An alarming situation

Five days after breaking through to the 2nd layer, Collin had refined two spirit herbs perfectly and immediately tried to refine a scab pill. He failed, the result was a charred, sticky, pill shaped goo. The next dozen attempts were met with the same result. In theory it was simple, let the two essences mix together while applying constate heat till they solidified into a pill all while holding it in shape.

He knew it was only a matter of time till he got used to this new process and succeeded in making a pill that could be used or sold. Because it is one of the easiest pills for new alchemists to make, many alchemists make them in vast amounts and then stop when they can make perfect grade pills. This is why a single gold coin can buy four or five pills.

In the past five days Collin was also having some problems with his sword and movement techniques. The problem lay with the distribution of inner energy when using the techniques, they required very fast and precise movements of inner energy in rapid succession. He could deal with the sore arms from practicing his sword technique but when he failed his movement technique, he would fall face first into the ground.

Of the new editions to his training routine, his practice of the wood attribute spell he bought was going great. He could place a dozen attel seeds in his hand and grow them to harvest size in about two minutes, instead of the two weeks needed to grow them naturally. If all alchemy ingredients were spirit herbs, then this spell would be worth far more than Collin paid for it. But for Foundation Establishment rank pills and above, the ingredient list for pills includes demon beast blood and cores, certain minerals and metals, or other weird ingredients.

It took several more days before Collin's alchemy practice went from producing zero-grade failure pills to a pill that barely reached low-grade. It was a brownish blue green colored pill, and it was a definite improvement to the charred pills he had been making. His next goal was to remove the brownish color from the pill and make a true low-grade pill, before trying to improve it to a mid-grade pill. High-grade and perfect-grade pills and making multiple scab pills at once would be the goals after that.

His plans for improving his pill making were interrupted by a sound Collin had hoped to never hear. It was one of the few sounds that could pass through the sound dampening arrays of the villa and its surroundings. It was the alarm indicating that Camis city was under attack.

The devil worshipers were attacking. They would attack Camis city whenever their numbers swelled enough, it could be two years to five years. They would launch an attack to bring down the outer defensive array, then they would swarm inside en masse. Massive fights would break out in the outer wards where the city's mortals live. A lot of mortals in the outer ward will die, they will be killed by devil worshipers, or in the shockwaves created by powerful cultivators fighting, or they will be drag off by devil worshipers to die horribly at a later time.

Collin's villa was located in the second ward which was protected by a sperate defensive array. This separate defensive array had only been breached twice in the last hundred years, and the villas in this neighborhood had smaller defensive arrays. In theory, the array that protected Collin's villa could last half an hour, which should be enough for the cities defenders to drive out the attackers, but not always.

Standing up from the alchemy table, Collin put the cauldron and spirit herbs in his bag of holding. He began to walk around his villa putting anything of value to a cultivator in his bag. Books, spirit herbs, and even the simple arrays he had been practicing making, all of them were placed in his bag. He didn't want to leave anything that could help the devil worshipers if they came here. After taking out the cheapest low rank sword that had ever been sold in Camis city, Collin locked his bag of holding in his safe before walking to the entrance to the main house of his villa.

Sitting down with his sword in hand he did find himself wishing that he was in the city core like he was the other times the devil worshipers attacked the city. The powerful array protecting the city core had never, ever been breached, and the array protecting his former home was all but unbreakable. It was hard not to want to be in an area of absolute safety in a time like this.

It didn't take long for a second alarm to sound, the outer defensive array had been breached. Every second that now passed meant that people were dying. The mortals that couldn't evacuate into the second ward were now trapped in a war zone.

Around an hour since the first alarm sounded Collin felt the ground rumble, quickly followed by the sound of a third alarm. The second defensive array had been breached for the third time in the past hundred years. The war zone now included his villa. Sitting in the doorway of the main house Collin gripped his sword so hard his knuckles had turned white as he tried to look past the privacy arrays.

If luck was on his side the devil worshipers would target other parts of the second ward, if he was unlucky his neighborhood would be attacked. Those that would be attacking would have a cultivation between Foundation Establishment and Core Formation with a very slight possibility of a Nascent Soul rank devil worshiper appearing. It wouldn't really matter which one showed up, they were all strong enough to kill Collin with utter ease.

The only comfort he could take was that the rumbling he felt seemed to be coming from the northern part of the second ward. That was where the noble families that did not have the right to reside in the city core lived. After several large rumblings, everything seemed to go quiet, the only thing Collin could hear was his own rapid heartbeat. The terrifying silence continued for about an hour before a long alarm sounded.

The devil worshipers had retreated outside the city walls, and most of the danger had passed. The outer defensive array was still down and wouldn't be restored till sometime tomorrow. This meant that the city was in for a sleepless night praying that the devil worshipers didn't regather for a second attack.

Collin found fear to be exhausting. He found himself wishing to be strong enough to not have to worry about things like this. He also wished that he could become a member of the alchemist guild already, then he could retreat to the guild headquarters in Camis city. It was in the city core and had a defensive array that made his clans seem cheap and pathetic.

He wanted to go back to practicing his alchemy but till the defensive array was restored he would have other things to do, like cooking dinner. His food delivery wouldn't begin again till maybe the day after tomorrow, and since he still needed food, it was time to get cooking.

"And it was steamed fish in spicy butter sauce tonight, why does this crap always happen on steamed fish in spicy butter sauce night?" Collin moaned.