Beginning Alchemy

The main ingredient in the Night Vision Potion formula was Nightshade Grass leaves. It was also the most expensive and indispensable medicinal ingredient.

Punk carefully picked up a leaf the size of a fingernail with Alchemical Tweezers. The blade was blackish-purple, dotted with faint red specks. Fine veins spiraled across its surface, and it felt chillingly cold in his palm!

This tiny leaf alone was worth five gold coins, and it was merely an Apprentice Level material. No wonder finished potions were so valuable. The raw ingredients for Alchemy Potions were inherently expensive; high costs, the scarcity of alchemists, enormous market demand, and other factors all made Alchemy Potions valuable yet scarce.

Nightshade Grass in particular was expensive for a reason. On one hand, it had demanding growing conditions and could only survive in cold, damp shadows. On the other, it could not be preserved for long. If it was not used within a month of being picked, it would lose its medicinal properties. In the Faerun plane, where transportation was underdeveloped and travel was dangerous, it took a full two months to get from one city to another!

As a warm city, Konola City did not produce Nightshade Grass. Punk gently touched the already faint, intermittent veins on the leaf and guessed that these leaves had been brought to Konola City by professionals traveling at extraordinary speed. That meant the Nightshade Grass had probably been picked quite some time ago, and much of its medicinal potency had already dissipated... This undoubtedly increased the difficulty of brewing the potion once again!

Still, looking at the small bag of alchemical materials beside him, enough to make ten Night Vision Potions, Punk gained a little more confidence. "Nothing is impossible for someone determined enough—especially someone with money." Out of ten attempts, he had to succeed at least once or twice, right? As long as one succeeded, he would recover the cost of the materials.

Alchemy in the Faerun World used spells to directly extract the necessary substances from materials. For example, Punk was now casting the Journeyman Level alchemy spell—Energy Extraction Technique—on the Nightshade Grass. As the mysterious Byron Incantation came to an end, a small, flickering multicolored sphere completely enveloped the leaf. Over the next minute, the blackish-purple color gradually faded until the leaf became transparent with only a faint purple tint remaining. The spiral veins had turned a muddled yellow-green. Beside the now energy-depleted leaf, an energy bead the size of a ballpoint pen tip, speckled with red light, bobbed up and down with the multicolored sphere created by Energy Extraction Technique.

Seeing that the faint purple color remaining on the leaf could no longer be extracted, Punk was somewhat dissatisfied. Those residual energies might have seemed minor, but they amounted to a full fifth of the total energy extracted. Still, Punk knew this was already a relatively good outcome. If he were Apprentice Level rather than Journeyman Level, and if he were using Minor Energy Extraction Technique rather than the more efficient Energy Extraction Technique, he would have needed three leaves to create a single energy sphere.

Maybe he would have to reach Formal Level, level ten, before he could avoid wasting energy, Punk thought.

Next, he extracted the energy or semi-energy from the other supplementary materials one by one. By the end, a series of tiny energy beads floated inside the dish-shaped alchemical container in Punk's hand, which repelled external energy. The red and blue beads slowly moved along the bright silver mysterious patterns carved into the golden dish. Their energy interference was neutralized by a peculiar energy field generated by the golden dish.

Then, guided by the system's analysis and reminders regarding every critical detail, Punk began pouring mental power into the golden dish. Condensed by the dish, his mental power shed its usual chaotic fluctuations and became almost entirely synchronized to a single frequency. Using this steadier mental power, Punk guided the energy spheres into contact one by one, then cast the Journeyman Level alchemy spell—Energy Fusion Technique—to fuse them together. In the microscopic world beyond the naked eye, threads of magical power began gradually merging the different energies while releasing faint, gentle radiation that neutralized the dissipation and fluctuations caused by energy conflicts.

Although Punk could not see these threads of magical power, he could sense their presence. Under the full calculations of a Journeyman Level powerhouse's brain, countless threads moved in an orderly pattern, smoothing every energy unit that did not need to clash, drawing closer every energy unit that did not need to repel each other, and pulling apart every energy unit that did not need to attract each other. On the macroscopic level, energy spheres could only be seen merging one after another into a translucent little sphere at the center of the dish-shaped container, radiating gentle energy fluctuations. The occasional energy dissipation was neutralized by the surrounding force field, preventing it from affecting the interactions of the other energies...

As time passed bit by bit, the central energy sphere began showing signs of becoming liquid, and its color shifted from translucent to crystal-clear transparency. The final energy connection was nearly complete, and the liquid potion at the center began stabilizing its own properties, no longer leaking energy outward...

Then... it failed...

The translucent liquid that had begun to stabilize suddenly generated immense heat and turned into a pink energy sphere vibrating at high frequency.

"Damn it!" Sensing that the energy sphere had begun releasing alpha rays in all directions, Punk hastily grabbed it in his hand. Protected by the Journeyman Level Abjuration Spell—Mage Armor, the advanced form of Minor Mage Armor—Punk was not afraid of the energy sphere's damage, but his expensive and fragile alchemy tools could not withstand the little sphere's heat!

The instant Punk sensed a danger beside him capable of destroying his body, Mage Armor appeared over him. Every inch of Punk's skin, along with his clothes, was covered by a transparent energy film flowing with multicolored radiance. On his left hand, which was in contact with the energy sphere, Mage Armor's energy blocked the invading heat and radiation. The Mage Armor, blazing with rainbow light due to the energy conflict, now turned Punk's left hand into a multicolored light bulb.

Clenching the burning sphere tightly in his palm, Punk made a split-second decision to crash through the rotten, dilapidated wall to ensure his alchemy tools remained safe. As a mage, Punk certainly did not possess the physical strength of a knight, but breaking through a thin, decayed wooden wall was no problem.

In fact, when an experiment produced an unexpected situation like this, a mage's first response should have been to get as far from the source of danger as possible. Only after running far enough away and layering sufficient protective magic over himself should he have used a Divination Spell to examine the laboratory's condition. That was the correct choice.

It was not that Punk did not know the safer method, but he still clenched the source of danger in his hand and moved as far away from his alchemy tools as possible. On one hand, Punk could sense that even if the energy sphere exploded, it would not be enough to break through his Mage Armor. On the other hand... Punk no longer had the money to buy another set of alchemy tools. If he failed to make anything and destroyed all his tools as well, he would truly be at a loss!

Punk had no time to find the door, so he could only move in a straight line, smashing hole after hole through the walls. He did not stop until he had burst through three rooms!

"Well, this really got screwed up!" Punk leaned against a swaying wall and muttered a complaint. Then, while enduring the burning pain in his hand, he helplessly began chanting an incantation...