Inner Spirit Flame

Evan was quick to learn Alchemy. Within 3 days he was tempering materials to the full extent, averaging a tempering rate of 25 times. This was pretty much the extent that he could go with the random unranked materials that were able to be found around Feldman's house.

The chores on the other hand were much more difficult, but the payout was phenomenal. His system didn't work the way he thought it would, relying on experience to level up and move forward. At least not yet, the experience slot was still locked. It basically was just a tool to help him gain strength faster than the average person, right now. Each time he would have to feed the animals he would need to get a giant bag of feed from Feldman, and walk it from the house to the pen, then he would need to distribute it between all of the feeders. To make this harder the only way to fill the feeders was to do it from inside the pen. He would be chased by the Clucks every single time he fed them. It didn't seem so bad but with the weight of the bags of feed, just the chores were a full day of absolutely blistering work.

All the hard work had benefits though. His strength stat had risen 2 points, to 7, making carrying the feed bag a lot easier. Before, he was able to easily lift 150lbs and 200 was his limit. Now though, he was able to easily lift 210 lbs. The biggest jump was to his speed though, previously at only one stat point, it had risen to 6, at one point he could only run top speed of about 20 mph and 15 comfortably, now he was able to run at about 120 mph at top speed, and about 90 mph comfortably. The other stats moved up so slowly that Evan guessed speed only rose so quickly due to how malnourished his body was beforehand, he had already caught his other stats up to normal or even surpassed normalcy. So naturally they would not receive the same growth. His stamina had also moved up one point. He had also figured out that if he was going all out working as hard as he can, each Stamina point allowed him an hour at this rate of work. This meant he could leisurely work for 12 hours without a problem. Agility had taken a large jump too gaining 3 points, from avoiding Cluck attacks, this made him much lighter on his feet, maneuvering easier and increasing his reaction time.

Evan was quite happy with the way his training had been going. After only a week he had mastered tempering and gained a lot of strength. Even more valuable is the knowledge that Feldman gave him. Not just knowledge about Alchemy, but about life and survival. He had explained how to judge the strength of a beast and how to conceal his energy from them. The most valuable information he had gained though was how to hunt and forage for food. Recognizing edible plants, and how to find the vital parts of a beast. He was setting Evan up to be able to fend for himself, even if he had to live in the wild.

"EVAN!" Feldman belted from the doorway of his home. Evan was working in one of the many unkempt parts of land on Feldman's vast amount of property. He was tempering random plants while they were still planted. This was something that was supposed to be impossible to do, but Feldman had never told this to Evan, and just let him continue to do it. He had already noticed that the first purple flower Evan had done this to had now evolved into an F rank material known as the Violent Violet. It is a good material used more for forging than alchemy, as it's only purpose for Alchemists is for Enhancers.

Enhancers are any elixir created by an alchemist to increase one aspect of themselves, whether it's strength, speed, stamina, agility, spirit pool, or even the ability itself. These were useful, but they were expensive, and there was no market for them in a small village like this.

But the main fact was that Evan did this. He did this without even knowing how amazing it was. So, Feldman was going to let Evan upgrade all of the weeds around his home into ranked materials. He could still sell them and make a lot of money, after Evan left.

Evan quickly ran to Feldman's house. He knew it should be around noon, which is when he would have his Alchemy class with Feldman.

"Sorry sir, I was just practicing my tempering skills." Evan stated as he trotted up to the house.

"It's fine. It's time for your lesson though. Are you ready?" Feldman asked.

"Yes sir."

"Good, take this and read it. You have 2 hours to read it and then I'll give you your next task." Feldman said this as he tossed a book to Evan.

The book was huge. It had to be twice the size of a standard dictionary. It said, "Comprehensive Guide to Alchemy: Apprentice to A rank", "Written by: Feldman Agate, Master SS ranked Alchemist".

*Alchemy Creative Art: Full Comprehension Download*

The bar showed up, with the bar settled at 0%. Instead of being discouraged by the size of the book, Evan was instead excited by the progress bar. Full Comprehension, this must mean that after I learn this book, I will be an actual Alchemist.

Evan started speed reading through the book, he wasn't worried about retaining the information. With his amazing Killer Instinct System, every word is ingrained into his brain. The content was full of details. It made the "Introduction to Alchemy" come off as a jumbled mess of basic ideas. It was impossible to not understand the book, the writing was fantastically specific to each and every step.

It even explained the difference between each sub-rank of Alchemy is just a success rate of creating an elixir. Just being able to create an elixir makes you considered a Low F Rank Alchemist. The major differences between full ranks are based on the rank of elixir you can make. Elixirs did not have sub ranks but did differ in strength quite a bit based on the materials used. Your rank increases as you become more proficient at combining materials. A Low F rank, Alchemist is basically someone who fails almost 90% of the time and the degree of crafting will only achieve an elixir of F rank, due to high amounts of impurities and low tempering strength.

After learning this Evan decided that his main focus should be the refining and combining processes. If he can perfect these, it is possible to skip a few ranks. At this thought, Evan skipped the parts explaining each rank. At the back of the book, there was an extremely detailed explanation of each stage of Alchemy. He skipped passed the section on tempering, he had a great grasp of tempering and even discovered that he could use his spirit search technique to perfect the process. This would put a pause on his download for full comprehension but would pay off in the long run. Sometimes the fastest route isn't the best option. This felt like one of those times.

Evan felt that taking the longer route would make a big difference. If he just read the information and practiced accordingly, then he would be a splitting image of Feldman's work. If he learned on his own, only working off of basic knowledge, he would have more insights and learn things and adapt them to his own specific style. He would finish the book after he felt that it wouldn't hinder his progress but help him instead.

His Spirit Search allowed him to use his spirit to watch each piece of the material. It was a detailed analysis of how much spirit and pressure was exerted to the material and where it was. This gave him the ability to keep the entire material balanced, exerting more pressure to the places that were not tempering enough, and lessening the pressure in places where it is causing stress fractures. Using his spirit search, he had completely perfected tempering of non-ranked materials.

He sped read through the refinement section first, wanting to first gain the knowledge and the reflect on it. It took a short time before he finished the section, just 5 minutes.

'So, refining is just getting rid of impurities. Without impurities, the previous tempering of the pathways has the ability to repair old decrepit pathways and create new ones all together. This gives the material the ability to directly increase in rank. By having a larger, more fluid flowing circulatory system, the speed and amount of spirit energy contained is dramatically increased, which directly influences the growth to a higher rank. It says that an Inner Spirit Flame is easier to refine with because you can directly control it with willpower instead of trying to influence an outside force.' Evan had broken the information down into the simplest way to understand it. He had put it into his own words, which made the thought process a little easier to understand. He knew that he had an inner spirit flame, this is what he had gained through completing the Apprentice Download. He wasn't sure if the system gave it to him or if it was something he gained from his parents. It also stated that inner spirit flames were usually gifted through a bloodline to either a Great Beast, or a powerful race. They were obscenely rare and came in thousands of types. There were only 10 known Great Flames though, which were able to be used for both Alchemy and Forging. They were also the only flames known to be at an Omega rank. Flames were ranked in the same way as treasures, without sub-ranks but the power depending on the individual using them.