Careful research had discovered that titanium was an excellent second element to alloy with mithril. It is a strong and light element and he could make a lot of it with a little bit of mana. Once Hugo had chosen that element, naturally he started experimenting.

The first few experiments were marvelous successes. Titanium by itself was very strong and light. He made a sword and sent it through its paces on the practice yard. The sword was amazing, cutting through targets with ease. He did notice that the edge was dulled by the end of practice though. That must be why steel was more popular for weapon construction.

The mithril and titanium alloy was incredibly strong and light. It made wonderful armor that held up to his strongest war hammer blows. It was also very mana efficient compared to mithril. He could make way more with less mana. He couldn’t be happier.

The alloy didn’t light up when he pushed mana through it, like pure mithril did. He suspected that meant that it wasn’t as good of a mana conductor. This wasn’t a problem at all for him though, he didn’t have the ability to work with runes, so mana conductivity was low on his priorities list.

Next, he tried to recreate his crossbow. His first version was an attempt to create the bow portion all in one go. It worked, but it bottomed out his mana and was too stiff.

Once he had enough mana, he used the leaf system again. It worked marvelously. He soon had a better crossbow than his all-mithril one, and he was even able to recreate his repeating cocker in the handle. This meant he was able to shoot several bolts in as many seconds. The added flexibility of the alloy also meant that the crossbow shot faster and farther.

The problem came when he wanted to create something to shoot. As normal, he created the crossbow bolt with an empty head. Then he filled the cavity inside with a loose dust of mithril and titanium. While he was reaching for a fire rune to slot into the hole in the arrowhead, he jostled it.

Then it exploded.

The explosion knocked Hugo back and punched a hole in the metal table Hugo had been working at. A puff of smoke filled the dorm room and Hugo fell to the ground in pain. He cried out, a raw sound of agony.

A neighbor from the dormroom nearby burst into his room, yelling, “What happened? Are you ok?”

Based on the way that the neighbor swore when Hugo looked up, it was probably bad.

“We uh, we gotta get you to a life mage. Can you walk?” the neighbor said, shaken.

Hugo had to have help standing up, but he could walk. He felt disoriented, the pain coming in waves and making him stumble. His chest felt like it was still burning, but he couldn’t feel his shoulder at all. His eyes were blurry, and he smelled the awful stench of burning flesh.

After an unknown amount of time, he found himself sitting in the academy infirmary. He looked around, he had never actually been here before. It was a small room with a bed on it. There were some tools nearby that he suspected were for surgeries, but he didn’t recognize them. A life mage was standing in front of him, wearing traditional black.

“Are you alright now? What happened to you?” the life mage said.

Running a hand across his head, Hugo found that his eyebrows and hair were back. Life mages really were spectacular. He looked up to the mage on duty and said, “Don’t worry about it, just a stupid mistake.” Hugo grabbed the remnants of his school tunic and made a hasty retreat.

The life mage yelled after him, but obviously hadn’t expected him to run. Hugo was quickly out of sight and hoped that this mistake wouldn’t cause him problems with the faculty.

Now that he wasn’t dying anymore, Hugo was embarrassed. He almost killed himself. He was lucky that his neighbor had helped him out, and that they hadn’t pressed him for an explanation.

He should have been using some sort of protection. He didn’t use the crafting desks because he didn’t want anyone to know he had two domains. That wasn’t a good excuse for not using any protections though. At the very least he should have set up a barrier.

He was a barrier mage for gods’ sake, why hadn’t that occurred to him?

Once he had a new tunic on, he cleaned up the dorm. Or at least attempted to. There was a hole in the floorboards near Oskar’s bed, and blood staining the wood near Hugo’s desk. Elbow grease helped with the stains, but not the hole. Oskar came back to their room while he was cleaning.

Oscar swore and said, “What did you do?”

Hugo gave him an embarrassed look and said, “It was an accident with my exploding arrowheads.”

The swearing intensified and Oskar said, “You were storing that in our room? What if more than one arrow blew up?!”

Hugo bowed his head. Now that he thought about it, it was incredibly irresponsible of him.

“Look. I have been thinking about getting my own room for a while. And you know that a few dorm rooms have opened up. How about I just request one of those rooms? Then you can risk your own life, and no one else’s.”

The guilt hit Hugo hard. Those rooms were only open because Hugo had changed things and a culling team lost five members. Oskar was leaving his room because Hugo hadn’t been thinking through the possible consequences with deadly ammunition. Both of those circumstances could have been avoided if Hugo had just thought things through more.

“Yeah, ok. Maybe it would be safer for you,” Hugo said quietly.

Oskar’s eyebrows went way up, as if he wasn’t expecting Hugo to agree with him. But all he said was, “I am going to go talk to the office right now. Goodbye Hugo.”

Sitting down on his bed, Hugo let the cleaning rag fall to the floor. He felt embarrassed he had driven his friend away.

If he was honest with himself, Oskar was a bad friend. Hugo had glommed onto him last year when he had no friends, but Oscar was a bad influence. He cared way too much about what others thought, and started selling drugs just to stay popular. His roommate had even gotten him beaten up this time around.

A thought occurred to him. Maybe Oskar wasn’t really mad about the explosion, maybe he was using it as an excuse. It was possible that he just wanted his own room so he could deal drugs easier. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed likely.

Maybe Oskar hadn’t started dealing yet, but he probably had already started considering it. Hugo knew that his former roommate was a people person. He loved being around people and wouldn’t normally ask to have a room to himself.

Suddenly leaving their shared room could be a result of Hugo’s carelessness. It was rather dangerous of him to keep explosives there. On the other hand, it could have just been a contributing factor in Oskar’s plan to deal drugs and win influence.

Either way, Hugo decided to stop beating himself up about it. He made some bad choices, the only thing he could do was to make better choices in the future. Starting with keeping exploding ammunition outside of his dorm room.

He walked down to the archery range and signed out a munitions box. It was normally used by the runists for something they called grenades, but Hugo could use it to store his crossbow bolts.

Now that he had a safe way to store his exploding arrows, he thought about what had happened. Why had the arrow exploded? He hadn’t even had the fire rune in place yet, let alone channeled mana through it.

He wished he could just ask Sage Rasmus about it. He wondered if he should just tell everyone about time traveling.

He had been trying to keep his situation secret, but was that really the best choice? Why didn’t he just walk up to Dean Artjom and tell him everything? Sure, the dean would be dubious at first, but he could quickly prove that he had two domains.

He would have two sages willing to teach him about his two domains, and he could tell them about his large mana pool. There was no doubt that they could help him be an amazing mage. There was a reason that nox ruled this world, having two domains was incredibly powerful. The sages would probably be able to tell him about synergies that he wouldn’t discover on his own.

On the other hand, the extra attention that would garner would certainly be a detriment. The school would probably want to do tests on him. Lots of tests. Being able to give people two domains was worth a lot. They would likely be willing to do a lot to recreate his situation. Researchers probably wouldn’t want to let him go until they had figured it out.

The problem was that Hugo wasn’t sure if he wanted them to attempt to recreate the situation that granted him two domains. There had to be a botched ritual that ended up killing seven kids. Then the person had to die in an enormous shimmer explosion with the heartbeat of the mountain.

Hugo shivered. No, he wouldn’t be telling anyone about his second domain. He couldn’t countenance the numerous deaths that would result from mages testing out what would be needed to grant someone a second domain. He promised himself that he would climb the mountain when he had the chance and destroy the second ritual circle. He didn’t want anyone else to stumble upon this situation in later years.

Back to arrow crafting. He needed to track down what caused the explosion. He started experiments on the archery range when no one was around. He made a small chunk of mithril/titanium alloy and placed a few layers of shields over it. Nothing happened, as expected. This was listed as a viable alloy after all.

Then he dropped the fire rune on top of the chunk of alloy. No explosion there either. Even activating the fire rune and dropping it failed to produce a reaction.

That meant that it was probably the mithril/titanium dust that had caused the explosion. Hugo produced a few grams of the dust and walked back to his bag to grab a fire rune. The dust exploded while he was walking away and destroyed one of his shields. The tiny amount burned brightly, a stronger reaction than he had ever seen before.

Hugo frowned. He had discovered a wonderfully powerful use of his elements, sure to kill monsters. But how was he going to safely use this metal dust without it exploding in his face?

Looking up into the sky, Hugo saw that it was getting late. Putting his exploding problem aside, Hugo went back to his dorm room and got ready for the Azad tournament. It was a bit sad to see that Oskar had cleared out his belongings. At least he had something fun to look forward to. He had placed a substantial bet on the outcome, everything he owned. Marius had sent him a few gold from the sale of the grandcryst, and he bet that as well. It was time to attend the finals and collect his winnings.

He walked over to the stadium, joining the crowd. The academy gates were thrown open, and azad fans were joining the stream of students heading to the center of the academy. The atmosphere was festive and fun. This was the reason the stadium was built to house thousands when the students only numbered in the hundreds. The only night that was a bigger deal was the tournament right before the heartbeat where the fourth year students would compete. Tonight was all about the third year students and everyone but him was wondering who would win.

In a few hours, Hugo would have more money than he would need, and the freedom to spend it on anything he wanted. His winnings would be several gold, and he started imagining what he would buy as he walked into the stadium.