POTION OF LIMIT BREAKING (BASIC)

Mortal tier recipe. No cultivation requirements

A rarer potion type this time, and one I don’t recommend consumption of. Limit breaking pills and potions exist throughout all stages of cultivation, even at mine, but they always come with a long-term side effect. In some cases that effect may be death, but not in this case.

Limit breaking is something every cultivator strives for but in a stable way through cultivation. These potions that temporarily force your mind, soul, body, and essence into a higher stage can either leave you crippled or damaged for periods of time. At these lower stages it will be a mere few weeks, but at mine it can be centuries in the weakened state.

Limiter removals have existed since magical herbs started appearing as some natural products already have a slight limit breaking effect, but a small 10% increase in power means nothing in grand battles and as alchemists it is our duty to refine and enhance these effects. If the limit removal has not at least doubled the strength of a person then the drug is practically a failure; people seek power with complete disregard for the backlash when it comes to these things.

All you must do is keep them on death’s door, whether they survive will be their fate.

INGREDIENTS AND RECIPE

* Seared bloodwort flowers, 40 grams – non magical plant

* Crystallised alcan seeds, 10 seeds – non magical mineral

* Volatile blood (unrefined) , 5000 ml – non magical fluid

* Worldly heart, 5 grams – natural gathering stage plant

Four more ingredients to run through. It should be noted that volatile blood is used in almost every limit breaking drug, with higher tier variants used in more advanced products.

Bloodwart is a type of mugwort that grows excessively well with blood mixed into the soil but poorly in almost every other situation. I do wonder what allowed this mutation to even be successful in the past, but I guess it just happens sometimes. Seared bloodwort is a more specialised mutated form which only grows well in climates averaging 50 C at the minimum. They are farmed at temperatures of 150 C for efficiency. They can be found in areas where incredulous quantities of yang qi have seeped into the ground, thus heating it up, and bloodshed is common. Good luck finding that naturally.

I’m going to skip over alcan seeds for now since they’re irrelevant in this recipe. Crystallised alcan is once more a mutated version of the base plant that grows on top of mineral clusters. It then takes on properties depending on the mineral it primarily absorbs, and magical ones can produce some lustrous flowers. They are often found in any mineshaft growing along the walls in copious quantities. Many consider them as extremely efficient Phyto-mining methods.

Worldly heart is a precursor to worldly body. This onion-sized bulb is a special plant that absorbs some essence of the world. I could go on a tirade of this essence’s properties but all you need to know is that it provides the ‘strength of support’. A mortal’s body cannot withstand the power behind a higher realm, and something to supplement this is required. Considering each bulb is 10 kg due to the ridiculously dense essence, you can make quite a lot of these with each one.

Worldly body is a destiny chasing stage ingredient for future reference.

Now, five whole litres of volatile blood which has yet to be refined. This is literally just a jumbled mix of blood from at minimum, 60 different creatures. Ideally you want it to be from 180 different beings, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. You also want to ensure that some blood is from each of the four main elements and then some from various secondary elements. As always, rare elements such as space and time are excluded from this. All the blood must be from non magical creatures. Gathering this will give you the unrefined version of this product.

I will describe the blood’s refinement first since it must be completed just prior to the start of the recipe. It will transform this 5 litres into a reasonable 100 ml.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Blood refinement can be done in a myriad of ways, and arguably the easiest is to just use blood runes, but mortals can’t draw that for obvious reasons. As such we’ll be using a chant aligned with certain dimensions to draw upon their power, of course this also places a burden on the user as we request this power. In any standard case it will draw away a portion of your mental power slightly greater than the power it gives to refine the blood. This is so it ends in a net positive for the dimension.

The chant is language specific unlike the one to a god, so don’t expect to understand it. Just try to get the pronunciation down. It goes as follows:

Canna droken, Kun arama des; Kun solo bas. Aga kuru san mas duul sa.

This would all be so much harder if we didn’t form a standard deal with this dimension long ago. The original chant was around two pages long.

Before starting your chant, bring the blood to a boil. Write the chant onto a piece of paper, or any burnable medium, and ignite it before dropping it into the blood. When the burning paper is fully submerged in blood you can begin chanting. It only has to be repeated thrice before completion, upon which you will feel extreme tiredness for a few seconds while the blood undergoes transformation.

While you recover from the sudden tiredness, you will see the full volume of blood float out the container and hang in mid-air for a few seconds. It will compress in its entirety, gaining a denser metallic red sheen, and finally drop back down. This new liquid is the same density at least, so a steady pair of hands can pour it into a small bottle for later use.

With that done, we can start the main recipe. Drop the piece of world’s heart into this refined blood and shake gently. Then leave it to rest, you just need to cover it in blood but there is no downside to leaving it soaked in the liquid.

The seeds of crystallised alcan do not hold any oil, instead storing a strong acid beside some nutrients to allow the future plant a way to dig roots into a mineral cluster. As long as you don’t crush or cut the seeds you’ll be fine. We just need to throw them into an oven to roast for half an hour at 250 C. It is often recommended to use some sunflower or vegetable oil to ensure a consistent roasting. Do try to realise that these cannot be eaten after roasting, it’s not like we’ve destroyed the acid in any way.

Seared bloodwart needs to be boiled like you would with any vegetable, but it comes with its own issues. Namely that the plant doesn’t burn in the presence of normal flames, let alone boil in water, this is why we need the world heart in the volatile blood. Just a tiny fragment of world essence will allow a fluid to forcefully enter and boil it. So, add 10 ml of the blood to a pot full of boiling water and stir. Now drop the bloodwart in and wait a few minutes.

The fresh stalks will turn limp near instantly as they lose a notable rigidity. With so many holes on a cellular level they have no choice but to allow any fluid inside, further breaking down the plant’s structure. After 10 minutes of boiling it will start disintegrating into a mush at which point we can finish this.

Use a fine strainer to squeeze the remaining liquid out of the bloodwart and then wash it with cold water. Add the roasted crystallised alcan seed to this mush and use an inert stone bowl to crush the two together. The strong acid will reduce the bloodwart mush to a liquid, leaving only fragments of the alcan seed. Add the remaining refined blood, which by now will have fully diffused the piece of world heart. Stir the mixture a few times and strain it.

The acid should be neutralised by now and as such any fine strainer can be used. The remaining liquid can now be bottled. You have made the product.

USAGE

A potion capable of allowing a mere mortal to temporarily reach the strength of the weakest cultivators. But not really. It lasts half an hour after drinking and as soon as it finishes you will enter a comatose state for 6 hours.

It only boosts the person’s physical strength to a stage at which they can stand on equal ground to a natural gathering stage cultivator’s Qi, meaning if they have any magical treasures…

All strength gain is magical in nature and therefore is not a multiplication of your base body, as such, how much you can lift has no impact on this potion's final effect. This flat strength increase is popular for many reasons, namely that it allows mortals to ensure their safety more often. Even if you cannot beat a real cultivator it is better than simply being slaughtered, although it comes with a more hidden cost.

It is not uncommon to see this potion be used for nefarious reasons, normally robbery. Being able to punch through bricks with your fist just makes that too easy in the end. Not to mention your body becoming impervious to ordinary cold weapons. Firearms can still do damage, but most worlds don’t have access to that technology.

This potion really just causes a lot of harm with very few benefits. In terms of limit breaking potions all the mortal tier ones are pretty rubbish. At least you can look at it this way, using this potion will only make you faint for 6 hours, so it ain’t all bad.