacob appreciated this lodging and didn't mind resting for three days. He was tired of the ocean and continuously avoiding one after another danger.
Nevertheless, as the saying goes, there was no rest for the wicked.
Both Curtis and Elf were quite eager to get their end of the deal, but Jacob delayed them by telling them that he would pay them once his deal with Sofie has fulfilled, and they had no other choice but to wait.
Thereafter, Jacob made sure there wasn't any monitoring or listening device planted in his lodging and then started to focus on the water magic.
Even though he didn't need a Magic Evolution Scripture for his mana core because he mused as long as he continued to do water meditation in a massive water body, his magic core would evolve.
But it was still not clear because, for some reason, he was only able to recover mana from water meditation, not gravity force field was created again. Jacob mused that he needed to complete the reaming four exercises to the completion before moving forward with the water meditation.
However, it wasn't the time to start another breaking exercise from Art of Nature because he didn't have the environment suitable for the next one, nor he has mastered the epic water magic core yet.
His Hex Magic Core was only good with hexes, and there was no physical advantage, but the water magic core was an entirely different story.
That's why he came to the alchemy guild instead of going to the bank or the alliance. He wanted to know which category his water core was and then acquire that category of magic knowledge.
Meanwhile, he was still learning the basic he had remembered from the Universal Magic Manual as well as he was using his knowledge of the fabled magic from his old world heard from stories and lore.
In his final years, he studied rituals and lore like his life depended on it, which actually were, and that is why he always wanted magic to try those theories. Furthermore, after becoming a magic smith, he has some idea of how to proceed with magic like water.
On the other hand, he was not able to apply those theories on the hex mana because it wasn't corporal at all, and its nature was completely supernatural, so he could only give up on it. But the water was an entirely different case.
But the problem was the Universal Magic Manual only had spells from 1-Star to 9-Star, and they were all very basic, and their chanting sequence was quite long, and Jacob knew he would be long dead before he could complete those chanting.
So, he decided to use another approach, the experimental approach!
'The Silent Casting exists in this place, but in the form of scripture, and scripture is what we use to alternate our magic orbits. But what about imagination?' Jacob thought as he looked at his palm and tried to imagine shaping the water.
His hand suddenly glowed in blue sheen, which meant he was channeling his mana out of his body which was the very basis of magic use. However, no matter how much he tried to think about it, the blue energy didn't even flinch and remained static.
Not to mention shaping water, he can't even convert his mana into physical water.
'Why can my mana turn into water when I'm inside water but not when I'm outside the water?' Jacob frowned as he had already experimented with this, but it bodes no result. He thought it was because he was agitated or not doing it right, but now it was pretty clear the magic was far more than just imagination and thinking about the casting.
Since it was not working, he tried chanting a 1-star spell called the Water Bullet. The moment he uttered the magic runes for this spell, he suddenly felt something invisible inside him stir.
The very next moment, the calm mana over his palm suddenly churned and changed into water, and suddenly a 9 mm bullet appeared in Jacob's mind, and the water instantly shaped into that bullet!
Jacob was astonished as he looked at the 9 mm bullet, but all of a sudden, he felt something strange as the blue water bullet was hovering above his palm and ready to fire on his behest!
Then Jacob pointed it toward the metal door and thought of it shot toward that door, and with a swishing sound, that bullet flashed toward that door and burst into water droplets after colliding with the special metal door.
1-star water spell can't even scratch that door's surface!
However, Jacob didn't care about that at all because a sudden realization dawned upon him, 'That feeling deep inside me? Was that my magic orbits? But why did I imagine a 9 mm bullet in instead of a 99 mm?'
Jacob's mind raced as he again chanted the same spell, and then another bullet started to form the process was the same. But this time, he imagined a large caliber bullet.
However, the very moment the bullet was about to form, the 9 mm bullet appeared in his head again, and the water changed into a 9 mm bullet again!
'How can this spell force me to imagine a 9 mm bullet?!' Jacob was really startled as it turned out it was the spell, not him. But then it didn't make any sense as he didn't seem to be forced, but just that it felt like a 9 mm bullet was the optimal choice for this spell.
'Don't tell me, this 1-star spell is also limiting my imagination? Or is it just that the mana converted into water is not enough for the higher-caliber bullet? If so, then as long as I can learn how to change my mana into water freely, didn't this mean I can form higher caliber bullets….'
Jacob felt that a bombshell had just gone off in his brain when he suddenly stumbled upon the concept of Magic Element Conversion!