Alex thought for minutes on end through the different things he had read regarding the alchemy books, but all he found was the books saying that the direction of the motion was important.
Every single one of the books failed to mention why. He wondered what he should do, and decided to log out.
He went onto his computers and started searching about alchemy on the internet. Unfortunately, there wasn't much information regarding alchemy on there. He knew more than what was available on there.
"Is no one that far ahead on alchemy? Or are the talented ones just reluctant to share information?" Alex wondered. It would make sense that just like him, there were others that didn't like sharing any information they gain onto the internet.
"Sigh, I guess I will just have to ask the master. Hopefully, she knows the answer," Alex said and went back into the game.
He set everything back up and decided to continue his experiment. Now that he was done testing the direction of the motion, he was now going to check the speed of the motion.
He decided to use the Silver Grass again. Once the cauldron was at the same temperature as last time, he put it in the grass and started moving it in a clockwise direction.
At first, he moved it at a speed of half a rotation every second, which took him 4 whole rotations to fully turn it into powder. Then he went a little faster.
This time, he moved it at 1 rotation every second speed. He thought that it would still take it 8 seconds in total, but surprisingly, it far exceeded his expectations and actually took 16 seconds.
"Hmm, what if I went slower?" he thought and decided to go so slow that it would take him 4 seconds per full rotation. He tried it and as he expected, the ingredient turned into powder in just 1 rotation, or 4 seconds.
"Hmm… if I go even slower, will it turn to powder faster?" he wondered. That would surely help him cut down on the time a lot.
He decided to take 8 seconds per rotation this time and dropped in the Silver Grass. He started to slowly move the ingredient around, but not 2 seconds in Alex stopped.
He couldn't help but facepalm himself when he realize what had just happened.
"Of course, If I take too long to move it, it will obviously burn," Alex thought and laughed to himself. He cleared the cauldron of the burnt Silver grass and tried a few different variations.
After a while, he had a grasp of how much the speed slowed down or sped up the energy release process as well as the powder forming process.
'The temperature probably plays a big role as well, but I will have to wait until then,' he thought. Now that he was a little more knowledgeable in this, he decided to make the same pill as before, only this time he would change the speed entirely to have it release energy at the fastest rate possible.
He made the pills and ended up finishing making the pill in under 7 minutes. However, he could see that most of the energy had been rejected by the powder.
So, he ended up really just making pills with 9% harmony. It was a total failure.
"Hmm… so it had something to do with the powder and not the energy, huh?" he thought. "I always thought that energy was where it was all at, but it seems that even the powder is an important part of the process."
He tried one more time, but this time, he simply used the fastest rotation speed for every ingredient possible. The energy in turn was produced at a very slow rate.
This time he made a pill with 13% harmony. While it was a usable pill, to Alex, it was also a failure.
"Okay, so I can't really make a pill if the motion of the ingredients isn't correct. Let's move onto the temperature," he thought and took out Silver Grass once more.
This time, he was going to try using the ingredients at different temperatures. After testing for a while, he realized that the temperature was pretty simple.
The hotter the cauldron was, the less time it required for the ingredient to turn to powder.
'That's quite easy to remember. However, now I will have to check how they interact with one another and find out what the correct combination of 3 is for each ingredient in each pill,' Ning thought.
He was starting to get overwhelmed a little. If he had to remember it all, it would take him years upon years, and then he would finally be able to learn just the ingredients for common rank pills.
"Oh god, what did I get myself into?" he started to worry. Only now did he truly start to see the true vastness of Alchemy.
"Wait wait wait, don't panic. Surely the Alchemy God's Knowledge skill will help me when it grows. I will probably get more benefit from it, surely," Alex thought. He didn't know when a growth-type skill would actually grow.
He was hoping for it to be when he reached True realms, but it could have a different set of requirements as well.
"No, I can't put my hopes on an 'if'. I need to learn what I can right now," he thought. "It doesn't matter how long it will take, as long as I learn it, surely I can learn it all one day," he thought.
"Besides, it will help me in the long run, so it can't be a waste of time," Alex thought and continued.
He started testing the rate at which the energy was released and the powder was formed for each combination of temperature, the direction of motion, and speed of motion, for the Silver Grass.
It took him the entire day to try every single feasible combination he would try on a normal pill-making process. Only when he felt that he had done everything did he stop.
