Alchemy basics

A few readers near him were startled by the shout. They threw him some unfriendly gazes. At the same time, the guards quickly rushed in to the library and looked around with questioning gazes.

"Sorry guys, I just got a bit too excited reading," Gerald apologetically smiled at them.

The guards looked around the library once more, and when they saw that everything was alright, they left.

"Please don't scream anymore," said a guard as he closed the massive doors.

Gerald smiled at him until the people focused on their research again, and then he quickly read the page again, to confirm his eyes didn't play tricks on him. What he saw was something he hoped to find all along. It was a Permanent Mana Enhancement Elixir!

"Mana Elixir! I knew there had to be something like that," he whispered to himself in excitement. The description was very short and vague, however, he knew what it meant. It was a potion that helped to expand the body's capacity for Mana. No need for expensive accessories or weapons. If he could just get this Elixir, how awesome would that be?

'Hmm, now that I think about it… people probably don't know about this Elixir. If they did, why would people use accessories to enhance themselves? It would be much more convenient to enhance your own body. There should be at least some research into the Mana capacity enhancement, but I didn't find anything about it in the books,' he thought to himself.

"There has to be a reason for that. I'll have to ask the headmaster to explain to me some stuff," he mumbled to himself and stood up from the table. He knocked on the giant door, so the guards could let him go out. After that, he went straight to the headmaster's office.

Knock, knock!

A, "Come in," was heard from behind the door. Gerald quickly entered the room.

"Oh, Gerald, welcome. I nearly copied a third of the book you gave me yesterday. What brings you here?" Orin Gezor asked him with a warm smile.

"Wait, yesterday?" Gerald asked in confusion.

Orin Gezer nodded.

"I was in the library for the whole day and night?"

Orin Gezer nodded again.

Gerald scratched his head, "No wonder I'm so hungry."

Orin almost laughed at his face and said, "Would you like some tea?"

"No thanks, I came here in the hope you could answer some of my questions," Gerald told him.

"I will do my best. Ask away."

"I'm interested in Mana's capacity in the body. Could you tell me anything about it?" Gerald asked with a serious face.

Orin Gezor took a deep breath and quietly sighed. "So many people always ask me about this. You found that you need a lot of money for magic accessories, and you want to increase your body's Mana capacity, right?"

Gerald nodded.

"Ah, " Orin sighed again. "I'll just start at the beginning. Mana, as a form of energy, is stored in a substance called Etherium, or Ether for short. Ether is circulating in every living being's blood. Some creatures store excess Ether inside their muscles and bones or in the form of a crystal. That's what we call Etherium Crystals."

Gerald now had a better understanding of what those crystals were.

"Humans, on the other hand, don't or actually can't do that. We keep Ether in our blood the whole life. As such, the capacity doesn't change much. An average person has somewhere between 5 and 10 LIS."

"LIS? " Gerald asked uncertainly.

"One LIS is the average amount of Mana needed for the lowest grade spell or Low-Intensity Spell," Orin quickly explained.

'Wow, the acronym is almost exactly like the name of my last girlfriend, Liz. This is going to be awkward thinking about it…' Gerald thought, but still simply answered, "I see."

"Let me continue. The Elves, for example, form a visible crystal on their chest after they reach 100 LIS and it then keeps growing for the rest of their life, gradually making them more powerful."

"Some creatures, such as monsters and Dwarves can absorb the Ether in their skin, muscles, and bones, making them stronger and their bodies tougher," Orin continued.

"Couldn't we do something about that? Like, eat more Ether to get a higher concentration in the blood?" Gerald continued to be curious.

Orin shook his head. "If that was possible, there would be no magic accessories. The weird thing is, that after Ether comes in contact with our blood, it starts emitting heat. At the normal levels, this heat is not noticeable, however when you get twice or three times higher concentration in your blood, it starts burning you from inside," Orin Gezor explained.

"There were experiments millennia ago, that tried to fix this problem. Unfortunately, after a long time, the only result was a bunch of crooked people and wasted resources. A few prisoners even burst into flames, when the concentration of Etherium in the blood went up by ten times."

"Oh wow, that's brutal," commented Gerald.

"It certainly is. That's why you should forget about increasing your Mana capacity. Just stick to the magic gear and you will be fine."

Gerald had a depressed expression on his face. 'Could it be that the potions in the book are made just for Elven's constitution?' he thought to himself.

"What about absorbing Ether into the muscles and bones? Like Dwarfs, is it possible?" he asked.

Orin wanted to quickly dismiss his question, but before he spoke, he suddenly remembered something from many years ago. "There is, in fact, a herb, that has that kind of effect and it's a praised delicacy for Dwarves."

"If I remember correctly, a few centuries ago a few alchemists tried to make a potion from it. It even worked for a while. The test subjects got a few drops of diluted herbal extracts every day and soon they started absorbing the Etherium into their bodies. And it seemed to be stable."

"Then that means…" Gerald wanted to say something but he got interrupted rudely.

"But! That herb, they later called it God's Joke, is actually extremely poisonous. The effect was quite nice if you exclude the fact that every single test subject didn't live more than a year after taking a drop of the herb juices."

"Even if it was extremely diluted and spaced out days, weeks, or even months it all had the same effect. It's like the poison is permanently anchored in the body, slowly killing you."

"At most, they could achieve somewhere around 50 LIS in the body before the subjects died. And if you think that a 25-year-old Dark Elf has more than 100 LIS in their body naturally and that you can buy a good Etherium Crystal with 100 LIS for somewhere around ten gold coins depending on the Element, then you can imagine that results like these are basically worthless." Explained Orin.

"Oh, is that so…" Gerald was kind of disappointed. "Then maybe could answer a few more of my questions?" he asked.

"Sure, ask away, " Orin answered with a smile.