Chapter 196: 196

Putting in the last bits of soul energy Michelle had in her body, she made it all circulate in one spot beneath the cauldron, sucking in the surrounding air. That increased the pressure beneath the cauldron but didn’t cause any changes in the temperature.

Michelle felt a bit disappointed, but she didn’t give up.

Continuing to make the soul energy circulate in the same spot, she increased its speed and made it shrink down a bit more.

After a while, the temperature rose—but just a little.

Still, Michelle felt a sense of accomplishment and continued.

From the side, Tenether watched and occasionally gave a soft meow, encouraging Michelle, telling her she was doing it correctly.

The temperature continued to rise slowly, but Michelle was getting tired and couldn’t keep up. Just when she was about to stop for a while, the soul energy moved without her command.

It started reshaping—not into a circle around a spot, but into a word.

“Fire”

A moment later, black flames erupted underneath the cauldron, nearly making Michelle yelp in surprise.

For a while, she stared at the black flames, her eyes scanning them closely.

“Serith, was that you?” she asked with a raised brow.

The only one who could control her soul energy other than her was the soul living in her soul space.

As nearly no soul energy was left within Michelle’s body, Serith couldn’t use it to make signs to communicate with Michelle. Still, Michelle was sure it was Serith who ignited the flames.

“Thank you…” Michelle smiled, feeling that she could control the fire since it was made out of her soul energy.

Quickly, she had it heat the whole cauldron until it turned from its original black color to golden, an engraved dragon appearing around each handle.

It looked quite majestic, but Michelle was already used to it, so she didn’t pay it any special attention. The cauldron was given to her by Philip Grace when she mentioned becoming a Pill Maker Master.

All she focused on was heating the cauldron to the right temperature.

Then, she let the flame get smaller to keep the temperature stable.

Only then did she put the first ingredient into the cauldron: a ground-up fang of a Snow Leopard melted into the blood of a White Wolf.

The cauldron fizzled violently when the mix of blood and bones hit it, and quickly, all liquid evaporated from it, leaving behind a red-white powder.

Seeing that, Michelle added in a few herbs—around half dried and ground into dust, and the other half fresh, just torn into smaller pieces.

For a moment, Michelle let the flame grow a bit bigger before calming it down again. Then, she threw in a mix of herbs, snake eggshells, and moose blood.

Unlike before, the liquid from the moose blood didn’t all evaporate.

Separating some of her soul energy from the flame, Michelle used it to push the ingredients together, smoothing them into a small pebble.

Then, without taking the small pill out, she repeated the process.

Instead of a new pebble appearing, the new concoction wrapped around the pebble, creating a new layer.

Michelle did the whole process three more times before she was satisfied with the pill’s size. But she was still far from completion.

Next was the most difficult part:

To merge the layers into one homogeneous pill.

Because at the moment, the pill was layered like an onion. So if someone took it, the effects would come in small waves which would be unable to cure the poison.

To achieve that, the pill had to be reshaped.

Under Michelle’s control, the black flames roared as they came back to life, the cauldron temperature rising rapidly.

To avoid failure, Michelle needed the heat in the cauldron to double within a minute. Otherwise, instead of melting, the pill would shatter into dust.

That wouldn’t make the process completely hopeless, as with some moose blood, it could be fixed, but it would affect the effectiveness of the antidote. Michelle didn’t like that.

Though she didn’t care about the pill’s appearance, she refused for the effectiveness to be lower than a high standard.

The temperature was rising quickly, but Michelle had the feeling it was too slow to achieve what she needed. But she had no more soul energy to push into the fire.

Within Michelle’s soul space, Serith felt Michelle’s desire to increase the flames’ heat by folds, so she decided to help.

Once again, the soul energy around the flames reshaped into a word.

“Inferno”

Instantly, the flames erupted like fire from hell, lapping over the bottom and sides of the cauldron like tongues.

That made Michelle smile. When the fire was in such a state, she could easily cool it down and was even able to pull some of her soul energy back into her body, letting herself relax ever so slightly.

With spare soul energy in her body, if something happened during the process, she could use it to save things.

When the temperature was just right, Michelle watched the layers of the pill slowly melt, her smile slowly turning into a frown.

The liquid that melted from each layer wasn’t merging with the liquid from the other layers. A problem.

That could mean two things:

When she was creating each layer, she used different amounts of the ingredients, which caused the liquids to be unable to merge. That would be unsalvageable without distorting the balance of the ingredients by adding moose blood.

Or, when she created the layers, the fire had a different temperature each time, and some of the parts in the layers mixed and reacted with each other differently. That could be salvaged by even more intense heat, which would make the ingredients react with each other again, making all the liquids the same.

Michelle had no way of knowing which reason was the right one, but she believed that she had put the right amount of ingredients every time, so she thought the temperature difference was the problem. In the end, she wasn’t that proficient in using the black fire yet.

So she chose the solution for the second problem. Even if she was wrong, she could still add in the moose blood.

Once again putting all her soul energy into the black fire, Michelle remembered what the fire felt like when Serith made the word Inferno out of the soul energy around it, and tried to achieve it.

At first, nothing happened, making Michelle think she was about to fail.

But after a while of nothing, the fire exploded under the cauldron, and the temperature in the whole cave rose rapidly.

Even with the Everfrost Mantle on, Michelle felt hot. The black fire was extremely potent. That just showed she could never let it go out of control, or it would cause a disaster.

Under Michelle’s gaze, the brown liquids—each a different shade—in the cauldron started bubbling and sizzling, their colors all changing to brownish red.

But they still didn’t mix.

Wracking her brain about it, Michelle retracted some of her soul energy from the flames and pushed it at the liquids from all sides, pressing them together forcefully.

The next moment, an explosion came from the cauldron, making a dent beneath it.

Quickly, Kieran, Anastasia, and Ivona rushed over to check on Michelle.

When they found Michelle, she was lying on the ground, her face covered by black patches, an ugly frown on her beautiful face.

The failure hurt. Literally.

“Did you get hurt?” Ivona quickly asked as Anastasia helped Michelle up. But the answer was quite obvious.

Except for some bruises from the landing, Michelle was completely fine. And her determination to make the pill was even bigger. Her stubbornness was taken up a notch because of the explosion. She felt challenged.

“Michelle, maybe you should give it a rest…” Anastasia suggested.

But Michelle shook her head.

“I said I need three days to finish this because I knew I wouldn’t succeed first try.”

Hearing that, no one could say anything more. When it came to stubbornness, Michelle was headstrong like a bull. No one could make her change her mind.

“At least clean yourself first!” Ivona refused to completely let Michelle do as she liked. The wash-up could at least let her rest for a bit and give her some time to think about her mistakes.

“I was planning to do so,” Michelle said with a nod, a smile spreading across her lips. Her eyes gleamed with something red for a split second. She felt challenged. And she loved good challenges.

Walking to the innermost part of the cave, Michelle glanced at the huge skeleton and bowed her head a bit.

“I’ll be bothering you for a while, Senior!” she said seriously before walking behind the corpse.

There, she summoned some of her ice-element spirit energy and melted it with the black fire. After getting a feel for it, she could summon it without much trouble. It made her quite happy.

But none of that could she have achieved without Tenether or Serith.

Under the melted water, she had already prepared a bucket of ice to catch it. Once it was full, she poured it over herself, not caring that she was still dressed.

The ground beneath her was quickly stained by the black marks washed off her.

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