407 A small change in the recipe

After that, the remaining ingredients were refined and the essences from them should be refined in a specific time in order not to fail the pill refinement.

'For Poison resistant pills, I have to mix the essences of the other two ingredients in 2 minutes,'

Ajax took the other two ingredients for the poison resistant pills and started refining them one after another as he thought back to what he had learned in Mason's family alchemy handbook.

That's right.

For every rank 2 pills, there would be a different time to mix the essence of the remaining ingredients to form the pills.

As for the poison resistant pills, it was two minutes.

Ajax didn't have any problem in refining the other two ingredients within two minutes and threw them into the fire cauldron before increasing the heat supply to the cauldron.

'Maintain the heat supply constant,' Ajax muttered as he fully focused on maintaining the stable heat supply to the cauldron.

'Ting'

It only took less than five minutes for him to receive the cauldron signal indicating that the pill refinement was completed; however, whether the pill refinement was successful or failure was yet to be determined by him manually.

'Please be successful,'

Ajax followed every step he had learned in alchemy while refining this rank 2 poison resistant pills and just needed some luck to get some good pills. So, he prayed as he slowly opened the lid to the fire cauldron.

"Phew...Finally its a success," 

Inside the fire cauldron, there were nine pills that barely looked like pills. Moreover, they were also not crystalline like the other pills he had refined until now but looked like some small balls made up of black soil.

'Ding,

Congratulations to the host for refining the rank 2 poison resistant pills.

'Ding,

Series mission (2/3)

Progress:- 1/3

While Ajax was feeling relaxed after his first successful rank 2 pill refinement, he received the system notifications and showed him the progress of his second mission in the series mission.

Ajax didn't bother with the system notifications and slowly retracted the bright red flame into his body while the nine pills were left in his hands.

'These pills barely look like pills,' Ajax took one of the nine pills into his hands and closely observed it and thought of himself.

'Ding,

Item name:- Poison resistant pills (Low-level)

Rank:-2

Description:- Barely called as pills.

Without him asking for the details of the pills, the system sent a notification that made his jaws drop.

'Even the quality is low-level, it's not a problem since it is still my first pill refinement. What matters now is the pill refinement was successful and the mission is progressed,' Ajax didn't feel bad and took a deep breath before starting the next pill refinement.

However, for the next refinement, Ajax was not as lucky as the first pill refinement and failed even before he could mix the essence of the last two ingredients into the fire cauldron.

'Keep calm and continue the refinement,' Ajax knew that he was already very lucky at his first successful pill refinement and wanted to continue his next refinements.

Based on the result of his first successful pill refinement, it could be considered as the lowest successful pill refinement. So, Ajax was neither shocked nor surprised at the failure of his second pill refinement.

Similarly, he failed the third and fourth pill refinement making Ajax frustrated and made him stand up from the floor to take a small break in his refining.

He went to his bed and relaxed on it before recalling his earlier pill refinements which failed and pondered about where he went wrong in them.

In his second pill refinement, he didn't maintain the stable heat supply while mixing the essences of the last two ingredients.

In the third one, he was too eager and opened the lid as soon as he heard the 'Ting' sound and for the final pill refinement, it was his luck that failed him even when he had followed every single step that was recorded in the pill recipe.

'Looks like the statement 'The path of alchemy needs luck' is not wrong. Even when I followed everything that is recorded in Mason's family alchemy book, the pill refinement still failed,' Ajax's thoughts drifted from one thing to another as he nearly pondered for a half an hour.

After thinking about his mistakes for a while, he felt that he could make some changes from the knowledge he had gained from the alchemy king's basic handbook.

'Anyway, now I can separate the essences from the two ingredients at the same time without any difficulty,' The thing that made Ajax satisfied was that he had finally become adept in refining the two ingredients at the same time.

'Now, let's start the refining,' With the new excitement, he stood up from his bed and went to his corner before starting his refinement.

Soon, he took the Poisonous snake gall and pearl cress and started separating the essences from them in a very skilful manner as though he had many years of experience in it.

That's right, he used the Pearl cress instead of the thunder grass root. Both the ingredients had the same level of importance, so Ajax wanted to try the pearl cress instead of the other one.

The reason he did that was not on some blind thought but he had a pretty good reason to do that. Pearl cress had a good affinity with the main ingredient which he knew from the alchemy king's handbook.

It took only a couple of minutes before he refined them and threw the essences into the fire cauldron. Also, he took the other two ingredients and refined them for their essences at the same time since he had sufficient confidence in doing so.

"Control the emotions and remain calm all the time," Ajax followed the remaining steps just like before while muttering some chant to calm himself with his eyes closed.

'Ting'

Soon, he got the notification from the fire cauldron and opened his eyes before slowly retracting the fire into his body.

This time he was pretty confident that the pill refinement was successful, so he didn't even bother to check the pills by opening the lid of the fire cauldron.

After retracting the fire, 12 pills that looked like small pearls appeared in his hands; however, the pills were not as shining as the rank 1 pills he had refined earlier.

Nevertheless, Ajax was satisfied with the quality and quantity of the pills and heaved a sigh of relief.

'Just changing the lightning grass root with the pearl cress did a miracle. Great,' Ajax felt good that the knowledge he learned from the alchemy king's book was used appropriately.

Next, his eyes landed on another batch of ingredients.