There were certain properties in each of the toxic materials. Their properties were related to the very nature of essence, and being able to alter the essence directly meant that it would, by definition, be dangerous to anything with essence in it. The properties were still not yet completely understood by the scientists, but they had left a sizeable amount of samples left. Eo was giddy with this knowledge, and decided that he would to some laboratory experiments after he finished reading.
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Four hours later, Eo put down the last sheets of paper. He was inundated with the techniques and direction the researchers had in their study of essenciology. He did find a few inefficiencies, and was motivated to fix them all.
He also saw why it took the researchers several years and a lot of manpower to get that far. There were countless failures, and the obtaining of the raw materials took far too long and some even expired, requiring new samples to be brought back in. When the facility was founded, the researchers were basically throwing anything and everything they could to seek substances that affected essence. They were going in blind, with no idea of the volatility that would be needed nor the amount to be able to determine whether or not it fundamentally affected essence. If anything, the scientists were forced to flee when they had all their materials and procedures—right in the middle of their golden years of experimentation.
Eo had also read upon all the ways they tried to physically isolate the essence components, and looking back in retrospect, his experiments with the centrifuge looked childish. He shouldn't be wasting time doing things others had already done. He had to step in and actually finish these people's work.
There were no outlines or templates explaining how the unfinished experiments should be conducted, but Eo quickly got a feel for how they were done from the sheer amount of previous experiments he had read. He also saw the general trend in the change of their experimental procedures and direction, and decided to follow it.
Over the next few couple of days Reya was running all over the facility constantly grabbing new materials and giving it to Eo. Eo was still cart-ridden, so he just synthesized test-tube tongs and stuck them on the chains, and then manipulated them with his tangiform. Reya was still curious about what Eo did that made his chains move around as easily as his own limbs.
"Eo, you promised me to tell me how you did that after we 'get out of here'."
"We're still in the Dewspin Peninsula, so it's still a trade secret!"
Eo finished the last of the experiments right after the one-week mark. He had gone through half of his "vacation". He summarized all of his findings on a piece of paper.
After staring at the numbers for a bit, there was a certain realization he had. There were some interesting patterns in the numbers, and there seemed to be five distinct base values. Other factors such as age and gender and whatnot altered it, but because of the equation Eo derived he was able to get rid of those variables. In other words, Octessence was made up of only five different substances.
This greatly shocked Eo, as essence was supposed to fall into eight categories. How could something with eight categories have only five different things in them? Eo had theorized earlier that it was nine different components, with one for each element plus tangiform.
The only logical explanation Eo could think of for this was because each of the five components were universal in each element. None were isolated, and all were required to make each affinity work.
Eo formed essence around his hand and began playing with it. He started thinking about how it functioned, and about how it was commanded. He thought about how the energy system took from the body, but also gave the body energy.
Eo started visualizing.
Acting upon his whims, he tried commanding his own essence to separate itself. Of course, it didn't do anything, as Eo didn't have any clue of what essence was really made out of. Eo theorized that if he had the mentally correct picture, the essence would actually sort itself to his will.
The more Eo thought about it, the more it made sense. Essence followed the user's will, whether logically, emotionally, both, or neither. The only requirement for it to actually execute the user's will was whether or not the request was possible. If it was, it would happen. Otherwise, it couldn't.
So the remainder of the "vacation" was spent on him furiously thinking and pulling out the essence in different forms, with the hopes that it would work.
And it did.