It's time.
Doing his best not to disturb the sleeping stone badger, Collin began to put the fresh dirt into a space bag, making the cavern bigger than it was moments ago. Collin ordered the stone badger to dig under the villa grounds a several days ago and was happy with progress so far. As the light shown off the gray stone walls of the cavern Collin wondered how far the stone badger would have gotten if its cultivation was higher. Its current cultivation limits its ability to produce saliva, which in turn limits the amount of dirt it can turn to stone with its saliva.
He had plans for this cavern, he was going to turn it into a large-scale cultivation chamber, with side rooms for each specific element. Right now, when Collin cultivates, he draws in the energy around him and then using the Heavenly Alchemic Cultivation Method he transforms the energy into wood Qi for cultivation. But if the energy he drawn in is already wood Qi, his cultivation would become faster. This idea isn't some grand idea Collin came up with after many hours or thought, there are many large sects that already do this, even the Monten clan do this.
The reason that everyone doesn't use this type of cultivation chamber is because of the sheer expense. Each elemental chamber needs a sealing array, a gathering array, a purification array, and a conversion array. Each array needs to be drawn by a high-grade inscriptionist, using rare and very expensive ingredients. Collin has enough spirit stones to buy the ingredients and the price for each array, but he does not have the ability to invite a high-grade inscriptionist to draw the arrays. He would need more than money to get a high-grade inscriptionist to meet with him let alone do any kind of work for him. If he was still the young lord of the territorial lord's clan, he might be able to at least speak with a high-grade inscriptionist, but now he is just a rogue cultivator with no background.
A high-grade inscriptionist would be able to draw all those modern arrays with ease, but Collin was choosing a different direction. He was going to use the personal notes in the inscription books he got from the Tyler and Styron families, and use arrays based off arrays created during the first era. They would not be as efficient or as powerful or even last forever like the modern arrays, but the ingredients could be bought at the market street for cheap and Collin was confident he could draw them. He planned to use three to five arrays to compensate for the decreased efficiency and strength of the modern arrays. The only true downside is that he would have to redraw the arrays every two years or so, it seemed like a small price to pay to get something he shouldn't be able to get.
Another minor downside is that of the four people living in the villa, the elemental chambers were useless to Valter and Julie. Valter's chosen cultivation path was as a sword cultivator so his cultivation method coverts energy into sword Qi, and Julie as a cultivator using the beat tamer method ad specializing in using dragons, coverts energy into dragon Qi. The only solace is that the main chamber would be filled with large amounts of pure Qi, that would help in their cultivation. How useful this plan truly is would depend on how many of his cousins accepted his offer and what cultivation methods they chose.
For the next three days Collin visited the cavern before breakfast and after dinner, but on the fourth day, he brought Julie to the hole. And after telling what she needed to do and giving her a few empty space bags and the flying disk, he dedicated himself to practicing the final four pills. He made those four pills over and over again for another ten days before he proclaimed success.
The next day he woke and did his normal routine till breakfast, but after breakfast he changed into his faceless servant costume and set out for the alchemy shop to speak to Valeria. It was time to tell her he was ready to take the Alchemist's guild test and hopefully become a member. As he was walking towards the shop, he felt a sense of relief that he had succeeded in learning those last four pills. He also felt a little nervous, he was sure he could answer all the written questions, and fairly sure he could make any of the ten pills they would ask him to make. But a part of him worried that they might choose one of the pills he hadn't learned yet in order to shake up the test. He didn't really think they would but in a lot of the books he read growing up, uselessly dumb plot twists happened all the time. Things like that annoyed him.
For the first time since he started to come to this shop, there was another person here to buy things. An older heavy-set male dressed as a faceless servant spent ten minutes trying to buy pills to help his young master to feel the energy around him. But he was offering Valeria far less than the price she stated, even going so far to have his young master owe her a favor when he becomes a cultivator. Eventually he realized he wasn't getting anywhere and stormed out of the building.
With the old man gone, the annoyed look on Valeria's face went back to her normal uninterested look. But the quickly change after she heard what Collin came to say.
"It's time, I would like to take the Alchemist's Guild test."
With a smile on her face, she asked Collin if he was sure and if he needed anything to get ready. She asked several times in her excitement, and after being told each time that he was ready she got ready to leave the shop. Collin also got ready to leave, he took off his faceless servant costume. His gold-colored hair, jade green eyes, and tan skin were further highlighted by his rich dark grey clothing with its silver trim.
After an approving nod from Valeria, they began heading towards the Alchemist's Guild. Along the way, many of the men they passed let their eye wonder on Valeria's full breasts and gorgeous curves till their eyes found the alchemist's badge. When they laid their eyes on the badge, they all but ran away from her. Collin couldn't blame the men for looking, he was still several months shy of his eleventh birthday and knew Valeria was a beautiful woman, and with her outer coat trailing behind her like a cape, more of her tight dress could be seen.
After a few minutes of walking, they entered the city center. The Alchemist's tower was the tallest building in the city at three hundred feet tall, it also had around five hundred feet below ground as a storage area. As an owner of two villas Collin could develop them how he wished within the binderies of the villa's walls and one hundred feet above ground and three hundred feet below ground. Only the Alchemist's Guild had permission to exceed these limits within Camis city.
There were many people entering and exiting the tall octagon shaped building. Following Valeria, they walked past the front doors, past the receptionists, past the many sales counters and into the office area. Valeria told him to wait there and began to walk around talking to various people till she came back with a woman who introduced herself a Haley. She explained that she would be responsible for testing Collin, and she would take him to the test room for the written portion of the test, then she would take him to an alchemy lab so he could use the arrays of an alchemy table to make pills.
Collin was glad to hear he could use an alchemy table to make pills, he had been trying to learn how to make pills with his flame art, but he could only make scabs pills so far. Every other pill he tried to make was turned into pill shaped charcoal or ash. He needed a long time to get as good at making pills without the aid of arrays as he was with them. But to truly progress in alchemy he would need to spend that time and a whole lot more.
As Haley walked him to the test room, Collin was wondering how his life would really change if he passed these tests while trying to ignore anything bad. As he stood before the door to the test room, he began to think of all the hard work he went through to get here, and he didn't like it. What he didn't like wasn't all the hard work or the many hours of studying, or even having to buy all those ingredients, it was that his mind was racing. He needed to calm down, so he took a deep calming breath as he entered the test room.