Er Mu - Release that Witch

In the center of the refining room, there were arranged six wide wooden tables. The tables were filled with all kinds of alchemical utensils: round bottomed flasks, glasses, scales, mortars, furnaces, crucibles… Each instructor was responsible for the management and use of one table, and Kyle, as Redwater City’s Head Instructor, naturally had the longest and widest table to himself, with most of the utensils placed on it.

The room was always full of clutter and in disorder, just like the alchemy process in general. Mixing all kinds of raw materials together then heating, carbonizing, watering or burning them. The results were ever changing, and simply fascinating.

In case you were able to find a clear path to follow within all these changes and disorders, it would become written down, turning it into one of the extremely rare alchemy formulas. As long as you were able to create a unique formula, you could be called an alchemist. So far, Kyle has had written down more than a dozen alchemy formulas, and he believed that each of them had been directly sent to him by God and that alchemy could be developing to such a level, that it would even be possible to separate the origin, making it possible to transmute everything.

“Chavez, how far are you with your Snow Powder imitation?” He asked.

Hearing his name, a twenty-year-old young man came over, shaking his head. “These wretched alchemists of King’s City definitely still add other raw materials into it. Until now the powder is too fine that it can’t even be extracted and used for anything useful.”

He was Redwater’s Alchemy Workshop’s youngest alchemist, and now he wanted to recreate the alchemy recipe for Snow Powder, but it seemed to be impossible without a long accumulation of knowledge, many attempts and sometimes a bit of luck. Many people, for their whole lifetime, only managed to become disciplines, even until their death they were unable to get past the last step. Chavez, however, had a remarkable talent for alchemy, two years ago, he summarized the recipe of dry distillation of green vitriol to receive an acidic liquid. Winning the recognition of five alchemists, owning from now on his own long table.

“Do not worry; it will come slowly.” Kyle smiled and patted the young man’s shoulder, offering him some comfort. After eight years, as chief instructor, Kyle naturally understood the difficulty of finding the right path through all the disorder and chaos. “However, I ended up making something good yesterday evening, the moment those haughty animals examine it they will lose all their color. Come with me.”

He went to his desk, to where he had had two disciplines deliver a storage box of about half a person’s height and made completely out of iron. Making it nearly impossible to be stolen nor easy to be destroyed. He pulled out the key and opened the first layer of lattice, within the middle of the lattice there laid a small piece of transparent crystal.

“Did you cut off a piece of a crystal?” Chavez who stood at the side took the crystal carefully into his hand to examine it, holding it in front of the window, “No, this is… Crystal Glass! God, you did it!”

“Yes,” Kyle smiled proudly, “I already can’t wait to see their expression when those guys discover that their proudest alchemy discovery had been successfully imitated by me, they will end up showing such a wonderful expression.”

Chavez who hadn’t been able to suppress his exclamation had gathered the attention of all the others alchemists. They all put down their work and came over to take a look for themselves.

“This is the product you’ve worked on until late last night? It really is great.”

“It’s so beautiful, it looks just like a crystal.”

“Congratulations, this will let the place of our Alchemy Workshop within the Duke’s heart greatly increase.”

“How did you do it, can you tell me?”

Kyle nodded, “We all know, that the glass made out of the river sand comes extremely close to it, but in the end when burned, the glass will still contain different colors. This is because the sand still contains some impurities. Now there are two possibilities, first to think of ways to remove the impurities, second to try to get sand which is purer from the beginning. We all tried both methods, I also did the same. The success of the alchemical process largely depends on chances and luck. I selected fine white sand from Willow Town and sandstone from the Fallen Dragon Ridge… ”

Everyone around him was quietly listening, no one spoke a word until he had finished his explanation, they even tried to suppress their breath, “So that’s how it’s done, that was very thoughtful of you.”

Crystals were very rare and expensive gems, and the colorless and transparent crystal are even rarer. So only the clearest of translucent glass had the right to be known as Crystal Glass. The haughtiness of the Alchemy Workshop in the King’s City was mostly based on their method for producing Crystal Glass. Always dominating the Redwater City’s Alchemy Workshop. Furthermore, the yearly income of gold royals let the Duke of Redwater City develop a deep feeling of envy.

But after today, this situation would soon change. If Chavez could also figure out the composition of Snow Powder, coupled with the double-stone method to create acid, we will be able to completely overthrow the domineering position of King’s City’s Alchemy Workshop. By then, those who are always used to looking down on other people, I am afraid they will have no choice other than to lower their cooky heads. After picturing this, Kyle Sichi mood became even better.

As he was preparing himself to screen the raw materials for the second batch of Crystal Glass, a frantic discipline run to his side, “Chief Instructor, a messenger from Border Town from the Western Border want to see you, he brought a letter from Roland Wimbledon with him the 4th Prince.

“4th Prince?” Kyle began to frown, it seemed that there really was such a person in the Royal Family. He knew nearly nothing about nobility, in his impression they were all uneducated and ignorant, always fighting for more power and wealth. “What is he looking for?”

“I do not know, the messenger said that as soon as you read the letter, you will naturally understand the meaning of His Royal Highness.”

“…” The Chief Instructor exposed an extremely impatient look, in all likelihood, the content of the letter will be recruitment offer for only a small sum, if that’s the case, I should show him that alchemy isn’t a cheap trick. However, since the other person is a prince, I still have to maintain a basic state of etiquette, “Take me to see him, so that I can get the letter and send him on his way!”

When Kyle Sichi returned home, it was already completely dark outside.

After dinner with his family, he returned to his study and recorded the recipe for Crystal Glass together with its required raw materials and his experience of producing it in his own book, “The Door to Alchemy”.

In it, he had recorded his journey from the day he had started as an apprentice to his days as Chief Instructor. At the same time, he had also included all of the newly discovered alchemic recipes of the Redwater Alchemy Workshop.

Kyle believed that with the help of this book, he would earn his place in all kinds of history books. Even thousands of years later, alchemists would still have his name deeply engraved in their minds.

Only after the candle was nearly burnt out did Kyle finally put down his pen and made himself ready to sleep.

Suddenly, he remembered that he still had the letter from the Prince, and until now, he hadn’t read a word of it. Glancing at the candle, he saw that only a fingernail’s worth of candle was left, so he decided to use the last bit of time to read this letter so that he could give a verbal reply to the messenger on the next day. The small remaining bit of candle would only be enough for him to write a few dozens of words, but it would still be enough to read a worthless letter.

After opening the envelope, he saw that it contained three sheets of paper, of which the first page was the common courtesy and introduction of their titles and their territory. Kyle didn’t even bother himself to take a look at it; he directly moved on to the second page.

The second page didn’t contain the expected recruiting offer or lash-out, making Kyle feel a little surprised. Instead, all that was written were five strange formulas. After taking a careful look, he noticed that each formula was made up out of three compositions.

Oh, that’s a little mean, he smiled, in the end, regardless of the which purpose the Prince had, at least he was somewhat tricky in the end.

He swept his gaze over the first line.

“Dry distillation of Saltpeter produces nitric acid.”

Saltpeter… dry distillation… nitric acid, these were all terms used in alchemy. Kyle was totally surprised, isn’t this the double stone acid method?

“The acidic liquid produced by dry distillation of Saltpeter has to be gathered inside a special container. It looks exactly like ordinary water, so it will be hard to recognize. However, it is very corrosive. Not only does it have the ability to burn away skin, but it can even dissolve some metals.“

This… is actually an alchemic formula? Is it possible that Border Town also has an Alchemy Instructor?

He quickly moved his gaze to the next line

If the first sentence was already enough to surprise him, then the second sentence was simply incredible.

It consisted of a bunch of inexplicable symbols, standing side by side, forming an equation. Kyle frowned. He had never seen such strange symbols in his whole life.

Looking further down, it seemed that the third sentence was the interpretation of the second sentence, including the names and meanings of the symbols. To be honest, he was still unable to understand the symbols even with the explanation. The hard to pronounce words were apparently all newly coined words. In order to link the words with the symbols, he had to read them again and again. But even after all this, the sentence meaning was still a much too complex puzzle for him.

At this moment, the flame of the candle shook twice and went out.

Hell! Kyle cursed loudly within his heart, and without any hesitation he took a new candle from the drawer, and began reading once more.

…

When the second candle had already burned halfway, the Chief Instructor’s hands that were holding the pages were shaking heavily.

What seemed to be a letter with nearly nothing on it had taken many times longer than the usual time spent reading a neatly written page.

On top of the second page of the letter there were only five formulas. Unexpectedly, they were all alchemy formulas!

If it was only given like this, then they would still be an outstanding master alchemist, but it was still not an impossible accomplishment to sum up five alchemy recipes by oneself. However, these five formulas, in addition to the first method for producing acid, were all correlated well with each other. Certain neologisms appeared repeatedly, giving the appearance that it was a maintained cycle.

“Nitric acid reacts with silver to produce silver nitrate, mixed together with water it becomes nitric oxide.”

“Silver nitrate reacts with iron to form ferrous nitrate and silver.”

“Silver nitrate reacts with copper to form copper nitrate and silver.”

“Copper nitrate reacts with iron to form ferrous nitrate and copper.”

Previously, Kyle had already put a silver bar into the acidic liquid. It hadn’t taken long before the silver was dissolved. Dissolving something or letting it become invisible were the characteristic of acid, it corroded anything. But now, this unknown alchemist had stated that the silver nitrate had been dissolved in the water and on the surface it seemed to have gone away, but in fact, the silver had only morphed into another kind of existence, instead of being annihilated as previously thought.

How can this be?

No… Kyle shook his head. Apparently, the other side had already guessed my way of thinking, so that meant, these formulas correlating with each other isn’t something accidental, he realized. This person wrote these formulas exactly so that I could confirm them, whether it is silver, iron or copper, these are all common minerals. According to the following alchemy recipes, the silver can reappear again, proving that it wasn’t annihilated, and still exists within the acid.