Jeffrey’s Purifying Potion
“Silence!”
Seeing the chaotic scene, Tyne, who had stayed quiet all this while, suddenly spoke.
In a split second, tremendous spiritual power swept through the hall like a storm.
“This is the assessment to enter my Four Seasons Garden. If you have no wish to participate, the door’s right there. Please feel free to leave.”
Tyne pointed to the small door at the side.
It instantly became unnaturally quiet.
“Good! Are there none who want to withdraw? In that case, let the examinations begin!” Wade glanced at the Magi under him, nodded, and a golden hourglass appeared in the middle of the room. Grain by grain, the sand started to fall.
Seeing that it was time to begin, the magicians quickly ran to their workbenches and started to handle the materials they had.
Leylin found himself a space in the corner, and since there were many workbenches within the hall, nobody was going to fight him for this place. At the moment, he was still relaxed enough to be judging the performance of the acolytes.
Since these Magi had all chosen Four Seasons Garden, it was natural that they had achieved a certain level of attainment in Potioneering. All of the magicians began to operate the equipment on the workbench in a skilled manner, motions quick and methodological.
“From the looks of it, I’ll have to reveal a bit of my skills...”
Leylin grinned and got to work...
“Hmm?”
Tyne, who had been sweeping his gaze over the applicants, suddenly made a sound of surprise.
“What happened?” Wade asked his friend in a hushed tone.
“That Magus! His brewing methods are extremely... perfect!” Tyne came up with the word after a long pause.
“Look! Even though the other magicians are skilled, they tend to make mistakes. However, there isn’t the slightest bit of a lapse in his hands or in his movements. Everything is so stable as if it’s a textbook example but in real life.”
“Hmm... You’re right! If you hadn’t brought it up, I would have missed it!”
Wade watched the young man in the corner who was engrossed in handling a green plant.
The young man was currently using his right hand to heat up the beaker, the fingers on his left hand constantly emitting yellow flames. When combined together, the colour became a striking red.
“This is the Flame Combining Method unique to the dark Magi domain, and is a high level technique used in Potioneering. To think that he’s so proficient in this method...”
Wade wore an expression of admiration on his face. “It looks like we’ve found ourselves a promising seedling. Let me see what his name is...”
Wade immediately went through the stack of application forms and quickly found the young man’s name on the last piece of parchment.
“So he’s called Leylin? He comes from the Abyssal Bone Forest Academy in the Poolfield Kingdom, and has offended the local Lilytell family!”
“If that’s all there is, it seems like we’re going to be welcoming another comrade soon!”
Tyne’s usually emotionless face twisted in a smile.
For the magicians in the light Magi domain, they were uncaring of the fact that Leylin had offended those in the dark Magi region. After all, these two areas were at odds with each other in the first place.
What they were most afraid of was if Leylin had offended any of the local large-scale Magi organisations. That was the most troublesome.
At times, in order to maintain the guise of unity and solidarity, they had no choice but to reject talented Magi who were on the light Magi organisations’ wanted lists.
The magicians were focusing on completing their own potions, and seemed not to have heard the two Magi, who were engrossed in conversation.
All of a sudden, a Magus dressed in a black cloak made a sound. His hand trembled, and the chemical within the test tube that was already transparent instantly became cloudy.
“Bastard! You’re looking to die!”
The black-cloaked Magus roared, countless black rays gathering in his hands as he dashed towards a blonde female Magus at another side.
“Stop right there!” Wade bellowed, his body shimmering with light. A rune nearby the experiment tables shone, trapping the Magus within the area.
“My lord, she...” he protested.
“I didn’t see her doing anything, I only saw you trying to attack a fellow Magus participating in the assessment!” Wade snorted.
“If this happens again, you’ll lose the right to participate.”
The black-robed Magus seemed extremely dissatisfied as he clenched his fist. After tarrying for several minutes, he then dispelled the radiation of energy waves in anger.
“I am going to kill you!”
He glared viciously at the blonde Magus. Afterwards, he picked up another set of ingredients and began his brewing again.
“This is... An attack on the sly?”
Leylin’s hands did not stop moving yet his emotions began to surge.
Just then, the A.I. Chip’s scan detected a tiny trace of an extremely covert spiritual force from the female blonde Magus that had attacked the black robed Magus.
Potioneering was a highly delicate process, and any tiny slip up could cause the whole brewing process to fail.
The black robed Magus had been interrupted at a crucial moment, and the potion he was brewing was naturally destroyed in an instant.
Although a spiritual attack was slight, a semi-converted elemental Magus would definitely be able to sense it.
However, these two examiners prevented the black-robed Magus from seeking revenge.
“Could it be that the test allows one to strike covertly, but it cannot cross a certain margin nor be too obvious?”
Leylin surmised.
With this said, the difficulty of the test had increased again. Leylin was stunned by the harshness and reality of this test from the Four Seasons Garden.
“However, on the other hand, the stricter the test is, the greater the benefits obtained later on!”
Right now, he was fuelled by a fervent desire.
*Bang!* *Bang!*
The commotion from just now seemed to have caused some sort of chain reaction, and in a short moment, another two Magi slipped up.
There was a cold glint in Leylin’s eyes.
Using the A.I. Chip, he could distinctly feel that there were two minute waves of spiritual force aimed towards him.
Their target was the Potion in his hand that was close to completion!
“A two pronged attack?”
Leylin laughed. To talk about the minute control of the spiritual force, Leylin who had the A.I. Chip to help him would not be afraid of anyone!
“A.I. Chip, begin secondary task and destroy the spiritual forces together with me!”
Leylin commanded inwardly. Very soon, a layer of spiritual force that had a trace of Darkness aura met the two similar spiritual force head on.
*Ka-Cha!* *Ka-Cha!*
At the point of contact between the spiritual forces. Leylin’s spiritual force had rapidly overlapped, turning into the form of a small snake. Its tiny strength continued to stack, and after several rounds, its might momentarily multiplied by several times!
*Boom!*
The two opposing spiritual forces were destroyed the moment they came in contact with Leylin’s spiritual force.
Not only that, Leylin’s spiritual force still followed the pathway of the two spiritual forces and began a fierce counterattack.
“Urgh!”
“Argh!”
Two sudden cries were sounded in the hall suddenly.
The potions of the black robed Magus and female blonde Magus immediately turned to ashes. Furthermore, two streams of blood flowed down from their noses.
“Interesting! Earlier, I felt that the acting of the black robed Magus was somewhat poor, but now, have they been colluding?”
Leylin smirked. His elemental essence conversion had been significantly boosted. Also, with the help of the A.I. Chip, these two were unaware, and had actually taken a small hit from him.
They most likely had to recuperate for a period of time before fully recovering from the spiritual force attack from earlier.
”My Lord! I forfeit!” The black-cloaked man glanced at Leylin in fright, and promptly lowered his head, afraid to look him in the eye any longer.
“Me too!” The blonde Magus yelled.
“Permitted!” Tyne answered.
The two Magi quickly gave Tyne a bow, and darted out of the hall.
Unexpectedly, neither of them had any complaints or glared at anyone.
“At least these two know their place!”
Leylin thought nothing of their behaviour.
Magicians respected power. In the earlier exchange, he could tell that the two Magi’s elemental essence conversions were not higher than 10%, so they most likely had only just advanced.
They posed no threat to the current Leylin.
It seemed they were well aware of this fact, and quickly withdrew from the assessment, even being afraid that Leylin would pursue the matter.
“Did you see that? What an interesting performance!”
Wade grinned as he spoke to Tyne.
“Yes, his elemental essence conversion is of a rather high level. His ability to manipulate spiritual force is also amazing!”
Tyne nodded, his expression stern.
“And I was still worried that he was a spy from some organisation! I’m afraid nobody would be willing to use someone like him as a spy!”
“So this is your conclusion?” Wade blinked. This was the first time Tyne had such a good impression of somebody.
“No! This is just my hypothesis!” Tyne’s usually expressionless face suddenly had a mischievous smile.
“You!”
As Tyne’s colleague, Wade naturally knew that his counterpart’s frosty indifference was just an act. In fact, Tyne had a mischievous mindset.
As for Wade, who looked more normal between the two, he often had to take the blame for Tyne’s behaviour.
“The Jeffrey’s Purifying Potion! I’ve completed it!”
At this moment, Leylin indicated his completion by waving his hands.
This voice was extremely abrupt in the originally silent hall. In a moment, many gazes from magicians glanced at Leylin.
Firmly held in Leylin’s hand was a test-tube with a milky white substance.
Wade came in front of Leylin, and carefully took the potion from him. He then began to scribble on a form.
“Very well! You can leave now. Ten days later, come to the recruitment area at the communal centre, and await for your results!”
Wade gave Leylin an extremely warm smile.
“Many thanks!”
Leylin smiled and bowed before leaving from a side door.
He understood that the test had been successfully passed. As long as there were no problems when they reexamined his current status, the Four Seasons Garden would never deny his entry.
Outside of the communal area were the wide streets of Zone 2 in Nightless City. The bustling activity on the streets continued, as people continued to pass by.
Anyone who had registered and provided their paperwork were allowed to stay in Zone 2, so Leylin was even able to see some regular humans here.