Refined in an Instant

Cash? Charlotte blinked.

This was quite something. Asking how much money a noble girl had on her was enough to get Gordon beaten into a bloody mist by the campus police.

"How much?" After a moment's thought, she decided to go along with him.

"Twenty silver pounds."

"What are you buying?" Charlotte wasn't sure what Gordon was planning.

"That spider."

Charlotte hadn't expected that answer.

The Spider Aberration's... corpse!

She came up with two explanations.

First, he was about to turn demonic.

Second, he already had, and was now a demon.

"Listen," Charlotte said, "no one in their right mind would buy that thing."

"Right, right."

"Then why are you buying it?" Charlotte chided him. "I honestly don't know what's gotten into you."

"I have a reason I can't pass it up." Gordon nodded solemnly.

"Gordon..." Charlotte felt like crying, but no tears came. "Don't do this! Is something wrong with your head? Or did you eat something bad? Oh, I remember buying you a goose leg the other day, only to find out later it was duck..."

Gordon couldn't easily explain.

So all he could do was give Charlotte a resolute look.

Charlotte sighed.

Fine. If Gordon had turned demonic, she could only keep monitoring his condition.

Twenty silver pounds was nothing to her, but it seemed to mean a great deal to Gordon.

If Gordon remembered that he owed her a favor, she wouldn't be losing out.

"If you hurt yourself again, remember to haggle with the school infirmary..." Charlotte muttered, taking out an exquisite velvet purse.

"Thanks, boss."

Gordon strode openly toward the teaching platform.

Peter was still busy.

"Gordon, come on. Let's go wash the beakers."

"Wait. I want to buy it."

Peter looked at Gordon as though he were a White Rat Monster volunteering to be dissected.

"Are you serious?"

"Dead serious."

"What do you want it for?"

"There's a dissection test tomorrow," Gordon said. "I need something to practice on that won't scream in pain."

"You don't need to buy something this big. I can sell you White Rat Monsters for sixty copper cents each. No one would care if you chopped them into mince. Buy three and I'll throw in a body bag."

"Professor Winslow worked on this one. I want to study how an authority makes his cuts."

Peter fell silent.

The professor's skills were exceptional. It was a little early for this kid to try learning them.

"Fine." Peter frowned. "...Twenty-five silver pounds, then. Consider it my way of supporting a junior."

"Didn't you just say twenty at most?"

"That was for sending it to the Old Fish Market as rubbish. Now it's an internal academy matter," Peter declared righteously.

"Seventeen."

"Not happening."

"If you don't sell it to me, you'll have to deal with it yourself. Half an hour pushing a cart to the Old Fish Market, with everyone on the streets looking at you in disgust. Then the dealers will tell you it isn't fresh, followed by how there's no demand for Spider Aberrations lately." Gordon whispered like a devil.

The corner of Peter's mouth twitched.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the instruments he hadn't finished cleaning.

"Twenty," Peter said. "Not one copper cent less."

"Seventeen. I'll carry it myself."

"Eighteen. That's my absolute lowest."

"Deal."

Gordon counted out eighteen silver-pound notes and handed them to Peter.

Peter accepted them, his expression quickly relaxing.

He'd saved himself some effort, the rubbish had found a home, and Gordon could pursue his fanciful academic dreams.

Everyone had won big.

"You said it. Carry it yourself," Peter said. "And if it comes back to life in the middle of the night, that's not my problem either."

"Don't worry," Gordon said. "If it comes to that, I probably won't have time to complain."

Gordon returned the purse to Charlotte.

"Eighteen silver pounds, just for eight legs." Charlotte weighed the lighter purse in her hand.

"Eight legs are a good thing. Ever had grilled octopus?"

"I need a reasonable explanation," Charlotte said, puffing her cheeks in annoyance. "I'm afraid the next time I see you, you'll be in a coffin."

"Fun fact: I can't afford a coffin," Gordon said. "If I die, the school will probably use me for the next batch of freshmen to practice their knife work. Anyway, put this money on my tab along with the rest. I'll pay it all back sooner or later."

Then Gordon lifted the Spider Aberration and carried the corpse outside. All eight legs had ideas of their own. One struck the doorframe, forcing him to back up and change direction twice before he finally carried the corpse out.

Charlotte could only sigh as she watched.

A hundred gold pounds in student loans.

The day Gordon paid off his debts was probably still a long way away.

Late at night, in the dissection laboratory of the biomedical building.

Gordon finally dragged the Spider Aberration onto the dissection table.

He leaned against the edge of the table, panting. The muscles in both arms ached, and his lower back hurt badly too.

Even while resting, Gordon couldn't keep his mind idle.

The hints really were useful.

Previously, their greatest achievement had been finding him three copper cents.

Now they were something else. They could actually locate source substance.

Coins could keep him going for a few days at most. Source substance could change his life.

He brought the kerosene lamp over, and in its light, that glimmer of silver grew clearer.

[Shining small source substance-"Unbroken Strings"]

Let's do this. One look will tell me whether it's real.

Gordon put on his gloves and picked up the Dissection Knife.

He reached deep into the Spider Aberration and began dissecting.

He separated muscle bundles that had already stiffened and cut through translucent fascia... The dead heads in their jars silently watched this momentous second dissection.

Gordon's fingers trembled. He couldn't tell whether it was from nerves, apprehension, or having eaten only half a slice of bread for dinner.

At last, the tip of his blade touched something hard. Focusing intently, he teased a fine thread out of it.

Found it.

Gordon carefully picked it up with forceps and transferred it to the glass dish he had prepared.

Some brown filth still clung to the thread, but it was clearly extraordinary, quivering without a breeze.

The forceps gently drew close, and Gordon felt a faint vibration. Apparently, this wasn't a hallucination.

Good, good.

Then Gordon's smile slowly faded.

He couldn't exactly carry it around to class.

Perhaps he could sell it.

Small source substances were worth roughly fifty to two hundred gold pounds, depending on whether the appraiser had a conscience.

But Gordon hadn't figured out how to handle all the questions.

He could already picture those fault-finding faces.

Who are you?

Where did you find it?

What else have you seen?

The people at the trading house had plenty of questions and plenty of schemes.

The people at the Old Fish Market would send someone to corner him in an alley and show him what the will of a tyrant meant.

The people on the black market... would bleed him dry.

Gordon looked at the silver thread in the glass dish.

Besides selling it, there was another path.

Refine it into myself! Turn it into a potion and make its power my own.

In other words, become an Essence Hunter, one of this world's ability users.

Essence Hunters spent their entire lives pursuing source substance, continually converting it into their special abilities. In the process, they gained extraordinary strength, speed, and longevity.

Gordon took a deep breath.

True, selling it would only get him gold pounds. It wouldn't bring any fundamental change.

Refining it into himself might open up an entirely new life.

To think I actually considered selling it just now. As naive as a law-abiding citizen.

A nobody, or a name known across the world?

There was no time to waste. Gordon hurried to prepare the materials needed to brew a source substance potion.

Better to act than merely dream.

He headed to the storeroom adjoining the dissection room. Inside were piles of inferior consumables Winslow had discarded over the years.

[Small alcohol lamp. The flame isn't very stable.]

[Old glass graduated cylinder. The markings have worn away.]

[Precipitation salt. Most has already been used up. What little remains only wants a peaceful life.]

Good, good.

It's all rubbish.

Even Peter rarely paid attention to this room, whereas Gordon often scavenged here, so he found what he needed with ease.

With most of the supplies gathered, Gordon dug out his lecture notes.

"Methods of extracting source substance... the Threefold Separation Method..."

When Winslow had taught this section, he'd said it wouldn't be on the exam, and everyone had immediately capped their pens. Gordon, however, had kept writing and recorded it all clearly.

Purify with precipitation salt, filter out impurities and inert substances, control the temperature appropriately, and choose the correct solution.

The solution mattered too. Source substance with a "shining" aspect could use distilled water, while source substance with a "burning" aspect required strong liquor.

Gordon committed the information to memory.

He also remembered Winslow saying that anyone could follow the steps. The issue was experience.

For an ordinary person's first attempt, retaining twenty percent of the activity was already a good result. Even experts from the Royal Alchemy Bureau couldn't guarantee success on the first try.

Most people couldn't observe the state of source substance, nor could they tell which step caused it to lose activity.

Gordon was different. He really could observe the state of the Source Substance with the naked eye.

And so he officially got to work.

He placed the silver thread in a beaker, added precipitation salt and clean water, and let the brown remnants of flesh and blood fall away naturally. Once it was clean, he placed it in a crucible and lit the alcohol lamp. As the temperature gradually rose into the appropriate range, the silver thread slowly unfurled.

As the process advanced, its glow grew ever purer, like the morning star.

Only after two hours of painstaking work did Gordon produce around ten milliliters of source substance potion.

The potion was clear and transparent, the most beautiful, radiant thing Gordon had ever seen.

It was truly incredible.

Still, he needed to test it.

Gordon solemnly tested it with a strip of test paper, like checking the solution to a difficult problem he had already solved.

The color shifted from pale to shining silver, finally turning clear gold.

Gordon's heart gave a powerful thump.

Extremely high potency, full activity, almost no waste.

[Source substance potion. Best served chilled.]

Gordon made up his mind, picked up the potion, and refined it into himself in an instant.

As the liquid touched the back of his tongue, he felt as though he'd swallowed a needle.

Cold.

Slender.

Sharp!

He was still waiting for it to drop into his stomach when, unexpectedly, it surged upward instead, heading straight for Gordon's brain.

Gordon swiftly pressed a hand to his forehead.

A burst of intense pain struck his head.

The world before his eyes flickered wildly, twisting and reforming!

Gordon staggered and grabbed the edge of the table, his heart pounding uncontrollably.

He looked down at himself as all manner of changes tore through every limb and bone.

Immediately afterward, a series of brand-new notifications appeared before his eyes.

[Source substance fusion in progress... Please refrain from casually killing yourself during this process.]

[Physique slightly improved. Now capable of enduring moderately intensive labor exploitation.]

[Drug tolerance slightly improved. Next time, you can use a bigger cup.]

[Proprioception moderately improved. You now understand your own body better than the campus clinic does.]

[Motor feedback latency slightly reduced. Your body has decided to cut down on internal friction.]

[New resonance ability acquired: Synchronized Conduction. You are no longer who you used to be.]