BXBX NOVEL Chapter 77: Rank 5 Alchemist
The main catch was that he knew literally nothing about the material of this sword.
All the solutions that came to mind either wouldn\'t work on this sword or would lower its potential, which Rain didn\'t want. After a while, a strange idea came to him.
"Wait, the enchantment could work, right? It could strengthen it at the same time."
With these thoughts in mind, Rain looked into his storage ring. There he noticed the wolf girl, who, as usual, was asleep, recovering her strength.
In this world, enchantments were used to enhance weapons. Enchantments could be applied to almost any weapon or equipment, enhancing various properties like sharpness and durability, or granting some attributes like fire or water.
All of Rain\'s past gear also had enchantment, though it was fairly simple, enhancing only their basic properties.
Usually, when it came to enchanting, people were faced with a difficult choice as each attribute had weaknesses and strengths, making it very difficult to choose very carefully.
However, Rain was completely devoid of this, for he had already decided what he wanted.
Space attribute.
It was extremely rare and had no obvious disadvantages, while its advantages were enormous. If it hadn\'t been for his meeting with Sives, he didn\'t know when he would have been able to try it out.
Rain looked once more at the sleeping wolf girl. He didn\'t want to disturb her, but the deed had to be done.
"Sives."
His voice reached her immediately, making her ears twitch a couple times before she slowly opened her eyes. The sleepy girl looked up at him, as if silently asking why he\'d woken her up.
"I need to enchant a weapon. Can you do that?"
She just stared in the direction the voice had come from for a long moment before sighing.
"...I don\'t think I have the option to withdraw at all. I can do it, but only once, otherwise my recovery will take much longer."
"All right, that\'s enough."
Replied Rain, while a thought flashed through his mind.
\'I wonder if that\'s really true, or if she\'s just afraid I\'ll turn her into an enchanted weapons factory?\'
Shaking his head to ward off such thoughts, he called out to her.
"If you agree, then come out here, I need that enchantment right now."
Sives, however, did not move from her position.
"Are you sure you want me to come out? As far as I can see, we\'re at the academy now."
Only now did Rain realize that he was still standing in the semi-darkness of the stairwell between floors.
He was so engrossed in his new sword that he almost forgot that he was now on the grounds of the academy, which was home to far more monsters in human form than he could have imagined. And the last thing he wanted was for anyone to find out about the living Rift Master in his hands.
"You\'re right."
Recognizing this, Rain moved the Unknown Sword into the storage ring where it appeared next to Sives. At that moment, the wolf girl added.
"Don\'t peek at me enchanting it, okay? It\'s an ancient... and secret ritual of my race, not meant for others to know."
He didn\'t answer her as he was already preoccupied with another matter. There was almost nothing left until the start of the competition, and he still had to accept the reward for the second quest.
[Extra Quest]
[Help Amelia with her research and expand her horizons.]
[Reward: Alchemy knowledge of rank 5]
[Penalty for failure: ---]
[Time limit: one hour]
[1/1]
[Congratulations on completing the quest!]
[As a reward, you will be given Alchemy knowledge equivalent to rank 5.]
"Rank 5..."
Whispered Rain with a strange emotion.
Historically, many supporting professions such as alchemy and blacksmithing were graded from rank 1 to rank 8. People in these professions were assigned ranks based on their knowledge, experience, and accomplishments in a particular field.
Rank 1 was given to beginners, Rank 2 to experienced people, Rank 3 to masters, and so on, up to Rank 8, which was considered a legend and at which mastery went beyond the boundaries of reason, allowing you to do things that were previously theoretically impossible. Therefore, the limit of this era was rank 7, which had only a few representatives on the entire continent.
Although there was an insurmountable gap between rank 5 and 7, rank 5 was considered a high rank and could only be earned by geniuses who had given decades to their work. Such people usually received respectful treatment wherever they went, and many factions were willing to go to any lengths to get them. And right now, Rain was about to become such a person.
He wasn\'t sure how long it would take him to absorb this knowledge, so he didn\'t wait any longer and accepted the reward.
Mentally giving the command, he closed his eyes and felt a huge stream of information washing over his head, enriching him with new knowledge and experience.
When he opened his eyes again, he frowned slightly.
It was... surprisingly fast?
It didn\'t take 20 seconds before he was able to absorb the abyss of knowledge that the system had given him.
He already had a good foundation in alchemy, as his past world had also had alchemy and although most of the formulas and ingredients were different compared to this world, the basic principles were the same. But that only made him realize how much of a change he had undergone.
"By the feel of it, I\'ve gotten much... much better at alchemy than I was in my world."
Now, after accepting the reward his foundation of alchemy became incredibly solid and his knowledge became much deeper.
Unbeknownst to him, recipes and formulas appeared in his mind, and some points he could not solve before now became intuitive to him.
It might not help in direct combat, but alchemy had a huge variety of different uses. There was a reason why good alchemists were hunted by everyone, including the Academy and the Imperial Family.
Satisfied with such rapid progress, Rain stretched relaxedly.
Since he had finished it ahead of time, Sives hadn\'t had time to fully enchant the weapon yet. Rain\'s gaze fell on the storage ring.
\'There won\'t be any problem if I just look at it, will there?\'
Though she obviously didn\'t want anyone to see it, it\'s not like he was a stranger to her.
\'Your secret is my secret.\'
With that determination, he discreetly peeked into his storage ring.
"Huh?"
He blinked a couple of times, trying to realize what was happening.
"She\'s... licking it?"
He couldn\'t take his eyes off this scene of a girl doing something unusual with his sword.
This went on for a couple more minutes before the wolf girl was finally satisfied with the state of the sword and called out to Rain.
"You can have it."
Rain hesitated, but asked.
"It\'s definitely an ancient technique?"
"Argh, I told you not to look!"
Sives turned away in embarrassment, growling angrily into space. But even then she seemed to still feel his gaze on her.
"Don\'t look at me like that, that was the quickest way to..."
She spoke in a low voice and it was unclear who she was explaining it to, herself or him.
"I had to use something as a conduit for my powers... of course it could have been blood, but..."
"I understand."
Rain finished her intermittent explanation. Then he summoned the sword back and took it in his hands.
At first glance, the sword did not change in any way, but if you looked closely, you could detect faintly noticeable space distortions surrounding it.
Rain opened the item\'s status window.
[Unknown Sword]
[Type: Weapon]
[Attribute: Space(supreme)]
[Indestructible &%# ?? ##&? ##&&#%#...]
The system also confirmed that his sword had a new attribute.
Rain did the same manipulation with the sword again, trying to lift it into the air using only gravity.
Even in the semi-darkness, a wide smile could be seen on the young man\'s face as the sword rose into the air.
The idea was simple, if you can\'t control one material, you just need to wrap it in another. Of course, it was difficult to imagine that this material could be space itself.
But now that Rain was not acting on the sword itself, but on the thin film of space distortion around it, he managed to move it. And to his surprise, it was no more difficult to control than a steel sword, perhaps even easier.
The sword obediently levitated in front of him, responding to all his commands.
"The space attribute is even better than I thought it would be."
After praising it, he put his sword away, looking at the time on his communicator ring.
It seemed like a lot of time had passed while he was getting his quest rewards and figuring out how to solve the sword problem, but in fact even more time had passed and Rain realized he was running late...
***
Thanks for reading, everyone.