The depth and breadth far exceeded Helos’s imagination. Professor Graham’s guidance to Helos could be described as holding nothing back. This outwardly unkempt master alchemist’s mastery of knowledge reserves was truly admirable.
No matter how bizarre or illogical the rune combinations she dug up from that ancient alchemy fragment were, the professor could always provide incisive insights from an unexpected angle.
Graham would push his thick glasses up and point at a twisted pattern on Helos’s draft paper. “Look at this rune structure, its mana flow direction. It’s not ‘stabilizing’ mana; it’s ‘deceiving’ mana.”
“It’s simulating a false state of stability, then causing a sudden energy imbalance at the most critical node. This is a trap, Helos, a very sophisticated alchemical trap.”
With such a master-level “sparring partner,” Helos’s progress was rapid.
Her understanding of alchemy had long surpassed the orthodox scope taught by Teacher Emilia in class, beginning to touch upon that ancient and chaotic field.
At the same time, the progress of restoring recipes also increased steadily.
After successfully registering the featherlight boots, glimmer prism, and echo stone, Helos successively conquered the restoration of two more small alchemical items.
One was frenzy dust, which she improved upon based on the incense of frenzy recorded in the fragment, with the former’s effect speed far exceeding the latter.
The other was ignition paste, an alchemical product that generated intense high temperatures upon severe friction.
This thing was much more useful than simply using a flint to start a fire. By now, she had successfully registered eight recipes, leaving only the final two to unlock the Enlightenment Arts.
However, when Helos confidently began to restore the ninth recipe, she finally encountered a real bottleneck.
“No… this makes no sense at all.”
Helos lay sprawled over the lab table, irritably grabbing her own silver hair.
In front of her was a severely damaged blueprint.
What was depicted was no longer a tool or potion, but rather something resembling an anatomical diagram of a creature.
The drawing showed an ordinary crow, but next to it were densely packed runes marked in red ink, pointing to the crow’s eyes, wings, and heart.
The annotations beside it were even more chaotic, filled with bizarre terms like will infusion, form mutation, and flesh fusion.
This diagram was something she had copied from the fragment, but its content was simply beyond her comprehension.
Yet, precisely because of that, it piqued her interest.
“Professor, can you understand this?”
Helos finally gave up on independent study and took the blueprint to find Graham, who was tinkering away next door.
Graham put down his magnifying glass and took the blueprint.
The expression on his face underwent an extremely subtle change the moment he saw the drawing.
The usual gentleness and appreciation seemed to freeze, replaced by a complexity Helos had never seen before.
“So the fragment still records this.”
He murmured to himself.
“Professor?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.”
Graham snapped back to reality. He pushed his glasses up, his gaze behind the lenses appearing somewhat profound.
“Helos, it seems you’ve already touched upon the most core, and most dangerous, part of ancient alchemy.”
He looked at Helos and said slowly, “What you restored before were still within the realm of ‘objects.’ From this moment on, what it touches is the domain of ‘life.'”
The professor fell silent for a moment, as if weighing his words.
“Orthodox alchemy holds that matter is fixed; we can only change its form through purification, decomposition, and recombination.”
“But this ancient alchemy believes that all things possess a ‘spirit,’ that the form of matter is not immutable, and that it can even be twisted by the alchemist’s ‘will.'”
“Will?”
Helos was stunned; this clearly exceeded her current knowledge system.
“That’s right.”
Graham nodded. “This theory holds that the highest realm of alchemy is not crafting tools, but ‘creating’ biomatter.”
He seemed to fall into some memory, his voice becoming somewhat distant.
“They believed that as long as the ritual was correct and the ‘symbolic meaning’ of the materials was strong enough, an alchemist could even inject their own will into the alchemical product, causing it to ‘activate’ and undergo mutation.”
Seeing Helos still looking confused, Graham sighed and decided to show her something “real.”
“Come with me.”
He didn’t explain further, instead leading Helos deeper into the underground workshop.
There was an inconspicuous black iron door there, always locked, something even Agatha didn’t know what lay behind.
Graham took out an ancient magic key from his pocket, touched it lightly, and opened the door.
A bone-chilling cold instantly surged from the crack, and along with it, a strong, strange medicinal odor drilled into Helos’s nostrils.
The room behind the door was pitch black.
Graham lit the magic lamps on the wall. The dim yellow light illuminated the scene before them, making Helos instantly hold her breath.
This wasn’t a storeroom; it looked more like a specimen storage room.
Shelves lining the walls were filled with huge glass jars, containing various horrifying creations soaking inside.
There was a three-headed hound specimen, its skin showing an eerie bluish-purple hue.
There was a plant that should have been an ordinary rose, now blooming with pitch-black flowers, with fleshy lumps resembling eyeballs writhing within the stamens.
And there was a substance that seemed to be metal, having no fixed form, slowly wriggling at the bottom of the container like a slime, with… human faces occasionally surfacing on its surface?
“These are…?”
Helos felt her throat go dry.
“These are all products of ‘created biomatter.'”
Graham’s voice sounded especially low in the silent room.
“They are also the failures left behind by those alchemists who attempted to touch ‘the forbidden.'”
He walked to a glass jar and pointed at the black substance still slowly writhing inside.
“Look at this. Its creator originally wanted to refine a golem-like creature capable of absorbing and devouring evil forces.”
“But he failed.”
A trace of pity appeared on Graham’s face.
“During the refining process, his heart was filled with fear and hatred of darkness. Thus, his will twisted the alchemical product. This mass eventually ‘came to life,’ but it was a living tissue that only knew how to devour light and spread fear.”
Helos looked at the mass of material constantly surfacing with agonized human faces, feeling a chill shoot up from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.
This had completely overturned her understanding of alchemy.
This wasn’t science, nor was it magic; it was more like a creation that blasphemed the gods.
“Do you understand now?”
Graham turned around, calmly watching her.
“The knowledge recorded in this fragment is this kind of power. What it pursues is not the transformation of matter, but the distortion of reality by will. It is full of uncertainty, danger, and madness.”
His gaze burned as he looked at the girl’s face, saying gravely, “It is both a shortcut to truth and an abyss leading to destruction.”
Helos fell silent.
She was deeply shocked by this “forbidden” knowledge before her.
The girl instinctively felt that this thing was dangerous; she should stay away immediately.
“However… there’s no need to be too afraid.”
Professor Graham’s tone shifted, and that gentle scholarly smile reappeared on his face, as if the dangerous person from a moment ago wasn’t him.
He patted the girl’s shoulder as if to reassure her.
“This is just an extreme branch of ancient alchemy, and knowledge itself is not sinful, Helos.”
“You possess talent and intellect far beyond the ordinary. I believe you won’t be consumed by this knowledge like those failures.”
He pushed his glasses up, encouraging her.
“So I think you don’t need to be afraid; just explore it as pure knowledge. As long as we are cautious enough, we can definitely avoid those risks.”
The professor’s reassurance slightly eased the unease in Helos’s heart.
Graham led her out of that oppressive specimen room and locked the iron door again.
“Let’s go. This place isn’t suitable for you to stay too long.”
On the way back to the lab table, Graham, as if by accident, dropped a small piece of parchment note from his towering pile of blueprints.
“Oops.”
He bent down to pick it up, but Helos was closer and picked it up for him first.
“Thank you.”
Just as Helos was about to return the note to him, her gaze was drawn to the title written in ancient runes on the note.
[Several Possibility Conjectures Regarding ‘Metal Activation’]
“Professor, this is…?”
“Oh, this.”
Graham scratched his head, looking somewhat embarrassed as he took it back.
“It’s just some scribbles from my past research, useless stuff. I was just about to throw it away.”
He said this, but didn’t put it away immediately. Instead, he seemed to deliberately let Helos see the contents clearly.
On that note, a few runes were hastily sketched, and next to them, a line of extremely simple explanation was annotated in the common tongue.
[If metal could be activated, then the structural strength of golems could be taken a step further… Would they become more human-like? Or would they go berserk?]
“Metal activation?”
Helos’s heart gave a sudden jolt.
“Yeah, a fanciful theory, attempting to give lifeless metal properties similar to ‘living things.'”
“For example, making metal develop a will… or enabling shape transformation based on the user’s will?”
Graham waved his hand dismissively.
“It’s somewhat similar to our earth element magic, just without requiring massive amounts of mana. And it’s theoretically very difficult to make work, so don’t take it too seriously. Alright, I need to get back to work. You can continue your research slowly.”
After saying that, he took the note and hurried back to his workbench, as if it really was just an unintentional incident.
Helos stood in place, watching the professor’s retreating back.
She lowered her head, but in her pale purple eyes hidden in the shadow of her silver hair, an unprecedented light flickered.
Metal activation?
This term echoed in her mind like a magic spell.
How was this different from creating biomatter?
But… if it could really be done, wouldn’t that mean—
Gavi could evolve further?
She looked at her own hands, then at the progress bar for Ultimate Alchemy, still two short of unlocking.
The desire to unlock the Enlightenment Arts and the intense curiosity about this unknown knowledge gripped her heart like two invisible hands.
She couldn’t resist this temptation.
Helos took a deep breath and secretly wrote in her notebook.
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