"Collect." Instructor Alex waved his hand, and the lid of the cauldron opened before twelve pills jumped out of it and landed on his hands.

He created a dozen pills using a single batch of ingredients that glorified his status as one of the best alchemists!

Seeing him perform pill refinement was the same as watching a festival or a piano concert.

The eyes of the students sparkled with excitement. Soon, even they might reach a good level as they were getting taught by Alex the alchemist!

Instructor Alex turned to the students and said, "You all get to it. If you successfully create a consumable pill, report to me. I will give you a grade-5 alchemist certificate. The more pill you make with a single batch of ingredients, the higher the grade of your certificate. You can directly get a grade-2 certificate if you conjure 12 pills as I did! Such is the reward for a solo performance. If you team up, the reward will get halved. The more the members in a team, the lesser the reward."

Vincent's eyes brightened. The alchemy association had divided alchemist into different grades, starting from grade-5, the lowest one, and going to grade-1, the highest one. Then, there were titles, namely Alchemy Lord, Alchemy Master, Alchemy King, an Alchemy Emperor. One could only earn titles by making significant contributions to the advancement of alchemy or joining alchemy competitions held by the higher authority. In the world of alchemy, only those with titles were the higher-ups. In contrast, to improve the grade of one's alchemy profession, a person needs to participate in many exams!

However, Vincent would get to skip all such tiresome processes as long as he creates 12 pills and impresses Alex, the alchemist!

The entire class started trying to make a pill. None of the students doubted instructor Alex. He was a master alchemist, and he could directly promote them to Grade-1 Alchemist. Such was the authority of a master alchemist.

Not to mention, Alex was one of the best, and the only reason he still had the title of a master alchemist was that he didn't participate in any competition for years! If he did, there was a chance that he would be the current emperor of alchemy, a title which could belong to only a single person! Even if instructor Alex had failed to achieve that, he would at least be popularly known as an alchemy king. However, he didn't care about reputation and stuff and did everything he liked. Thus, he didn't give respect to the alchemy association when they invited him to join the most significant competition for alchemists and declined their invitation.

Eric, Salvador, Gale, and Vincent talked for a minute. In the end, they decided to go solo. The pros of going solo were far more excellent than the cons!

"Let's start." Vincent cracked his knuckles and got to work.

He started by purifying a single batch of ingredients. Then, he used a couple of minutes recovering his mana.

Once his mana recovered to 300 units, he opened the cauldron lid, which he placed on the table nearby.

He looked inside and saw that the cauldron had two sectionsan inflexible horizontal plate made of a material that won't melt no matter how hot it gets. Instead, the higher the heat, the more it compacts and hardens. It was an exotic material, and each high-tech cauldron came equipped with it. One could place ingredients on top of the metallic plate if they didn't want to use mana to keep their ingredients afloat.

Vincent didn't have a lot of energy like instructor Alex and most of the students here, so he picked up some ingredients that he purified moments ago and carefully placed them inside the upper layer of the cauldron.

Then, he put the lid back on the cauldron.

With that done, he could finally start the main process of alchemy.

Vincent touched the pendant beneath his shirt and communicated with its artificial intelligence mentally, "Blood, are you ready?"

[Alchemy assistance program activated!]

The moment that notification sounded in Vincent's ears, he directed his gaze towards the cauldron. Many small boxes opened up in his vision. They contained all the information about what he should do and not do to refine energy restoration pills!

[First, start by using three units of mana to activate the fire creation inscription!]

Following the first step mentioned in the alchemy assistance program, Vincent released three units of mana and ingrained them into the fire creation inscription. Instantly, a fire appeared beneath and within the lower section of the cauldron, healing it up.

[Wait for five minutes.]

He needed to let the fire head the cauldron for five minutes.

Vincent used those five to recover the mana he had just used.

[Five minutes have passed.]

[Now, please split the fire inside the cauldron into 12 parts by using your mana.]

After five minutes passed, the alchemy assistance program gave Vincent two more instructions. He hurriedly put 120 units of mana into the flame control inscription and gained significant control over the fire around and inside the cauldron.

He easily split the fire in the lower section of the cauldron into twelve equal parts. He was sweating, making the onlooker think that even if Vincent was born to do this, it might not be easy for him to succeed in a single try.

Alex smiled. Yes, alchemy wasn't easy. If someone succeeded in a single attempt without finding it hard, wouldn't there be many alchemists and not just a million or so. He thought that Vincent might fail his first attempt.

"Now what?" Vincent asked.

[Use five parts of fire to melt ingredient number 4, three to melt ingredient number 1, three to melt ingredient number 2, and two to melt ingredient number 3.]

The alchemy assistance program told him how much fire he needed to pour on the ingredients to make them reach their melting point!

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Monthly Goals: 13/60 Chapters!