Help Yourself

When the first rays of sunshine landed on Gerald sleeping on the ground, he woke up on the dirty floor.

Gerald took a deep breath and organized his thoughts. In this new life that he has now, he decided to shelf his name as Gerald and try to be, "Chrysos."

Chrysos looked around and saw that this place was extremely filthy. Ever since he was still living on earth, he always kept his stuff clean and organized.

This guy's house is literally a mess. Of course, he needed to clean it as soon as possible.

"Egh.. Who lives like this?" Chrysos took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. "And of course he stinks like garbage.. that gas mask is very necessary, I might transmigrate again if I don't wear it." Chrysos knew that he had to put an end to this disaster unless he wanted to die from suffocation.

It was a really good thing that the chemicals in the gas mask do their job properly. The oxygen is inhaled by his lungs and the carbon dioxide gets "devoured" and turned into oxygen.

The mask is airtight and creates a pocket air circulation inside. The chemical is indeed unique to achieve this effect.

First, he checked everywhere and found a small barrel with a small door and a faucet attached to it.

The moment he looked at it, he recognized from his memory that it's a water dispenser. He opened the door and saw a blue crystal with numerous pipes connected to it. The crystal is the same size of three adult fists in terms of mass. He opened the faucet and sure enough, water was running down from it.

He closed the water faucet in order to save water even though the water crystal can provide 57 years worth of water if kept open all the time.

Chrysos looked around and saw a broom and a mop. He remembered that he used to clean chemical and potion spills whenever he made mistakes during his brewing sessions. He grabbed a used cloth and was ready to clean the stuff.

But before that, he took out everything outside and after a few minutes, he was left with a dirty but empty house.

"This is going to take a while…" Chrysos took a deep breath and began cleaning.

5 hours later...

...

Chrysos was looking at a new scene now.

The cabinets were wiped clean, the brewing ingredients were organized, the table is almost empty, but it's definitely cleaner than before.

It took a while to clean the place up and it burned Chrysos' fragrant crystal orchids.

A fragrant crystal orchid is a cheap but easily extractable flower even by novice alchemists and other potion brewing classes. They have a blue crystal like stem that beautifully complements riversides and streams since they grow near them to satisfy their need for rushing water.

They are fragrant just like in the name, and can be used to clean stuff as well. It can be mixed with water frog grass gels to make a soapy mixture. And because cleaning this place used all of his reserves, he needed to collect more.

He sighed, the reason why he never cleaned up is because he thinks that the place will be stained afterwards anyways, so why bother. Well it's true, but he's going to die of infection if he keeps this lifestyle up." Chrysos scratched his head and white flakes kept falling down. Even his dandruff was too much for a normal person to handle.

"Speaking of which, I need a bath. But the orchids and the water frog grass reserves are all gone.." Chrysos made up his mind and decided to go out and look for orchids and water frog grass.

He grabbed a Scent Masking Potion of the Abnormal tier. Speaking of tiers for potions, weapons, armor and other necessary stuff, they are classified in Common Tier, Normal Tier, Uncommon Tier, Abnormal Tier, Rare Tier, Strange Tier, Mystical Tier, Epic Tier, Advanced Tier, Legendary Tier, Mythical Tier, World Tier, Half Ascension Tier, Transcendental Tier, Otherworldly Tier, Cosmic Tier, and finally, Universal Tier.

Rare ingredients are the best ingredients he currently has. Anything above the rare tier is almost impossible for ordinary folk to get, so he had to settle with this much for now.

Chrysos also brought three Uncommon Tier Incendiary potions, two Uncommon Tier Swiftness potions, and one Abnormal Tier Eagle Sight potion.

He grabbed a knife and a leather bag for collecting the ingredients and finally set off.

...

The moment Chrysos walked out, the sun warmly greeted him. The lush greenery around him made him feel revitalized. It was a very soothing feeling.

Looking at the cabin from the outside, he felt a sense of accomplishment. It looks much better now than how it was before. Chrysos never knew about his old self's past, about the things like, how he was betrayed or why. All he knows is that it happened.

Yes, he remembered something about Chrysos being betrayed a long time ago.

The reason why he couldn't access those memories is because his old self buried those thoughts too deeply. It was hard for him to recall them without a stimulus. But that has to wait for now.

He walked north towards the river that he saw in his memories. He passed by many tall trees with thick moss covering them. He touched the grassy looking moss and a small dew fell down as a droplet of water from his finger.

Chrysos laughed. After being transported here, he felt very curious about the world he's living in. But he was also sad that he had to leave so many things behind. He couldn't shake off that feeling of loneliness and sadness.

But he knew that worrying about them now wouldn't change anything. He continued walking forward and found the river later on. There, he saw a few crystal orchids and walked towards them.

"There they are." Chrysos got close to them and cut the stems one by one before putting them in his bag. According to his old memories, it's better to leave them with their stems, because uprooting them will leave them no chance to regrow in the future. And these orchids need more water than an ordinary plant so it's hard to replant them somewhere else.

He followed the river and walked carefully along the rocky riverside so that he wouldn't trip. Not too long later, he found another group of orchids.

"Ah, another one. That's good."

Chrysos pulled out his knife and cut the stems the same way he did earlier. The collection of orchids took at least an hour.

In the end, he got 65 stalks of orchids and decided that it was enough, and it was time for him to get the water frog grasses next.

He went ahead to a lake filled with bubbly gel frogs. The Bubbly Gel Frog is a type of frog that produces bubbly gels. The excess gels fall down the water and get absorbed by wild grasses, making the water gel grass. The bubbly gel from the frogs themselves are very concentrated and it's even harder to use them for making soap. The bubbly frog gels are used as a binding ingredient instead of being a main ingredient.. An example of the bubbly frog gels being used as a binding ingredient is for a Flaming Petal Snakeflower and an Earthly Essence Ore. These two ingredients need to be binded somehow and the bubbly frog gel does its magic. That way, you can make an Earthly Flameskin Potion used to resist high temperatures.

Of course it has more ingredients, but that's just an example.

Later, Chrysos found the bubbly frog lake and carefully stepped in the waters. The bubbly frogs are pretty docile and get scared when they hear loud sounds or feel the ground shaking.

Chrysos also didn't want to scare them off, but the reason he stepped carefully is to avoid crushing their eggs. This will lower their population if he's not careful. Bubbly frogs only reproduce when it's spring, so he has to preserve as many frogs as possible if he wants to get a steady supply of water frog grass.

After getting past the usual breeding zones, the water was now getting deeper. Chrysos held his breath and dived down the lake. And there, he saw many water frog grasses. It was perfect.

As for why he didn't use his mask? It isn't scuba gear. It doesn't work underwater and needs to come in contact with air to work.

He grabbed his knife and nimbly collected every grass nearby. The water frog grass is called water frog instead of bubbly frog because the gel made the grass more attuned to the water element. The fragrant orchids make the bubbly nature of these grass show themselves when cooked together with the grass. Of course, the wild grass can be attuned to the water element by themselves after a long time and will become water grasses. Unlike the water frog grass, it isn't attuned through gel or any "unnatural" means which has residue. (Evident when cooked with fragrant orchids)

...

Chrysos swam back to the surface in order to get some air. And after he breathed in and out, he calmed his lungs and held his breath so that he could dive down the lake once more.

...

This repeated for a while until he got a satisfactory amount.

He decided to walk back to the cabin later but he stayed for a while and counted his gains.

"... One hundred fifty five, one hundred fifty six, one hundred fifty seven, one hundred fifty eight and a hundred fifty nine. All one hundred and fifty nine stalks of water frog grass." Chrysos packed the grass into his bag.

A bubbly frog jumped on his shoulder and drank the water drops from his face using its tongue.

Using his hand, he picked the frog up and gently placed it on the lake.

It jumped off and swam away.

As he rested, he yawned. Chrysos decided to go back now.

...

Back at the cabin.

Chrysos grabbed a pot and filled it with water. Using a quarter of a drop from an incendiary potion, he started a fire in the furnace. He then put the pot of water in the furnace.

While waiting for the pot of water to boil, he chopped up a few stalks of the water frog grass. After it was hot enough, he put some orchid stalks and the chopped grass.

He mixed them for a while and closed the pot with a lid. The grass melted and was fully absorbed by the orchids inside.

Not too long after, he blew out the fire and used a strainer to take out the orchids from the pot. He let them dry for a bit before refining them one by one.

Using Divinious, a beautiful green glow came from his fingers. When he touched the orchids, a fragrant blue liquid came out of the plant. This unique ability to alchemists is called extraction.

A unique ability is given to a person the moment they were born. It can range from one to twenty unique abilities given to them when they are born. Of course, the more unique abilities, the rarer the chances of that happening become.

Chrysos is born with the unique abilities Extraction, Refinement, Blending, Skin Hardening, Material Detection, Swiftness and Purification.

All of these unique abilities cost Divinious to use. The difference between unique abilities and the abilities that can be learned is that they don't need to be learned since it's an ability given to them since birth.

In order to use Divinious abilities, one must control their Divinious and manipulate them in ways to form a Divinious formation.

Divinious is formless, structureless and it lacks an element. Different structures, different forms, make different elements.

If Divinious is structured in a specific way, it will become air energy, earth energy, fire energy, life energy, destruction energy, extraction energy, blood energy etc. depending on how it's structured.

To simply visualize it, it would be like a molecule composed of millions of atoms but much in a much more complicated structure. The structure inside a "molecule" of Divinious would have millions of atoms making a structure inside it to decide what kind of energy it is. And a stream of Divinious is made of such "molecules."

With infinite structures and forms, there are also infinite types of Divinious.

Anyways.. setting aside Theories on Divinious, after Chrysos extracted the liquid from the orchids, he got what he needed.

He put the gelatinous liquid on a bowl and mixed it using blending Divinious. He kept mixing and mixing until it was getting firmer and firmer. Until it had a good texture suitable enough for the soap so he stopped.

He waited for a while until it finally solidified.

And finally he had soap.

He just repeated the process five times and wrapped the extra soaps with a white sheet made from the leaves of a White Leafed Daqier Tree.

He took a very needed bath after this.