After Ed's first failure, came the second failure, and the third, and the… well, many.
'Let's do this one more time…' Ed told himself while opening the flood gates except that this time only a trickle of blood came out of the 'flood gates.' Ed had made the faucet significantly smaller with each explosion.
As the drops of blood started their descent into Ed's umpteenth small cauldron, Ed shielded his entire body while wearing a solemn expression. After so many beatings at the hands of alchemy, he knew to protect himself from the likely result.
'Kaboom?' But even though Ed was already picturing the explosion in his head nothing of the sorts had transpired. Instead, his ears were met with the sound of bubbling water.
'Ah! I need to stir it!' Ed quickly got on it as he stirred the pot with swift yet delicate movements. It was what he saw to work the best. Plus, the system also corroborated it.
Ed knew that the assessment function could tell him the status of things so how could it not know if an explosion was imminent when all of the volatile ingredients were already in?
Truth be told, this wasn't actually the first time Ed made it this far. Assuming otherwise implied one was underestimating the difficulty of being an alchemist. Some explosions could happen without warning, even while assessing the cauldron it became impossible to anticipate those. The very definition of volatile implied frequent and unexpected changes.
[Rock Cauldron (Volatile)]
'Damn!' Ed swiftly reached for some ground serenity buds and dropped them into the cauldron. The volatile state suggested it was prone to explode and that Ed had to make his movements quick.
[Rock Cauldron (Unstable)]
Having calming ingredients within reach was also important. Ed had learned this from much trial and error. He had also learned not to rely too heavily on those or else… well…
[Dud Healing Potion]
A stable potion incapable of causing much change.
He would receive a dud. He could only sigh at his misfortune and carry on. A single sweep of one's eyes would reveal small rock bottles that held dull green liquid. They were the many dud's Ed had made within the hour.
That was right, Ed had spent an entire hour failing even while having the help of the assessment skill. It was time to rethink his methods.
'All I have been doing is reducing the volume of blood' The faucet could hardly be called a faucet, it was now more like a dropper. Clearly, there was something wrong with this approach.
'Hm… Although the explosion does occur when the blood is dropped inside, it doesn't mean the blood is responsible' Correlation didn't necessarily imply causation. It was a saying often used when referring to statistics. If Ed were to graph his own attempts he would find two lines.
One would go up and the other down as more attempts took place. These two lines would be the number of serenity buds used and the volume of blood used.
'My relative success might not be due to the lower volume in the first place' The system had already declared the buds as the ultimate dud maker. Ed had to take in the other variables when creating reactions.
'Reactions…' Something to slow down reactions, even when referring to just a person… what would slow them down? After thinking along those lines, Ed finally understood where he had made a fundamental mistake.
How did you prevent any reactions period? One of the answers was freezing it. He had to lower the temperature.
Ed immediately emptied and cleaned out his cauldron. He placed the dud potion into a new rock bottle and began to make a potion. This time with a really really low temperature.
After placing all of the necessary ingredients inside, he suddenly felt stupid.
'I can't even make tea at this temperature' The first step required boiling temperatures… Ed heated the cauldron with fire and proceeded as usual.
Ultimately, potions were volatile by design. Some potions required to remain at certain temperatures but that was only the end result. That temperature could definitely change many times during the concoction as different ingredients were introduced.
This meant that the key to utilizing the highly active Blurak blood was to lower the temperature before introduction! Ed could wait for the dumbing tea to cool down and add the blood thereafter.
But of course, he would much rather use magic. Ed ran over to the crystal storage area which designated to be the cathedral for the time being and grabbed both fire and ice crystals.
He then returned to the cauldron and cooled it using the ice crystals. The fire crystals were a just in case measure. But in the end, it was unnecessary, he only needed to keep stirring.
[Incomplete Healing Potion (Unstable)]
As he drew closer and closer to completion, the system acknowledged his efforts and changed the name accordingly. Plus, although the potion was unstable, the state hadn't fluctuated as much as it had with the higher temperatures.
'F*ck!' That was when the potion once more exploded. Where it not for the fact that the cauldron had already blown up and sent pieces of itself flying everywhere, Ed would have kicked it towards the horizon.
'On the plus side, I don't get scalding liquid with each explosion now' Ed looked at the positive side while gnashing his teeth and creating a new cauldron.
[<Alchemy lvl. 1> Acquired]
It was only much later that Ed would see success.
[Potent Healing Potion]
A super healing potion made with local ingredients. The vigorous blood of a bizarre ogre restores strength to the drinker.
'I really did it' Ed thought with glee. The description didn't say anything about restoring nerves but the latter sentence had still given Ed much hope. Could you call it regeneration if you still ended up as a cripple?
Obviously not, so as long as even a tenth of Blurak's strength lay dormant inside the potion there was hope.
Ed didn't dally any longer as he quickly poured the potion into a container. The potion was yellow in color, it had taken the green attributes of the Alivio and Cura plants and the vigorous red blood of Blurak which had only been entered in small quantities.
There would be bubbles that popped up occasionally but the solution was for the most part completely tranquil. Almost alarmingly so.
[Potent Healing Potion (Spoiling)]
'I knew it was too good to be true…' Ed thought with a hint of tiredness. Nevertheless, his mood was quickly uplifted. Such a small issue could be easily resolved in the future. In the worst-case scenario, he would concoct the potion next to needy patients.
'Still, it would be a good idea to find a way to preserve it sooner rather than later' Ed thought up many ideas but he knew that he had to first and foremost test out the efficacity of the potion before actually yelling eureka.
He therefore ran. He dashed with the sealed potion in hand toward the medical room where Nag and some other similarly unlucky orcs were. Nag wasn't the only one to be sent through a wall so the room was bound to still be full of incapacitated orcs.
"Hey E…" As he ran, some of the more friendly orcs would try to greet the dashing figure only to be left with their words in their mouth as Ed ignored them completely.
"Wow, not even a dashing smile…" One complained in a mutter.
Ed oblivious to this finally reached the complex and traversed down the complicated complex corridors on his way to the convoluted complex medical room.
"Yeah so what?!" One of the patients yelled angrily. The other orc with whom he argued was about to say words of rebuttal but that was when the speeding Ed ran past their beds and reached Nag at one of the corners of the room.
Stopping next to him, Ed sent a cursory glance at the bottle with the intention of figuring out its state.
[Potent Healing Potion (Spoiling)]
Ed heaved a sigh of relief, It was good that the heated run did not make the potion spoil faster. He quickly unsealed it and lifted Nag's body to help him swallow the yellow liquid.
As Ed forced Nag to swallow the fluid, he also continuously scanned his body. He wanted to make sure that no negative side effects would suddenly pop up on his status.
"Cough Cough Urgh!" But that worry was unfounded as Nag's eyes darted open and he broke into a coughing fit.
"That tastes horrible!" He yelled wishing to wash away the taste of both iron and fiber mixed with dirt and rock. He even wanted to wipe his mouth but…
"My- My arms! No… my legs! My- My body...!?" Nag came to a grim realization after wishing for this simple action. He was crippled. He had remained unconscious previously meaning he had never realized he had been bedridden.
"Calm down!" Ed screamed at Nag from the side who immediately turned to look at him. Nag then became confused.
"Ed? Cough Ack!" He asked accidentally tasting the bitter potion again.
"Yes, and you will be fine" Ed said with confidence. Why? Well, it seemed that the potion was effective enough to help Nag regain the feeling on his torso to a certain extent as well as just wake up. As long as Ed could make more of the potions, Nag would definitely heal!
"Huh? Really?" To Ed's surprise, Nag didn't try to ask him not to lie to him or thank him for attempting to comfort him. He had instead asked for confirmation.
'I think you might be a bit too gullible…' Ed commented casually in his mind.
"Yes.." As long as he had ingredients Nag would heal.