Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice poisoned a small village, then he cured them. He used his mind control skill to manipulate the town’s Elder, and the guard posted at the Elder’s door. He then used the pretense of hunting for an apprentice to stay in the town awhile.

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I asked around town for an apprentice. Not many of the adults took to the idea, but all of the younger generation seemed to like it. Of course I only needed one for now. I could only take that one if the parents accepted it.

I went about the small town, and spoke to everyone. Although only a few adults took to the idea for themselves, they almost unanimously wanted their children trained by me.

It wasn’t a bad idea. A powerful alchemist comes into town, cures everyone, and then says he’ll elevate one person to beyond what they could imagine. The idea made many of the people giddy. Especially for their children.

I came to the most rundown house in the village. I knocked on the door like I had done for all of the others. A small child answered. He must have been about eight or so.

I had seen the child in the Elder’s house, he was with a woman I presumed to be his mother.

“Please, come in.” A tired female voice sounded as the boy opened the wooden door. “I was just making dinner. It’s the first time we’ve eaten at home in a long while. It felt good, so I’m making something special. Feel free to join us.”

She was working in an antiquated kitchen. The house was poorly furnished, but not completely destitute. The woman warmly smiled at me while she worked.

“Please have a seat.”

I sat down on one of the two worn chairs. I was tempted to just create one out of earth, but that didn’t seem prudent since I was under the guise of a simple alchemist.

“Thank you. I won’t beat around the bush. I came to this town to find an apprentice. I want your son.”

As soon as I had walked in I decided on him. Both he and his mother had depressingly low willpower. Both were under level five as well. A potter couldn’t ask for better clay.

A loud noise came from the kitchen. I quickly turned around to see what was wrong.

The lady had dropped her cooking utensil on the ground.

“Sir, could you repeat that?”

She turned towards me, and stared agape.

“All I said was that I wanted the young man here to come be my apprentice.”

Of course I saw that this boy held his mother in high esteem, because of the fact that even as I entered his emotions showed that he had ‘love towards mother’ as the number one emotions. The second biggest emotion was ‘protectiveness’. The third was ‘insecurity’.

Since the mother had ‘love towards son’ as the highest emotion, and ‘hopeful expectations’ followed it.

It was easy to make both of them agree.

The mother quickly replied. “Yes! Yes please!”

She grabbed the boy by his arm, and quickly took him to the other room to speak with him. She obviously didn’t want to give me a chance to change my mind.

It actually went a bit better than I thought it would.

After a moment I heard sniffing, coming from the boy. Obviously he was sad to leave. I didn’t need Analysis to show me that.

When they came back it was obvious that the boy had been crying.

I chuckled. “I’m glad you accepted, madam, but I must also get assent from the man of the house.”

The mother obviously knew what I was doing, so she didn’t stop me.

“Now, young man, I want to know if you want to come with me.”

His eyes lit up as he was about to decline.

“Wait a moment. This is a big decision. You will only be able to see you mother if you pass one of my tests. I don’t know how long that will take for you.

Of course I understand that a man has to provide for the women in his life. So we will send any earnings you make to your mother. I will provide you any food or clothing you might need. How does that sound?”

At first the boy wanted to decline right away. After I mentioned not seeing his mom, he wanted to decline all the more. But I knew how to work people, especially such young people. He loved his mom, and felt inferior.

Obviously he wanted to provide her with money, but had no means to do so. The fact that I kept calling him ‘man’ instead of ‘boy’ inflated what fragile ego he had.

Since he was still unsure, I leaned in and whispered to the boy. “By the way, alchemists can make enough money to buy a house even bigger than your Elder’s.”

His eyes shone at that moment. A house bigger than the Elders? His mom would be the talk of the town if she had a house that big.

“I’ll do it!”

The enthusiasm with which he accepted forced a half smile on my face. Maybe I should use someone else for my conquest.

I shook my head. No. If I was going to do this, I’d do it right. There would be no stopping just because some little brat made me question myself.

“Alright then. Since you’ve decided let’s go. There is no sense in staying here to say goodbyes. I’ll let you come visit your mother in one week, but that will be the last I let you unless you finish my tests.”

Obviously I said this on purpose. I wanted his mother to expect him in a week. Her eyes slightly watered in gratitude. It was time to leave.

We left the small town without saying goodbye to anyone. The kid was sullen and sad on our trip to my cave; but when I asked if he wanted to go back, he gave a resolute ‘No’.

On our trip to the cave, I activated all nine possible links of Mental Domination Connection on the boy. I gave him nine commands.

Listen to your alchemist master.

Like your alchemist master.

Trust your alchemist master.

Your alchemist master knows a lot.

Your alchemist master is nice.

Your alchemist master is a good master.

You want to follow your alchemist master.

You want to be like your alchemist master.

You want to serve your alchemist master.

I didn’t want to overwhelm the kid all at once, so I only gave nine simple commands. I couldn’t act on them too soon, or they’d have a reverse effect.

The whole point of telling his mom I would return in one week, was to give me a week to integrate these into his mind. Normally the effects would stop once I stopped using the skill, but my goal was to make the commands permanent.

In less than an hour we made it to the cave.

“Alright, this is where we will stay for you training. When you have passed the second test, we will move to my mansion. By that time your mother would be set for life. You might even be able to afford to get her a servant or two.”

The boy looked despondent at the mention that we would be staying in a cave. I smiled and gently hit his shoulder.

“Don’t look so sad! You’re about to start on a journey that will lead to riches you’ll never be able to spend enough of!”

I had made this section of the place under the hill for exactly this occasion. It was sparsely furnished with stone furniture, and had candles enchanted with light mana hanging from the walls. It also had hidden metal around the cave that was polished until it reflected. Of course the mirrors were concealed by a layer of rock when I wasn’t using them.

So I started his schooling.

During the first day I had the boy pick out some of the common weeds, and green healing herbs from the surrounding area. I gave him a quest and everything. His eyes lit up at the quest screen.

The quest was to grab at least 20 common weed, and 10 green healing herbs. The reward was a basic mortal and pestle made of stone. He had been looking throughout most of the day, by the time night fell, he had finally collected enough.

“Good, good.” I praised him, “You are the second fastest to complete this quest out of all of my prior apprentices.”

I patted his head.

“Where is it now?” I ruffled around in my robes. “AH! Got it! Here you go. This is for you. Go ahead and try to get a feel for it. Tomorrow I’m going to teach you how to grind out a potion. Once you get a potion that I’m satisfied with, we’ll go sell it and send the money to your mother.”

He nodded his head seriously.

I briefly showed him the proper way to create a potion. “If you haven’t made a good enough potion by the time your ingredients have run out, go collect more. Then I’ll show you how to do it once more.”

I completely ignored the boy after that. Or at least made it seem that way. I was actually using my spells to make him fall asleep. I made the room the most comfortable for him possible, at least as far as humidity, heat, and airflow were concerned.

I also debuffed him with the calmness debuff. For an eight year old, he resisted quite well. He stayed awake for an entire hour. I know many grown men that might only last half an hour.

The only problem was that he gained .1 willpower from that. Willpower is similar but different from mana regen. It isn’t actually in the stat table, because it is simply calculated. It is 1/10 of Wisdom plus Intelligence. Willpower was a derived stat, much like flexibility was derived from agility.

So my willpower was (275 + 350)/10. Or 62.5. This kid had no chance to have a higher intelligence or will power, but I didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize my plan.

When he did fall into the deep sleep, I began my project. The first step was to embed my nine previous orders into this kid’s brain.

First I changed the orders. Eight of them I changed to instructions on how to create the best potion he was capable of making. First was the exact number of times he needed to crush the leaves of the Green Healing Herb, and the Common Weed.

The orders I gave for that part weren’t precise words, but impressions on how to spread the leaves and Common Weed for the best results; and how the green goop should look and feel while crushing it.

The fourth command was the amount of water to add. Basically how it should look and feel while swishing it around.

The first four commands were set to go off in order, after he completed the step before. The rest were ongoing. That is, they would be going the entire time he was making the potions. I could only give the orders activation requirements because they had been fused into Task Master, and I had the brilliant idea of trying to make them obey me as well. It obviously worked.

The fifth command was to go slowly during this whole process. The sixth command was to check and double check to make sure each step was successful. The seventh through ninth command were all the same: Trust your Alchemist Master.

If he gave in and began to listen to the orders of his own free will, he might associate all orders from my skill as something to follow. Then it’d be cake to control his feeble mind.

After making sure the skill was working correctly, I went back to my side of the poorly furnished cave, and sat down. I removed the debuff from him, and buffed him with the energy buff.

I uncovered a few of the mirrors, and watched the boy work. He suddenly jumped slightly when he awoke. He took a quick glance behind his shoulder at me, probably to see if I had noticed that he had fall asleep.

Seeing me ignore him, he decided to continue his work.

In the hour he had spent trying to make potions, he had ruined enough to make four potions. He only had five tries left since he gave me the ingredients to make one for him to learn from it.

At first he seemed to ignore, or not notice, the commands I had given him. I wasn’t trying very hard to make him obey them, so I didn’t really try to force them on him. They were easy to ignore, even for someone of such low willpower.

As time went on, about a half hour later, he had failed an additional two attempts. That was the exact speed he had been going before. I could tell his arms were getting week, so I buffed him.

From over my shoulder I called, “Remember to make sure to crush the goop well enough.”

Since my skill wasn’t working, I became a bit more invasive about it. I made the Mental Domination Connections a bit more potent, and talked to him. I told him things similar to a few of the connections, to hopefully make him listen to them more.

This was a good exercise for me. If they were too weak to work on a kid, I couldn’t imagine they’d work on an adult.

With the extra bit of strength added to it, I decided to let the kid go through the rest of his supplies.

Meanwhile, I busied myself with studying something that I really wanted to know about. The mana stone in my backpack. It had the ability to extend the space inside, and decrease the weight of the items in it.

Imagine if I could reproduce that! I’d have an army of warriors that could each have a dozen different weapons. Archers running out of arrows? Not with their enchanted quivers. Long supply lines? Not with the enchanted wagons!

It didn’t go very well though. It had the same principle as the teleportation. It was just a mess of all eight mana types. What’s worse is that they were infused into a mana stone, so I couldn’t even use the magic myself. Not even Chao had any idea how it worked. Although my little dungeon master did ask to take apart the stone for his personal use.

I declined. I wanted to be the one that made more of these things. By the time I took a break, the kid was already outside, hunting for more ingredients for his potions.

Well at least he works hard.

When he got back from harvesting, I was waiting for him.

“Alright I’m going to show you this again. Try to get it right this time.”

A few hours later and I heard the boy exclaim, “I did it! Master! I did it!”

I had just gotten into the zone too.

I sighed, and turned around. “Alright then, let me check out what you have.”

I used my analysis. “Not bad, heals 25 hp. That’s pretty good for a start. Not the best of my apprentices, but at least in the top five. Alright let me show you the next steps.”

His eyes widened slightly. “The next step? I thought this was it.”

I chuckled slightly. “No, no, no. This is the most basic step! How would this potion cure anyone?”

From that point I went on about how drying potions worked, and the intricacies of how to properly combine different potions to make a new, more powerful one.

I also changed my orders slightly while giving him the lecture. I added in the details of how to dry and combine the potions, and took out all but one command telling him to obey me.

I quickly made a batch of four potions, dried them, then made two more potions from the dried remains of those potions. I slowly prepared, and made, both of the potions. I let him watch every step I took so he could better follow them.

He ruined about a dozen potions before he finally dried one correctly. The temperature on the stove that I created was either too hot, or too cold. He had the potion on there for too long, or not long enough.

You’d think a computer program would be better at this kind of stuff. Guess even computers can be dumb sometimes.

After another half dozen attempts he finally had a second successful attempt. It shouldn’t have taken that long in all honesty. One thing did go correctly though. By the end he seemed to be perfectly listening to my Mental Domination Connections.

When he was done I decided to test whether or not he had listened to my command to obey me.

“Alright, now throw the potion bottle on the ground.”

Without hesitation he tossed the glass bottle to the ground. Immediately after though, he seemed confused about his actions.

“Eh?” The boy looked at me.

“Why did you tell me to do that? *Sniff* I just *Sniff* I just finished. WHAA” Tears formed and instantly rolled down his cheeks.

So he was conscious of my order to break it, and felt regret after. I’ll have to fix that somehow.

“That was a lesson.” I kneeled down, and stared him in the eyes.

“I am your master now, but that doesn’t mean everything I say is perfect or good for you. You must learn to listen to the voice inside yourself. The voice that is always there telling you what is good or bad. What is right and wrong. What you should or shouldn’t do.”

Obviously, I was talking about my Connections.

“It’s alright. Stop crying. I’m going to teach you a meditation method. This is how I like to spend my time when I’m trying to create a new potion.

“Sit next to me.”

I sat on the ground and crossed my legs. The boy soon followed.

“Alright, close your eyes. Picture yourself in a calm meadow. The wind is gently blowing through the grass. The sun is warm, but not hot. You are full, and sleepy. You are laying in the grass, and feeling peaceful.”

The boy closed his eyes, and his body began to slowly grow limp.

I began to debuff him with my drowsiness spell.

“You see another person in this field with you. The other person looks just like you. In fact he is you.”

The boy’s body shook slightly, and his eyelids fluttered in apprehension.

“It’s ok. It’s ok. This is you. You are also you. The man you see is your inner voice. He is what you really feel. How you really think. He knows everything about you, because he is you. He doesn’t judge you. He loves you as much as you love yourself.

“He wants what is best for you. He wants everything you want. You trust him as much as you trust yourself.

“He opens his mouth to speak. He tells you what you already know. Obey your master.”

“Listen to your alchemist master.”

The boy seemed to try to fight for a moment, but I added another level of debuff on him. What I was doing was essentially burying that idea deep inside his mind.

I continued on this for a few more hours. The boy’s ‘inner thoughts’ told him nine things:

Listen to your alchemist master.

Like your alchemist master.

Trust your alchemist master.

Your alchemist master knows a lot.

Your alchemist master is nice.

Your alchemist master is a good master.

You want to follow your alchemist master.

You want to be like your alchemist master.

You want to serve your alchemist master.

The same nine orders I gave through my Mental Domination Connection. At the moment I made the boy believe his inner thoughts were saying these things, I gave them as orders from my Mental Domination Connection.

After this I woke the boy up.

“Do you feel better?”

I buffed him with a large amount of buffs that I thought he could handle. I gave him energy, increased his strength and flexibility, and increased his ability to see things more clearly.

The boy seemed stunned by the transformation. “I do! How did you do that master?”

The boy beamed in excitement.

I couldn’t help but smile back. “It’s called meditation. I can help you get into a meditative state whenever you want. If you find your inner voice is wavering come see me, and I’ll help you refresh yourself.”