Abe the Wizard

Abel wasn’t an expert on perfumes. He didn’t know how rare the aroma he obtained was. While Loraine was still asleep, her nose was smelling it even when she was unaware.

Next up, when Abel finished dissolving and filtering the materials, he synthesized them in his Horadric Cube once more

When the bottles of the elven perfumes were done, he decided to put them inside the Horadric Cube. He wasn’t planning to synthesize them again. If the resulting product was too perfect, he would have a lot of problems if he was showing it to anyone else.

Lastly, after mixing all the solutions in accordance with their proportion, Abel started chanting out the words to reach the sublimation stage. Seven rays of lights started filling out the room. It was a lot brighter than the time that Loraine did it. The lights were expanding out at first, but after a while, they started closing in together.

Abel could sense it. This hyacinth-based elven perfume was a success. The resulting liquor was a thick shade of purple, which seemed all the more luxurious when it was under the shine of the night pearl.

As for the scent, Abel couldn’t really comment much on it. He just knew that the smell was making him very relaxed. That was saying a lot, actually, since his power of the Will was much stronger than most people. If normal people smelt this perfume, they would probably fall unconscious right away.

Well, with a scent this strong, it was hard to call it a perfume. Abel wanted to make something that he could give to Loraine, but he ended up making bio-weapon instead.

“What’s smells so good, Abel?” Loraine walked in whilst rubbing her eyes. Even when she was so sleepy, she couldn’t help but keep sniffing the air.

“Uh, hey, Loraine! I was trying to make my own elven perfume just then. Something doesn’t feel right, though.”

Abel felt kind of sorry to have woken Loraine up from her sleep. Since Loraine asked for it, he passed over the perfume he’s just made. Loraine had a strong in her power of the Will, so there she wouldn’t fall unconscious.

Instead of falling asleep again, Loraine actually felt very awake now. As her eyes examined the bottle Abel gave her. She started mumbling something to herself.

“Wait, no no no, this isn’t real. There’s no way that it is,” Loraine commented.

“What happened, Loraine?” Abel asked. He thought that there was something wrong with the perfume he’s made.

“What happened is that you’re a genius, Abel,” Loraine took another look at the perfume in her hand, “For some reason, you’ve exceeded the maximum quality you can achieve with this recipe. Did you attain a “flash of light” by any chance?”

Abel tried to be as vague as he could, “I’m not sure, but the portions I used to make this one bottle could be used to make three normal ones.”

Loraine started raising her arms in excitement, “That has to be it! You must’ve had a flash of light! The lady who taught me this had done it once before. She told me that if you want to attain a flash of light, the potion you’ve made must be in a lower rank than yourself.”

“You can have that bottle, Loraine,” Abel took a look at the elven perfume in Loraine’s hand, “I was going to give it to you in the first place. It was meant to be a gift.”

Abel kind of wanted to study the elven perfume now, but he knew he wasn’t getting it back. Well, he wasn’t planning to. As he said, it was meant to be a gift for Loraine.

“Thanks, Abel!” Loraine ran back to the room whilst having the bottle in her arms. She really wanted to try out the perfume now.

With a smile on his face, Abel took out the formula for the “ration potion.” From what it looked like, the main ingredient of this recipe was wheat. With about a pound of wheat, it was possible to make an entire bottle of this potion. All the other ingredients were either for preserving the potion or for adding more flavor to the taste.

This was probably the easiest formula there was. Technically, all Abel needed was wheat. Right now, he had some in his kong kong spirit portal bag.

Not a lot of wheat was produced in this world. Most people could only eat rye bread that was made from wheat barn. White bread that was made with fine flour was only available to the privileged ones.

Abel took a pound of white and placed it on the table. Since a pound was quite a lot, he couldn’t just use his alchemy tools to handle it. After taking out a tub from his kong kong spiritual portal bag, he had all the wheat in it and added water to it.

Once he had done the enchantment to perform “quick fermentation,” the wheat softened in a way that was clearly visible. That’s when he realized that this recipe was harder than it looked.

Abel had to use up a lot of his mana to sustain the fermentation because of the sheer amount of wheat. He wasn’t a real wizard. With the tiny amount of mana that’s been released by the spell enhancement, there was no way that he could cover up all of the wheat.

For a low-tiered wizard, Abel actually had a lot of mana in him. While it was quite hard for him at his current level, he still managed to make a dough at the end. It was quite funny, actually. If all it took was a spell and some water to make a dough (he didn’t even separate the wheat from their shells), then all the bread-making machines on Earth would’ve become completely useless.

When the fermentation was complete, Abel added more water to the dough so that it could sink. He had to use the “quick dissolving” spell, which just showed that only wizards could have the ability to use this recipe. For all the techniques he’s just used, the mana cost would’ve been the same as a low-tiered spell.

Soon, the dough was completely dissolved into water. Since the “ration potion” was not meant to have a good texture, there was never a need to perform “precise filtration.” Thus, Abel went to the refinement stage immediately. Out of this muddy solution of wheat and water, he extracted the finest essence and placed it into a cup.

Next up, he was going to make some supplementary ingredients. While he’s just done making most of the ration potion, now was the time to use “sublimation” to add the final touch.”

Soon, seven rays of light burst out from inside the tube. To Abel’s surprise, the resulting product became black, almost as if it was burnt out. When he noticed how terrible it smelt, he knew that he failed.

That’s when Abel remembered what Loraine said. She talked about “sublimation” like it depended on luck. The chance was one in five if he remembered correctly. It wasn’t like he was guaranteed to get one in five bottles right, either. For every bottle he’s made, he would have a one in five rates of getting it successfully sublimed.

“Sublimation,” It was an ability that’s based on gambling. For every level that the alchemist was higher than the recipe that he’s making, the chance of attaining a successful sublimation would be multiplied by two.

Keep in mind that “ration potion” was a low-tiered potion. If an intermediate alchemist could make one successful bottle out of three, an advanced alchemist would’ve had almost a 100% success rate.

Abel was an amateur. It was very understandable that he would fail. Something bothered him, though. If the odds were against him, how did he get it right the first time when he was making the elven perfume for Loraine? Was he just lucky, or was there some factors that he didn’t take into consideration?

It’s got to have something to do with the Horadric Cube. For the perfume he just gave to Loraine, most of the materials were already synthesized with his Horadric Cube.

To test this assumption, Abel began his second experiment with three pounds of wheat. After making three solutions with the “quick dissolving” technique, he combined them with his Horadric Cube. The resulting product was a synthesized wheat solution, which had a very nice wheaty smell to it.

Instead of having a transparent color, the synthesized solution had a milk-white color to it. When Abel used his “refinement’ technique, the extracted essence was even more similar to that of milk.

Abel held the extracted wheat essence in his hand. After chanting out the words to perform “sublimation,” seven rays of light appeared from inside the bottle. Before he even knew if he had succeeded or not, he could already smell something very nice with his nose.

It was the smell of bread made with fine milk. In fact, that’s what the bottle looked like. It looked like a bottle of milk.