Arthur Ward returned to the real world with a throbbing headache. It seemed whatever he’d done in the Quintessence, even within the confines of the lesson cube, had a lasting effect. His mind was buzzing with ideas, and he wondered why no one had told him about any of this.His tutelage under Alyssia was understandable; he’d been far too weak to behold the entirety of his soulscape at the time, but Iris? Ayesha? The fae princess had had ample opportunity to tell him ‘something ‘ in the last few weeks, anything to set down the right path. She knew how much he struggled with magic. Arthur sighed and rubbed his temples.Don’t attribute to malice what you can to ignorance. I doubt the thought ever crossed her mind that I didn’t know about Quintessence.More simply, perhaps she hadn’t thought he was ready for it. After all, Cyprus had been incredibly surprised by his success. There were fewer than ten hours remaining before the voidling hunt, and Arthur wanted to make some progress before then. He didn’t rush into things, though, instead perusing the System store for any information he could find while he gave his brain some time to rest.Unsurprisingly, there was very little on the market, and typing in Quintessence or inner world only directed him towards novels eerily reminiscent of the eastern fantasy stories Mathew used to be obsessed with. It made sense. The System wanted to curb the use of unstructured magic, or at least regulate it for only the upper echelons. Letting people trade information regarding Quintessence on the open market would be counterintuitive to that purpose.Arthur was about to close the System store when a notification flashed before him. (...)Re-callibrating…Updating store access…