167 New Alchemy Room

Jayde inspected her new alchemy room as soon as she arrived back at her cottage, she was happy to see that the alchemy room came fully kitted with everything that she needed. The large square shaped room had a couple of tables.

A wooden table was placed against the wall on the left side of the room which had an empty bookshelf next to to the table. On top of the table was a stack of blank parchment as well as a ceramic container filled with quill pens and a small ink jar — it was perfect for Jayde to sit and write down her research.

The rest of the tables were made out of granite, a perfect surface for alchemy. The tables were lined up against the right wall and formed an L shape. On top of the granite tables, there were several glass vials, beakers, an alembic ❶, two burettes ❷, a dozen spare retorts❸, mortar and pestle, sand hourglasses, various glass and metal sticks for mixing and weighing scales. Next to the table were two large cabinets filled with different size draws. In the middle of the back wall was a large furnace and in the middle of the room a big cauldron.

This is perfect, Jayde thought, smiling as she left the alchemy room to fetch her alchemy books in her library. Returning to the alchemy room, Jayde placed her books in the empty bookshelf next to her work desk. Really should get some more books, Jayde thought seeing how empty her bookshelf looked. Walking over the herb storage cabinet, Jayde opened one of the draws figuring that she would store the herbs in her spatial ring. Jayde was surprised to find the draw filled with herbs.

Opening up various draws Jayde found nearly half of the cabinet contained basic potion making herbs. Making a mental note of the herbs contained in the draws Jayde walked over to her work desk and jotted down the name of the herbs, then tearing the parchment carefully to separate each name, she returned to the cabinet and placed each name in the small slot provided above the draw handle.

Once she had stored away all the herbs in her spatial ring and everything was labeled correctly Jayde decided to choose the new technique she had earned when Thorn upgraded to level two. Unsheathing the fire sword, Jayde sent her consciousness into the sword.

Thorn was surprised when Jayde suddenly appeared in front of him. The two chatted as they walked over to the giant monolith. When Jayde inquired about how far Thorn was from upgrading to level three, she was dismayed to find out that Thorn had barely scratched the surface of leveling up. Thorn informed Jayde that spiritual weapons took a long time to upgrade, the only reason he had leveled up so quickly was that he had been so close to upgrading.

Just as well I have the Blood Tower Jayde thought when she found out it would take thousands of battles before Thorn upgraded again.

Once they reached the monolith, Thorn gazed up at Jayde. "Remember to choose a better skill this time," he said.

"Hmm, will do," Jayde said. "Hopefully this time the damn scroll won't forget to mention something important like grounding oneself to the sword like it did last time."

Jayde was still upset that the Art of Sword Flying hadn't mentioned something so important.

"Duh! That's common sense," Thorn said scornfully.

"Oh really?" Jayde said softly, as her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Then why didn't you mention anything when I was struggling to learn?"

Hearing the blatant threat in Jayde's voice, Thorn gulped audibly. Ah, shit, he thought, how could I forget that this woman is nuts.

"Hee hee, I also forgot," Thorn said subserviently. No way in hell was he going to admit that he had been rolling around laughing his head off as Jayde kept on falling off.

"You forgot?" Jayde questioned, her eyes appraising the small fox in front of her.

"Uh-huh," Thorn said while nodding his head vigorously, he could feel his small heart thundering in his chest like a racing dragon scale horse.

Jayde gave a small snort of disbelief before leaning down, her eyes still narrowed dangerously, she said softly, ice dripping of each word: "Oh and are going to be forgetting anything else?"

"Nuh-uh," Thorn said, shaking his head, before giving Jayde a puppy dog look.

"Right, you better see that you don't," Jayde said rapping her knuckles against Thorn's forehead sharply.

Standing up Jayde placed both her hands against the black monolith and channeled her magic into it. As Jayde disappeared into the monolith, Thorn couldn't help patting his chest. My poor heart, he wailed silently, I thought it was going to jump right of my chest and run away. Flopping onto his belly, Thorn swore never again to hide anything from his scary master.

Jayde found herself back in the black space with the dancing balls of light, this time when the voice told her to chose, she sent out her magical senses as examined each ball. Each of the glowing balls contained unique techniques like Warstrike, Mutilation Smash, Vampiric Cleave, Molten Strike, Whispering Thrust, Vanishing Strike, Summoning Strikes, Incinerate, Soul Drain, Divide, to just name a few.

There were many techniques that Jayde was interested in, but after a while, she came down to three methods that she really wanted. {Summoning Strikes} which created multiple tiny versions of the fire sword that she could direct with her mind. {Vanishing Strike} which would allow her to flash instantly to an opponent and {Divide} which would create an exact duplicate of the fire sword allowing Jayde to dual wield.

After much internal debate Jayde finally selected {Summoning Strikes}, while she was really tempted with the technique {Divide}, Jayde realized when she was on level two in the Blood Tower how important it was to have one hand free to weave her magic. The swarm of attacking beasts of the first level made Jayde realize she needed more magic spells or techniques to handle multiple enemies.

Combining her {Blades of Fire} spell with the {Summoning Strikes} technique would be really useful, Jayde thought. Especially when fighting with allies since she couldn't use her {Fire Blast} spell to incinerate everyone around her.

After leaving the monolith, Jayde informed Thorn about the technique she had chosen. Thorn speedy told Jayde that her mental strength would determine how many blades she would be able to command, but the added benefit of {Summoning Strikes} was that the more a mage practiced the stronger a mage's mental strength would develop.

When Jayde discussed combining her {Blades of Fire} spell with the {Summoning Strikes} technique, Thorn cautioned her that it would be difficult but if she succeeded her mental strength would increase substantially which would benefit her alchemy, especially pill refinement which required pure mental energy to purify and fuse the medicinal herbs into a pill.

"Then I best practice, take care, Thorn," Jayde said as he returned to her alchemy room.

Tired from her ten days in level four Jayde elected to go to bed early, she still had another full day left in her dimensional space before she had to return to Damonia.

The next morning Jayde woke up early, after breakfast she decided to spend the day making potions, even though she still had to learn the {Summoning Strikes} technique as well as {Fire Wings} transmutation spell, Jayde decided to study those spells when she returned.

After a full day spent in her alchemy room, Jayde managed to create twenty basic healing potions, after handing them over to Isha to sell on the inter-dimensional market Jayde returned to her cottage atDamonia.

On her return, Jayde spent some time playing and cuddling Takara before giving him one of the cakes stored in her spatial ring, while Takara was happily munching on his cake Jayde got ready for school.

Leaving the cottage, Jayde met up with Nova, Ash, and Raven just outside the gate to Divinity Square. Since the first lesson was Rune Magic, Jayde, Ash, and Nova bid farewell to Raven as the three hurried to their class.

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