Siderius took out a particular ball of clay inside his leather pouch and loaded it in the sling.
He quickly stood up from the cover to swing the clayball at Pax.
The ball broke into pieces and a black liquid spread out from inside the ball. It landed on Pax’s face.
The liquid slled of burned dried charcoal and painted his face black.
The servant wiped his face, attempting to remove the liquid but to no avail. This was no ordinary solution.
"What is this?" Pax said.
Siderius didn’t answer. He put another clayball into the sling and spun it.
Pax didn’t even bother to block the projectile. To him, that ball could cause him no harm.
However, to Pax’s surprise, what happened next was sothing he could not imagine.
The clayball was Siderius’ trump card. It was no ordinary projectile.
THREE DAYS EARLIER.
Ashe carried two buckets to George’s house in the middle of the night.
Most of the people in Mucktown had already gone to sleep, except for the lazy townguards. They were probably staying up and playing dice at this ti.
Siderius was kneeling in the yard, near the forge of George.
In front of him was a circle of yellow powder sulfur with a piece of pyrite in the middle.
With a few hand gestures, the sulfur enveloped the ore in its soul fla. A ball of fire levitated up in the air.
Soon, the fireball landed on the ground, distinguished itself and revealed the separated pyrrhotite and sulfur.
With the access of sulfur, Siderius could separate elents using an alchemical seal instead of going through the ti-consuming process of thermolysis. This was the sa process when he had separated Phosphorus out of the bones.
Ashe approached Siderius, her eyes were lit with curiosity and wonder. What he just did was not too far from magic.
"That... isn’t magic?" Ashe mumbled.
"No, my apprentice. This is called an alchemical reaction, produced by using Seal and Sign."
"Alchemical reaction? Seal and Sign?"
"Yes. The difference between us and magic is that we play within the rules of reality while magic breaks it. Alchemical reaction is nothing more than the conversion and transformation of matters and elents.
As for Seal and Sign. In alchemy, we had the three trios. These trios represent our core ideas and processes.
The first trio are the three pris. Salt, Sulfur and rcury. The most important elents that are needed in almost every alchemical process. Without them, there will be no Alchemy.
The second trio are the three S. Seal, Sign and Spirit. The practice of alchemy broke down into three aspects.
Seals are alchemical symbols and patterns that can evoke alchemy. You can imagine it as the language of reality, the basic unit of the fabric of the universe.
Signs are gestures of the body with the will of the mind that can control alchemical processes. They shape alchemy in the way that we want them to be.
Spirits are alcohol-based concoctions rooted in Alchemy that can evoke alchemical processes in a living being. You can think of it as a superior form of dicine. However, it can achieve wonders that no dicine can."
Ashe listened closely and tried her best to rember everything, forever engraving these precious pieces of knowledge to her mind.
"And what is the third trios, Master?"
Siderius smirked. "The third trio are the three Aethers. The rules, the guardian of the rules and the destroyer of such rules."
"Oh." Ashe rembered Siderius did say sothing about other forms of Aether, aside from True Aether. She also rembered that it wasn’t ti for her to learn that yet so she didn’t ask further questions.
"Have you got what I asked?"
"Yes, Master. I got the clay and this..."
Ashe gently dropped the two buckets on the ground. One small and one big. Both were tightly sealed
Siderius opened each of them.
The first smaller bucket held moldable clay, the type of clay that had been treated and processed so that everyone could start making an object out of it right away.
The second bigger bucket held a gallon of fresh blood.
"The potter didn’t haggle much. He sold the clay for twenty bronze coins." Ashe said. "The blood was also very cheap. The butcher didn’t have any use for it so he happily sold it to . He is very curious about what I will do with it though."
"And what did you say?" Siderius said. He picked up a handful of the wet clay to examine it.
Its condition was acceptable.
"I said that I buy it to make blood sausage."
"Oh?" Siderius had sothing similar in his old world.
People basically cooked blood and let it solidify into sausage. It was a very good way to make use of the excessive waste of blood.
This was a very smart move from Ashe as it would not be a suspicious transaction at all. He bet a lot of people ca to the butcher to buy blood for the sa reason.
"How much did you pay for the blood?" Siderius asked.
Ashe scratched her head and gave Siderius the coin pouch. "I tried to haggle with the butcher. But at is rare these days. Even blood becos a very expensive product. He wouldn’t sell for anything under a silver."
Siderius chuckled. He patted Ashe’s head gently.
"Nicely done. You have completed my task well."
Siderius’ complint made Ashe blushed a bit. It made her feel warm and appreciated inside.
Siderius had two silver coins left and he gave it to Ashe. She bought the clay for twenty bronze coins and the blood for one silver coin. In the pouch were the remaining eighty bronze coins, the last of Siderius’ wealth in this world.
"What are we going to do with these items, Master?" Ashe said.
"We are going to make a weapon, Ashe. A very special and deadly weapon.
Co, let show you so alchemical seals."
The sling could use any type of ammo. As long as they were capable of causing damage. But Siderius didn’t just want to bruise witches with a rock.
That kind of attack would do nothing in the heat of a battle. He needed sothing more powerful and destructive.
He wanted to make special projectiles for his sling.
The smokebomb that the assassin had used gave Siderius an idea for the ammo.
The issue with a bomb that it was very easy to dodge. Even with the hardest throw of an athletic knight, Siderius found it too simple for any warrior to avoid the attack.
Attaching a bomb on an arrow was also a stupid idea. The weight of the bomb would slow down an arrow and make it imprecise.
The sling, however, could deliver a precise ranged attack that would be difficult to dodge. It was also the perfect weapon to throw bombs.
Now that he had sulfur, Siderius could combine saltpetre with sulfur and charcoal to create black powder. An explosive mixture that would make his projectile a hundred tis more dangerous.
The only difficulty was to acquire saltpetre. It wasn’t sold by any rchant inside Mucktown and most people didn’t even hear of it before. The assassin probably got a way to acquire saltpetre by other ans.
Siderius already had a suitable alchemical process in his mind to produce the saltpetre and one other ingredient to make his explosive projectiles effective.
The ammo case would be constructed from clay. The clay was fragile enough so it could be shattered upon impact, mixing the different ingredients inside and igniting the bomb.
To manually create clay balls from the wet clay would take a few days. Molding, drying and firing the clay all required ti and effort.
However, Siderius had alchemy on his side.
By using a modified clothing transformation seal, Siderius could mold the clay quickly and with precision. His old alchemist guild called this seal Object Transformation, a variation of the rcury Transformation Seal.
"Activate Manual rcury Overdrive." Siderius said.
[MANUAL RCURY OVERDRIVE ACTIVATED]
The silver bracer appeared on his wrist and rcury started to leak out from his fingertip.
The System held an amount of rcury Extract that Siderius could make use of any ti. It wasn’t specifically restricted to only mutation.
Siderius drew the Alchemical Seal in front of the amazed gaze of Ashe.
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