”Do not worry, it does not corrode cold-iron. It does, however, do this…”
Fritz took out a long glass pipette and put it to his mouth, drawing in precisely one single drop of the compound after Makhus opened the flask for him. Then, he dropped it onto a shank of chicken meat which he had pulled out of somewhere in his many-pocketed apron. The single drop of Black Seven struck the meat and instantly began devouring it. In seconds, half a kilogram of chicken had become a puddle of black, tar-like substance. In the middle, a very slightly smaller droplet of Black Seven could be discerned, surrounded by purplish flesh.
“We think it consumes any slightly organic matter on contact in an attempt to reconstruct a draconic body. I hope that one day we may be able to use this effect to create potent cultivation pills, but for now, just ensure that any shells loaded with it are sealed properly.”
“How much do we have?”
“Besides the batch this sample is from, three more. One more batch is in progress.”
“How long?”
“Three days, give or take.”
“Try to make it two, if possible.”
“Deadline?”
“Ideally, six in the morning the day after tomorrow. A delay of a few hours is acceptable. I want you to dilute half of our reserve for my cannon and leave the rest for Zefaris.”
Fritz smiled, his eyes widening manically. With a giddy voice, he said: “Where there is a need, there is a way. Makhus, my friend, you have made the Fivefold Philter before, yes?”
The alchemist shot Zelsys a half-pleading, half-accusatory gaze, but nonetheless said: “Yes, I have.”
“Good, then we can take shifts watching over the accelerated refinement process. I shall take the first shift. In the meanwhile… You, Damlech. Come-with and bring back two batches.”
“It’s alright, I’ll just do it myself,” Zel stepped in. Half to make absolutely sure there was no incident, and half out of curiosity for what eldritch glassworks the Philosopher’s Heart was buried inside this go around.
As they walked, Zel said to Fritz: “I must admit, I did not expect you to so easily adapt to modern technology. Going by Kanbu, you were more reclusive than the Woodsman until recently.”
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“Eh, it’s all the same. Artifice advances, recedes, then advances again. We had weapons as advanced as yours, in my day, merely of a different kind - at least when it came to firearms. I cannot speak to the Fangs. It was not your country’s technological supremacy that caused things to be as they are, but the fact that technology was freely placed into the hands of the common man. Such advancements were normally kept closely guarded by the sects and the nobility, meted out only in limited forms that could not be reproduced by the peasantry.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sect, in a private chamber…
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A glyphic circle had been painted on the floor, and three further layers of white-glowing energy glyphs shone mid-air. Six pillars of black ice stood around that same perimeter. Within it, Zefaris and Victor sat across from one another. Despite still being angry at the redhead for such carelessness, there was no contesting the reality of things; the difference in the limits of her Philosopher’s Eye now and only weeks ago was as unfathomable as the depth of the Boiling Lake. It had taken her a fraction of the time it would’ve otherwise to calculate and scribe the formation that, simultaneously, strengthened Koschei’s Crow Mask and restricted its function to its confines.
Victor donned the Crow Mask. A third eye hole yawned over Victor’s forehead, only a dot of paint behind it.
In an instant, his form went limp, and he then sat back up, stiff and awkward, moving like a puppet as he raised his hands, looking at them.
“This is… An absolutely wretched sensation. Oh, I truly hate how this feels,” said a crow-like voice from beneath the mask. Then, he turned to look Zefaris in the eye; despite sharing a colour and pupil shape, the eyes under the mask weren’t Victor’s… And a third one now held a place on his forehead.
“I understand that you have questions, and I may or may not have answers, for as you know, I am not Koschei in truth, but a mere vestige, and the same goes for my knowledge of that which Koschei knew in life. We have… An incense stick or two. Twenty minutes perhaps. After that, this ritual must not be carried out until the next lunar month.”
Hundreds of questions swarmed in Zef’s head, but they had prepared specific questions ahead of time.
“I would ask you of the Three Kings’ cultivation system, the Four Circles. Our knowledge of it is woefully incomplete and myths abound.”
Wasting not a moment, Koschei’s Vestige answered: “To start with, we invented the system as a basic framework based on the observation of contemporary cultivation methods. That is why Third’s Oracles are found in our dungeons, they were meant to help steer up and coming cultivators and help them figure out their True Path. As for the system itself, where to start… I suppose the end is as good a place as any. The Fourth Circle, Opus Ad Infinitum, was so named because we at the time believed that one may well remain in that stage forever without stagnating, due to the vast breadth and depth of cultivation which it covers. It was also the final stage we willingly revealed to our population, expecting those with the aptitude and merit to learn of stages beyond it through their own ability… And because we, ourselves, never reached past it. For all I know, there might not be a Fifth or Sixth Circle. Cultivation, much like the whole of our world, is bottomless and beyond the ability of mankind to explore in full. I wholeheartedly believe that even the most advanced cultivator in human history had not reached the true apex of human ability.”
“Elaborate on the boundlessness of cultivation.”
Without a second’s hesitation, Koschei’s Vestige broke out into another diatribe.