Preparations

That night, Alex went back to his room and prepared to make the new pill.

He read the recipe and thought about it all for a few minutes. There were 16 ingredients exactly, of which 4 of them would be considered rare. 

Of course, they weren't as rare as the willow they just found, but it was rare enough that only one or two of such ingredients would pop up in the market every day.

'I will have to gather them and use them towards the end,' he thought. For now, he simply had to make the pill.

'Maybe I won't even need to do anything,' Alex thought. 'Maybe this pill is already the best it can be.'

Since this was a pill recipe from the long past when humans and demons fought, Alex had more faith in the recipe than the new ones made by local alchemists.

So, once the cauldron was properly heated up, he started making the pill.