By the time Eric and his groupies finished bickering with each other, Vincent reached the substitute teacher, who was here to oversee their process.

"Mr. Holmes, I have finished purifying the ingredients," Vincent spoke to him formally as the latter was his teacher. Even though Mr. Holmes was only a robot, a being artificially created by the esoteric engineers of the federation, Vincent believed that he still deserved to be treated with the respect a student would give to their teacher; he and the other should not treat him like a mere thing because even though he was made of metal and lived off of energy, he was the one teaching them stuff.

"Finished?"

"So soon?"

"Am I hearing it right?!"

"Is the purifying process as easy as taking a stroll around the park, heh?! He is spewing bull shit!"

Vincent was intentionally loud, so everyone in the classroom had heard him. Everyone suddenly stopped whatever they were doing after hearing what they said. Some of them thought that he was faking it as they couldn't believe that he managed to purify all the ingredients in merely minutes. It was not like he was Alex, the alchemist! He was just a newbie. How could Vincent, who has never dabbled in alchemy, purify ingredients nearly as fast as a veteran alchemist? Did that even make sense? A big fat No! His classmates were bound not to trust him and take his words for the truth.

However, even though everyone didn't believe him, Mr. Holmes still took him seriously. Emotions such as disbelieve, one that imprisoned humans in a small well of ignorance created by their sky-high arrogance, pride, limited knowledge, and refusal to believe something way out of the ordinary, didn't inflict Mr. Holmes. Instead, he needed to see things through with his own eyes, calculate what he saw, and then come to a conclusion and relay the result to the others. He closed his book, put it aside, stood up, and looked at Vincent.

"Oh, let me see." Mr. Holmes said as he used his middle finger to affix his pair of eyeglasses. His eyesight wasn't weak. The only reason why he was wearing them was to show off. He was a robot who was addicted to wearing sunglasses, ah.

"Please take your time."

Vincent placed the tray full of purified ingredients, as well as impurities, on the table that separated them.

"Hmm."

The eyes of Mr. Holmes started scanning the ingredients.

Because his eyes could determine how impure something was, it only took him a couple of seconds to decide that the ingredients on the tray contained not even a single trace of impurities.

"How is that possible?!"

The students thought that something was wrong. Lost in a fantasy of their own creations, they concluded that Vincent hadn't even done a thing to purify the ingredients, thus earning such a strong reaction from Mr. Holmes.

However, the reality was far from the things they cooked up in their minds. Mr. Holmes was shocked, but the cause was the fact that a student managed to nearly best the official record of purifying and upgrading the quality of the ingredients that Alex set himself!

"Mister, is there something wrong?" Vincent asked.

"No, no, no, nothing is right with this situation!" Again the students misunderstood their words, and Gale and Eric's knight started saying they were right, that Vincent was a troll.

But they had only started yapping when Mr. Holmes, with his hand holding Vincent's shoulders and body trembling in fervent excitement, added, "You eliminated all the impurities in these ingredients in less than four minutes, something that is so hard that even professional alchemist who has a grade-2 official license would sometimes fail to do. You also increased their quality from mid-rank to high-rank, adding four cherries on top of the cake ah. Even Alchemy Lord Alex can't confidently say of doing that. That's something that no one can attribute to beginner luck. Is this really your first time learning alchemy?"

Pin-drop silence!

Everyone booing Vincent and calling him out as a coward who abandons things when he finds them hard couldn't utter a word.

Whatever they wanted to say got stuck in their throat, and they choked over their words.

They stared at him speechlessly and with mouth agape!

Why was there such a vast disparity in their talents?

Why were they so bad at purifying ingredients and he so good that he started a commotion?!

Had fairness left this universe, eh?!

With what face were they calling him out as a sore loser?!

"No, sir, I had never taken alchemy lesson before or even dabbled in it." Vincent was speaking the truth. The only thing was that he had used the help of his spell matrix in performing such a feat. Though, he was sure that no one would manage to find out about that as it worked so covertly that there was no one way of knowing it even if he performs purification while using it under their eyes.

"It isn't?! Eh? I guess you're what they call a prodigy born for alchemy!"

Mr. Holmes was so excited that he praised Vincent for the next minute, making him become the center of attention of the entire class.

"We're such fools."

"Failed to recognize a genius and even bad-mouthed him. He probably won't see us in a good light anymore and even stay away from us."

Gale and Eric's knight faces turned beet red out of embarrassment. All the bad words they said about him came to bite them back in the most unexpected way.

"That's why I told you guys to make sure of the situation and see things through before opening your mouth and pushing your opinions on others," Eric said to them and sighed. To get Vincent on their side was going to be exceedingly hard now. He wanted him because he was too talented as an alchemist.

"You can return to your seat, and if you want, you can take as many ingredients as you like and purify them."

On the other hand, Mr. Holmes told Vincent to go back to his table, and he himself turned around and left the classroom.

Then, he went on to reveal his capabilities to Alex, the alchemist.

At first, Alex didn't believe the words that came out of his mouth, but when Mr. Holmes showed him the evidence, he had no choice but to believe.

After that, they returned to the classroom and what they saw left them shocked to the point they stood still at their spot like startled bears!