Abel stood in front of a white villa. He looked at the familiar street in front of him. This street was very similar to the Triumph Boulevard in Bakong City. Actually, the designer of Triumph Boulevard copied the design of the Lambe Road.
No wonder Loraine liked the Triumph Boulevard. She always talked about how that place looked like her hometown. While standing here at the Lambe Road, Abel also felt like he was back in Bakong City.
Abel's villa was about the same place as the mansion near Triumph Boulevard. Maybe Grand Duke Edwina told him to go there on purpose. Whether or not that was the case, he was very satisfied with this arrangement.
"Greetings, Master Bennet, I'm your Butler, Brewer!" A middle-aged elf in a black gown stood in front of the steps of the door and said with a bow, the four elf servants standing behind him also bow with him.
"Brewer, this Black Wind, a dear companion mine," Abel slightly moved away, and Black Wind protruded its head behind him. With a curious glance at Brewer, it nodded its head as though greeting Brewer. Black Wind's mouth contained a yellow middle-level magic stone, which was an electric middle-level magic stone. After listening to Carrie's advice, he decided to use the stone to replenish Black Wind's energy.
Brewer was startled by Black Wind's huge body, but his good manners told him to remain calm. As Black Wind nodded its head at him, he also nodded back to it.
"Can you take me to tour around this area, Brewer?" Abel requested. He knew that everything here was arranged by Duke Edwina. That being said, he didn't have to do much to keep everything in place around here. Since Brewer was a real butler, he could do a good job organizing everything by himself.
"Yes, master, please follow me!" Brewer straightened up. Since Abel recognized him as his own butler, Brewer immediately referred to Abel as his own master. After signaling the servants to step down, he took Abel to look around the elven-style villa.
Brewer said as he showed Abel around, "All the flowers and plants in this yard were transplanted from the gardens in the Grand Duke's House. As you can see here, even the fish in this pool were delivered from the Lake in the Inner City!".
Brewer led Abel into the door of the villa. They saw a white stone avenue with exotic green plants on both sides, and a small pond with gold and silverfish swimming inside.
Brewer was a professional butler. His family has been a butler for generations. He had just lost his job because of an accident with his former master's family. After that, Brewer was hired by Grand Duke to manage the villa.
Brewer was not sure about what his new master would be like. All he knew was that even the Grand Duke helped Abel to move in. Also, the great druids were helping overnight to move in a large number of precious flowers and trees to this villa.
Brewer thought that the Grand Duke was trying to build herself a new villa, yet, all of this was given to a young elf, whose name he has never even heard of before. Brewer came from a line of butlers, so something like this just shouldn't happen. So far, after spending some time with Abel, he could tell that Abel was a noble elf. Apart from that, he didn't know much else about him.
Abel followed the Butler Brewer in the new villa. He knew all the spots here. The decoration here was almost a replica of the courtyard where he lived with Grand Duke Edwina, with the ultimate decoration and luxurious ornaments. Everything was decorated in elf style.
After walking around the main building, Abel said, "Okay, Brewer. Here's how I'm going to put up securities in this building. During the day, I'll make it so that anyone can come in, but at night, I will arrange a defensive circle to separate the main building from the outside."
Brewer replied as he pointed at the tiles around the main building, "But Sir, this main building already has a defensive circle. The main control array is in your bedroom. The defensive circle is hidden around the main building."
"Oh," Abel sighed, "Well, that's very thoughtful; whoever designed this building."
For Brewer, it was the first time that he had seen a magic circle like the one in this building. (he wasn't going to tell that to Abel, obviously) The magic circle around the m building was not an ordinary one. Something like it could only be arranged by several powerful great druids or wizards. For regular elves, it's pretty much near impossible to breakthrough
After Brewer stepped down, Abel came to the hall. The long wooden table in the middle of the hall was made of a hard iron cloud timber, which was normally used to make alchemy tables. That being said, it was strange to see it being used as a regular table.
Abel placed the book with sheepskin cover that he received from Lorraine on the long wooden table and took out a set of ordinary alchemy tools. He needed to use the "soul enhancing potion" to quickly master these recipes. Only by mastering a few more recipes, could he be promoted to become an intermediate alchemist.
The materials for 'skin lotion' and 'conditioner' were already available to Abel. In fact, he has already bought enough to make thirty of each potion, which was just enough to let him master making them.
Not the "beauty potion," though. Since the material he needed to make it was quite rare, he had to wait for the right opportunity to actually brew it.
So far, the only recipes Abel knew were mostly for women's beauty care. He learned them from Loraine. He didn't really care, though, as long as he could keep making them improve his alchemy skills.
Since Abel was also training to become a wizard, he spent most of his time practicing spells. If he didn't keep his balance right, he would be spending too much time on alchemy instead of on his wizard training
Fortunately, Abel had a "soul enhancing potion," which could him learn a lot faster than he normally could. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of soul enhancing potions left. After bringing them back from the dark world, Abel had already used one bottle on White Cloud, which meant that were six bottles left.
It made a lot of sense that Abel would want to keep his soul enhancing potion. After all, the soul enhancing potion could not only strengthen one's power of the Will; it could also help to boost his thinking process in a short period of time.
If there was something difficult that Abel wanted to learn, like crafting a certain potion, for example, he could make a lot of progress by drinking the soul enhancing potion. After consuming it, his brain would be fired up so much that it could actually create a super-realistic mental simulation, which he could use to practice acquiring the skills through his own imagination. As precious as this ability was, he had to save as much soul enhancing potions as he could to use them at the right time.
Now was the right time. After drinking one bottle of the soul, enhancing potion, Abel's brain started to remember things at full speed. Just by flipping the pages of a book, Abel already remembered all the contents in it.
Just by imagining it, Abel could see an alchemy table inside his own mind. On the alchemy table, there was a full set of alchemy equipment. There was also an imaginary person standing in front of the table.
He could also see the ingredients of the three potions he wanted to learn. As the imaginary man started practicing some of the common techniques used in alchemy, such as "rapid ablation," "precise filtration," "refinement," "purification by distillation," "accelerated corruption," 'uniform calcination,' and 'fast fermentation,' Abel could start "seeing" the materials to change their shape. While the final stage, the "sublimation" process, would sometimes fail, the rate of success would always increase.
Abel started to understand more and more about the alchemy as he was continuously forging using the three recipes. However, it consumed a lot of energy he gained from the soul enhancing potion, and halfway through the forging progress, the effect of one bottle of "Soul Elixir" had been used up. When that happened, he went from being able to pick up everything in an instance, to being confused about everything.
As Abel moved his hand, another soul enhancing potion appeared in his hand, he drank it without hesitation, The virtual figure his brain started to fuse again, and the basic alchemy recipe in Abel's brain began to shine, and the light became more and more abundant. When the light covered up the whole basic alchemy recipe, the basic alchemy recipe turned into dark gold color.
If Abel didn't have any intermediate alchemy recipe with him, he could only become a semi-intermediate alchemist. That being said, he had to upgrade his basic recipes first, if he wanted to achieve his full potential. Since Loraine knew how fast Abel could learn, the sheepskin book she gave him was already in the intermediate rank.