Well now he has to go poke all the species there are. "Does the potion cost points or what?"

"No, the potion is something I'm allowed to give out because--I can grant people witchness all day, every day, without running down any resources. So there are--agreements, limitations, bindings--set in place, by the gods, on each other, to restrict that sort of thing. But a potion, I have to obtain. It has to belong to me, or to my church; somebody has to brew it. So it's mine to do with as I like."

"- oh. Do I... buy it from you...?"

"No, it's fine. You're Lucy's friend, and she's going to make me more." 

"...do I also later make you more...?" He's trying to date May, not Lucasta.

"I will likely give you quests to make things for me, yes."

"Okay cool." That squared away he pokes species bubbles. ...Aurai are fucking weird. Luxals seem neat maybe??? Oh this bubble, that's the thing May is. ...he's not, actually, excited about being a nonhuman thing. He's pretty used to being a human thing. He can identify what he'd be if he had to be a thing, or if it'd get him a bunch of points to be a thing, but...

"I don't especially need any of these immortality deals because you will put me back if I fall in a vat, right?"

"Correct."

Then he does not want to be a hybrid today. Saves him figuring out which flavor of elf would look least weird on a black guy.

Back to the ranks with his remaining points! He wants the Talent rune, he'll buy up Runes far enough for that. Second rank in Portals. He wants Map, three in Divination. And... "If I don't spend these I can buy more stuff later, right, as it occurs to me that it'd be useful?"

"Right. You do need to figure out what your rank four potential is in, though, along with your rank five."

"Dangit. Uh. ...Torn between hexes and divination."

"Bella has rank five divination and no wizards have yet picked hexes for a rank above three...but on the other hand, with the mal issue, more divination is always good."

"Divination seems less like something you can hire out than hexes, but being able to do hexes on the fly in the lab might be really - quite incredible. Not, uh, these specific ones, but if there are more where those came from that I could learn, I expect some game changers. Not to mention substantially bypassing the normal alchemical means of messing with living things though I'm not sure if hexes can do novel living things? - I will be extremely responsible and check with at least two other people before making any novel living things, I know we get more mals that way, it's just an entire area of alchemy that seems really interesting in principle if people would stop starving their quattrias or deliberately making The Second Most Dangerous Game."

"Naturalism is very good for making novel living things. And has a lot of interesting results that don't eat people."

"Wizard alchemists can do that! In principle! But the track record is bad so nobody goes into it unless they want to do something that has a bad track record. I will consider Naturalism but until I have broken the Andean monopoly I want to keep my options open."

"That is extremely valid. But even if you do break the Andean monopoly, you can only have four affinities at a time, so you should think about which ones you want."

Poke poke poke. "Nature's a good one, for hat trick elementalism and also making my remaining alchemy ranks cheaper. Plus if I wanted to pick up more portals."

Nod nod. "I didn't take it, but then, I'm a sorceress, I had different constraints."

"How much is an Andean monopolist ingredient going to run me?"

"It...varies, but...the first example I found, going looking for a recent sale, had it at...a little more than five million kisses."

"...okay, I'd better find a way to be selling mana storage before the price drops since that's practically the only thing we can do that is cool."

"I'm sure you have other cool things that are just less obvious! And you'll invent more once your entire civilization is no longer bending its energy towards evading monsters."

"Sure. But if I need to be a five millionaire I want to get in on the ground floor."

"I'm not discouraging you."

Poke poke poke. Hexes are cheap for him, he may as well pick up his fourth rank now if it has to be locked in by destiny anyway. "...can I make my compulsion less foot-tapping specific, I might wind up levitating a lot and I could just - do some dance-y fidget thing that might usually be that but could evolve with whatever else I'm doing?"