Ian had two modes of navigating the item creation space, from a first-person perspective and from a third-person perspective. He could walk, fly, and transport to any location within the space.
From his first-person view, he zoomed out of the item creation space and panned around the rows and towers of floating plants. If he could physically manifest all the plants into in the otherworld or the real world, he would likely become the richest man in the country. Unfortunately, the plants were simply there, filling the space with fragrance and unusual array of manifestation.
Although the plants weren’t real, Ian learned a lot from studying them with their manifested traits. The sunmane plant in one row had six golden strands of mana floating in space. In the real world, it looked nothing more than a giant gerbera. In the item creation space, the strands of the mane would flare out and attack intruders when within close range. Ian studied their reactions, habits, and the movement of the hidden glyphs.
It was all preparation for the upcoming test, but simply understanding the plants’ properties and glyphs wasn't enough. The bare minimum to pass any alchemy exam was to create a a proper spiritual pill. From what he knew, it was possible to create a pill through apothecary. Unlike alchemist, apothecary didn't need magic to create a pill, but a good teacher. He didn’t have a teacher, but he had a sharp nose and grafting ability.
Back inside the unregulated realm, Ian sectioned the D-rank sheragon lily and lincour mint into little pieces. The two plants were key components of the dynami pill, one of the most common pills used to enhance physical strength. He picked the parts with the greatest concentration of mana and spiritual node. Then, he grinded them together with a mortar and pestle, formed the pill into the shape of a round pill, and set them aside to dry.
In the meanwhile, he grafted together more plants. Grafting success rate wasn’t high, but with unrestricted access into the Otherworld, it was simpler for him to experiment as long as he was on alert against the Desmond. After a few hours, Ian checked the dynami pills. The pills had dried up and reduced in size, but none of the pills display any sign of spiritual aura. He was missing something, but he wasn't sure what. Was it the ingredients? The technique? Or his lack of understanding?
When Ian returned to the real world, he received a message from B39.
B39: [So, you want to join the Orcon alchemy union?]
Ian just wanted the database, but he responded with a yes. B39 didn’t respond back until later in the evening.
B39: [Buck said you might have an ability to find spiritual herbs. That is impressive and all, but alchemists need a different set of abilities. You’re not going to be able to continue scouting if you want to train as an alchemist.]
Ian hesitated to respond. It sounded like B39 was advising Maddox on his approach to specialize in alchemy, but B39 was actually prodding Maddox about his ability. Scouting and alchemy's approach to enhance their abilities were different. A scout needed to understand the habitats of a spiritual plants. Alchemists needed to understand not only plants, but minerals and the elementals needed to create a spiritual item.
Maddox: [My collaborator is the scout. I have been studying alchemy for some time, but need more information to narrow down the right pathway as an alchemist.]
B39: [So knowledge is your main approach?]
Maddox: [Yes.]
Public forum topics provided all sorts of training methods and abilities to focus on to become a high-ranking alchemist. Some people suggested focusing on purification, some suggested transmutation, and some suggested fusion magic. There were also people who suggested focusing on knowledge, the fundamental of many magical arts, including alchemy. Although it was possible to be geniuses in a battle oriented magic without knowledge, it was almost impossible to become an alchemist without high intelligence. Forum members joked about requiring high intelligence to master alchemy, and although there were exceptions, many alchemists have high IQ.
B39: [You believe you're capable of remembering the thousands spiritual plants and minerals in the world?]
Maddox: [Yes.]
B39: [I hope you can back that up.]
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Maddox: [I can.]
Ian didn’t do well in school and testing settings because he lacked the ability to retain and recall information quickly. One of the reasons he wrote so many notes and drew detailed information was to compensate for it. With the item creation space, Ian had more confidence to make it through the test.
B39: [All right then. If you send me one of your pill, I'll give you a position to test at the next Halland City exam.]
****
A skinny man with sharp eyes and jugular cheeks measured a powdery white substance onto a wax paper sheet on a metal scale. The metal scale was a luxury item that he had spent months acquiring from the real world. For a wanted man like Warrick Desmond, it was safer for him to stay inside the otherworld realm than to be in the real world.
The scale tipped every slightly as the powdery substance sprinkled over the plate. When the scale evened out, Warrick lifted the wax paper in a u shape just narrow enough to sit on top of the opening of a small vial. The murky liquid in the small vial bubbled from the reaction. Once cooled, Warrick scooped the paste into a pill presser and pressed the handle. The fully formed tablet was indistinguishable from a round tablet, a common painkiller. Each batch could produce dozens of tablets, but only one could be deemed successful.
Warrick casted a purification spell, removing as many impurifies as possible. Sheragon lily and lincour mint had over a thousand chemical compound, but with his ability, he was able to remove all the unnecessary compounds and elements. All that remain was to transmute the remaining chemicals into C13H18O2.
After twenty hours of drying time, one of the pills produced a slight green glow. Warrick carefully stabilized his skinny arm, taking extra care with the tweezer to move the green glowing pill in a bottle labeled dynami. With dynami, the physical strength of a user for as much as 25%. Warrick’s pill was special. It was effective in the real world, slightly better than steroids and untraceable. There wasn’t any green glow in the real world and the substances detected were simply ibrufopen. Clients paid as much as $100,000 for a single pill. Many of Warrick’s clients were athletes, willing to pay thousands for improved performance while passing the required drug test.
Warrick slid the remaining failed pills into another bottle, labeled vavi. Vavi caused many harmful side effects including hallucination and cardiac arrest. It was used in the beginning for assassination jobs. But something unexpected happened five years ago. The person they had attempted to kill survived the assassination attempt and awakened a geist.
Warrick’s brother, Nolan, always the one to think about profit, advertised the pills as a second chance miracle pill to people at the end of paths. Warrick didn’t think it was worth it. If someone had money to buy the pill, why bother committing suicide? However, Warrick hadn’t anticipated that there were people out there, with money, willing to risk everything for a chance to become a ranker. Most of those people were suffering from terminal illness, hoping that becoming a ranker would somehow prolong their life. There wasn’t any scientific proof that it did. In fact, rankers had a higher rate of mortality than non-rankers. It didn’t matter to Warrick, Nolan’s method was simply another means to acquire more funding for his experiment and equipment. The underground “suicide pill” was sold for $10,000.
As Warrick cleaned and stored away his equipment, he heard a loud crackling boom to from the main log building. The boom was likely his brother beating one of new recruits out of enjoyment. Warrick walked out of his log cabin and into the main cabin to check on the commotion. Nolan was still enraged as he punched a senior member of the family as a punching bag. The member barely had the strength to move as blood dripped from his broken nose down to loosened teeth, barely hanging onto the nerves.
“What’s going on?” Warrick asked. Nolan was a sadist, so for him to be angry was unusual.
“This pipsqueak went through my stuff!” Nolan returned to his quarter just in time to find the member looking through his stuff.
“Did he take anything?”
Nolan hadn’t bothered to check. “I don’t think so.”
Warrick ordered the guards to put the traitor into the cage while they investigated. However, as soon as they were about to take him away, the traitor pushed them away and dropped to the floor. Warrick quickly checked the pulse of the traitor.
"It looks like he internally damaged his own organs," Warrick said. Not many people used the method to commit suicide unless than they trained to. He quickly checked the body to see if there was anything unusual. With nothing found, he stood up and looked at Nolan. “How many bottles of medicine do you have?”
“How would I know?’ Nolan wasn’t one to double check things through, which annoyed Warrick.
Warrick looked through the medicine vault. There were seven bottles left. “How many did you sell?”
“Just two.”
“What happened to the other two?”
“You think that pigspeak stole from us?” Nolan grumbled.
If he had been stealing from the beginning, it would be difficult to know how many were stolen as it was also easy to switch them out with regular pills.
“We need to find out where he sold the pills.” Warrick had instructed Nolan to sell the pills overseas. They wanted nothing to trace back to them. However, if the traitor was selling the pills within the country, the authority could narrow it down to them. It didn’t matter as they were already considered wanted criminals, but the last thing Warrick wanted was for the authorities to trace the existence of his pills and discover his geist’s ability.