Reaching for the Stars

Chapter Twenty-Four

During the next few days my talents seemed to halt, like I had finally found my place, well that was at least what everyone else thought, the truth was I didn't spend too much of my time during the night practicing the intermediate potions, instead I worked on increasing my pill refining skills.

The basics I had learned for herbalism, helped me understand the process a lot, allowing me to understand things I thought I was doing right were actually horribly wrong, but what helped the most was Professor Kresmir's teachings on keeping the ingredients and subsequent products that the ingredients were used for pure. It took me three days, during which I had little to no struggle during my herbalism classes, the potions seemed rudimentary to me, it was those three nights that I spent in the spatial world, that changed into almost a month's time that my skills really flourished.

I had thought maybe I was an abysmal herbalist after my experience in the woods, but it turns out I was only misunderstanding the basics, once I had gotten a grasp on that, I excelled, not just in potions, but I also made great strides in pill refining. It was very different to potion brewing, as I mostly only used the cauldron, and the Premium-Grade Dragon Coal that Nero had given me, it just took the slightest touch of spiritual energy and it would burn for hours, so much better than exhausting my energy trying to keep a flame at the same heat for hours.

Pill refining very much relied on extracting the essence of ingredients rather than most of the ingredients themselves, this liquid coalesced into a swirling mass as I added it, and I had to refine it into a ball with spiritual energy alone, forcing the ball smaller and smaller until it was only the size of a pea, though it usually had a specific color and even retained a slight glow for hours after being made.

What frustrated me the most was I had practiced with so many pill formulas and only had such a small amount of pills to show for it, they were of the highest purity, but it took so much effort I wasn't sure if it was truly worth it. Potion brewing could make multiple potions at once if you had large enough equipment, but it was only until I came across a small book that had hidden itself on the bookshelf that I realized my errors.

During the pill refining process once I had refined the pill to its smallest possible form, I was to roughly expand my hands outwards, in a motion that one would think would tear the pill to pieces, and while it sort of did, it also didn't, because the pill then expanded into a string of pills, roughly ten to twelve pills were in a string, called that way for the small whisp of spiritual energy linking them together, though once put into a container after a few hours the pills would absorb the remaining whisps of spiritual energy and unlink from each other.

All the previous pills that I had made, were too concentrated in their single whole form, strong enough to most likely kill rather than heal, after a few hours, once the glow faded, the pills could no longer be made into a string, resulting in me directly having to throw these pills out. Pill containers were different then potion bottles, while potion bottle were usually made with normal glass if they were cheap, and moon blessed crystal if they were of Premium-Grade. Pill bottles were made of either cheap clay, so the books said, Nero had given me no such bottles, or moon blessed white quartz, which is all I had.

Potion bottles were translucent and usually contained a glass stopper sealed with wax, whereas pill bottles were opaque and usually only had a stopper lid placed on top, enough to keep out any insects and possible liquid contamination with a slight rim that the lid hugged on both sides, but not enough to be airtight, as unlike with potions, pills would not evaporate at all.

The effect of pills compared to potions was easily five to one, a beginner level pill could heal just as well as an advanced potion, if not better. Which is why I intended to learn the art of pill refining as quickly as I could, of course pill refining went hand in hand with potion brewing, whereas most students couldn't brew a potion after one demonstration unless they tried at least a dozen times if not more, I merely needed to know the properties of the ingredients and the recipe, in truth I didn't even really need a demonstration, I could usually brew a potion after one to two tries with a demonstration, four to five tries without one, and then only one or two times after that to brew one of perfect purity.