“So will you take them? If so, I’ll give you an art design toolset for free,” said Dave as he took out a black tool pouch from somewhere. It contained several utility tools such as pens, rulers, brushes, knives, and some inks for painting.
Angor clenched his teeth. “I’ll buy them!”
The balance display on his bone card instantly lost several digits. Angor had to take out seven magic crystals from his pouch to complete his payment.
“Want a delivery?” Dave smiled.
Angor quickly shook his hands. “No thanks. I’ll find help on my own.”
He paid 50 silver coins to five strongmen to carry his packed tools back to his house.
Once the tools were placed in his basement, Angor asked his helpers to go to the marketplace in town and carry back several special laboratory tables along with some simple chairs.
During the entire afternoon, Angor redesigned his basement into an alchemy lab with the help of the helpers. It still looked simple, but Angor was very satisfied with the result.
The night had come, bringing an unpleasant chill into the town. Angor looked at his neatly-arranged lab and felt some sense of belonging.
In the next days, Angor’s alchemy work progressed smoothly.
He spent three days and created his very first alchemy creation in his life: a folded fruit knife.
The knife was made according to a 3D printer blueprint saved in Jon’s hologram tablet. It only required three major parts and two minor ones to assemble.
Assembling was a popular way to create alchemy items. It required fewer skills compared to one-piece products. Assembled products usually had weaker effects. However, it was still a mainstream choice as the alchemy items were convenient to use and were universally accepted.
The folded fruit knife had its handle made of a special tree, and it had with wooden grains on it as decoration. When the blade was unfolded, Angor could feel the cold sharpness on it. When looked closely, he could even see faint patterns on the blade.
With Earth Fiend Bronze to improve its hardness and a special casting liquid to sharpen its edge, these two common materials created a cutting tool of superior quality.
Angor took out a touchstone and gave it a small cut with his new knife. A shallow cut was easily made.
A touchstone was a special tool used by alchemists to test the sharpness of an object. No ordinary blades could damage the stone. Only weapons which could break open the magic defenses of apprentices could leave their marks on it.
The fruit knife had no special traits, but its sharpness alone already surpassed mortal weapons by many levels. Being able to create a cut on the touchstone meant this knife was enough to be used as a supernatural weapon.
Angor was satisfied with his first attempt.
The weapon was his first alchemy creation and a memorable one. It was just like the dagger Angor found on the younger Sunders in the Nightmare Realm. The dagger was only a mortal weapon, but it was something really special to Sunders.
Angor put the fruit knife away in his inner pocket carefully.
He suppressed his great joy. Without taking any rest, he meditated for a while to recover his mana before immediately continuing with making his second creation.
Again, he chose a melee weapon found among the 3D blueprints. Or rather, a cooking tool.
A Chinese kitchen knife.
He chose this one as his second practice attempt because he wanted to try to make one-piece creations.
Instead of assembling a blade with a handle, Angor planned to create an entire item in Thaw spell in one try.
It proved to be harder than he imagined. Choosing the right materials already took him a lot of time. A one-piece item did not mean it required a single material. Instead, he had to use several materials to create a final product in Thaw spell.
After some experiments, Angor found a dozen combinations from a book he recorded in Nightmare Realm called Material Polymerization and proceeded to try them out one by one.
An ordinary alchemist might need months to discover a correct material combination. Angor, on the other hand, could find help in the alchemy books of unknown origins and thus, skipped many steps. More importantly, everything he aimed to make already had a blueprint.
Besides, the 3D hologram cast by his tablet could be observed from every angle with completely no blind spots. Even if he did not understand how something worked, he could simply copy its shape and make it work.
After five days, his Chinese kitchen knife was ready.
Its handle and blade were designed in an all-in-one style. As Angor never learned how to apply runes on stuff, or had any special materials or catalysts, the knife did not carry any special effect. Gaining a special weapon effect without meeting these conditions was almost impossible.
Angor swung the kitchen blade and easily left a one-centimeter cut along the surface of the touchstone.
“As expected, a one-piece is more effective then assembled items,” Angor mumbled. The weapon felt more harmonious in his hand.
Since his second idea was a success, Angor thought about something wilder.
He decided to craft a series of Chinese weapons.
He did not make up his mind like that because of Jon’s teachings. He only wished to get more practice and get familiar with different material combinations.
Ten days passed. Angor walked out of his underground laboratory while covered in dust. Three new weapons were displayed along the wall of his lab.
A sword, a blade, and a pair of spikes.
A Qingfeng Sword, a sheathless Tang Dao 1 , and a pair of dual-wield Emei Piercers.
Among them, only the Emei Piercers were one-piece. The sword and blade were only assembled weapons like Angor’s fruit knife. If sold on the market, he could probably earn a magic crystal or two. However, he did not intend to do that for now. Time was urgent. Even though they were actual alchemy weapons, these weapons were too weak. With enough effort, even mortal blacksmiths could also forge something like these.
After shutting himself in his basement for several days, Angor decided to spend half a day off to rest a little before he headed back to his soundproofed room.
The overall process of making an alchemy item required skills at controlling the heat, shaping, and condensing the item. Angor already knew how to do them. He made all these cold weapons just to practice his skills.
But this did not mean that he was an apprentice alchemist yet. At his current state, Angor could be regarded as a master blacksmith in the view of mortals. However, he was definitely not an alchemist.
Items made by real alchemists all had their own supernatural effects.
Supernatural effects meant special traits such as a piece of equipment that enhanced its wearer’s ability, a machine that stabilized energy, a weapon that cast spells, items with particular uses or other indescribable abilities. Even something like space storages and time-manipulation items could be achieved with alchemy.
Naturally, Angor was aiming for something like these.
In general, there were several ways of crafting an alchemy item with special effect.
First, Runecraft. When making an item, an alchemist could affix runes in accordance with the materials used and gain a supernatural effect when the materials and runes amplified each other.
Second, magic array. An improved version of Runecraft.
And third, activating the specialty of materials.
These were not the only approaches, but they were mainstream choices.
The first two approaches were also referred to as “enchantment”. As for the third one, it was also called “synthesis”.
In the field of alchemy, an enchantment was a minor trick, while synthesis was more commonly regarded as a legit way of improving items.
An appropriate synthesis brought way stronger effects compared to enchantment. When alchemists applied runes or magic arrays to an item to receive the special effect, they also had to consider the nature of materials instead of drawing any runes they wished. Beneficial effects created by enchantment were highly restricted.
Synthesis, on the other hand, triggered certain specialties hidden within a certain material by combining different materials together. For instance, when Winter Gold and Ice Raven Feathers were added with dozens of catalysts and brought under a special condition, a special freezing effect could be triggered by them.
An effect triggered in this way could be applied to any material without obeying the restrictions when doing enchantment. Also, the effect was a lot stronger.
If Angor wished to achieve something great on the path of alchemy, he certainly had to choose the third approach.
However, the time to challenge Sky Tower was imminent, so he chose to take a shortcut for now and decided to go for enchantment.
Angor took out Basic Alchemy and began studying how to enchant items.
The first thing he needed to learn was Runecraft.
The art had its own set of characters, or rather, patterns. Every pattern inside a rune represented various reasons in the world.
For example, a rune that quickened the growth of plants contained reasons for weather, dampness, dirt, season, and so on. Each of these lied within a pattern. Drawing the patterns according to a set of fixed diagrams meant creating a complete rune.
An apprentice learning Runecraft naturally had to start by studying the meaning of every pattern. There were 60 million basic patterns with different or identical meanings. Even a different time point could require a different pattern to express a certain reason. For instance, one had to use two completely differed patterns to represent a setting sun in winter and a setting sun in the summertime.
Angor did not have the time to memorize all those basic patterns.
Instead of trying to comprehend the meaning of each pattern, alchemists usually forced their minds to memorize complete spell patterns and copied them onto their alchemy items.
However, even copying was not an easy task.
The process of drawing a rune also required a stable mana output and prolonged patience. Any mistake would not be tolerated.
For example, when drawing a rune called Sea Wave, one had to add tens of thousands of strokes with different directions and curves inside a giant circle. The creator had to maintain his or her mana output while slowly applying the patterns onto an alchemy item, one by one.
A tiny, miswritten stroke, no matter at which incorrect interval, direction or size, would basically ruin the entire work.
For this reason, there were few alchemists who chose to study enchantment.
For Angor, however, studying enchantment was a very good choice.