Pursuing The Summit - Chapter 7 Louis

When Louis finally crafted a grade 7 Convalescence Pill, he ate the pill. The skin on his blackened fingers slowly began to crack and fall off and the soft, tender skin popped out. He packed the rest of the materials up and tidied the room before leaving.

The other alchemy rooms on the floor were all closed, with ‘Do not disturb’ signs on them. Louis flipped over his skin to ‘Be back soon’ and walked back to his dorm.

The sun had already revealed itself from the horizon, its highest peaks could be seen over the classroom buildings. When he entered his room, Amelia and Amber were both asleep while Silva stood up and stared at him the moment he entered.

“Where were you?” Silva asked. “I’m been up all night and Amelia and Amber would be too, if they didn’t fall asleep from exhaustion. They wanted to show you the room, but you weren’t here.”

Louis walked up to Amelia and Amber, patting their heads. “Sorry. I got absorbed in concocting pills that I didn’t notice time flew by.”

“Concocting pills? Where did you get the materials or the skill?” Silva asked as she sat down.

“Too difficult to explain. I’ll show you after I wake up.” Louis said, crawling in between Amelia and Amber and closing his eyes. He fell asleep immediately.

Just a few hours later, Louis woke up to a tender and gentle shaking by hers truly, Amelia. As he woke up on his sides, coughing, Amelia shouted words he couldn’t understand while Amber patted him on the head.

“What is it?” Louis asked, then wiping his mouth. “Couldn’t you have let me sleep for a few more minutes?”

“No. You made us stay up for hours and you didn’t show. Meanie.” Amelia said, glaring then running away.

Amber drew in closer before asking, “What happened?”

Louis simply shook his head a bit. “Nothing bad. I found a club you two should join and I got wrapped up in alchemy, so I spent the night concocting. I’ll show you after breakfast.”

Breakfast was light, some pancakes and a mixed bowl of fruits and a cup of freshly made apple juice. They sat like they normally did: Tina, Carla, Shea and Nia on one side; Cecilia, Amelia, Louis, and Amber on the other side. Amelia and Amber ate especially quickly, so Louis ate faster. The three left the breakfast almost as quickly as they arrived, as they made their way to the library.

Laura sat on one of the seats by the library’s western doors. As soon as she saw Louis, she smiled and walked up to them. “Are these two your family you want to join?” She smiled and patted each of their heads. “I recognize Amelia, one of the three treasures of the Allyn Family, but I don’t know this little one. What’s your name? I’m Laura Eten.”

“Amber.” Amber said, gripping the edges of her shirt. “Amber Moonling.”

Louis held his arm out in front of her. “Amber’s my fiancee. That should be good enough?”

“Fiancee? Not one you have chosen yourself, right? She’s much too young.” Laura said, holding her hand in front her mouth. “Unless, you have that type of fetish.” She smiled as she turned around. “Just kidding. They are fine. Which professions are they? Alchemy?”

“Small scale arrays.” Louis said. “One star each, almost two.”

“Not bad.” Laura walked to the first floor of the wind element section. The door had ‘Small’ and ‘Wind’ signs hanging over the door.

The boy sitting at the back of the array library, organizing a mound of books, looked just a bit older than Shea, perhaps a bit smaller since puberty had started for her. He looked at Laura with tired eyes, the blood vessels within his eyes plain as day. His grey hair was disheveled.

“Am I that tired already or has Laura has been so gracious to visit me and grant me an assistant?” The boy said, looking up for just a moment before closing his book he was writing in and putting it onto the mound books he could barely reached with his fingers.

“I indeed am yesterday, but unfortunately I need you to find some two star small array books.” Laura said. “We have five new members and two of them are close to becoming two star array masters.”

“That means one of them can take over this stupid job, right? I read so many array formation books over the past two years that if I have to read another one, I would quit.” He said, leaning his head back against the chair.

“Sorry, no can do. These two are just normal people, students.” Laura said.

The boy stared at Louis for a while, then looked at Amelia and Amber. “So these are the two normies?” He looked back at Laura. “They your type?”

“They are not.” Laura said, shaking her head. “They are Louis Allyn’s family, our new member. He is an alchemist and we finally have enough of them to do extended expeditions now.”

“He’s that good?”

“No. Not yet, he will be though. He’s already improved two grades in seven sets. Lydia says he is simply not used to the current alchemy style but he will reach it in no time.” Laura said. “So find those books, it will be a shame if we lose such a talented member of our team.” She turned around to Louis. “That man is Lionel Emerson. He’s like you.”

“He can tell who is normal and not just by looking?” Louis asked.

“His an astrologist and a fortune teller, but he now works as a librarian as part of his price. We are rather short of them after a few of our members graduated the past couple of years.” Laura said.

“Where are they now?” Louis asked.

“Well, some of them are dead, killed in the noble family conflicts. Others are gathering materials for the club or gathering more information and money. Some of them, like Lydia, remain here to help out.” Laura said. “It depends really.”

“Dead?” Louis asked.

“Of course. We are reincarnators, not immortal. We can die, just like anyone else. Knowledge may give us an edge, but we are by no means invincible.” Laura said, pausing. “Remember that. Don’t be like those fools acting like geniuses in the spotlight. They will be assassinated within a few years.”

Louis kept silent for a moment. Just as he was going to open his mouth, Lionel approached him.

“Louis, here are the books.” Lionel said, placing ten books, each with three inch spines, into his hands. “They will help improve the fundamental knowledge that public school books don’t necessarily have for the one star books as well as the two star books you were looking for. Now let me do my job, I have a mountain of work to do before the day ends and I would really prefer to go to bed early.”

“Well, I have done my job.” Laura said, turning around. “If you want to find me, look for me next to your alchemy room. I’ll be helping Nancy Inzud with her alchemy.” Within the next moment, she was gone.

As soon as Louis closed the door behind him in the alchemy room, Amelia started talking. “What were they talking about? Normies? Reincarnators?”

Louis looked at Amelia and shook her head. “Nothing really special. Normies just refers to you two, since everyone else has three stars in their profession. Reincarnators is just term they use for the club members, so if you hurry up and learn, they will call you one too soon.” As he sat down, he looked at Amelia once more. “Oh, right. These are club secrets, alright? Just call people by their names and don’t use the terms normie and reincarnator around other people.”

“Even around brothers and sisters?” Amelia asked.

“Especially them.” Louis said. “Promise?”

“Promise.” Amelia said.

“Those ten books will be helpful for you two to read, but read the bottom five first. If you need help, ask me whenever the fire stops. Otherwise, the two of you should try to figure it out together.”

“What about our exams?” Amber asked. “We studied so hard for them.”

“Let’s skip them. This is more fun and important. It’s not like we are allowed to skip past the second grade anyway. Grade one and two are the same either way. It would bore you.” Louis said.

“Alright.” Amber said.

Unlike when Louis first attempted concocting the pills yesterday, Louis followed Lydia’s advice starting from his second attempt forward, increasing the amount of qi he injected in the minor and major fusions by ten percent with each attempt, until he would fail. However, he realized she just gave him some starting tips and that he could imbue qi in each of the three concocting stages, especially in the purification, where the qi was the most malleable. The biggest improvement Louis had was the furnace he was using. Although it was of a poor quality and configuration, just having it freed up his left hand and gave him greater control of concocting over all. Furthermore, he could make the heat within the cauldron more uniform and spent less qi keeping the temperature and more qi infusing into the pill themselves.

The purification stage went much better with each time, since although impurities entered the pill each time he imbued his own qi, the size of the pill was almost the size of a ball that fit comfortably within one palm. Although removing the impurities reduced the size of the pill, to an inch in diameter at the very end. Although the first two stages got easier, the marking stage got harder with each grade increase of the pill, since the qi within the mark grew in a linear fashion while the amount of qi within the pill grew exponentially bigger.

Perhaps it was because he had taken a break from concocting or it was the sleep, but the pill Louis just created was a grade 10 Convalescence Pill, three grades higher than his previous attempt. Although it seemed his grading system was different than the others. The normal grading system had five grades: low, medium, high, great and unique. It made no difference between the quality within each realm, but Louis preferred the preciseness of having three subrealms within each grade.

When he was done, he looked at Amelia and Amber. There books were opened to the first few pages of the book but their eyes were glued onto him, not the books.

“Just how much reading did you do while I was concocting.” Louis asked, sighing.

“When did you learn how to do that?” Amelia asked, running up to him, even before his alchemical flames had entirely dispersed.

Louis used the remaining of the qi within the array to put out the flame before Amelia tackled him. “I told you, I found something interesting yesterday. This was what I was doing.”

“Can I do it soon?” Amelia asked, sitting on top of it.

“No, you can’t. You don’t know enough about alchemy, but you will be able to use those fancy arrays I showed you before soon.” Louis said.

Amelia frowned as she looked as Amber, who had walked up to her and whispered into her ear. “Alright. But if you lie to me, you have to buy me some food. A lot of food.” Amelia said.

Amber pushed Amelia off of him and grabbed his hands, which had once again burnt. “What happened here?” Amber asked, grabbing his hands. “Does it hurt?”

Louis laughed a bit as he shook her hands off. “Watch.” Louis said, eating the Convalescence Pill. The blackened, burnt skin cracked once more before falling off his hands, revealing the soft, pink skin underneath. “All better, like a magic trick, right?”

“Your hands still burnt before. The pill only removes minor damages.” Amber said, about to speak more.

Louis placed a finger over her mouth. “Relax. The pills I make repair all the damages.”