Chapter 469 - Creating The Catalyst!
Cluck!
The classroom door closed shut automatically after everyone was registered to be in class.
Teacher Sonna smiled gently towards everyone and said, "Please close your eyes and use this link to enter the UVR."
Without further ado, Felix copied the holographic link and placed his head on the table. Then, he closed his eyes shut and requested the Queen to log him in.
After he opened them again, he saw that he was in front of two tables, one for materials and the other for glassware.
This class was about teaching the witches how to extract the essence of materials to use them as a catalyst in the concoction. Plus, techniques on how to prepare materials perfectly as the recipe requires.
This meant, each class there would be something new to teach almost irrelevant to the past classes.
Hence, teacher Sonna didn't address Felix about his absence in the past month.
She simply snapped her finger and the holographic screen behind her had brightened up, displaying a potion, recipe, and lastly materials.
"This is the Flask of Intellect, a rank 1 potion." Teacher Sonna disclosed with a soothing tone, "It a quite niche potion that rarely gets concocted due to its poor sales."
Felix nodded his head in understanding as he knew that the potion was being sold at 50k SC and its effects weren't really that useful in most cases.
It simply provides the drinker with increased cognitive skills for ten seconds before losing effect.
What's worse, it leaves the user with a nasty headache as a side-effect.
"The reason I chose it as today's class wasn't to concoct it in the future but to learn the method to prepare its catalyst since its process is quite complicated. In addition, this catalyst process is recurring in many catalysts for rank 2 potions. " Teacher Sonna explained.
Then, she highlighted a weird-shaped black ear that was extremely hairy. Its name was written underneath it, making Felix murmured it, "Tengu's Ear...Is that a beast's ear or some weird species?"
"Does anyone knows what this is?" She asked.
Few witches raised their hands and unsurprisingly, Lara was one of them. Teacher Sonna ignored Lara and picked another witch since she knew that Lara never failed to answer a question.
The information about this creature was the same as an earthling student knowing about rare aquarium fish like Wolf Cichlid and Flowerhorn Cichlid
"Great!" Teacher Sonna praised and inquired, "Anyone wants to add something else?"
This time only Lara raised her hand. Teacher Sonna pointed at her and Lara said calmly, "The Tengu creature is a creophagous-based lifeform that feast on its kids since it produces thousands of them each three months. Its preferred habitat is underground and swamps. It has multiple predators but few prey choices..."
Lara just kept going and going like a robot reading off a Wikipedia page, making Felix admire her knowledge.
Knowing that she was Dalilia's student simply implied that she was drinking photographic memory potions since her birth.
Imagine how many books and information she consumed on daily basis to this point in time!
'Tonight, I will drink my own photographic memory potion and can be just like her in the future with some efforts.' Felix thought with a pleased grin.
"I believe that should be the most important information about the Tengu creatures." Lara nodded her head in respect to teacher Sonna and stopped speaking at once.
"Tsk, she keeps trying to sound smart when she is merely abusing a potion."
"Must feel nice drinking one."
Some witches clicked their tongues while some murmured with an irritated expression. It was crystal clear to Felix that Lara wasn't popular in the class.
She appeared like the lonely nerd in every class that gets shit from his classmates due to their envy.
He assumed this from the fact that he never seen her talking with a classmate or walking with another witch.
"Good job as always Lara." Teacher Sonna gave her a head nod in praise and pressed on the material Tengu's Ear.
Immediately after, the material had been materialized on everyone's preparation table with the equipment required to work on this specific material.
Felix knew that it was done like this to not confuse the students with other pieces of equipment and gadget since there were plenty of them to deal with any potion recipe.
"To turn the Tengu's Ear into a catalyst, first you are required to shave all the hair from it by using this small shaving device." Teacher Sonna lifted a portable device that appeared just like a normal shaver for a beard and added, "Let me show you a few demonstrations and you ladies follow after me."
Felix's lips twitched at being called a lady but he didn't brood over it too much as he simply focused on teacher Sonna by zooming in on her.
She brought it upclose to the Tengu's Ear which was 30 cm long and started shaving its black fur slowly and precisely.
Her hand neither trembled nor did she blink as she kept sliding the shaver from bottle to top and left to right until she completely skinned it.
"If you were planning on concocting the potion, don't throw the furr as it is one of the subsidiary materials to concoct it." She advised while breathing at the skinned black ear, removing any strands left.
Then, she placed it in a circular bowl and poured water on it. After doing so, she closed the lid and started shaking it hard while clarifying, "This is the 2nd step, you need to keep shaking it for a few seconds until water touch all of it. Even the inside of the ear."
Felix noted this down on his holographic side note just like most witches in the class.
"The 3rd step is taking it to the glassware table and switching the bowl to a large-sized beaker with precise measurements." She said while doing so, making the rest nod their heads in understanding.
Then, she lifted the beaker and placed it on a burner while attaching it to a ring stand so it wouldn't fall off.
Next, she poured three drops of a purplish liquid on the ear and swiftly turned on the burner.
"The liquid I poured is called Satyr Extract. It is capable of turning the ear softer and less resistant to heat." She clarified while enlarging the beaker in the screen to allow them to see what's going on.
'Wouldn't it affect the catalyst though?' Felix pondered, 'The catalyst is the most important ingredient in concoction since it enhances the chemical reaction between the main ingredient and subsidiary. Hence, it needed to be pure or else the result wouldn't be satisfactory.'
Teacher Sonna didn't leave him confused for long as the moment the entire ear melted into black thick goo, she lifted the beaker with beaker tongs, a piece of lab equipment that appeared like scissors without the pointy fronts and sharpness.
Then, she poured the beaker quickly into a round-bottomed flask. After making sure that all of the gooey substance was inside, she poured a different white liquid inside and gave it a good mix with the gooey substance.
"For those who don't know, this liquid is called the separator." Teacher Sonna lifted her head and clarified while glancing at Felix, "Its job is to separate two mixed substances by breaking their molecules apart and sticking with a substance randomly."
She pointed at the gooey grey substance that was beginning to lose its shape and said, "If it got stuck to the Satyr Extract, we can easily filter those materials later on. However, if it was the other way around, we can only get rid of the materials and try again since there is no other substance that could split apart your material with the separator liquid."
'No wonder the potion is expensive. Even creating the catalyst, there is 50% of failing and trying again, wasting time and materials in the process.' Felix reasoned.
Although he wasn't fully clear about the separator liquid, he understood that teacher Sonna would have told them another method to extract the essence of the Tengu's Ear if there was one.
If there were any improvements to be done, other witches would have already done it to the recipe since it was merely a rank 1 potion.
Thankfully, it seemed like the process had turned successful as teacher Sonna had displayed a delighted pretty smile while looking at the flask.
"Since the separator had attached itself to the Satyr Extract, we can now get rid of it since it had become a useless substance."
Teacher Sonna said while pouring the newly created gooey gray liquid into a different container and leaving the other inside the flask.
Since they couldn't merge, it was extremely easy to separate them.
"Now to the final last step, we need to pour the tengu's ears substance into a piece of equipment called an Oppressor.
She went in front of the equipment that appeared like a funnel drip but with a metal rod inside of it, that was placed on a thin paper filter.
"So what we do is we pour it inside this long side tube and let it fill the spaced area of the oppressor. After doing so, you simply clutch the end of the metal rod from the outside and start pushing the gooey substance into the thin paper filter like this."
She processed to demonstrate it by hammering down the metal rod on the gooey substance time after time until black liquid started dripping from the thin paper filter and into a test tube that was placed underneath it.
"This usually takes around 15 minutes before you extract the liquids inside the gooey substance." Teacher Sonna stopped hammering down and said with a smile, "That liquid is the catalyst for the potion of Intellect."
"Any questions?"
No one raised their hands as the demonstration was beyond informative and perfect, making them appreciate teacher Sonna for amazing teaching standards...Even Felix felt the same!
"I am glad that all of you understood the gest of it." Teacher Sonna extended her hand and requested, "Now, please repeat the entire process until you create the potion of intellect's catalyst."