Chapter 249: Chapter 249: Blood in Essence

Theo looked at the glowing strands all around the organ move toward one place slowly before getting sucked out into the syringe, which now had a faint glow.

It felt like the world he knew had just flipped twice.

’My library... was shit.’ Theo could only think that.

The amount of information he had gotten from his home library was nothing compared to what he was learning every day here.

When the organ was sucked dry of its essence, which anyone could tell as the glow had completely vanished, Enren moved the syringe back and showed the little amount of essence that had been collected.

"So far, I have two drops of Demon Toad essence, which we will turn into a fire affinity crystal later on. I will be conducting the same procedure on all the other organs in front of us, so watch the whole process carefully, alright?"

Just like that, Enren first poured the two drops of essence into a vial and then went to the heart.

Each organ only gave him two to three drops of essence, which made sense as the organs themselves were quite small.

When he was done, he properly cleaned the syringe and showed everyone how to do that too. It was a tough thing to do since they had to remove some components that were very delicate.

When all the essence was extracted and stored in vials again, Enren stopped and looked at everyone once more.

"You might not have realized it, but half the time is already over for the class. So, you will now practice what we just did on your own desks. We’ll continue with the same vials you and I make in tomorrow’s class."

Theo felt a little disappointed that he couldn’t watch the whole process, but it turned out it was written in the books they had been given in plain text.

The wording was complicated, and the sentence formation was as if he were reading a holy scripture.

Theo could not understand why there was such a difference in writing style among the books.

Some were easy to understand, which was great, but others felt like they were made to be difficult just so the students would suffer.

"The tool I used was too big for the Demon Toad’s body, but I used it to show the level of precision you will one day achieve with practice. You will begin with tools of this size," he said and showed one in his hand.

Theo now saw a normal-sized, specially made syringe in front of him, and he sighed in relief.

When the uniformed individuals brought in all the equipment and raw materials and placed them on the desks of each student, some looked at the twitching toad with horror while others simply smiled and got started.

Theo looked at Tristan, who proficiently made a deep gash in the toad with confidence, only to see a lot of blood spray out.

It made Theo laugh out loud, only for the professor to glance at him and note something down.

’Great,’ Theo grumbled and took the scalpel-like tool, making a cut that wasn’t too deep but precise enough.

The toad’s body oozed out a little glue-like substance, but it was still better than Tristan’s, who had asked for a new frog only to be declined by the uniformed aides.

Theo used the same tools and clipped each part of the toad’s skin he could get his hands on, stretching them as instructed.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when all the skin was peeled away, that Theo could finally see the organs clearly.

He looked up and saw the professor glancing around the room and then at his work, only to nod and write something down.

Theo noticed Tristan peeking at his technique a few times, but his bad luck started only a moment later.

An organ he picked up punctured in his hand, and all the essence in it drained away immediately. Theo could tell because when he touched the other organs, they still had strands of the same essence, but the punctured one didn’t have it anymore.

At that moment, Theo got a risky idea.

He moved the syringe and checked all the organs, peeking at the professor once before piercing the syringe into an organ that was still inside the toad.

The toad’s body twitched a little, and Theo quickly pulled all the essence out.

When he saw all the strands disappear, Theo looked at the liquid, which now had the glowing substance mixed with a bit of coagulated blood.

He winced but still placed it in the vial before continuing to move the organs out again instead of keeping them inside.

He didn’t know why it hadn’t worked the same for Tristan, but Theo wasn’t in the mood to risk the first day any further.

One by one, all the organs were sucked dry and placed to the side while vials of essence were stacked one by one.

When Theo finally felt done, he looked toward the front and saw many students who had finished way before him while the instructor was checking their vials.

He wrote notes and said a few things one by one until his gaze shifted, noticing Theo, who had just completed his procedure.

"How was your experience, young man? Any problems?" Enren asked before looking at each vial, only to have his eyes stop on the one vial Theo felt he had messed up.

Before Theo could speak, the instructor said again, "Oh, did you try extracting the essence while the organs were still inside the toad?"

Theo looked at him and sighed; it seemed he’d made a mistake that was quite common.

"Unfortunately, yes, Instructor."

"Hm? What’s unfortunate about this? The essence you extracted is of high-grade quality, young man. You should be proud," the instructor said, patting Theo’s shoulder with a smile.

"Thank you for the compliment, Instructor," Theo said politely, then asked, "But what about the blood inside the essence? Can you tell me how I can fix that next time?"

When Theo asked that, a knowing smile formed on Enren’s face before he noted something down.

"It’s..."