Purity, Extremely High Purity (Please Follow)

After straightening his clothes, Richard carefully dug out the Red Mercury he had refined several months ago and placed it in a box stuffed with crumpled paper and straw.

If this thing exploded, Richard would lose half his life.

Carrying the box to the Central Black Tower, Richard stopped by the Apprentice Self-Test Room to test his physical condition.

[Spiritual Power?, Physique 22, Magic Power 176, Rating: Beginner Apprentice.]

"Huh? Why is there a question mark for Spiritual Power? Is the Crystal Ball broken?" Richard patted the Crystal Ball. Besides his Spiritual Power, his Magic Power seemed a little off too. But the bloodlines used in Bloodline Alchemy were all Magic Beast bloodlines, and they naturally carried some magic power. A slight increase in magic power was not much of a problem.

By the time he reached the Fifty-Sixth Floor, Richard was already drenched in sweat.

Holding a bomb in his hands, anyone who said they were not nervous would be lying.

Knock, knock, knock!

Richard knocked on the nearest door.

Click.

"What do you want?"

An apprentice opened the door. He was fat and looked middle-aged, with squinting eyes, a hooked nose, and a shiny bald forehead gleaming beneath the Magic Lamp.

"Senior Brother, I'm here to submit a task."

Richard held out the box to the middle-aged apprentice, handling it with extreme care.

"Submit a task? Which task?"

The middle-aged apprentice reached out to take it, but seeing Richard drenched in sweat and acting so cautiously, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind.

Could it be Red Mercury?

Did some greenhorn really refine it?!

"Come in, come in. Hold that box carefully. Red Mercury packs quite a punch."

The middle-aged apprentice retreated repeatedly, opening the door behind him as wide as it would go without showing the slightest intention of taking the box.

Only after Richard had placed the Red Mercury securely down did he let out a sigh of relief.

"Junior Brother, you've got some nerve. You actually dared carry Red Mercury up here yourself."

The middle-aged apprentice sat down in a chair and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"What should I call you, Senior Brother?"

"Jacques. And you?"

"Richard."

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Jacques walked to the window and called out twice. Within seconds, a normal-sized Owl flew into the room.

"Senior Sister, someone has delivered the Red Mercury you wanted," Jacques said to the Owl.

Richard watched in fascination. "Senior Brother, what was that?"

Jacques waved a hand. "Just a trivial little trick. Nothing more than using an animal to pass along a message."

With that, he released the Owl and returned to his chair.

"Senior Brother Jacques, you mentioned Senior Sister just now. Wasn't this Red Mercury requested by Master Gerald?" Richard recalled Jacques's words. It seemed that this task had not been issued by Gerald himself.

"Ha, our teacher researches Chimeras. What would he need that stuff for?" Jacques wiped his forehead again. "The Red Mercury task was issued by Senior Sister Anna in his name."

"Then does this task count...?"

"It counts. If you want to join our teacher's ranks, this task absolutely counts."

Looking at the somewhat bewildered Richard, an absurd thought flashed through Jacques's mind.

Could he have refined the Red Mercury without failing?

How could anyone refine Red Mercury without failing?

"Um... Richard, how long did it take you to extract this?" Jacques asked tentatively.

"Uh, about three months. Refining Red Mercury is rather dangerous, and I failed several times along the way, so I was a little slow," Richard lied without changing expression.

"That's good, that's good. Judging by your strength, you should be a freshman who just enrolled. I almost thought I'd run into some legendary alchemy prodigy." Jacques secretly breathed a sigh of relief and smiled. "Even when our teacher refines Red Mercury, he sometimes fails. The difficulty is already beyond the limit."

Hearing that, Richard instantly felt that his decision to submit the task after three months had been incomparably wise.

Even wizards encountered problems refining Red Mercury, let alone an apprentice.

The two chatted for a while longer. Although Jacques looked like a greasy middle-aged man, his strength was already close to that of an Advanced Apprentice, and he was Gerald's formal student.

Once they had grown more familiar, Richard began asking about Gerald accepting disciples.

"Senior Brother, I heard that most people who join Master Gerald's ranks end up going to the Alchemy Workshop?" Richard probed.

Hearing this, Jacques waved his hand disdainfully.

"Don't listen to the nonsense outside. They say all of our teacher's apprentices just go work in the Alchemy Workshop and never learn anything worthwhile.

"I'm telling you, our teacher's treatment of apprentices ranks among the best in the entire Academy. As long as you join our teacher's ranks, you'll receive a subsidy of at least five Magic Stones every month.

"And that's separate from your workshop wages.

"If you work in the workshop, then once you get proficient, earning ten or twenty Magic Stones a month is perfectly normal.

"For freshmen like you, isn't that far better than doing Academy tasks?"

After saying that, Jacques pulled a metal flask from the table beside him and took two small sips.

"Besides, look at how other masters treat their apprentices. Using apprentices to test medicine, to test magic—I've seen that sort of thing with my own eyes.

"Our mentor not only doesn't use you as an experiment, he even gives you Magic Stones. Where else are you going to find a deal like that?"

The more Richard listened, the more something felt off. Why did Jacques's words sound so much like the spiel of a con man?

If Gerald were really that good, wouldn't apprentices be fighting tooth and nail to join him?

But before Richard could speak, the room's door flew open with a bang.

"Jacques, where's the thing that was delivered?"

When Richard saw who had entered, it was Anna, the one who had taught his class that day.

The moment Jacques saw Anna, he hid his flask away and sprang to his feet, then scurried over to her side with a fawning smile.

"Senior Sister, Senior Sister, the Red Mercury is right there. Don't make such a big fuss. Red Mercury can't take that kind of tossing around."

Anna glanced at Jacques, then looked at the box before turning to Richard.

"You refined this?"

"I did."

After confirming it was an apprentice, Anna strode over to the box containing the Red Mercury and opened it with great gentleness.

"Hm?"

The moment she opened the box, a brown glass bottle came into Anna's view.

Although many apprentices knew that Red Mercury had to be kept away from light, she herself had only thought of storing it in a brown glass bottle after receiving guidance from her mentor.

Before that, she had never seen anyone else use one.

"A brown glass bottle. You paid good attention to the details," Anna praised.

At Anna's words, Jacques's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

Senior Sister Anna had praised someone!

Anna was Master Gerald's most outstanding disciple in a thousand years. Normally, let alone praising someone, it was already considered a good thing if the junior brothers and sisters did not get scolded when they met her.

As for praise, it was simply unheard of.

"It needs to be kept away from light, so I found a brown bottle," Richard answered vaguely.

As the bottle was opened, a peculiar fragrance from evaporating Red Mercury instantly spread throughout the room.

Richard instinctively covered his nose and mouth, but Anna casually waved a hand, and a breeze blew the smell out through the window.

"Jacques, you're our mentor's student. Even an outsider knows to cover his nose and mouth, yet you're standing there like a fool." Anna shot Jacques a glance that made him shudder.

After scolding Jacques, Anna's fingertips glimmered with a faint blue light. A thread of magic power extended from her fingers and slipped lightly into the bottle. Before long, it drew out a drop of Red Mercury shimmering with strange colors.

"This color..."

Anna stared at the Red Mercury's hue, her gaze flickering.

This color... this luster... It was indeed Red Mercury, and Red Mercury of extremely high purity.

Unable to resist, Anna activated the Red Mercury. With a bang, it instantly exploded under the stimulation of magic power, sending a wave of air sweeping through the room.

"You refined this?" Anna turned and asked.

"I did," Richard replied.

"What is your name? Do you have a mentor?"

"My name is Richard. I don't have a mentor for the time being."

"Then that's good."

After hearing that, Anna capped the bottle and strode toward Richard.

Richard could not make heads or tails of the situation. Could it be that what the Miracle Furnace had refined was not Red Mercury, and this woman had taken him for a fraud? Had she asked whether he had a mentor to find out if he had someone backing him?

Richard suddenly remembered that above the fiftieth floor of the Central Black Tower was wizard territory, where there were no Academy Watchers.

In other words, even if Anna killed him here, no one would know.

For a moment, Richard's mind turned to chaos, and he backed away again and again.

"Um, Senior Sister Anna." Forced into a corner with nowhere left to retreat, Richard decided to put on a braver front. "Just say what you want."

Anna was nearly six feet tall, enough to look down at Richard. She placed both hands on his shoulders and said in a firm voice:

"Since you don't have a mentor, join our Alchemy School."