Chapter 260 : Chapter 260
Chapter 260. The Infinite Health Bottle
“When using Miracle Alchemy, you cannot just throw in roadside pebbles as materials. That would simply be a waste of mental power.”
“The materials you use have a certain connection to the effects of the Curio you ultimately obtain. The higher the quality of the materials, the more powerful the Curio’s effects will be.”
“Although a Curio refined from low-grade materials can sometimes be far more powerful than one refined from high-grade materials, even that kind of power has its limits.”
“The lowest-grade materials that can still produce a Curio are scraps from magical creatures. Anything even worse than that is just a waste of the mental power spent on Miracle Alchemy.”
Fulan then carefully read through the examples above. Elise had followed one principle throughout them all—that was, use whatever you had on hand.
According to Elise’s opening remarks, the most correct way to use Miracle Alchemy was to throw all the unimportant things in your possession into this alchemical process and then rely on luck to obtain a Curio.
Because sometimes, even if you used the same materials, after failing nine times, you might succeed on the tenth.
But you had no idea when that “tenth time” would arrive. It was also possible that even after one hundred attempts, your formula would still never succeed.
That was why alchemists who had truly mastered Miracle Alchemy would never limit themselves to a single formula. Whatever they had in hand, they gambled with.
As long as they managed to draw one powerful Curio, they could turn their fortunes around on the spot and gain a huge amount of wealth. That was where the joy of Miracle Alchemy lay.
And every paper related to Miracle Alchemy was only talking about one thing—how to draw closer to success while “pulling the gacha.” Some even studied the mystical superstitions of other worlds, vainly hoping to increase the chance of success.
Fulan glanced at the Life-Replenishing Potion on the table and fell into thought. The moment she stepped outside, she ran straight to the Mage Tower and exchanged for that paper.
However, after mastering Miracle Alchemy, she saw a new Skill appear on her own panel.
【Miracle Alchemy (Uninitiated) (Proficiency: 0/10): An alchemy that pursues “miracles.” During the use of this alchemy, anything is possible.】
Fulan returned to the house where she kept her alchemical equipment, took out some small bottles, and poured ten milliliters of Life-Replenishing Potion into one of them.
Ordinarily, for wounds like severed arms or broken legs, if the detached limb was still available, then about ten milliliters of Life-Replenishing Potion would be enough to stabilize the injury when one had suffered a fatal wound and prevent the situation from worsening.
And what Fulan intended to do was use Miracle Alchemy to fuse the Life-Replenishing Potion with the small bottle and see whether she could obtain a Curio.
At the same time, she also wanted to see whether her trait, Alchemical Inspiration, would work on Miracle Alchemy.
A mass of golden light appeared in Fulan’s hand, then instantly turned multicolored and wrapped around the small bottle containing the Life-Replenishing Potion, leaving Fulan unable to see what was happening inside.
After ten seconds passed and the light faded, what came into Fulan’s sight was a small transparent green bottle.
She could not sense any fluctuation from it, and she had also felt nothing during the use of Miracle Alchemy.
There was no question that this experiment had failed. This bottle was still ordinary and could not possibly be considered a Curio.
After examining it further, Fulan arrived at a conclusion—this attempt at Miracle Alchemy had merely dyed the bottle green.
Through that operation, her money had turned into a green-dyed transparent bottle. It was a huge loss.
But that was also within Fulan’s expectations. The reason Miracle Alchemy was called Miracle Alchemy was because it was, by nature, a search for miracles.
If she had really succeeded so easily on the first try, then what were all those alchemists dreaming of becoming rich overnight through Miracle Alchemy supposed to do?
Failure was the normal outcome. And when she had begun trying, she had never expected to succeed in a single attempt.
What she had wanted was to test how exactly her trait Alchemical Inspiration was triggered, so that she could plan how to make use of it in alchemy in the future.
After that, Fulan conducted another thirty-four attempts, but still failed to obtain a true Curio.
What she ended up with was a large pile of green-dyed transparent glass bottles of questionable usefulness, along with some that had simply shattered into glass fragments and fallen to the floor.
The only attempt that made Fulan feel she had come close to success was one in which a green bottle containing white liquid had appeared before her. But the instant Fulan touched it, that bottle turned into water and spilled onto the ground, merging with the earth.
And throughout all these attempts, Fulan had not sensed the slightest sign of Alchemical Inspiration triggering. That made her start to want to give up.
But on the thirty-fifth attempt, when Fulan spread the multicolored light over the bottle, she suddenly felt as though something had burst forth within her mind.
It was like a shower of sparks. She could feel the mental power she had spread over the object erupting into violent fluctuations, making her almost instantly certain that her trait, Alchemical Inspiration, had taken effect.
Then the small bottle containing the Life-Replenishing Potion remained fully wrapped in light for several whole minutes before finally revealing its new appearance.
What appeared before Fulan was a small bottle of nearly the same shape as the original. Its size and capacity had not changed, but decorations had appeared upon it.
The originally transparent glass wall of the bottle was now overlaid with pale green patterns that spiraled upward from the base to the middle, where they turned golden and continued rising all the way to the top.
At the same time, Fulan could sense a strange fluctuation from it. She was very familiar with that fluctuation. She had felt it before from the azure box that had imprisoned the Deep-Sea Golden Dragon hatchling.
Although the two kinds of fluctuations were somewhat different, they were highly similar in detail and in essence. That made Fulan realize that the box was most likely some kind of Curio as well.
Fulan did not immediately begin testing the effects of this Curio she had made with her own hands. She first confirmed the consumption involved in this instance of Miracle Alchemy.
She discovered that even though Alchemical Inspiration had triggered, the mental power she had consumed was still no different from before. And by now, she had already used up nearly half of her mental power.
“No wonder the Society President kept emphasizing in that paper not to waste mental power. So that is why.”
Miracle Alchemy consumed a great deal, and that consumption was difficult to reduce through equipment or talents.
Fulan’s mental power was stronger than that of an ordinary First-Tier Mage. Otherwise, she would never have had the chance to reach the thirty-fifth attempt.
She likely would have exhausted all her mental power around the twenty-fifth attempt and been unable to continue.
Miracle Alchemy not only consumed precious materials purchased with large amounts of money, it also consumed the exceptionally valuable mental power of a mage.
【After repeated attempts, your Miracle Alchemy has finally achieved one success. Miracle Alchemy proficiency +100】
【Miracle Alchemy (Mastered) (Proficiency: 27/1000)】
With that successful use of Miracle Alchemy, Fulan had also raised this Skill to the Mastered level.
But unlike the other Skills she had raised to Mastered before, Fulan gained no knowledge during the process, nor did she feel any increase in her success rate.
That was very unusual. Even with certain Combat Techniques or spells, once Fulan pushed them to the Mastered level, she could feel that using them became much smoother.
Yet with Miracle Alchemy, Fulan felt absolutely nothing. It was as though it had not improved at all, and no knowledge entered her mind.
“So this alchemy is just pure gambling?” Fulan could not help pressing a hand to her forehead.
But after accidentally glancing at the remaining Life-Replenishing Potions, she suddenly understood what reaching Mastered had given her.
Just like a gambler, Fulan now possessed an indescribable intuition that could tell her which materials had a relatively high chance of success when used in Miracle Alchemy.
And now, when she looked at the remaining Life-Replenishing Potions, a feeling flashed through her mind at once.
【This material is not suitable for creating a Curio. If you really want to use it, it would probably take several hundred or even a thousand attempts.】
Aside from that, Miracle Alchemy had given her nothing else—not attributes, and not even a trait.
“I’ll wait and see whether it gives me something after it levels up again in the future.”
After thinking it over, Fulan made that decision.
She set the matter of Miracle Alchemy aside and looked at the Curio in her hand.
She poured her mental power into it and examined the information contained within. Most Curios would carve their effects onto themselves, and those effects could be read through mental power.
Fulan’s Curio was no exception. After examining it, her eyes widened immediately, and she exclaimed in an incredulous tone,
“Infinite Production? What is this supposed to mean? I actually made a Curio this strong?!”
Fulan stared at the bottle in disbelief. After watching it for a moment, she saw a few drops of green liquid shot through with golden light appear inside it out of thin air.
That made Fulan swallow hard. She could hardly believe she had made something this powerful.
“Didn’t I just use Life-Replenishing Potion to make it? Then why did I end up with something like this?”
Fulan simply could not understand it. Logically speaking, using First-Tier materials should never result in something capable of producing matter infinitely. A property like that was exceedingly rare even among high-tier Curios.
Most Curios required the infusion of some substance as fuel in order to be used. She had never heard of a Curio capable of producing something endlessly.
But the Curio in Fulan’s hand had done exactly that. And what it produced was not some common substance like water or rock, but Life-Replenishing Potion.
After testing it a little, Fulan discovered that the Life-Replenishing Potion poured out from this bottle would lose its vitality within ten seconds.
That drastically reduced the Curio’s value, but even so, a Curio capable of infinite production was still terrifying. Its estimated price was probably no less than several tens of thousands of gold coins.
“I’ll call it the Infinite Health Bottle.”