Chapter 53 First Attempt

First Attempt

[Ace POV],

After some deliberation, I decided to start with the basic health pill.

I decided to start with the basic health pill because I am a close combat fighter and the only thing I use my mana for right now is to light a flame or infuse it into the twin blade to coat it with flames.

It would have been a different story if I could cast some spells or use my mana to attack without the use of external aid.

While I was thinking about these things, I carefully placed and organized the herbs I would use to make the basic health pill.

I also wonder how many attempts I would need to make before I could successfully make a pill as I stare at the herb stalks in front of me.

What I do know is that some of these herbs will be wasted before I can successfully make one.

Fortunately, I bought a lot.

Moving closer to the cauldron, I circulated the mana in my body to my left hand, coating my entire hand in fire, but I was unharmed.

I touched the bottom of the cauldron hovering in front of me with the hand now covered in blue flames, and the entire cauldron immediately began to emit light from its body.

I took a quick look at the cauldron and noticed that it was not the cauldron that was emitting the light, but rather tiny vine-like lines that were densely scattered around the body of the cauldron.

I only just noticed these lines.

When I initially observed it, I did not notice it on the cauldron's body.

Perhaps it was because I didn't pay enough attention.

But, even though the cauldron was emitting light at the time, I didn't have time to observe further because I noticed that the moment my flame-coated hand came into contact with the cauldron and it began emitting light, I could feel the mana in me draining.

Even though the process was slow, I could still feel it.

I might have to reconsider making the mana pills sooner than I had originally planned.

Without further ado, I began placing the herbs in the cauldron in the order specified in the Basic health pill recipe.

My cauldron was not particularly large, so I could still see what was happening inside when I added the herbs.

When the first herb, called Rain moss which resembled a leaf, was placed in the cauldron, it immediately made a strange sound when it came into contact with the inside of the heating cauldron as I watched the rain moss slowly turn into powder.

When the specified time had reached according to the recipe, I added the following herb without thinking or looking inside the cauldron too much.

I repeated this process a few times more, following the recipe's instructions.

At this point, the entire garage was filled with various herb fragrances, and the inside of the cauldron was filled with a powdery and muddy substance.

When the last herb was placed in the cauldron, I retreated the hand that had been used to place the herbs and circulated the mana in my body to it, coating it with blue flames just like my other hand.

After that, I retreated the other hand that was under the cauldron and brought both hands to the cauldron's side.

Each hand is on one side of the cauldron.

Even though my hands were not in contact with the cauldron, the cauldron was responding to the mana around my hand and was heating itself.

This aided my progress in not disturbing the pill.

When this was done, I attempted to use a technique used in forming the pill and the shape of the pill.

The name of the technique is relatively straightforward.

It's known as the pill-forming technique.

Simple, but because it was my first attempt, I was unable to succeed on the first try and only succeeded on the third try.

But when I tried it on the processed herbs in the cauldron, it exploded and the powdery and muddy substance blew up into black smoke.

When I saw this, I realized I had failed my first attempt at creating something with Alchemy, so I stopped what I was doing and sat back on the ground panting.

I didn't start to feel the effects of my mana being sapped until I stopped concentrating on making pills.

Though my mana was not completely depleted and was only a part of it, it was still exhausting, especially since I had to focus my attention on making the pill, only for it to fail.

There are several reasons why I was unable to create a pill.

Standing at the top is because of my lack of familiarity and experience with alchemy and pill-making.

After all, this is my first attempt at making a pill.

It would be a surprise if I could make one on my first attempt.

Another factor contributing to my failure is my lack of mana control.

My mana control is trash at best and garbage at worst.

To put it mildly, my command of mana is lacking.

I'm not sure what level I should be at in controlling mana effectively before I'm qualified or barely qualified.

All I know is that my mana control is poor, even for someone like me who knows nothing about it.

And it's not surprising that I have this level of mana control.

After all, it's only been 'two days' since I awoke.

There's also the part about how I process the herbs.

Perhaps the concoction did not blow up at first because of the 12% success rate increase provided by the magical steel cauldron.

There were other reasons for my failure, but they were not as impactful as these three.

As I pondered these thoughts, I waited for my mana to recover while taking a short break.

I only stood back up when I was ready to try again.

After that, I kept trying to make a pill.

The second attempt.... failed.

The third attempt..... failed.

The fourth attempt.....failed.

...

....

..

Even after experiencing failure after failure, I continued to try.

This was with gains.

Even though I failed in the end, I was clearly improving as my familiarity with the process of making the basic health pill grew.

Apart from resting to recover my mana, I continued to try to make a pill as the sounds of herbs blowing up filled the garage in the middle of the night.