Over the next few months I have begun attending classes and developing my personal lab in the collective but what I am really proud of is that my inner world no longer looks like a hellscape as all the burnt-out buildings are gone along with the countless bodies the temple now less dilapidated and more refined surrounded by mountains, waterfalls and forest with strange but majestic purple lake in the center infact all the water is purple I think it represents my mana but I'm currently unclear on that as each inner world is unique to each individual I haven't made it to the next step which is creating worker spirits to help maintain the inner world.
My personal lab has for the most part become the sole lucrative laboratory within the Living Alchemy Collective this was due in large part to my crop golems which a variation of mud golem that I used to grow alchemy ingredients from rare flowers to exotic vegetables that usually the academy had a strangle hold over the students seeing my success many tried to duplicate my golems with very little success allowing me to remain dominant in the field although the only reason I was able to make them so easily is because of my unique mana that allowed for such a thing to be possible in the first place.
If you are wondering how my research into homunculi is going you will be shocked to learn that I hit a wall because although the initial research for how to create a homunculus was there it was from a previous member who graduated and abandoned the research leaving no references or clear explanation for why and how things were done in a certain way the only reason they were able to create a homunculus was that one of the members were able to fix the old homunculus tank in which it was made with a pre-loaded formula to birth the substandard homunculus so instead I looked into Heather's current project which was what helped me create the crop golems as she was studying plants and plants based creatures in order to create a plant based chimera which has shown better results than my homunculus research.
The reason I even bothered with helping out Heather and the others was so that I could recruit them and let's be honest most of these grunts don't have a future I mean no matter how smart and powerful everyone in the world has become someone will have to scrub the toilet so to speak no matter how much society has evolved there will always be a place for the beast of burden which is why I needed to win over their hearts and minds to make them see me as that ray of hope in their lives to see something in them that others didn't for someone like Heather that was easy because of lack of social skills and connections without me her best option was to become a mistress to someone powerful but since I helped her achieve her goals pretended to care she has become my loyal and eager to please assistant.
I haven't only forgotten about my relationships outside of the collective such as my roommate apparently Franklin learned nothing from our encounter except for a personal trauma towards me he still a douche and continued to ruffle feathers wherever he went as if it was his purpose in life since he no longer bothered me I stopped caring.
Cordelia Voluptas has become very clingy as I was her only friend that was not assigned to her nor did I back down to Howard or his lackeys as others had in the past although because of that Howard and I have been having a secret conflict as it is mutually understood that we don't attack each other openly although the teachers and faculty suspect what is going on they have yet to do anything about it as there were no deaths as of yet even when I sent Howard to the ICU when he tried to take matters into his own hands after many failed attempts by his entourage nothing changed.
Right now I am preparing for my assessment exams which is pretty important it determines our ranking which affects what resources are available to us in fact the most important social circles in the academy automatically reject those who don't score well regardless of their status outside of the academy which is why even high ranking nobels are seriously preparing for the assessment as it could sink their chances of inheriting their house as for those who won't inherit their house such myself we have to do well in order either steal the heir seat (which is impossible for me) or receive funding to create an associated house of my own which was more likely.