“How about this?” Nina said, continuing our conversation from earlier. “I promise to not use [Lie Detection] on you, and you promise to not lie to me.”

“Sure, sure,” I said, not really paying attention. My eyes were locked on my opened notebook, and my thoughts were focused on the experiment. I would have to keep the organic structure locked firmly inside my mind during the entirety of the experiment.

“Pinky promise,” Nina demanded from outside my field of vision.

“Sure,” I held an outstretched pinky in the direction of Nina’s voice.

She held my pinky in her own and said, “I promise to never use [Lie Detection] on Thale Feldrast for as long as I live…”

“Mm hmm,” I said while clumsily turning the pages of my notebook with one hand.

“And…?”

“Oh, right,” I turned my eyes away from the notebook for a moment, saying, “I promise to never lie to Nina Koravin.” I hoped that wasn’t binding in some way. You never knew how magic would manifest in Ferrum. “Is that good enough?”

“Yep!” Nina smiled.

“Good,” I lightly placed my notebook on the seat of a nearby chair. “Now, Nina. Please bring me the scale, water, and charcoal.”

“Okay!”

While my assistant retrieved those three things, I brought two glass beakers from the pile of equipment that had been set aside on the wooden table. Once Nina had placed the large brass scale upon the ground, I started my measurements.

In transmutation terms, I would be doing a four-point reaction. With the books I had available, it was the most complicated transmutation circle I knew how to make. Usually, when using transmutation magic, at least one of the points on the reaction would determine the product’s shape or size. I realized a few years ago, however, that this wasn’t necessary. If all the necessary elements were present in a pure form, you could use every point on the circle to denote an element you wanted to work with.

The elements I was working with were marked on the four points of the Transmutation circle. They were Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, and Oxygen.

I dumped two beakers full of purified water into the flask. A moment later, I dumped a beaker filled with pure elemental carbon into the water and ignited a spark of Hellfire just under the flask. Considering the vow of non-violence I had imposed upon myself, that was the greatest use of Hellfire I could have at the time.

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The water soon started to boil, and I began stirring the murky mixture inside of the flask with a glass rod. The plan was for Carbon to be derived from the charcoal, Hydrogen and Oxygen to be derived from the water through a separately maintained hydrolysis reaction, and Nitrogen to be derived directly from the air. Natural air was 78% Nitrogen, after all.

“Do you remember the rule for the experiments?” I asked.

“Yes. If you start to smell almonds, run!” Nina said, mimicking the emphasis I had placed on my words the first time I had told her.

At its core, this new form of transmutation magic I was creating was the forced connection of atoms. I was basically just slamming atoms against one another and hoping it would create the compound I wanted. A major downside of this was that, if I lost focus for a moment, I could accidentally mix Carbon and Nitrogen together in great quantities, creating Cyanide gas.

“Make sure you follow that rule,” I said. “Especially today.”

A worried look colored Nina’s expression, indicating that I had instilled the correct amount of fear within her.

I placed one hand on each of the small metal disks. This process placed my hand within the outer shell of the flame. If not for my fire resistance, my hand would have received third-degree burns.

I held the structural diagram for the compound I wished to create as I funneled mana into the two transmutation circles. The indentation in the iron disks began to glow as they were powered by my flowing mana. One circle gave me command over the four elements contained within the flask, and the other reduced the water into its constituent Hydrogen and Oxygen elements.

Mentally, the process of transmutation was an inverted version of healing magic, sorcery, or the use of [Hellfire]. The arcane circle inscribed on the iron disc was the Initiation, and the formula I held within my mind was the Expression. My mana had to move in a cycle, moving from the discs to my core and back to the burbling clump of charcoal that the transmutation was acting upon. It was a complicated process that was only possible due to years of practice.

Over the next three minutes, I continued to send my mana into the reaction while maintaining the structural formula of the end product in my mind. I only stopped the reaction once the mixture within the flask had transformed from a liquid into a mud-like slurry. After giving the mixture a few minutes to cool down, I strained it through a filter to remove any liquids.

When everything was said and done, I was left with a black powder-like substance sitting within a snuff box. By nature of the reaction, I could not remove all of the charcoal. If the reaction had worked at 100% efficiency, the powder would be pure white. As it was, I wasn’t particularly worried. Charcoal was safe to ingest. Though the excess Carbon would give the product a sickly-sweet flavor, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Other than that, the reaction had gone exactly as I had planned. I couldn’t be sure yet, but I was pretty sure that I had been successful. A broad smile appeared on my face as I looked down at my completed product.

“Eureka! I’ve done it!” I shouted as I threw my arms up in the air victoriously.

A part of me wanted to cry. Many years of research had finally bore fruit. I had brought a new school of magic into Ferrum and taken the first step on my journey.

“Eureka!” Nina said, unsure of what the word meant.

This first drug I had created would not necessarily make Ferrum a better place. It was not a painkiller or an antibiotic. No, it was a drug that I knew would be very profitable for myself and any merchant who was fortunate enough to work with me. It was a drug that I knew any scholar would pay out of the nose for.

On Earth, it was called Adderall.