Alchemy

"Let me educate you two first, so listen carefully," Lou said.

"Alchemy the refining of plants, minerals, and other substances into medicinal pills and elixirs. Alchemists are essentially pharmacists who work with magical materials and make miracle drugs."

"Cauldrons and Pill Furnaces the tools alchemists use to produce medicinal pills and elixirs."

"Medicinal Pills and Elixirs are miracle drugs which can have all sorts of effects. Often taken to boost cultivation, heal wounds, cure poisons, purify or strengthen the body, and much much more."

"Medicinal Plants / Herbs is a generic term for any kind of plant which can be used by alchemists to make poisons or medicinal pills and elixirs. Older medicinal plants are generally considered to be more potent."

"Does that mean the older the Herb the better the effect of the result?"

"That's right, but not only the age of the herb is the base of the quality of the Pill, you still need to learn how to control Fire and how to process the Herb."

"Started to process the spirit herbs, and then placed them inside the furnace. After this, each and every step must be performed extremely precisely."

"The basic steps of alchemy include: pouring the True Qi or if not, you can use your Mana Sense inside the alchemical furnace, baking the herbs, waiting for the spirit herbs to start emitting unique spirit essence, controlling those various spirit essence and mixing them with dried up spirit herbs, gathering them together in one place, and then condense them into a pill."

"What is True Qi?" Fumino asks if this word is new for her who is learning to use western magic.

"Qi is the vital energy which exists in all things. The cultivation of Qi is a major strength of those cultivators in China but right now we are not a Cultivator so we can't use True Qi."

"The next energy near to True Qi is Mana that everyone has, Mana is also a form of energy that comes from the surroundings so it's fine using it as an alternative."

"Let me show you the process, I'm not proficient in doing this but I can still make a simple pill for you guys." Lou then starts looking for low-quality herb left in his storage after that he arranges it according to how he wants to use it.

He started to process the spirit herbs, and then placed them inside the furnace.

"Before i forgot, if you want to become Alchemy, you should learn Fire Magic or any kind of Fire,"

"Why?"

"Fire is one of the requirements to become Alchemy."

He then placed both his hands on the two separate mouths of the furnace and then poured his flames inside it, while, at the same time, inspecting the internal situation of the furnace with his spiritual power.

The flame was poured into the alchemical furnace, backing the herbs inside and drying them out.

There was some residue essence left inside the dried spirit herbs, so his first attempt ended in failure.

Nevertheless, Lou was not discouraged by this, because he knows that his knowledge is not enough and failure is natural.

"See i fail, the first thing you need to do after you fail is to find the cause of it, on my condition, i fail to control the flame im using while i miss a large amount of essence from the herb."

He then picked up the next set of herbs. This time, he made sure to pay special attention to his control, in order to manipulate the flames correctly.

He carefully baked the herbs inside the furnace, but it, once again, resulted in a failure.

After experiencing failure three times in a row, Lou had started to build up some experience. His knowledge, regarding the control of the flame and extracting essence, had increased during each previous attempt.

On his first attempt in the past, he use alchemy but not alchemy at all, what he did is the lowest form of alchemy and the is mixing, he can create low rang pill like poison pill the last time but those pills can only work on normal benign like fish, birds, and insect.

As for the higher one, those pills are useless, but this time it's different, the pill made from herbs that are aged for too long and processed using flame is the priest form of pill.

On the fourth try, Lou was finally successful in extracting out all the essence from the herbs. Now he could enter the next phase of alchemy.

While injecting his spiritual power into the alchemical furnace, he took a peek inside. Lou saw the various colors of different herb essence from different herbs being emitted by the herbs.

Now he started to manipulate these essences, rotating them to form a rainbow whirlpool. The already dried spirit herbs slowly disintegrated into grey ash.

After they had completely transformed, Lou manipulated the essence emitted from these herbs and combined it with the "Herbal Powder" and that is the ashes residue of the herb itself.

While forming the five whirlpools, Lous brows started to wrinkle, and he was sweating hard from his forehead.

Not only did he need to use Mana to form his flames, but he also had to control the formed flames while, at the same time, also trying to compress all essence and herbal powder into a pill.

Doing this is not only laborious and hard, he also needs a great amount of attention.

The five herbal essence whirlpools were revolving rapidly and even began the process of fusing together.

But there's a problem, the pill is about to diffuse having failed to compress all the essence harder.

Using his Psychokinesis, he forcefully squeezes all of the essences and turns them into a small ball, he then fuses some mana to enclose the pills and prevent the essence from escaping.

After a couple of more minutes, Lou finally succeeds, he successfully creates 3 Pill from his original plan of 5.

Lou opened the alchemical furnace, looking at the three snow-white 'unknown pill' within the dissipating mist.

"Are you successful?"

"Of course."

Ogata takes one and carefully observes it," What kind of pill is this?"

"Just a simple Healing Pill."

"So this is a Healing Pill... can I take one back to study?"

"Sure," He then put a bunch of more herb that he collected and about to discard.

"Try to make one, here is the herb, the first thing you need to know before you make one is to think what kind of pill you want to make and the herb that you want to combine."

"Is there any Pill Book available at this school?"

"I don't know, I will ask Nobuan later if we have one."

"Okay."

Ogata with Fumino who is curious starts to move their hand leaving Lou watching them, he doesn't know why Ogata wants to learn Alchemy but he feels she is hiding something, a secret that she is trying to hide.