Alchemical Fusion (Part 2)

He had figured out what he was going to make. The trick was he now had to both temper and refine all of these materials, without changing their rank. This would make the materials much more adaptable to the spirit energy and the heating process. They were both imperative processes for the fusion step to be successful. Without any tempering, the introduction of foreign spirit energy will cause an imbalance that will cause the pathways to explode, making the material unusable. Without refining the material will not have a tolerance to the flame and instead of the spirit melting, it will simply be incinerated.

'No wonder unranked elixirs don't exist. The idea alone seems impossible to accomplish. This is harder than A ranked elixirs.' Evan was flabbergasted, this process seemed impossible. He knew it wasn't though. It might have been for the average person, but due to his spirit search and spirit sense, it was possible for Evan. In order to not change the rank, he simply couldn't destroy any impurities, he could only refine the pathways internally. This would take incredible control as he had to leave the impurities in the pathways intact while also using the flame gently on the surface to build a tolerance to the flames. The tempering process wouldn't be much different at all as it doesn't increase the rank of the material.

Specifically tempering simply brings the impurities to the surface and gives control over spirit pressure. This would just make the refining step more difficult. With perfect refining it is possible to force all impurities into the spirit pathways, but that kind of pressure takes a lot of spirit control and a lot of intelligence as the mental strength would have to be extremely impressive. This way why Feldman never had to increase his physical strength. His mental fortitude was incredible, his intelligence stat was almost 300. Evan was unaware of this as he never felt the need to actually search into Feldman.

Evan had an idea. He was just going to temper the material to a very small extent. He was hoping that with such a small amount of tempering, he would be able to avoid the impurities in the spirit pathway enough to not change the grade of the materials but just enough to strengthen the pathways themselves to withstand the melting process of fusion.

He started the fusion process with his normal spirit dome, but instead of forcing as much energy as possible into the dome, he turned on his spirit sense. With his spirit sense active he could watch the impurities in the material as he was tempering. This was his first attempt at using his spirit sense while tempering, and the results were astounding. He was able to slowly push his energy into the dome and stop the moment that the impurities started to move.

As soon as he noticed an impurity starting to move, he retracted a small amount of energy out of the dome. When the impurity stabilized, Evan just kept a steady stream of energy flowing into the product at the same strength. The process took a lot longer than normal, but as he was starting to feel like his energy was on the brink of exhausting, he could finally feel his energy being accepted into the material without conflict. He held on a little longer and when he could feel his energy freely moving throughout the material without resistance, he retracted the dome and his energy.

Retracting his energy didn't refill his spirit pool, but it did allow the used energy to stimulate the receptacles that absorbed energy. It didn't make the process any easier but prevented the normal fatigue of forcibly absorbing. It was like taking a pain pill before playing a physical sport, by the time the fatigue and pain would be felt, everything would be finished. Since there was no pain associated, just fatigue from forcing the pathways open, by the time you were finished there was no fatigue at all.

This was the bodies way of recycling old energy to help create new. It was actually quite an amazing process. On the other hand, if you didn't get the chance to reabsorb your energy by the time you recuperated a quarter of your strength, you would faint from exhaustion.

The tempering process was fine, but Evan needed 2 hours to gain back his spirit pool, this was actually much faster than before, even with stimulation. It was a result of his spirit refinement technique. Before he was only able to gain one point of spirit energy every 5 minutes. Now it was less than one minute to gain. He didn't realize this before but now it was evident.

When he gained his energy back, he created another dome of spirit energy but instead of releasing his pure spirit he started releasing small wisps of flame into the dome. This was a little more strenuous, as filling the dome initially would take about 30 points of spirit normally, and then another 10 points per minute after that to continually flow in. This time it only took 10 points initially, and 3 points after that.

Refinement flame would normally take 60 points initially, and then 20 every minute after. He could not use a normal amount now though as it would destroy the material. He had to control the flame to be cooler, and slowly allow flames to enter. If he didn't, he wouldn't be able to control them to not touch the impurities. The spirit sense may have made the process easier, but it was by no means simple.

Tempering took an hour with that amount of consumption. This made Evan worried that he wouldn't have enough energy to make it until the material would accept the flame. The initial consumption was only 30 spirit points which made it so that he would need 10 points per minute, but that is still a small amount of time to work. He would only have 17 minutes but would risk hurting himself if he depleted his spirit pool completely.

He only had about 15 minutes of safe time to work. Before he reached his ascension point, if he depleted his energy completely, it could cause his pathways to collapse. This would ruin any chance of future cultivation. It was no different from what Feldman had done to himself intentionally.

The process was going smoothly. Evan had a few slip ups that destroyed impurities, as he was trying to fine tune his control. As he progressed it got much easier to go. By the time 12 minutes had passed he was making the flames dance around the impurities. This increased the pathways at a faster rate, as they were being bombarded by pressure and heat from the flames. At the same time, it improved Evan's control over not just the flames, but his spirit control as well, since they were controlled in the same way.

When Evan had felt his flames moving through the material in the same way his spirit would, it meant that the material had integrated into the flame. The moment of truth would be after he retracted the dome. The material would have to cool down after being refined, and this was the time where it would usually evolve to a higher grade.

Success. As far as he knew, he was the first person to ever refine and temper an unranked material and keep it unranked. Evan started jumping around excitedly, before he felt sick and realized he was almost drained of spirit energy once again.

Another 2 hours passed as Evan regained his strength for what was supposed to be the most difficult part. Alchemical Fusion was described as a culmination of tempering and refining. You would use the flame and spirit to super heat the material, while also causing pressure to condense any and all spirit energy from the material into a blob of free-flowing energy. From there the only non-ethereal material that could withstand the flames would be the vessel material. Evan would have to then use his spirit to create enough pressure to bond the ethereal energies of all the materials into the vessel and use the flames constantly in order to keep the temperature high enough to keep the vessel a liquid.

Evan was estimating that with the high temperature needed, his consumption would be twice as high, and with the constant pressure so would the pressure needed. This would change him to a normal amount of consumption for a normal refining. The tempering wouldn't quite be normal but under the strain of both.

He figured he had about 4 minutes to complete the whole process otherwise he was risking damaging himself. Evan had faith in himself though. His control had leapt leaps and bounds in the past few hours.