Harry arrived outside of Alex’s room early in the morning, so Alex quickly asked Whisker to stop making pills and go back into his beast space.
Once he was gone, he finally opened the door and let Harry in.
“Alright, I’m excited to learn this thing. Let’s start,” he said the moment he entered. Alex chuckled a bit and led him to the Alchemy room.
“So, where do we start?” Harry asked.
“Uh, would you mind telling me what you know in the first place so I can maybe start from there?” Alex said.
“Sure,” Harry said and started explaining what he knew.
Harry basically understood everything that was basic knowledge about Structure and Combinations. He knew that the individual specks of powder formed different structures and that when combined together properly, they made a pill better.
He was confused about the specifics of everything, however. He did not understand what exactly the combined form should be or what an individual speck of powder even looked like most of the time.
He didn’t understand how anyone was supposed to keep track of the millions of specks of powder that formed when making a pill.
And most of all, Alex realized that he did not understand why a pill would be good just because it followed those rules.
Alex thought about everything and started understanding just what it was that he had to teach.
“Can you tell me when you reached the Saint realm? Like how many years it has been?” Alex asked.
“Uh… ahem, unlike others I focused too much on Alchemy so I was quite slow,” Harry said with an embarrassed face. “I only reached the Saint realm about 12 years ago, and it has taken me that long to reach my current cultivation base.”
“Saint Condensation 4th realm isn’t that bad,” Alex said and asked something else. “How comfortable are you in using your spiritual sense?”
“Oh, you might not know this since you are not from here, but our Spiritual senses are quite awesome,” Harry said. “We start off early on with this small flower that gives us a Spiritual sense without having to reach the saint realm. That was one of the reasons why I never really sought it out as much as I should have.”
‘Oh,’ he thought to himself. ‘City of Many Flowers… that makes sense.’
Alex thought for a bit and moved his hands. The pill that Whisker was making before he had to stop halfway flew out of the Sun’s womb, which was just powder at the moment.
“Can you see the individual speck of this?” he asked.
“Individual speck of this powder?” Harry asked. “Uh… I can if I force hard enough. But only right now though, I can’t keep track of them when they are in a cauldron.”
Alex nodded. “Well that’s because you aren’t supposed to,” he said as he dusted off the powder. “Inside a cauldron, you are supposed to use pill-forming techniques which can help you make pills on their own. There are some that require you to be able to see inside the cauldron at the individual specks, but they are not as demanding as they sound.”
“Oh… so I don’t have to worry about them?” he asked with a look of clarity as if he understood something finally.
“No, you are meant to rely on some sort of technique. Of course, that probably wasn’t true in the past, but others have worked hard to make techniques so we don’t have to,” Alex said.
“Regarding Structures, there’s not much I can really teach you. Every ingredient can have hundreds of different structures depending on the heat, direction of spin, and the speed of it moving in a cauldron.”
“If you really care about the shapes, you will have to spend time learning everything on your own by making them,” Alex said.
“Or you can just look at a book and learn,” Harry said.
“Uhhh… you can do that, but I’m not sure many people would note it down in a book. Do they?” Alex asked.
“Oh, the book I got has the majority of it covered in drawings that are about the structures of some rare ingredients that you wouldn’t want to test on yourself because you might not find another one,” Harry said.
Alex got a little curious. “Mind if I take a look?” He had a way of finding all the structure for an ingredient if he had 3 of its variations, but he would rather not waste a rare ingredient if he could just learn the information from somewhere else.
“Sure, here you go.” Harry brought out the book and handed it over to Alex.
Alex looked at the title of the book. “Internal Pill Shapes – A collection of Studies on Structure and Combinations”
He flipped the page and on the first page, there were two words written on it. He read the words with a confused look on his face. “Spicy Gourd? Is that the author’s name?” he asked.
“Ahem, that’s just something I wrote. Please skip that and go next,” Harry said and flipped the page himself.
Alex looked through the front half of the book was a basic explanation of Structure and Combinations, but it wasn’t a book meant for thorough explanations.
It was more so there to give the reader an idea about Structures and Combinations, rather than teaching it to them. What was there was just a precursor to the various different shapes with different ingredients.
Alex looked at the first ingredient, a Foghorn Tree’s fruit. He closed his eyes and looked through his sea of knowledge to find that name.
‘Foghorn Tree’s fruit… can be used for anti-inflammatory medicines. Can be used for burns, and can be used as an ingredient to pills to make a very specific antidote that came from getting stabbed by a Foghorn Tree’s thorn. Foghorn trees themselves are very common, but they rarely flower to even produce fruits.’
He recalled all the information he had on that and opened his eyes with a surprised look. ‘It’s an Immortal rank ingredient,’ he thought.
The thorns of the Foxhorn Tree weren’t very harmful, but they did cause a lot of rash and itching that normal Immortal rank pills couldn’t relieve, and thus one had to make a pill using the Tree’s fruit.
Otherwise, their best bet would be to find an Immortal-rank antidote pill with a few pill veins.
He turned through the pages and saw many more drawings of shapes of many different ingredients. The drawings were small enough that the author had managed to cram hundreds of different variations of a single ingredient.
There were about 50 different ingredients in total, and as far as Alex knew, they were all incredibly rare.
Once he was done reading through it all, he handed the book back to Harry and started explaining to him about Combinations.
“For Combinations, you must remember that it’s all about reducing the empty space in a pill. The more compact the combination you can make, the better,” he explained.
“Wait…” Harry thought for a bit. “Does that mean I will have to know the structures for all the ingredients?”
“Yes,” Alex said. “Not just the ingredient either, you will need to know the shapes of the exact way in which the ingredient will be used to release the same amount of energy.”
“Damn, that’s… that’s tough,” he thought. “Yeah, it involves a lot of repetitive practice.”
Alex taught him various other little tidbits he knew about Structure and Combinations before going on to the main part of that piece of knowledge that Harry did not have at all.
“And to get the best result when making a pill, you want to make the most symmetrical shape,” Alex explained. “The better the symmetry, the higher your pill’s grade will be.”
“Woah…” Harry said as he learned that information. “That’s really a lot to take in a single day.”
“It can get overwhelming at first, but you will get used to it in time. For now, I suggest starting with common-rank pills whose ingredients you can easily find. Once you have done that, move on to True rank pills, and then by the time you reach Saint rank pills, you will get used to it,” Alex said.
“You must have practiced this for many years then,” Harry said. “Did you get a similar book as mine from your treasure box?”
“Uh… yeah, it was an alchemy book as well,” Alex said.
“Ooh, do you mind if I read it?” Harry asked.
Alex shook his head. “Sorry, I learned it through the game and the book disappeared. I do not have it anymore,” he said.
“Oh… that sucks,” Harry said. “Still, it must have helped you a lot. When did you start learning about Structures and Combinations?”
Alex recalled back to the first time he learned about this information. It was back in the royal library in Cardinal City in the Crimson Empire. He had read a book that was written by the Royal Alchemist.
“It’s been 30 years or so, I believe,” Alex said.
“Oh, so you started around the same time as me,” Harry said. “I guess you were just better at learning than me.”
“No, I just got information that you didn’t know about,” Alex said. “You would’ve done amazingly by now had you been given the same information I had been given by someone early on.”
“I see,” Harry said.
Alex taught a little more and showed him a few examples by making a few pills in front of him.
Once he was done, Harry left the room and Alex was finally free to do what he wanted to on his day off.
