After a few minutes, the trio repeated the exact same steps as the previous time and soon they were once again at the last crucial step.
BOOOM!
Another explosion rocked the room and Luna blew out a puff of smoke, coughing up with her tiny mouth.
Seeka as well became bald this time.
However, Liam calmly said…
"Again."
Just like the first two attempts ended in failure, the third, the fourth, and the fifth as well consecutively ended in the same manner.
The white fox looked at Liam pitifully, her fur now almost pitch black. Liam as well was fully bald and Seeka was close to losing her mind.
The two dreaded the next attempt but thankfully for them, Liam did not say anything and closed his eyes.
They had now tried this same process five times and all five times the cauldron had exploded. Liam was not frustrated about this.
While learning alchemy such things were expected especially when he was directly trying to make a huge leap going from making low grade potions to high grade potions.
But the thing that bothered him was that he was not making any progress. In all the five attempts he had not learned anything.
If things continued this way then even if he repeated the same set of movements a hundred times, he would still not learn anything.
He calmed himself down and silently closed his eyes to try and decipher what was going wrong.
Clearly, the problem laid in the last step but was it really his mana manipulation that was lacking, or was it something else disguised as his mana manipulation?
Liam cleared his head and dissected the whole process into several steps, thinking about the individual steps carefully.
Mana potions especially high grade mana potions contained within them a gentle aura. The explosive nature of the mixture was only when it was not fully concocted.
And this explosive nature was because of one specific herb, Thithinali.
Liam flashed his eyes open to look at the bundle of Thithinali herbs that were placed on the side.
In the recipe, it was described that this herb required extremely high heat to stabilize. Otherwise, the whole brew would become exothermic and explode.
At the same time, certain parts of this herb were also very sensitive. So the mana had to be carefully circulated only on the outer edges of the herb.
"Did I make a mistake?" Liam pondered.
He picked up a stalk and tried to process this stalk alone by churning out his mana and running it around the leaves of the herb.
Seeka intuitively took a step back but the little fox was too curious to do the same. She was perched beside Liam and peeked her head in curiously, when… Do you want to read more chapters?
BOOOM!
Another explosion rang out.
This one was rather a small explosion. Nevertheless, it burst right on the little thing's face making her riled up.
When Liam chuckled and picked up the next stalk to examine, the fox furiously opened her mouth and let out a growl before burning the whole herb thoroughly.
Everything happened in an instant and the herb was completely ruined. The little fox only realized what she had done later.
She yelped in shock, her eyes going wide. Now she had done it!
The little fox gulped and immediately put on a pitiful expression looking at Liam with all sorts of cuteness dripping from her face.
Liam on the other hand was still busy staring at his hand where the herb was previously there.
Seeing that he was not paying attention, the fox adjusted her cute face and popped into his lap from different sides really trying to show him that she was repentant.
After an entire minute, Liam finally paid attention to the little thing and rubbed her eyes. "Idiot. Stop it. I am not mad. It's fine."
He rubbed the little fox's head, thinking about what he had observed. In the split second that the herb was burnt, he had actually experienced a cooling feeling in his hand.
He knew that Luna's fire was a few degrees hotter than his own conjured fire. Could it be because of this?
Liam mulled over this for a couple more minutes but no matter which angle he approached this from, this seemed to be the only logical reason.
It then struck him that perhaps where he was going wrong was not in the control but in the quantity.
"You did good, naughty little girl." He picked up the fox by her scruff and placed her on the side. "Let's start from the beginning again."
"Yes, Master!" Seeka hurriedly started pouring in the water and the fox as well obediently grabbed the first set of herbs in her paw seeming a little too eager.
Liam smiled, "Add it in."
The first steps of the process quickly went by and they were soon at the deciding step. "I will try with 80% of my mana now."
He closed his eyes and touched the cauldron, churning the huge quantity of energy in his body. Pain rippled across his body as he tried using all of that mana at the same time.
At the same time, the Thithinali stalks floating on the concoction, all of them started vibrating. Liam could feel it and he knew that he was close.
He gritted his teeth and tried to hold on but a second later… BANG!
Once more everything exploded.
However, the explosion this time was not that bad. In fact, only the cauldron had snapped apart and the liquid seeped out.
This was a lot better compared to the previous times when several tongues of fire roared out and the entire room was filled with smoke and debris.
This was progress!
Liam grinned and shouted. "AGAIN! NOW!" He had a feeling that he had this in the bag!
Everything was quickly set up and when the moment arrived, he resolutely eyed the cauldron. "90% mana this time!"
"This is going to hurt."
He tried to prepare himself as he swirled the mana circulating in his body, but as soon as he commanded all of it to do his bidding, his entire body twitched in pain.
The pain was simply excruciating.
Despite this, Liam was not done yet. He had to bear this pain and he also had to keep his mind sane somehow while going through this torture.
Both Luna and Seeka could see how much he was suffering and the two of them gaped at him with awe and respect.
Their master's willpower was tremendous!
As Liam continued to push through, each second dragging like an eternity, soon the entire cauldron started glowing.
***
Golden Ticket Mass Release Chapter 1 ~~
