The Exalt [Cultivation Fantasy]

A few hours ago, after separating from Oscar, Avril roamed the sparkling halls of the Alchemist Guild and found her testing room 404. She breathed long and deep to combat the jitters and slapped her delicate cheeks with her gloved hands. Behind this door would be her first official step into the world of Alchemy, and she had to seize it. She couldn't keep falling behind Oscar. The door opened with her determined steps tapping into the room, showing the fantastic workshop inside. A serene waterfall and a vibrant tree stood in the center of the room above a white porcelain table.

"How beautiful." Avril tapped the table, a clear ring escaping from each touch. The clock showed it was now almost four, the appointed time of the exam. She sat on a soft chair and patiently hummed while waiting for the proctor to arrive. Her true thoughts escaped her lips as she sighed, "I wonder what Oscar is doing. He and Erden should be gathering information right now."

Avril's cheeks slowly blushed rosy red as she tried unsuccessfully to find a more comfortable position, fidgeting around in the chair. Wife…The one word echoed endlessly in her thoughts, the heat welling in her chest and exiting as hot breaths. Hearing Oscar say that made her jolt in delight, and she couldn't help lifting her lips into a bashful smile, laughing shyly.

'Slave.' A voice coldly echoed in her ears. The voice Avril didn't want to hear the most. She held her hand over her covered eye, her red cheeks paling to an icy white as a cold sweat dampened her gloves from underneath. The smile turned to a flat line, paralyzed by fear. A shadowy figure of a woman reached her hand out to Avril, the other holding a scythe. Clenching her teeth and gripping her quivering hands, Avril covered her ears and mumbled the same mantra Oscar had taught her, repeating what she read from books.

Slowly the echoes of her mistress went away, replaced by the story of the boy with a scabbard she had read with Oscar before. Once the shadowy figure went away, her hands relaxed, and her shoulders dropped. Avril shuddered from the sweat drenching her back. Her feet could barely hang on, and she gripped the table for support, gagging almost to the point of vomiting. Behind her closed eyelids, she could see her mother and sister exactly as she remembered them years ago, before her enslavement.

'Wait a little longer. I will find you, mother and sister. I swear.' Avril bowed her head on the table as if in prayer, resting her forehead on the cool porcelain surface. She had to pass this exam to get a legitimate identity and use the Alchemist Guild's network to gather information faster. Her resolve settled in her heart, and she opened her eyes with a golden clarity.

"Hello, Mrs. Terr. I am Elder Roslin, your proctor for the three-start alchemist examination." The door softly opened without a creak, and a man with long brown hair walked inside with measure steps, closing a pocket watch. He was surrounded by what Avril imagined many books described as a scholarly aura. His glasses rested perfectly on the bridge of his nose as his hands elegantly moved into a bow. "It is always a good day for the Alchemist's Guild to welcome new and unknown talent."

"Thank you for your consideration." Avril bowed in return and bit her tongue to stop herself from accidentally falling into self-narration. Oscar had told her it might get awkward and attract unwanted attention if she did so. Still, the urge nearly broke her guard.

"Ah. Here are the materials for your exam." Elder Roslin waved his hand. A tray containing several plants, vials of liquid, and a core, floated over and landed on the table. "Concoct a grade-three elixir from these ingredients meant for aiding in the resistance of powerful thunders, the Stormgate elixir. The instructions are written down for you in this booklet. Now show me your alchemy." His eyes narrowed under his glasses, a piercing gaze that seemed to understand and break through anything.

Avril nodded and turned to the tray of materials, familiarizing herself with the instructions. Cores of Knight Exalt Thundermanders, vials of the beasts' blood, bundles of fresh Gold-tipped Thunderferns, and a jar of beast hearts rested on the tray. She closed the booklet and closed her eyes, imagining herself going through the process.

'Self-visualization is a powerful tool, Avril.' She remembered Sevon's lesson, even hearing him blowing out his pipe while she lay on the floor in exhaustion. 'You may stumble and have trouble, but that's alright. What's important is you always see how you should approach and where the path to victory is. That is honed through experience. One day you might find all your visualizations becoming a reality through your strength of will. What's important is never to stop believing in yourself.'

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Avril chuckled softly. 'Sorry, Master. I failed so many times. Back with Old Yule and at the shores of Zeret against those beasts. Time and time again, I couldn't make what I wanted to do a reality.' Avril snapped her eyes open and took out her cauldron, heating it atop the brazier of blue flames. She grabbed the Thunderfern and tossed it into the cauldron along with the Thundermander's blood, separating them with her Ein. Mixing them right now without proper refinement was bad, but they also needed to be in close proximity to each other during this process.

'This time, I will make it a reality.' Avril closed the lid and concentrated, her Ein flowing into the cauldron, keeping up the barrier and controlling the heat. Sometimes she flicked her wrist to fan the flames hotter in a small burst. The process was more complicated since she had to control the flames in separate places for the two ingredients.

Hours later, she shouted, "Come on!" The contents within the cauldron were reaching their vital timing. Both of them had to be finished at the same time at their respective temperatures and mixed. A moment off would ruin the entire concoction and need to be redone. Avril waited as her fingers twitched, still outputting Ein into the cauldron.

Finally, the Thunderfern released a slight hiss of steam, and the blood began to boil. The signs of their completion finally revealed themselves. Sweat beaded down her forehead, and Avril quelled her Ein, allowing the Thunderfern to soak in the blood, a strange reaction occurring in the red blood-burning blue with streaks of lightning crackling within.

There was not a moment to waste. Avril summoned her scroll anima and unfurled it to the first Ein section. A burst of Ein released from the paper sheet and flooded the cauldron, imbuing the mixture with even Ein all over, down to every droplet. She smiled at how her scroll allowed her to skip or cheat some steps like this. Normally, a person would have had to permeate their Ein from the surface down to the bottom of the cauldron. Glancing at Elder Roslin, she saw the amazement behind his glasses, stretching to his raised eyebrows.

She quelled the flames to a low heat to bring the new mixture to a simmer. She sat back in her chair and focused on the cauldron. Despite her wishes to find a faster way, this step required her to wait a full day, keeping watch over the cauldron and its contents until it would be ready. The timing wasn't always exact, ranging between twenty and twenty-six hours. What mattered was catching that timing. She sat and waited for that moment.

Twenty-three hours later, she jumped out of the chair and opened the cauldron, a blast of black smoke with lightning coursing within escaping. With her Ein, she scooped up the remaining mixture, a ball of blue paste, and placed it in a jar to use for later. What a tough first step. Avril wiped her sweat with a towel and grabbed the core, boiling it in a pot of water. The remnant will of the Thundermander roared in retaliation but failed to prevail against her power.

She brought out the cores and extracted their inner formations, laying them over the table. Her knife cut out the portions relating to the beast's resistance to thunder and put them in a sieve. Slowly, under her Ein, the carved-out formations started to drip and fall into a vial. She gritted her teeth and kept her Ein going for the long process that took her another whole day. She breathed in exhaustion and relief when the formations filled the vial.

Now for the hearts…Avril held in her gag, her cheeks turning green at the sight of the hearts. They had been drained of all blood, but it didn't make it any less disgusting to look. She wondered why she could kill beasts and people, but seeing the organs like this made her want to vomit. The hearts were rendered into a thick mash in the bowl, and Avril rushed to wipe her gloved hands, still reeling from the strange smell.

'Here goes nothing.' Avril took a portion of the blue paste and some of the mashed hearts, throwing them into the cauldron. They started to boil and melt together into a liquid state, ready for the final step. Carefully, her hand tilted the vial of liquified formations through a drainer, a drop slowly dripping down into the cauldron.

Her concentration never broke. Each drop went in and burst with power in the cauldron. Avril took the drop and used it as a node for the formation within the elixir, carefully guiding each drop into a certain spot and locking it in place. She smiled as she imagined a great ocean, each node being a fish that swam in certain and consistent patterns along with the rest. Drop by drop, node by node, Avril crafted her formation into the solution until it was completed.

Unfurling her Ein section, refreshed by the passage of time, Avril filled the cauldron with her Ein for the finishing touch. A sweet smell filled the room, rousing her stomach to growl since she had not eaten in days. Embarrassed, she quickly poured out the contents into a vial and held it out toward Elder Roslin.

"Grade-three Stormgate elixir. Please judge."

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