The scene was filled with the flash of blades and surging blood.
Sylvia’s special training was not as thrilling and battle-filled as Helos had imagined. At least in these first few days, she didn’t even have a chance to step out of the hall.
Sylvia did not teach her any earth-shattering moves or pass on any obscure, hard-to-understand incantations.
In the following days, this ghost teacher who called herself the “Great Slayer of Mages” did only one thing: act as a strict alchemy instructor.
“Have you memorized the recipe?”
“You messed up the number of stirs. Do it over.”
“The heat is too high. Are you making soup?”
Sylvia floated above the experimental table, using her uniquely sharp tongue and pickiness to direct Helos in a very special alchemical operation.
It was a potion recipe Helos had never seen before.
It had no name, nor any description of its effects.
Only a long list of seemingly unrelated ingredients and complex production steps accurate to the second.
“What in the world is this?”
Helos wiped the sweat from her forehead while carefully controlling the temperature of the crucible in her hand.
She had already failed three times in a row, and each time, the expensive materials turned into a foul-smelling black smoke, making her heart ache.
“Don’t ask,” Sylvia said coldly. “This is the ‘basics’. If you can’t even make this, then don’t expect to learn how to control your power.”
Helos had no choice but to grit her teeth and persevere.
Because of that, she had to send Gavi to the Imperial Capital’s Black Market several times just to barely gather those materials that sounded a bit ominous.
Tears of the night-walking dog-headed eagle, swim bladder of the deep sea rage fish, and even ghost grass that had to be collected under the moonlight.
Fortunately, although she couldn’t use Ultimate Alchemy in this situation, she was still an alchemy genius with a solid foundation.
As long as someone could help her at the critical moment, completing the steps that required mana catalysis, she could still rely on physical operations to finish most of the process.
And that perfect tool was naturally Julius.
“Now! Inject the mana!”
“Stop! Steady! Maintain this output frequency!”
Under Helos’s command, Julius was like a human mana pump, diligently cooperating with every instruction.
Finally, after who knew how many failures and wasting who knew how many materials.
On the evening of the third day, when the last ray of sunlight disappeared over the horizon.
“Success!”
Helos looked at the bottle in her hand. It was no longer black and no longer emitting a strange smell. Instead, it showed a milky white color and gave off a faint bitter almond scent. She jumped up excitedly.
She carefully put the potion into a crystal bottle, then held it out to Sylvia like an offering.
“Master! Look! No problem this time, right?”
Sylvia floated down.
She leaned close to the bottle’s mouth, sniffed it carefully, then reached out a translucent finger and gently flicked the bottle, listening to the crisp echo.
She pondered for a moment, and finally a trace of satisfaction appeared in her hollow eyes.
“Hmm…”
“Just barely passable.”
Although her words were harsh, her tone had clearly softened a lot.
“It’s only seventy to eighty percent purity, and the impurities aren’t completely removed, but for you right now, it’s barely enough.”
“Phew—”
Helos let out a long breath, feeling that the suffering of these few days hadn’t been in vain.
But then a new problem arose.
She looked at the potion in her hand, with its strange color and even stranger smell, and felt a sense of doubt.
“Um, Master.”
She swallowed and asked tentatively:
“This potion… what exactly is it for?”
Although the color and smell matched what Sylvia had said, she hadn’t mentioned the specific effects of the potion.
What if it was poison, or a transformation potion that would turn her into a frog? Wouldn’t that be a huge loss?
“What’s it for?”
Sylvia smiled mysteriously and didn’t answer directly.
She turned her head to look at Julius, who was wiping his sweat nearby.
“Big oaf, come here.”
Julius frowned, but still followed the instruction and walked over, standing behind Helos in a guard’s posture, ready to draw his sword at any moment.
“What’s wrong?” he asked warily.
“Don’t be so tense.”
Sylvia waved her hand and pointed at the potion in Helos’s hand.
“I just need you to be a witness. That way, if something happens to this girl later, you won’t blame me and try to burn me.”
Julius frowned even deeper.
He looked at Helos.
“Is this potion dangerous?”
“No danger,” Sylvia said firmly. “At least for her body, there are no side effects. Not only that, this is a ‘treasure’ that countless mages once dreamed of to enhance their magic perception.”
She looked at Helos, a hint of expectation in her eyes.
“Drink it, and you’ll be able to see what you want to see.”
Helos looked at Sylvia’s hollow eyes, then at Julius’s worried expression behind her.
She took a deep breath.
Since she had come this far, since she had chosen to trust this female ghost, there was no reason to back down.
“Okay.”
Helos nodded.
Under Julius’s tense and watchful gaze, she pulled out the stopper of the crystal bottle.
A bitter smell rushed to her nose.
Without hesitation, she tilted her head back and downed the milky white liquid in one gulp.
Gulp.
The liquid slid down her throat. It wasn’t as unpleasant as she’d imagined; instead, it carried a minty coolness.
“It seems… nothing’s happening?”
Helos smacked her lips and looked at Sylvia with some confusion.
“Don’t rush.”
Sylvia crossed her arms, floating in midair, and leisurely counted.
“Three…”
“Two…”
“One.”
The moment she counted to one—
BOOM—!
A scorching heat, like molten lava, erupted without warning from Helos’s lower abdomen!
“Ugh!”
Helos grunted, and the empty bottle fell from her hand, shattering with a crack on the ground.
That heat didn’t stay in her abdomen. It surged up her spine, through her blood vessels, racing wildly upward!
It rushed past her heart, past her throat, and finally slammed into her brain like a bursting flood!
“Ah—!”
Helos felt as if someone had hit her head with a stick. Double images instantly appeared before her eyes.
The world began to spin.
The surroundings became distorted and stretched.
Julius’s worried face blurred in her vision, as if seen through thick frosted glass.
“Helos? Helos, what’s wrong?!”
Julius’s voice also sounded distant and close, with a strange echo.
Helos tried to reassure him, but she found her tongue stiff, unable to speak clearly.
“I… I’m fine…”
Her vision grew dimmer.
The once bright lights began to fade, and the clear outlines of the furniture started to dissolve.
It was as if someone was slowly turning off the lights of this world.
Darkness crept in from the edges of her vision, bit by bit devouring all colors and light.
Helos panicked.
“What’s happening…”
She raised her hand to grab Julius’s arm, but grasped nothing.
She blinked desperately, trying to see what was in front of her.
She rubbed her eyes in disbelief, trying hard to wipe away the “fog” that blocked her sight.
But when she opened her eyes again—
That last glimmer of light disappeared completely.
Her world fell into a dead, silent pitch black.
She couldn’t see anything, not a single ray of light.
Only endless, boundless darkness remained.
“…Huh?”
Helos was stunned.
She stretched out her hands, flailing wildly in the void of darkness before her, trying to catch something.
But there was nothing.
“Teacher! Julius!”
An unprecedented fear seized her heart.
She shouted in panic, her voice full of helplessness and trembling:
“I—I can’t see anything!”
“My eyes… are my eyes blind?”
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