Chapter 138: Chapter 138
When Professor Sylwel finished his demonstration and instructions, he instructed the class to begin grinding up their ingredients. Now he was watching as the students worked, while also paying attention to the ones who had offered to be assistants.
He walked around the classroom, and when he spotted a mistake, he quickly corrected it. When none of the fresh students required his immediate attention, he focused more on the assistants. He seemed to home in on a particular set of students.
"Sorry, but this isn't good enough to be an assistant," Sylwel said outright to a girl.
"But I used to help my dad with remedies…" the girl whined.
"I understand, but true alchemy doesn't allow such sloppy work."
The girl took it as if he'd slapped her in the face, and stubbornly stood her ground. "These aren't even real ingredients!"
"Well, naturally! Did you expect me to allow you to waste precious ingredients?" the professor snapped back. "I intend to build you all from the ground up; I won't tolerate any sloppy foundations in my classroom. Otherwise, when you're in your third year and your fluxroot dissolves after your addernettle and the potion batch is ruined, your only excuse will be 'sorry professor'."
The girl looked like she wanted to desperately crawl into a hole after the verbal lashing, but she just nodded. He then spent some time quickly correcting her obvious mistakes and telling her to start over.
This continued in a similar manner as he went from student to student, although after that fiasco, none of the others dared to object so blatantly. Lotte looked like she was sweating bullets, but all Lily could do was give her a reassuring smile and a nod.
When Lily finished her work and was busy cleaning her tools, Professor Sylwel made a beeline for her. He glanced at her three piles for each ingredient and even pinched one and rubbed it between his fingers before licking it.
"Excellent, you're hired. Please go help those three over there," he said and pointed to a desk at the back.
Lily was surprised by the sudden recruitment, but quickly nodded. "Yes, Professor!"
She got up and rushed over to the students, as he indicated, all three were brand new and frequently consulted the illusory images that still floated at the front of the class, representing different steps.
Before she began, she heard the professor again, and saw this time he was speaking to Lotte, "Good work, you're hired too."
Lotte looked shell-shocked but quickly went over to help the new students she was assigned to. Lily couldn't help but smile, hoping it would give her friend a boost of confidence. Then she started helping the three students as best she could.
Despite her own initial fears, it wasn't actually too hard to instruct them. Most novices had simple issues that were relatively easy to rectify, such as too much pressure or not properly removing the buildup on the pestle.
Lily patiently demonstrated her technique to the three students, keeping it as simple as possible. Soon enough, they were set in the right direction, and all three of them were properly grinding away.
Not a moment later, the professor caught Lily's attention, and she was directed to another student, repeating the process. For this introductory lesson, it seemed that the professor had assigned five potential assistants, although Lily wasn't sure how long each would hold the role.
As soon as we get to requiring imbuing, Lotte is out. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share that knowledge. Miss Camilla was very reluctant to teach me until she started using me for my Mana…
Two students had turned down the professor, and she could only assume they wanted to take the test to skip some classes. One unusual thing Lily noticed was that the professor emphasized not to discard any of the failed products. It was just grass and leaves, so she wasn't sure what the point was, since if he wanted to use it for a demonstration, then it wouldn't serve any meaningful purpose.
Still, she continued to play her role, receiving thanks from her fellow students, despite a single look of jealousy towards Lily, which she paid no mind to. It wasn't her fault that she had an apprenticeship beforehand, and as the professor said, this was so that each student could gain more hands-on assistance.
When everyone had done a satisfactory job, Professor Sylwel once again drew the class's attention. What followed was a brief lecture on how to properly clean the tools, after which he proceeded to the next part.
"Right, please bring up your failed attempts," Sylwel said as he moved over to another desk with a cauldron.
The students came over and deposited their belongings in a pile, unsure of what the teacher would do. He then pointed directly at Lily.
"Please bring yours as well. I'll use them for a bonus demonstration." For more chapters visıt Nove1Fire.net
Lily was shocked and confused, but quickly fetched her work and carefully brought it over as well. The other designated assistants were also told to fetch their successes.
Professor Sylwel then kicked the cauldron, which suddenly filled with water, while a flame spontaneously ignited from beneath it.
Stolen story; please report.
"Gather round, gather round. Or, if you prefer, you can watch the projection," he said and pointed to the currently projected image.
[Once again, I must praise the headmaster for integrating illusions to assist with teaching.]
Lily nodded in silent agreement. This solved so many spacing issues.
"Right. With advanced alchemy, timing and proportions are paramount. Some recipes require two or more ingredients to be dissolved simultaneously, or one before the other, or in various other combinations. While with simple recipes you can simply add one ingredient later, that soon fails to be the case, and you need them working in tandem."
He waved his hand in a gesture at the various piles of ground-up leaves and grass.
"This is why your foundation is vital, and you must never take shortcuts. Even with simple recipes, you can ruin the batch if your ingredient fails to dissolve in time due to an uneven grind. If the recipe requires five hundred grams of fairymoss dissolved in under ten seconds, and you've got uneven lumps that take over twelve seconds, well… you've made an inferior product, if not outright failing."
To everyone's surprise, he began chanting a spell while performing one-handed, half-gestures that Lily had never seen before. When the spell completed, he proceeded to poke some of the grass piles, which began to slowly bleed into another silvery color before their very eyes.
The class couldn't help but gasp in wonder, watching this unknown magic happen before their very eyes. Lily, on the other hand, couldn't help but feel she'd Arakil do something similar before. It was on the tip of her tongue, but before she could recall it, she was interrupted.
[Transmutation magic! I suppose there is still some hope for this world yet. I honestly would not have expected someone to cast it verbally and with short, concise gestures. Even in my day, most stuck to the safety of inscriptions that could be checked multiple times beforehand. I can only imagine the countless hours Professor Sylwel must have dedicated his life to this.]
Lily was surprised, as Arakil usually only mentioned people by name if they'd truly impressed him or they were someone close to her. Even Melina didn't get her name called as quickly as this, and that had the whole "love" debacle.
The professor had yet to start explaining and was in the middle of another chant before poking different piles, causing them to change to a bright orange. When it looked like someone was going to ask a question, he held up a finger on his unoccupied hand and went straight into another spell.
Since it looked like Sylwel was going to be occupied, Lily made a quick, subtle gesture for Arakil to explain further.
[While there are some common phrases in transmutation spells, the vast majority are entirely unique, and it requires exact precision. You need to learn hundreds, if not thousands, of unique chant components for every material. You could liken it to needing to memorize an entire lexicon just for this subject.
Furthermore, this only takes into account known components, and researching a new material can take an astronomical amount of time. There are also numerous rules regarding the exchange of ingredients that need to be balanced out with cost or more unique incantation components. And, not to forget, there's also—]
Lily quickly gestured for Arakil to stop. She felt like steam was coming out of her ears at the flood of information he was dumping straight into her mind. He usually only spoke this fast and enthusiastically if it was something he was genuinely passionate about—her Astral magic had never received such treatment, for example.
Arakil created an inscription to turn dirt into stone. If I remember correctly, it destroyed all the grass and plants first, which I can only imagine would have caused problems with the spell if left alone. If I think of it as a set of instructions and I say, "turn this salt water into juice," but it's actually sugar water, it would fail spectacularly.
When the professor finally finished, the students were left in awe. They still had no idea what was happening, and now their piles of grass looked like actual potion ingredients.
"Professor, what was that?" a boy finally managed to ask.
"Forbidden magic," he replied, causing a few gasps and worried looks from the students.
Sylwel sighed. "Forbidden for me to teach, not to use. I'm one of the very few practitioners, and it's one of the reasons I'm so far in my field."
Looks of awe or disappointment spread amongst the students. Lily even noticed that Arakil let out a small curse at the word "forbidden"; she already knew how he felt about such regulations against magic.
"Anyway. To put it simply, this will demonstrate the importance of preparing our ingredients correctly. Any last-minute questions before I proceed?"
The girl who got scolded earlier raised her hand. "If you could do this, why didn't you give us the ingredients beforehand?" she pointed at her own failed pile, which was now a silvery lilac color. "I would have properly prepared silverthorn…"
"That, my dear, is precisely why I had you work with grass and leaves even though I could've supplied you all with real ingredients from the very start. Who are you to treat your ingredients differently? Every resource can and should be treated as precious, as you never know what it might be capable of—"
He reached over and poked Lily's finely ground leaf pile, her only one that had yet to be transmuted. At his touch, it shone in a bright flash and instantly turned into a sparkling gold color.
"—Or turn into," he concluded.
The class was speechless, and the girl looked like she'd sucked on a lemon. It was his most impressive display yet, as he hadn't even chanted from what any of them had seen, and yet there was a pile of gold dust on the table now.
[Spoken like a true transmuter. I'd love to be able to discuss transmutational theories and share principles of matter with him.]
Oh no… Arakil used the L-word again.
Professor Sylwel clapped his hands. "Right. Let's move on."
He then proceeded to give a demonstrative lecture on controlling the rate of ingredients dissolving. He brought out various timers and used them to repeatedly prove his point.
He would demonstrate how a properly prepared ingredient would dissolve in five seconds, and then show how the lumpy ones would not fully dissolve within the same time frame. What was extremely shocking, however, was that to reset the cauldron, he abruptly plunged his hand into the boiling liquid.
Some of the students couldn't help but scream or shout at such a horrific display, but the water became crystal clear again, and when he removed his hand, there was once again not even a blemish on his blueish skin.
This happened so many times that they quickly became numb to him, suddenly plunging his hand into the water and returning it to its crystal-clear origins.
The professor was comprehensive, going through a wide variety of scenarios and explaining them in detail. When he needed two different ingredients to activate simultaneously, he began using Lily's ingredients. He explained how mixing a coarser grind with a finer one can allow you to adjust timings without needing to seek alternatives, such as changing the temperature during a brew.
While none of this was new for Lily, she still found it a fascinating display and enjoyed the comprehensive recap. When he finally finished, he dismissed the class but called on the five potential assistants to stay behind.
Lily and Lotte shared a quick smile with each other, both having been selected.