Chrysos' house…
Beads of sweat trailed down Meiros' face as he stretched his legs upwards, completing another set of squats while holding a wooden pole carrying four iron buckets filled with water on each side.
"Fifty…." Meiros grunted as he bent down to complete another set of squats.
The water swayed as he moved, but it was later stabilized as he continued on with his exercise.
This was Chrysos' err- Gerald's idea to train Meiros. Physical strength really isn't that hard to achieve since he has hypertraining fluids, but he did give Meiros this difficult exercise not to train him physically, but mentally.
Okay, okay, training a psychic mentally is just like training a fish to swim faster. But to be fair, is the one being trained going to put up with this training regime or quit?
That depends on their patience and perseverance.
That's right.
Gerald values a person's character more than anything else.
Chrysos on the other hand, prefers reliability and obedience.
But to both of them, abilities and appearance are secondary.
..
And while Meiros trained his legs off, Chrysos was brewing potions and decided to use the jaguar's liver while he's at it.
He first worked on a Divinium Recovery Potion by using a bunch of wild elemental grass. The wild elemental grass is first coated in Shofvil Flower oil and then heated up slowly in a flat pan. Next, Rare level high tier slime essence is used to capture the Divinium.
Slimes are elemental creatures with extremely low intelligence with fairly decent speed and strength. These creatures are gelatinous liquids held together by a Divinium core holding its mass together.
How did slimes form in the first place?
Divinium takes different forms in different environments. Most of the time, Divinium is gaseous, but sometimes, it can be liquid or solid.
If Divinium accumulates enough in an area, it can turn solid or turn into a crystal. Caves are very secluded and gaseous Divinium that goes inside a cave are often trapped, leading to it turning into crystals.
Divinium crystal veins aren't rare at all to the point that you could find one if you take a casual stroll in Ironmountain. But the ones with high Divinium concentration with finer qualities are rare.
Meanwhile, liquid Divinium forms because of Divinium crystals falling from very tall heights. Even though Divinium is weightless, unaffected by air resistance, and frictionless when it comes in contact with one another, it can be affected by gravity.
Not only that, a shattered Divinium crystal can be fixed by just piecing them all together and it'll connect as if nothing happened at all.
Anyways, back to liquid Divinium..
The smaller fragments of the broken Divinium crystal will try to turn back into a gaseous form but will be restricted by its solid form, therefore making a liquid version of it.
And once it liquefies, the other fragments will melt and turn into liquid as well. That's how Divinium crystals work. If they are exposed to a liquid version of itself, it immediately melts the moment it makes contact with liquid Divinium.
Beautifully enough, a Divinium crystal is a glowing milky white crystal with geometric and sharp shapes. But despite its sharpness, Divinium crystals are actually very brittle.
So how is this connected to slimes?
Slimes aren't from Divinium. They are small balls that use a liquid body to move around and melt down insects, small animals and plants. They also consume crops, so farmers see them as pests.
They only move around all day and absorb anything with nutritional value. Or as long as it produces energy. So when slimes find a Divinium crystal vein, they will immediately try to melt it down.
Most of the time, they're undisturbed and will succeed absorbing the crystals, turning them into magical slimes. Magical slimes can move around faster and the slimy substance that they use to move will become more viscous. And if given enough time, slimes will be able to use Divinium abilities, whether it's fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, necro energy, psychic energy, and many many more.
These slimes are more valuable and the essence that they produce can be used to create potions, forge magical weapons, create energy discharging machinery, and for medical purposes.
With a wide application of uses, slime essence is a very versatile ingredient not only for Chrysos, but for other classes as well.
Chrysos poured a lot of liquid Divinium into the slime essence and extracted the jaguar's liver to add it on the slime essence. Next, he grabbed a Pricivule Mutant Fruit which is the pineapple version of the Divine Lands.
The Pricivule Mutant looks like a hybrid between a sea sponge and a pineapple. A sea sponge's appearance already looks weird. And mix that with the pineapple, you get this mutant.
No one bothered to even harvest the Pricivule because of its massive size combined with its prickly outer layer and sharp leaves. An average Pricivule is 17 inches in width, and 21 inches in height. It still retains its normal pineapple counterpart like the yellow and juicy parts and the tongue slashing juice that everyone enjoys because they're masochists.
Every Pricivule differs in shape, so cutting one is either difficult and extremely time consuming or a quick and easy slicing session.
Chrysos bought a pre sliced Pricivule so he only had to squeeze it and mix it in a small jar of water. He then added a bunch of Soursalt into the pot and blended the two using his unique ability.
Soursalt is interesting. A very acidic crystal that forms in the seashores because of Venomous Lunger Shrimps. When these shrimps battle other creatures, their venom sometimes seep out of their special glands that crystalize in the seashore. And after being exposed to salt for a month, the venom's lethality will disappear and the only thing that will remain are small, sour crystals with a tinge of the color orange. Hence the name, Soursalt.
However, Lunger Shrimps use Divinium.
So naturally, soursalt is also a bit magical. That's why it can be used for some potions to give it a quick spreading effect. Even though it isn't lethal and it doesn't damage the immune system, soursalt is still crystalized venom in the end of the day. It's just that being in the seashore for a long time weakens their spreading effect and it needs to be blended with a perfect ingredient.
Pricivule Juice.
Soursalt blended with Pricivule juice "re-awakens" its ability to quickly spread throughout the bloodstream.
And mixed with the large amount Divinium that the potion is carrying, the Divinium will spread throughout the body very quickly.
After a while, Chrysos took the boiled grass and purified it before extracting the grass's essence and dumping it into the pot of slime essence. And once he did, the gelatinous slime essence quickly lost its viscosity and became as fine as water.
Chrysos added the Soursalt Privicule mixture and blended the entire thing for six minutes.
After that, he was done.
…
…
Bam.
Chrysos placed the corked bottle of the Divinium recovery potion on the table and sat down, contemplating how to deal with it.
Just feeling the intense amount of energy stored in the bottle made Chrysos quite hesitant already. Just to improve the potion's effectiveness, he even bought a lot of strange tier potions costing over 11,520 gold coins.
Chrysos sighed. "I'm glad that I went to the dome so that I could pay for this." He raised his right hand to grab the bottle.
Examining it closely, it should be a Rare tier, Medium tier Divinium recovery potion. "Hmm… I used a mix of strange leveled ingredients with rare leveled ingredients, so this should be a potion that is 36% strange tier, and 64% rare tier."
Calculating the amount of Divinium he could currently handle, Chrysos found out that his Divinium Circle Core can handle about two drops of the potion or else, his core would explode and kill him.
He sat down on a chair and concentrated on his core.
The Divinium Circle Core is located exactly in the center of the chest.
Chrysos looked at the two drops of the Divinium recovery potion and swallowed it unhesitatingly.
Immediately, a pure and firm energy filled Chrysos' Divinium core. He focused his mind inside his core and he could visualize an endless, bright, cloudy area with streams of blue energy circulating inside.
And in the middle of this infinite space of clouds was a beautiful and blinding golden orb. Ravenously devouring the energy around it like a starved beast.
But the more it absorbed, it became stronger and sturdier.
Chrysos' will floated around his Divinium core and he "saw" numerous but familiar magic circles.
That's right, those are his spells.
Currently, he is only a will inside his own body. Formless, but he can still think and move around freely.
Something like a ghost but faster. And less spooky.
His will controlled the energy as it swirled and swirled, making his core even stronger. Even though it was only by tiny slivers, it was still an improvement at the end of the day.
"After I consume all of this energy, I might break through from the advancement stage and go straight to the creation stage." Chrysos, with his keen observation, noticed that even though his rank was advancing because of the energy, most of the energy was being used to increase his Divinium reserves.
He didn't mind it. After all, he was hunted by assassins and he had to gulp down bottles of throat slashing pricivule potions.
Pineapples were bad enough if one ate too many. But pricivules enhanced by soursalt? They are three times as painful when it comes to their juices.
It's no wonder why Chrysos' throat bled because of that much enhanced Divinium recovery pineapple juice slicing their way into his mouth and throat.
Thinking of that pain once again, Chrysos felt his scalp tingling.
So far, the times where he received the most damage was at the greenflesh beast village, drinking Divinium recovery pineapple juice, and by rearranging his entire muscular composition and formation.
Even though the evolutionary potions delivered a heavy pain throughout his body, his brain barely registered most of the pain, so it didn't impact him as much.
To think that the most memorable pain he had was because of pineapple juice.
"Ah… I absolutely cannot allow myself to be in situations with zero Divinium." Chrysos swore to himself with absolute seriousness.
He shook those distracting thoughts away and began absorbing the Divinium using his core once again.
The core was like a black hole in the middle of the unforgiving darkness of infinity. But here, it was in the middle of vitality and power.
Fwooosh-
The energy was soon swept clean.
Chrysos opened his eyes and the surroundings changed from a heavenly plane of clouds to an ordinary wooden house with the same table and bottle in front of him.
He opened the bottle and poured two drops before drinking it.
Immediately, his Divinium reserves had been replenished in an instant.
"This is only the start. The more my Divinium core gets strengthened, the more I can absorb the potion's Divinium." Taking a deep breath, Chrysos closed his eyes and returned his focus back to his core.
After plunging his will into his core, he saw the familiar white clouds and the magic circles in different colors floating around the area, illuminating those around them like stars.
Chrysos viciously absorbed the energy once again until it was dried up.
This process repeated for an hour.
It was very mundane, but the pleasure and relief that washed over Chrysos as he felt his very soul grow like a sprout in the middle of the richest soil in the world. The nutrients, the ample supply of water, the sun's glorious rays made him feel revitalized.
….
"Phew.." Meiros finished after doing 1000 squats. He sat down and felt his legs and hips that had been sore after that repeated exercise.
Wiping his sweat with a towel, Meiros spoke in his mind.. "Man, was that even training? All I felt was my legs and shoulders giving up on me as they shouted in agony."
With a sigh, he stood up with great difficulty and grabbed his bag and took out a potion to relieve the pain.
Chrysos explicitly told him not to drink a healing potion, but he did permit him using a pain reliever.
He uncorked the bottle and downed it all in one gulp.
"Pwah.." He wiped his lips and went out of his room to look for Chrysos.
But when he saw Chrysos, his master randomly threw a bottle of Divinium recovery towards him.
"Woah!" He barely caught it before turning his attention back to Chrysos. "Master, what is this?"
"A Divinium recovery potion. Use it to advance as much as you can." Chrysos spoke with a slightly happy tone because of how much he advanced.
Noticing this, Meiros said, "Master, you seem to be in a good mood."
"Of course I am." Chrysos smiled. "Check this out." Chrysos stretched out his hand and two magic circles appeared at the same time.
Meiros felt a bolt of shock pass through his chest, making him almost drop the potion in his hands.
"M- Master… you're…" Meiros couldn't believe his eyes.
He looked at the bottle in his hands and when he took a closer look and saw the sheer quality of the potion, it was no wonder….
It was no wonder that Chrysos was now half a step towards the Provectis rank.
Now at the Partial Rebirth stage with a Divinium reserve of FoF-1, Gerald could barely contain his excitement as he felt the abnormal amount of power coursing through his body and soul.
But.... he was quite far from being a real Provectis ranked alchemist.
With his money only being at 9273 gold coins, he can't go and spend any more to advance.
Thinking about his money problem, Chrysos could only pray to the Divine Ones that a company would buy his recipes.