Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 27 - Quasi-Tempering Pill

Previously on Aethernea:

Elaru stops reminiscing about what happened to make her meet Kiel and decide to make him her soulmate. She returned to their room at Hot Pot. Kiel is still unconscious.

* * *

Elaru sat down cross-legged on the rug before taking out a pillbox from her backpack. She opened the box which contained three candy-like pills. As she picked one up, she felt a familiar warmth spread through her fingers. So this is what happened to that Feather of a Firebird I got for uncle Ixos.

Initially, she had thought that plucking a feather from a firebird would be as easy as taking candy from a baby. Yet it had given her unexpected trouble. It wasn't that finding a firebird was hard for her, it wasn't that she couldn't approach it or sneak attack it. No, the problem was quite peculiar:

A firebird didn't have any feathers.

Where normal birds would have feathers, firebird was covered with flames instead. She lost count of how many times she cursed whoever named the item as the "Feather of a Firebird".

Elaru shook her head. Misleading. Totally misleading! Then, without hesitation, she popped the pill into her mouth and swallowed it down.

As soon as the candy reached her stomach, it melted into a hot liquid. The liquid quickly passed through the walls of the stomach, seeping directly into her bloodstream.

Through her blood, it quickly spread to every nook and cranny of her body.

It was as if a flame had been lit up inside her. The warmth pulsated everywhere, heating her up. Her skin turned reddish and hot to the touch. Sweat started pouring down her forehead like a waterfall.

The warmth started burning her from inside out. This must be how a freshly roasted porkling feels like.

Searing pain assaulted her senses. She closed her eyes and took long breaths, her body posture shifted to that of meditation. Although her body ached, her face was the definition of calm, showing neither pain nor worry.

Tempering medicine was the kind of medicine she was the most familiar with. It took only a single glance for her to be able to tell that this particular pill was a quasi-tempering medicine.

Quasi-tempering medicine didn't actually temper the body with mana, but rather, changed the body in a beneficial way that would ultimately result in improved mana resistance and tolerance.

This pill tried to make the composition of one's body closer to the body of a firebird. Not only was its flesh resistant to fire, but it also had a better mana resistance and tolerance than the bodies of argel and elibu.

The firebird was always on fire, and its body consumed a lot of mana to sustain the flames. This increased consumption of mana, when compared to the consumption of argel and elibu, caused its body to excel in channeling mana.

This pill used the flame of the firebird to burn away all impurities within the body. Afterwards, it modified the cells using the flesh of a firebird as a reference.

The impure matter within the body negatively impacted the passage of mana, so removing these useless particles was desirable. It was a similar process to refining gold. Only by removing useless impurities would the gold be able to shine resplendently.

The burning pain persisted for several hours before starting to subside. By that time, Elaru was as drenched as if she had been swimming with her clothes on. She looked down at her sorry state, sighed and then proceeded to cast a cleansing.