Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice looked around town for an apprentice, and finally settled on a boy. He then proceeded to teach the boy some basic alchemy, while simultaneously brainwashing him.

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After the meditation session, I once more showed the boy the entire process of how to make a good potion. From start to finish he watched with rapt attention. He seemed to zone out the surrounding world, while paying heed only to my words.

From the point where I first showed the boy the unique meditation way, he seemed to listen to all of the ‘inner voices’ with his utmost ability. Listen to your alchemist master. That order alone made the boy much more recipient to my instructions. It synergized very nicely with Instruct, since both made him better at following my orders.

Within one more day, he had made a passable potion. It was nowhere near me ‘op potions’, but it was good for a beginner.

I looked over one of my own creations. It was made with some of my enhanced seeds. I had enhanced them with as much light and nature mana as I could. The result was that they had as much healing potency as they could handle for a plant of their level.

The basic potion without using my alchemy skills would heal 100 points of health. With my alchemy skill, including drying it, distilling it and so on, it increased to 1299.4 points. Because of my ability to hit the perfect spot each time, the effect increased to 2598.8! On top of that I increased the potion itself with my Magical Alchemy skill.

Magical Alchemy allowed me to funnel mana into my potion to boost it even further. Magical Alchemy allowed me to add a total of 50% to each final potion. By enhancing all three potions this way, I could increase the power of a basic potion to 1,445.4. I could increase my final potion, using two others as a base to 2890.8!

That’s almost a thirty times higher potion quality!

Over Potion *UniqueMaterial QualityUncommonWork QualityMasterBase Restoration220This potion was created by a mysterious alchemist master. This is just about the highest level potion you could make with these ingredients. It is quite an amazing feat.

This potion was made by an expert craftsman. This potion gains an unparalleled amount to restorative powers. This potion heals a total of 2,890.8 health.

The 220 was because of the basic combing of the potions as ingredients. So instead of getting three potions that healed 100 health, I got one potion that healed 220.

The potion still wasn’t quite as good as my original potion of 20k, but it was still a very potent potion. I didn’t use my critical strike, because it could only increase the attack by 30%, and only once every minute. It took me about half a minute to actually make my potion.

After making my potion, I tried making a potion out of the basic green healing herb and common weed. The result ended with a potion that healed exactly 750 hp. I made the same potion a few times, but the maximum limit was always the same. Exactly 30 times the potion total.

I guess the update made the total 30 times. That’s still pretty high. Not the 10000x I had made before, but I should still be able to blow anyone else out of the water with my potions.

I spent the rest of the day finding out which parts of each ingredient that I had, did what. I found out that the seedless leaves of a Green Healing Herb, combined with the stalk of the Blood Lotus mushroom, would give me a potion that temporarily reduced bleeding effects.

I stalked up on quite a few of those. Even healing potions wouldn’t stop bleeding, not unless they could heal the entire wound in one go. If the stalk of a Green Healing Herb and the cap from the Blood Lotus were combined, the two would make a poison that nauseated the victim. I was immune, but it boosted the potency of my poison just a bit.

By the time I had done all the experiments with my few ingredients, the boy was done with his potion.

I looked over the potion with my Instant Analysis. It actually managed to heal 60 hp, which was five more than the basic 55 that the weakened version of the OP healed.

Hm, he’s actually not bad. I guess Task Master is better than I thought. I wonder if I can make a factory of potion creators.

I turned to look at the boy with a serious expression. His beaming face told me he expected praise.

“Hm, it’s not terrible.”

The boy looked confused for a moment, then frowned as if he were let down about something very important.

“Aw, I’m just fooling! It’s great! This is the best potion that any of my apprentices have been able to make in their first week!”

The boy instantly began to smile widely. He bowed deeply to me.

“Thank you master. I even got a skill! Alchemy!”

My eyes widened a bit. He really got a skill just like that? Just being mentored for a couple of days? At first I questioned why every NPC didn’t have a huge amount of skills, but then I understood. I had basically forced the skill on him with Task Master.

Hm, does that mean I can teach others any skill I know? If so I would definitely be teaching some people a host of skills once I got them completely controlled.

The boy looked me right in the eye, and asked, “What do I learn next?”

I could tell that the boy was hoping that I send him to his mother again. He seemed to be listening to my commands well enough, so I decided to forge ahead onto the next section of my plan.

“Alright, it’s late. Tomorrow we will see your mother. For tonight, I want you to meditate and concentrate as much as possible upon the inner voices you might hear. I want you to suppress any voices that seem doubtful, or that tell you to stray away from the path of alchemy.

“If you really are going to be my apprentice the desire for other fields of work must be shut off. There will be no days of blazing glory for you. You will be behind the scenes. You will make an enormous contribution to the world, and be rewarded accordingly, but don’t expect bards to sing your praise.”

The boy nodded seriously.

I summoned up a tablet of earth behind me while I spoke, and engraved my name on it using earth mana. I also engraved a spot for the boy’s name. I hadn’t bothered to learn it thus far, and I found calling him boy in my mind was a bit tedious.

“Here, write your name on here for me, and you will truly be my apprentice.”

The boy looked at the tablet and frowned. In an embarrassed way, he shook his head. “I’m sorry master, but I cannot write.”

Oh, I forgot people in the medieval era rarely knew how to write. Well crap.

“Do you know how to spell your name out loud?”

I asked him in as mellow a tone as I could. He shook his head again.

“Alright then, slowly sound out your name so I can properly spell it. Then I’ll have you write it on the tablet after.”

He nodded eagerly. Apparently learning to write his name was exciting for him. “KUH-I-EL”

I smiled and wrote it down. “There that’s your name. Kay, I, EL, EE. That is how you spell it.” I spelled it out in the dirt on the ground.

The boy looked it over for a minute, and marveled at it. Honestly it wasn’t that big of a deal. I had him practice writing it a few times in the dirt before letting him write it on the tablet.

The result was a crude rendition of his name, but he seemed content by it. At least I knew his name now.

“Now, go meditate until morning. You will find that as long as I aid your meditation you will not want for sleep.”

He nodded and quickly sat down in the position I had showed him. It’s true that was the best way to begin meditation, but he wasn’t a spell caster. So the only thing that really happened was that he concentrated fully on my commands.

I changed the commands to one command nine times: Obey your Alchemist Master. He was already listening to me. Next I wanted him to obey. After an entire night of listening to the voices willingly, even some weak willed adults would fall prey to it. Of course I made sure the commands, that were all just one command repeated, were just outside of his range to actively notice.

While he was meditating I also enchanted a few rocks with some of my mana. I made them all quietly play a recording. “Obey your Alchemist Master.” If the kid wasn’t completely mind wiped by the start of the next day, he would at least have a good start on it.

In the meantime, I went outside. It was dark out, so I created a large underground room. The room was bare, but stretched on for a long time. It was big enough that I’d have to spend at least twenty minutes running to get to the other end and back again.

I focused on my mana. I began with 90% light mana, and stacked 5% fire mana, and 5% wind mana on top of it. I infused the mana into my muscles. It gave me a buff to dex. Not what I wanted.

I tried 80% light, 10% fire, and 10% wind. Another buff, but not the one I wanted. I kept decreasing the amount of light mana by 10%, and increasing the amount of fire and wind mana by 5% each. Until it got to 50%.

Then I started back at the top. This time I did 90% light mana, and 5% wind mana, then 5% fire mana. It gave me quicker reflexes slightly. Not what I wanted. I continued until light mana was 50% again. I still didn’t get what I wanted.

I began to alter the amounts of mana I infused into the attempts. Even going so far as to add 1000 mana as the upper limit of the spell.

I continued like that for hours. Trying every conceivable way to fuse the mana types. I even tried using light mana as the base, then fire and wind, then more light mana on top. It still didn’t work.

I began to break down the contents of the mana types even more. I eventually got to one percent mana for fire and wind, stacked on top of each other with a base of light.

I went all the way down to 50% light mana, but it still didn’t work. I tried throwing more light mana on top. I had about half an hour until the sun rose, so I didn’t have much more time to be messing around like this.

I had planned to recreate my speed boost I had used while in the worm caves, but nothing was coming from it.

Eventually I had a light mana base of 52% and fire wind and light at 16% each. Each mana type was stacked upon another. A total of 1000 mana was used for the spell.

The moment I enforced the final light mana block of one percent of the total power of the spell, the entire spell structure began to swirl.

My mind filled with the sight of the mana infused tornado. The center of the whirlwind was light mana, while tendrils of fire, wind, and then light streamed around it.

Light Speed (Minor)

The target gains incredible movement speed. The target is granted a speed of 15x their normal amount. This duration of this spell is (10 + (light affinity/10) * Aura) seconds.

The target’s reaction times, and ability to obtain information in this state are not enhanced. Any physical damage the target receives while in this state will multiply by fifteen. Energy, power, velocity, and all other numeric values remain constant for all those not buffed by this spell.

I.e. if the target touches a blade in mid-swing, they will still be cut by the force of the blade, although it is seemingly moving at a slower pace.

All magical damage will remain the same. Spells with an area of effect will effect the target as normal, as long as the magic used to create the spell comes in contact with the user.

Damage over time will seemingly be slowed to 1/15th of normal. Mana regen, health regen, and stamina regen will seemingly be slowed to 1/15th of normal. Stamina consumption will remain the same.

This spell allows for total movement at the enhanced speed, but the target must be able to naturally process the enhanced flow of time.

The base spell cost for this spell is 1000 mana.

My eyes lit up as the spell completed. Everything seemed to instantly pass me. My body responded to well to my desires. I tried to slowly lift a hand, but ended up almost dislocating my should due to the insane speed.

I activated the special effect of my Instant Analysis. It slowed time by ten times. At least seemingly. During that time I couldn’t move either, but my mind worked.

I slowly raised my hand back up. At least this time I could actually see it. It still moved fast though. The fifteen times movement speed was no joke.

I used a few other buffs, and made them permanent. I had quite a bit of mana, even after having given the boy several buffs as well. My five senses were instantly sharpened, enhancing the ability of Instant Analysis even further.

Unfortunately the effect of the speed boost ended all too soon. I only had a matter of a few seconds of my fiendish speed while using Instant Analysis, to enjoy myself. That didn’t matter. I turned off Instant Analysis, and meditated to regenerate some mana quickly. I only needed about half a minute to restore my lost mana.

With my other buffs going, I reapplied the buff, but this time made it permanent. The cost was only 1.26 times the buff total, since my Magical Master group skill was up to 75. So I only used up 1260 mana to use it.

With the buff to my senses, and my skill in full play, I could just barely keep up with the new speed. It was still a bit faster than me, but my mind could process the high influx of information more easily thanks to Instant Analysis. Not only did the skill increase the speed I got the information, it got a ton of information and made it easily accessible to me.

The resulting combination was nothing short of game breaking.

I created an earth spike and shot it out. Normally it would take me a fraction of a second to complete this, and technically, it still did. However, it seemed like it took several seconds, about seven. The spear slowly formed, and I saw my mana bar drop accordingly.

I took out my staff, and began hammering away at the spike as it broke through the surface and revealed itself. My staff chipped away at the spear, even as it began to reveal itself. I tried to get my fairies to buff me as well, but none of them responded. I guess it didn’t extend the speed buff to them.

Oddly enough the spike seemed to break only very slowly. As if the damage transmitted to it hadn’t had enough time to really set in. This made some things a bit harder to be fair, but it also meant I could hit the same part on someone’s body many times as quickly as I could, and they would feel the effects of those punches at fifteen times speed.

I ran to one side of the large room to another, keeping track of the amount of time it took me. The time was the same as normal, but I was sped up by 15x. So instead of about a minute or so, it was a handful of seconds.

TOO OP!

I REALLY wanted to playing around with my new buff, but I had goals I set myself. I wasn’t going to give up on controlling this kid, and eventually others, just because of a cool buff I got!

I opened up a pathway out of the room, and filled the entire room with natural earth mana. My training place was no more.

I quietly flew to my cave, and placed my hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Wake.”

The boy woke from his ‘meditation’. He blinked, and stretched.

“Master, every time I meditate on the voices, I feel completely refreshed! I am lucky that you are my teacher!”

“I’m glad you are enjoying yourself.” I said with a fake smile. “Go collect your potion, we are going to back to your home.”

The instant my words left my mouth, he went to get the potion. Whether that was from the brainwashing, or from being happy about returning home was up for debate. A debate I intended to settle on our way back to his town.

We walked through the fields to return to his home. When we were less than a minute away, I turned to him. “Ah, I forgot the potion I made last night. Would you get it for me? My bones aren’t what they used to be.”

The boy stopped walking forward, and went to get it. “And be quick about it!”

He instantly dashed toward my cave. He tripped on the way there, but that didn’t even slow him down. While falling he simply increased his speed and righted himself. Moments later he returned with my potion.

“Good boy. You know to listen to your elders.”

During our trip I gave out several other commands. He instantly obeyed almost all of them. We had stumbled upon a blood lotus on a rotten log.

“Kyle, cut your palm to drip blood on the mushroom. That way we can bind it and take it with us.” He hesitated a moment, unsure of whether or not to obey. His emotions were conflicted according to Instant Analysis.

He eventually did drip the blood, so I healed his wound.

So he still won’t do anything that would bring himself harm. At least he will submit to anything else.

I changed four of the commands going through his mind. Instead of nine commands saying, ‘Obey your Alchemist Master.’ There were five that said that, and four that said, ‘No orders from your Alchemist Master says will harm you.’

With both of those in place I decided he should become more pliable. If it was this much work to brainwash one child, imagine how hard it would be to brainwash a king. Of course I was going for long term brainwashing here. I could have just gone brute force, and temporarily overridden his mind. Then he would probably do whatever I commanded, but would know it after the fact. I wanted an actual mind puppet.

We made it to the village by early afternoon. The boy seemed surprised by the turn of events, but I had sped our way along by having the wind always at our backs.

One of the village ‘guards’ saw us coming, and ran off somewhere. Even before we had arrived, we were greeted by the village elder, and the boy’s mom. The boy, upon seeing his mother for the first time in a week, ran into her arms right away.

I forced myself to chuckle at the sight. It struck a bit close to home. Never mind that though. They were just ones and zeros. Just ones and zeros.

He looked up at his mother, and proudly presented his potion to his mother. “Mama! Look! Look what I made!”

He gleefully shoved the potion into his mother’s hands. She looked at it for a moment, and gave him a smile. It looked a bit condescending to me, but the kid didn’t seem to notice.

I gingerly walked up to them. “The boy is right. He made that himself. From pickin’ the herbs, to crushing ‘em down. The only thing I did was given him his tools. He’s not bad either. He’s the only apprentice I’ve had that could make a potion in only a week. Th’ boy’s got talent. A rare gem.”

Kyle looked proudly at his mother, chest pushed out. His mother looked at me, even if I didn’t have Instant Analysis to show me her emotions and I had never studied people, I’d be able to see how grateful she was.

“Thank you sir. Thank you so much.” She bowed her head deeply.

I waved away the thanks. “That’s enough of that. The boy hasn’t seen you in a week now. I’ve enough sense to let a boy spend a bit of time with his mother.”

I put one finger up.

“But remember Kyle, we are going to leave in one month. I still expect you to come to me every morning for training. And each night I’ll see to your meditation.”

The mother looked confused, but didn’t ask about why an alchemist had to meditate. No doubt Kyle would tell her everything about his training when they got home.

As the duo walked off, I turned my attention to the town elder. “Pardon my manners. I’ve neglected you.”

The elder shook his head. “No, it was good of you to allow the boy to see his mother. I take it that after the month is over, you’ll not be coming back here for a while?”

Wow. I mean… wow. It actually was my plan to set it up to seem that way, but for the town elder to catch on so quickly… It just went to show that his wisdom being the highest in the town wasn’t just for show.

I nodded thoughtfully. “Hm, just so. I’ll let the boy spend a bit more time with his mother. If he is acceptable then he’ll come with me when I leave the town. If he isn’t then he’ll have still learned something useful from me.

“Tonight I’ll visit his home and allow him to get into his meditative trance, and talk to his mother about my plans. If she agrees we will leave in a month.

“If it’s alright,” I continued, “I’d like to stay at your manor for this time. Of course I wouldn’t just ask for charity though.”

I handed him the potion I had made before. The one that almost healed 3k hp.

“Will this suffice as payment for a while?”

His eyes widened as he vigorously nodded his head. “Please sir! Right this way, I’ll have someone show you where you can stay!”