Angor was carefully strolling inside a mountain forest while searching for something.
Mountain wind came and caused the trees around him to rustle.
He halted his steps and listened closely.
“Got you!”
Following the unnatural air current he grasped, he leaped into the air and landed on the thick branch of a giant tree.
Following the branch, he reached the center of the tree’s crown. Using what light managed to slip through the large leaves, he discovered a yellow birdling huddled inside a small nest.
The creature was sleeping sound as its chest rose and shrank.
“Stay right there...” Angor reached out a hand into the nest to catch the bird, but it sensed danger and quickly fluttered away from the nest.
Angor spent the next two minutes going after his target.
Fortunately, the forest wasn’t real—it was an illusion made by Angor, which meant the bird could not leave it.
Angor held the bird in his hand. When he squeezed it a little, the animal suddenly melted and released Mystery energy into the area.
Angor enjoyed the energy for about half a minute before it dissipated, rendering the forest as an ordinary and harmless illusion.
“Twenty-seven seconds...” Angor noted down a number and sighed. He felt rather annoyed when he had to spend so much time “hunting” for the manifestation of Mystery by himself when he was the one who created that illusion.
It couldn’t be helped—anything related to Mystery tended to be slippery.
Angor only managed to blend the “sense” of Mystery into his illusion. He did not create Mystery beings for real. Even so, the presences he created were already reflecting the properties of Mystery.
Each time he made a new illusion, it was like opening a Pandora’s Box, for he never knew which form the Mystery sense would use.
Even if he was the controller of his illusions, the manifestation created by the sense of Mystery was unpredictable.
This might change once he fully comprehended Mystery and became a Mystery Alchemist for real, by which time even such unknown wisdom would be easy for him to master.
A week quickly elapsed.
Angor almost tested through a hundred different illusions, during which the “manifestations” also showed up in his view as different beings, such as animals, humans, and random objects including stones, boxes, books, houses, or even pure elements.
Most of the manifestations were relatively easy to find, but there were also cases in which he failed to find his target from start to end.
He knew he successfully brought the manifestation into existence because he could feel it, but he just could not locate it.
Whenever this happened, he would simply cancel the illusion and began another session.
As he did more tests, he slowly learned how certain elements would affect the “duration” of the Mystery energy, that a more complicated and perfect illusion that possessed intact logics tended to allow him to enjoy Mystery energy for a longer period of time after he discovered the manifestation.
And it was even better when he mixed nightmare energy in it.
The longest “Mystery energy flood” he experienced till now lasted one minute. It was like an all-inclusive intelligence repository that always led Angor toward something he could learn from. However, he had no idea whether he could put such random and precocious enlightenment to use.
Rather than learning new knowledge, he felt as if he had been blindly reading books that he could not understand and hoping to take advantage of the knowledge one day.
Currently, he would like to make the “energy flood” last longer. The longer he could spend inside the Mystery energy, the better he could benefit from it. For now, one minute was the best he could do.
If he could successfully make an “everlasting Mystery energy flood” happen one day... perhaps it could then be considered as a real Mystery treasure.
...
He was almost done testing the Mystery sense in his illusions. The next step was to see whether he could do something similar to his alchemy items.
He took out a block of Balm Wood from his space bracelet. This was a common, non-tiered material famous for its decent sturdiness and magic conductivity.
With several masterly moves, he quickly carved a miniature garden out of the wood—he was very proficient when doing such simple crafting work now.
While doing his work, he also left two illusion nodes in the item, which supported a basic illusion mixed with the sense of Mystery.
As the simply-made decoration did not have an energy source or any noticeable feature, Angor had to provide his own mana to activate the illusion.
When he did, the illusion on the tiny item suddenly spread wider until it turned the entire testing ground into an aromatic flower field full of drifting petals.
Angor looked around the beautiful illusion but without finding anything other than colorful flowers. Again, he sensed the Mystery presence hiding somewhere, yet he just could not grasp its location.
He thought about giving up and try something else.
Wait. Flowers, their smell... is this a camouflage?
When thinking about this, he removed the element of “smell” from his illusion and kept walking.
He suddenly took a whiff as something reached his nose.
The smell of flowers earlier belonged to the illusion. It was a fake scent that did not exist for real. After he removed all the smells, anything that tempted his nose had to be the “foreign being”, and in this case, the manifestation of Mystery.
But what caused the smell? The flowers or the wind?
After careful searching, he put his attention on an inconspicuous white bud.
When he poked it, the bud slowly spread open and began to release Mystery energy into the garden.
The flood lasted for 15 seconds before it ended.
At the same time, the illusion disappeared.
This told Angor that he could combine “Mystery illusions” with alchemy items, albeit not very efficiently.
The garden was only a very basic illusion that was supposed to sustain the energy flood for less than 10 seconds. Since the outcome turned out better than his estimation, he believed that it might be something to do with his material choice.
Time for more experiments.
He spent the next few days testing through over fifty different alchemy materials—commonly-seen, non-tiered ones.
He reached a conclusion that anything that amplified mana could increase the duration of energy floods, especially materials that radiated mana flows, which usually doubled his estimated result.
Following this clue, he chose several suitable materials to prepare for his work later.
During the tests, he filled his turf with a lot of curious trinkets that he created, such as miniature sculptures and decorative gadgets. These poorly-made creations might earn him several dozens of crystals if he put them to sale. However, he was no longer the impoverished apprentice who would care for such minor gains now. After discarding them to a junk pile at the corner of the testing field, he entered the laboratory.
Time for putting theories into practice.