Chapter 209 - Alchemy

Chapter 209 Alchemy
“Quick dissolving!”
Abel has heard of this before. He searched his kong kong spiritual portal bag with his power of the Will. With a tap of his hand, two sheepskin books appeared. He got them from Wizard Black. It was his trophy for beating him. They were both alchemy recipes.
Yes, ‘quick dissolving.’ It was one of the methods that were used to make the “ration potion.” It was mentioned in the pages. So, was the “elven perfume” an alchemy recipe, then? No wonder she was using alchemy tools to make it.
Loraine took out another crystal cup. After placing a thin cloth on top, she poured the dissolved hyacinth into it. She started chanting something in the noble tongue of the elves again. A dim light flashed over the thin cloth. If Abel didn’t pay attention, he might just not notice it.
As the dissolved hyacinth was poured on top of the thin cloth, all the residue was filtered on top. The liquid that passed through became very, very clear.
“This is called “precise filtration,” It’s meant to separate all the residue from the mixture,” Loraine explained patiently.
Next, Loraine held the filtered hyacinth solution in her left hand. With her right hand holding another empty crystal cup, she chanted out something else.
Something strange started happening. While the hyacinth solution was still in the cup, a mysterious power lifted a part of it out. The part that was separated looked kind of oily, and it was flowing right into the empty cup.
Loraine said as she gave a satisfied smile at the oily liquid, “This is “refinement,” I extracted the hyacinth essence from this solution.”
Abel was starting to smell it now. He was a few meters away from the crystal cup, but the aroma was so strong that the entire space was filled with it.
Loraine used the same few methods to process the other dried flowers. When she was done, she combined all the flowers in proportion to each other. The resulting concoction was a small test tube of liquid.
Loraine held the test tube in her hand. With an anxious look on her face, she started shaking the test tube lightly with her hand. She chanted out something in the noble tongue of the elves again, which made the test tube flash out in seven different colors of light. The more she shook, the more these lights started coming out of the test tube.
Loraine started chanting out the words faster. She was also shaking the test tube faster. Suddenly, the seven rays of light burst out from inside the test tube.
A light aroma started emerging. It wasn’t thick, but it was, in a way, very “captivating.” To put it into words, this scent could easily reach one’s soul.
“Yes!” Loraine took the test tube near her nose, “A sublimation! I didn’t expect to get it on the first try.”
Loraine took the night pearl to have a better look at the test tube. When she was done examining, she took a small crystal tube and poured the entire mixture in.
Abel said, “So that’s what meant when you said you’re making the perfume.”
“Yeah!” Loraine replied, “This is one of the ways to make them. Sometimes, if you’re using a different recipe, you might have to learn some other ways to process the materials.”
Loraine continued, “Since we aren’t in the right season now, we can’t use fresh flowers to make the perfume. I’m not saying that the one I’ve just made is bad, but the smell could’ve been a lot better if I was using freshly-picked flowers.”
Loraine looked kind of disappointed when she was saying that. With the ingredients that she had access to, this was about the best quality she could come up with. There was no way that a place like Moogen Town would have exactly what she wanted.
“Hold up there just a second,” Abel pointed out at the alchemy formula for “ration potion, “Quick dissolving, precise filtration, refinement, sublimation. These are all technical terms in the area of alchemy! You’d have to be an alchemist to know them!”
“But, I’m not lying, Abel!” Loraine looked at Abel innocently, “The lady who taught me this didn’t mention anything about alchemy! She just told me that they were for making perfumes!”
Loraine didn’t want Abel to think of her as a liar. There was no way he was going to, anyway. If anyone was hiding the truth, it would be that lady who taught Loraine how to make her own perfume. Maybe she didn’t know about alchemy, too. Maybe she just thought that there was no need to tell Loraine about alchemy.
Abel has always wanted to learn some alchemy. However, it was hard to find a real alchemist. Throughout his not-so-long career as a wizard, he has never seen an alchemist as of yet. Now, he just realized that Loraine was an alchemist. Even she didn’t know about it before.
Abel asked in a somewhat embarrassed tone, “Um, Loraine. Do you mind if you, uh, teach me how to do alchemy? Obviously, if you’re not up for it, you can always just say so.”
“You want to study alchemy?” Loraine called out in surprise. A look of happiness emerged on her face. In her mind, if Abel was learning alchemy from her, she would have all the time she wanted to be with him. She didn’t care about alchemy or whatnot. As long as Abel wanted her to, she could teach him anything.
For the next few days, since Abel and Loraine wanted to hide their tracks, they decided to make camp out in the wilderness. They would hunt and pick for whatever food that they could get. Since Abel had his own private storage box, Loraine could have as much fresh juice as she wanted to.
They couldn’t just spend all their time moving. Abel wanted to learn alchemy, so a lot of their time was spent on alchemy lessons. Actually, throughout most of the day, Loraine would be teaching him somewhere with nobody around.
In a few days, Abel was able to learn some of the fundamentals of alchemy runes. “Beginner’s alchemy runes,” in other words. Not only did he engrave some of the basic patterns into his own memory, but he’s also learned some basic techniques related to potion-brewing.
‘Quick dissolving;, ‘Precise filtration,’ ‘Refinement,’ ‘Sublimation,’ ‘Purification by distillation,’ ‘Accelerated corruption,’ ‘Uniform calcination,’ and ‘Fast fermentation’ were quickly crammed into his head. Of course, no real alchemy teacher would give that to a student in one go, but that was the way Loraine did it. Luckily, Abel had already done plenty of self-study. Since he’s already had a good understanding of how runes functioned, it took about a few days for him to learn how to draw the right patterns. And since he knew the noble tongue of the elves, it was very easy for him to know how to do the enchantments correctly.
One day, when Loraine was sleeping on the big ambergris bed, Abel snuck his way to the alchemy table. He wanted to give Loraine a surprise. As a way to thank her for the lessons, he wanted to make his own elven perfume and give it to her.
This was what he did. After taking four bottles of the elven perfume Loraine had used, he tried to copy her by adding the purple hyacinth into the crystal cup. But just when he was about to pour the water, he realized something. If he was just going to copy her, all he was going to make was a product of the same quality.
With that in mind, Abel took everything out of his Horadric Cube. He then added the hyacinth flower into the water and placed the cup on top of the stove. He stirred the solution with his crystal stick and chanted out in the noble tongue of the elves. For some reason, the flower dissolved a lot faster than when Loraine was doing it. Maybe it had to do with the fact his mana capacity was much bigger than hers.
Quick dissolving. Next up, it was time for precise filtration. Abel had thought that this technique was just a substitute for filter cloth. He wasn’t wrong, actually. Since the technology wasn’t advanced in this world, good filter cloths were very hard to come by.
After making another two portions of the hyacinth flowers, three hyacinth solutions were on the alchemy table. Abel took all of them into his Horadric Cube, and once he was done synthesizing them, one bottle of the solution came out.
While this particular bottle didn’t look any different from the other ones, Abel knew that it must’ve been a lot better in its quality. Whatever that’s been synthesized by the Horadric Cube, it would always be a lot better than the ingredients that were used to make it.
Next up, it was time for refinement. When Abel was doing it, it was very different than when Loraine was doing it. Instead of coming out as transparent, the oily liquid that was extracted was a shade of light purple. Also, It was a lot thicker in its smell.