Alex felt something change within him.
"… Eh?" Alex was dumbfounded for a few seconds. Then, he read the notifications once more. As he read, his eyes widened when he realized what it meant.
"Wait wait wait wait wait… did I just get a Superior Metal Spiritual root? Wait, no… it says Supreme. What's that? Is it better than Superior?"
He didn't know what was going on. Only his metal root was suddenly upgraded, instead of all of them.
"Wait, did my spiritual roots change and I no longer have all 7 energy roots?" he thought and quickly opened his status page again to check. Thankfully, his spiritual root hadn't changed.
"Phew, thank god," he said. Just then, another piece of notification popped up.
<Detecting…>
"What? What the hell is detecting this time?" he cried out loud.
<Discovered: Supreme Metal Spiritual Root>
"Huh? But it should have already discov— " another Notification arrived at the same time.
<You have discovered a hidden function of [Alchemy God's Knowledge]>
Alex's eyes went wide. "Is it going to level up?" he thought with hope in his eyes.
<You can now command all free Metal energy as you wish>
His technique didn't level up, but he wasn't disappointed at all. If what he understood from this statement just now was true, then…
"Woah, isn't my alchemy going to be better?" he thought.
He waited for more notifications to appear, but nothing did. So, he took out his cauldron and decided to try what he could.
He took out ingredients for a single pill. That pill was the same pill he made for the 3rd-day competition when he created a 60% harmony pill.
That pill alone had created chaos in the crowd when he revealed it, and even the Royal Alchemist himself had praised him later on.
Now, he was going to make the same pill, but with much greater knowledge and control of the Alchemy process.
He started simply by heating up his Golden Jade Cauldron. Once it was ready, he put in the first ingredient. He followed the recipe, but also at the same time absorbed all that was happening in the cauldron.
He tried to understand why the alchemist who created this recipe made the instruction this exact one. Did he also have many failures before he was successful with this one?
Alex couldn't help but think that. 'Focus,' he told himself and made the pill.
The process was surprisingly very simple for him now that he had practiced these things so intensely. When all the ingredients were put in and the final resulting energy was metal, he started to use Elemental Guidance to pass that metal energy into the powder that was formed into a pill.
He didn't worry about the composition or structure of the pill at the moment and only focused on the energy aspect.
He guided the metal energy to the pill, and surprisingly it followed what he wanted it to do.
"Eh?" he thought. Usually, the normal energies could be at most showed the way to the pill. Whether they went there or not was another matter.
As for metal energy, he could guide them. He could show them to the pill, and whether they entered the pill or not was another matter.
However, right now, he could fully control what the pill did. He felt like he could grasp metal energy right in his hand.
'Is this what commanding metal energy means? I can make it go to the pill?' he wondered.
No pill-splitting Qi appeared, and he freely forced all the remaining energy into the pill. Once he was done, he waited for a little bit because he expected something to happen.
As expected, the pill rejected some of the metal energy due to the irregularities in the powder's structure and composition at some level.
"Well, I tried my best," he thought and took the pill out of the cauldron. The pill had absorbed quite a lot of energy, so he was very excited to see how much he had made.
He held the pill in his hand and the information popped up.
[Bronze Tiger Pill - 82%]
[Bronze Tiger Pill - 82%]
Alex had to read the pill's information twice to realize that he wasn't hallucinating.
"No way! 82%?" he freaked out when he saw that. "Woohoo… I made such a high-grade pill," he said in absolute joy.
He looked at it again and said, "Damn, it really is 82%. Is that still Heaven Grade? No, it should be up at Immortal Grade right?"
Higher-level pill harmony rarely got talked about so he wasn't sure about where the rest of the ranking lay. But he was sure that he learned somewhere that 75% was where Immortal rank started.
"I made an immortal rank pill," even as he said it, he couldn't believe it.
"Let's try once more," he thought and took out the same ingredients. Then once again, he made the pill.
This time, it came out better at 84%. Alex couldn't stop his happiness from overflowing. He jumped around screaming with joy.
After he calmed down, he made a few more pills that had metal energy as the final resulting pill.
Each of those pills he made came out to be above 80% in harmony level. The only problem he encountered was the energy leaving the cauldron, the age of the ingredients, and the not-perfect structure and composition of the powder in the pill.
Aside from that, everything was perfect.
He decided to check his Iron Fist Punch, Smiting Blade, and Penta Blade Technique. Those were the techniques that used metal energy.
While he already had a boost in damage, he wanted to see if there was an improvement in the damage. He tested all 3 and was a little disappointed.
"I guess I already did as much damage as I could. Meridian Realm just revealed it, nothing else. Whatever, I'm still happy," Alex thought.
"My driving lessons continue from tomorrow right? What do I do now?" he thought. There was really just one answer and he knew it.
So, he sat down and started contemplating the different aspects of the pill.
