Golden Experience

Chapter 65: “The Philosopher’s Stone”

The branch she had gotten from the World Tree was the size of one of those roadside trees in town. To the gigantic treant, a branch of this size was probably akin to a nail clipping, but this much wood would be enough to supply all kinds of projects Rare wanted to do. She could process some into charcoal and ash for use in experiments. Any extra could then be turned into staves to see if they could make weapons that assisted in casting magic.

“Can staves be created via woodcrafting? Oh, that’s right, it’s used to make bows too. I wonder if there are any deer-type monsters or anything in Liebe whose tendons can be used for bowstrings… And what about glue?”

“I can make glue when gettin’ the tendons. The recipe uses the waste materials I get from tanning leather.”

“Ah, Remy, long time no see. Now that I’ve brought World Tree into the fold, can you try crafting whatever you can that we have materials for?”

“Yeah. I came over because I already heard.”

After returning to the queen’s chamber, Rare had started mumbling to herself again, so Remy had overheard and proactively came over to help. Remy was currently running a kind of odds-’n’-ends shop in Erfahren, but since Rare was planning to make the Philosopher’s Stone today, she had been called back to assist.

“I don’t think we have a lot of woodcrafted weapons here. Even without World Tree, I believe we still have a lot of suitable wood for woodcrafting, so I wonder why we haven’t been making anything.”

“We haven’t really needed any, I guess? Weapons that need to be made of wood are the ones you mentioned, staves and bows, and also long weapons like spears. None of those are useful for ants.”

“Ah, now that you mention it, you’re absolutely right…”

An ant’s main weapons were its mandibles and poison stinger. They had no need for anything extra. The adamantite soldiers were ostensibly equipped with low-rank weapons, but in close combat they could just smack things with their own bodies for good damage. Wooden weapons just didn’t have a place here.

“Well, since we’re going to have more and more skeletal troops, it might be good to include bows in our weapon stores. We can make ones for you and Riley to use from World Tree too. The adamanmages can just use staves made from regular wood or treant remains.”

If World Tree could handle it, then it should be possible to get any number of branches the same size as this one, but Rare wanted to avoid information on these weapons leaking. She wouldn’t know anything for sure until she actually put them into production and tested the performance, but if weapons that were too powerful became known to the general public, then they’d only be tightening a noose around their own necks.

“All right, so first off is charcoal. Making it properly requires about a week, I believe? Go ahead and get started on that first, then.”

“Yes, I’ll take care of it.”

She let Remy handle processing the World Tree wood for charcoal production. The one doing the cutting would be the Kenzaki leaning on the wall. Recently, he had been predicting Rare’s needs and acting on his own like this; maybe it was a result of spending almost all their time together.

“Let’s try making ashes from a bit of the leftovers.”

That said, it was extremely important to be prudent in their current location. The offensive [Fire Magic] that Rare and Remy had learned was too powerful; no matter how well they controlled it, it would still be destructive enough to burn the queen’s chamber to the ground. Even with a single-target spell like [Flare Arrow], a direct hit had enough heat to completely sublimate wood.

“Oh, I just had a great idea. [Philosopher’s Egg].”

Rare used her skill to create a crystal egg. With it in hand, she approached a piece of wood, causing it to get swallowed into the egg.

“All right; next up, [Heat].”

She proceeded to warm up the entire egg using [Fire Magic]’s [Heat] spell. Well, “warm up” may be the wrong verb considering the temperature inside the egg would soon surpass several hundred degrees. As Rare watched, the wood finally caught on fire and began to blaze merrily. She canceled [Heat] and just continued watching the fire. Since the crystal was airtight, there weren’t any problems with smoke. However, oxygen had to be getting in somehow since the flames didn’t change in intensity. What a truly magical container. Or, because the heat was generated magically, maybe this was a form of combustion that didn’t require any oxygen? If so, then putting aside an oxidation reaction happening at the molecular level, maybe she couldn’t even call this “combustion” at all and it was something entirely different.

After some time, the fire died out, and all that remained inside were the world tree’s ashes.

“Mm, I thought we could make charcoal from this wood, but it just burned up normally. Maybe we need to consider a more magical method.”

“We might be able to do it using [Athanor] or something,” Remy suggested.

“Aah, you’re right. Go experiment with that and let me know how it turns out.”

“Yes, Boss.”

After the flames disappeared completely, the crystal egg broke apart on its own and disappeared as well.

“Aww, so it did end up breaking. That was kind of a huge waste of MP, but, well, what can you do…”

Rare picked up the pile of ashes that had fallen to the floor and scrutinized it closely. She wasn’t able to tell when it had been inside the egg, but looking at it closely like this, she could see that it glittered subtly. Considering how poorly lit this room was, the ashes themselves might actually be luminescent.

“I guess that’s what you get with ashes made from a World Tree. Now then, what was that recipe…”

Rare quickly reconfirmed the recipe for [Magnum Opus]. Looked like these were indeed “Ashes of the World Tree,” and they could be used in various other recipes as well. With how much she had here, she could produce quite a few new items now. As she had originally planned, the first of those would be the provisional Philosopher’s Stone. She was glad that the final piece turned out to indeed be ashes from magical wood. However, the item required in the recipe was not “Ashes of the World Tree” but rather “Treant Ashes.” Rare had no memory of obtaining Treant Ashes, so Ashes of the World Tree must count as Treant Ashes as well. Since other items that were unlocked specifically had “Ashes of the World Tree” listed in their recipes, then what she held in her hands should in fact be Ashes of the World Tree. If it didn’t matter which one she used, then the higher-ranked ingredient should work fine. In fact, using better materials should result in much more interesting products.

“I’ll try with Treant Ashes later too. But for now, let’s just make it with these ingredients.”

She called over some transporter ants to retrieve the necessary items from their inventories.

• Mercury
• Sulfur
• Iron
• Monster hearts from the strongest bear-type monsters being raised in the Great Liebe Forest’s farms
• Formic acid from engineer ants with generously XP investments
• Ashes of the World Tree

She put these into a [Philosopher’s Egg], then heated it up with [Athanor]. It took on a marbled pattern as usual—except this time it was already radiating a rainbow color. Normally, it wouldn’t start glowing until she used [Magnum Opus]; having gone through the process thousands of times before, she was absolutely not mistaken in the sequence of events.

“Is this maybe an indicator meaning ‘great success’? An alchemy game I used to play a long time ago always had those kinds of theatrics. Well, it’s probably good that it’s shining. All right, I’ll use [Magnum Opus] now.”

As soon as Rare activated her skill, the crystal began to shine even more brightly than before. But instead of the glow coming from the contents of the egg, it seemed more as if the egg itself was what was letting off all that light. It was so intense that she had to shut her eyes.

Once the light finally settled down, she opened her eyes to see that the [Philosopher’s Egg] was gone. In its place, there was a crystal egg the size of a regular chicken egg floating in midair.

“Did the crystal egg shrink? Did it… turn into a container? I wonder if this red liquid inside is the Philosopher’s Stone, then.”

As soon as Rare touched it, she somehow understood how to use it. Like it came with its own manual.

“Hmm, so just like skills and magic spells, after saying the activation keyword, the egg will break on its own and the liquid inside will be absorbed by the target. The effect is… I’m not too certain, but apparently it improves the target by two stages? Or that’s the image I’m getting, at least. I don’t think it’s a negative effect, but, well…”

The explanation was clearly insufficient. Being a Philosopher’s Stone, the effect seemed to be exactly what she imagined it might be, but she hesitated a little to blindly use it on herself.

“I’d really like to try it on a test subject. But first, I should see if it can be mass produced or not.”

Remy spoke up. “I might be overstepping, but I suggest that we see if I am able to produce the same item as you did.”

“Ah, you’re right. Stats and other skills could play a role in it. Keeping all that in mind, let’s make a bunch of them. If we run out of materials, we can just go get more, even if that requires going to the farms or to the other forest.”

After that, the two of them crafted a whole bunch of Philosopher’s Stones.