Searching through the book Shelvs for anything interesting Alex spotted a few books that interested him. Alchemical ingredients vol 1-5,the standard alchemy guide vol 1-3, unorthodox alchemy vol 1, the book of living alchemy, and intermediate uses of basic runic.
The first one that caught his attention was living alchemy, so he grabed all the books relayed to alchemy he could find. And intermediate users of basic runic was just something interesting. Starting with the alchemical ingredients, having several difrent minds and completely perfect memory helped in memorising all the books in half an hour.
They where all just collections on every difrent ingredient for alchemy, where to find them or how to make them, and what they did. They included ingredients from every contenent for body forging to foundation building and the equivalent levels in body cultivation.
Next was the standard alchemy guides, which took 10 minutes total, they where mostly the names of famous alchemists and how they found out they useing diffrent flames caused diffrent results. The guides main topic was how to actually do alchemy.
Unorthodox alchemy was where things started getting interesting, all the previous books where about useimg difrmt plants, minerals, and occasionaly parts of beast to create pills or potions. The 10 minute read of unorthodox alchemy more heavily leaned into useing difremt beats and even some mentions of people for alchemy. It was very interesting, and while Alex wasent going to start kidnapping random people to use to make some drugs, he might if they just so happend to be some bandits that attacked him if that happend again in the future.
Now on the the thing that started this small fixation, The book of living alchemy. Over the 40 minute read it detailed how to put 'conciousness' into ingredients to increase the quality of products, how to use live materials for various diffrent creations, how to make 'medicine people' which where effectively living pills, how to make a living cauldron and their various uses, and more. This gave him a metric ton of ideas to use for statuses, traits and techniques.
In the last 30 minutes he read intermediate uses of basic runic which detailed how to add the basic runic language to things for various effects, such as talismans, real formations, forging, and more. It also gave him some ideas for new techniques.
Returning the books and heading back to his room Alex was already thinking of ways to use his new information. Once in his room he drew a circle om the floor, added a couple drops of blood, said some things in runic, and summoned a demon. "Who are you, who has summoned me, the grea-"
"Skip dialogue. Seal, bind, silence."
Before the demon could respond chains spawned from the circle before wrapping around it and binding it in place, stopping it from returning to its own realm, speaking, moving or useing qi. Walking up the the demon Alex placed his hand on its chest and began to circulate qi through its body, forming circuit's. Standing back up he made a hand sign to active the circuits the demons face twisted into a silent scream as its body was reshaped, its heart becoming the core, its bones the frame. It's eyes, ears, teeth, tongue, hair and nails being destroyed. It's brain becoming the controller, it's flesh becoming the foundation, and it's meridians being forcefully moved to suite its new purpose.
Infront of Alex now was a living furnace, it's memories and thoughts wiped clean, and it's entire body remade for the sole purpose of refining various materials. He had no problem with doing this as demons where inherently evil, not in a generalising way, demons where normal people who died and had comited so much evil they where brought back to life by hell in return for causing more havoc.
They stop being evil, they instantly die. They where literally living evil. So turning one into a living piece of equpment wayed on alexs conscious as much as killing those bandits.
"Eh, it's OK. But it could be better. Oh, I have an idea, what if I used this furnace to refine the next demon into a furnace? Sounds fun."
Picking up the furnace Alex moved it to the side before dropping some blood onto the circle to summon another demon. Repeating the prosess of binding it, this time placing it into the furnace. The particular furnace he made was a single use version, as he didn't intend to use it at all, just experiment.
'Turning on' the furnace by pumping it full of qi, alexs qi mixed with the furnaces vitality to make 'blood flames' which began to burn away all the unnecessary parts of the demon, before 'melting' everything but the brain and heart.
Separating the liquid slush of flesh and bone from the heart, brain, and phisical manifestations of the meridians, Alex began to fuse the hear and meridians, useing his mandala bridge building guide to conect the meridians. This refined 'heart' woukd act at the core of the furnace, absorbing ambient qi and creating the blood flame. Next was the brain, he wiped it clean of all its memories and personality, before adding a drop of his blood into the mix.
Reshaping the brain he effectively made it a small supercomputer with the potential to grow, while also connecting it to him with his blood. Once thise where done he went to the flesh slush.
The first furnace was ugly he this one wouldn't use only flesh to from the body of the furnace, cutting off a small piece of flesh, which regrow before the first piece entered the cauldron, he fused it with the slush and reshaped it all tk create the body of the furnace, it was a bone white and about rhe size of large pot. He also formed various rune patterns on the inside of the furnace, for things like control, insulation, cleaning, protection, durabilty, and more. Finaly useing his own meridians as refrance he expanded the space inside, to about the size of a family car. He then created two seprate spaces, one for storing works in progress, and one for analizing new materials.
He then added the heart and brain to the body, compleating his living furnace. Once he finished this prosess the first furnace began to crumble and vanish, all its vitality entering the new furnace as its starter boost. Alex also added a decent portion of his vitality to make it as high rank as possable.
Once this entire prosess was finnaly done he got a notification from his system.
[Congratulations host for creating the [living cauldron: soul eater(bonded)] this item is bonded to the host and can be stored om their body, it will grow while stored in hosts body. Host will gain buffs based when it is inside their body. It is recommended host uses the technique [chrysalis] after storing the cauldron inside their body once the cauldron has refined 5 living creature with souls.]
"Huh, that's the first time that's happend. You've recommended that I don't do something before, like when I gained my 108 meridians, but yoy haven't recommended I go out of my way to do something before. Any reason?"
[System can not predict the full outcome of its recomeded action, but the system does know that it will result in a highly beneficial event related to hosts soul.]