MMORPG: The Elementalist

The Alchemist Guild was a very unique one. Since a thousand years ago (in the game), the Alchemists were well known for their groundbreaking inventions in creating various items that carried strange attributes!

Their boundless creations ranged from something as magnificent as a magic potion that could put a dragon to sleep to something insignificant like a gas that could inhibit Slimes from secreting acid… Aside from that, they also produced many useful items such as TNT bombs from Mana Cores and certain herbs into single-use edibles that would enhance specific attributes or for healing purposes.

This class was once popular among most adventurers in the Mythical Battlefield. However, due to its uniqueness and unstable nature, the Crown decided to restrict the access to this class. Now only those who proved themselves as absolutely loyal to the Crown were allowed to learn about this once open-to-all class.

In other words, the Alchemist class was actually a hidden class…

Ironically, this class was perhaps the best known hidden secret in this world too! This was because when any player stepped into the Alchemist Guild, regardless of which town, the Guild Elder would repeat the same lines, as the one currently directed at Qin Ruo.

“Young adventurer, I sincerely hope that one day your loyalty would be recognized by the Crown, then you might join us to become one of the noble Alchemists.”

This was not the first time Qin Ruo entered an Alchemist Guild, so he had listened to the same phrase multiple times now. He instinctively ignored the meaningless phrase and walked straight toward one of the Alchemist Elders.

“Good day. Might I know what kind of service you require? Buy? Sell? Refine? Or others?” The Elder facing Qin Ruo asked him promptly. The main hall of the Alchemist Guild was eerily empty, with more than ten Elders standing there leisurely with their backs against the wall.

As suggested, the service that one could select here was either buy or sell items. They could also practice Refinement here…

There was nothing much to talk about the two former options.

Most of the goods here were unusual items that were useless yet marked with a high price. The players were not usually keen to make purchases there—this vending service was merely there as a default shop function…

It was the Transmutation service that the players had immense interest in! This included Qin Ruo, who went there with the intention of constructing Magic Scrolls. Before that however, he needed to trade off some Mana Cores first!

(Alchemist will usually breakdown a Mana Core into fragments of equivalent energy—different Mana Core grades and levels yield different amount of fragments, as well as dissimilar power contents. A Mana Core with two attributes would yield double the amount of Mana Core Fragments of different attributes)

“Refine!”

Qin Ruo retrieved more than ten Mana Cores from his storage…

These Cores were obtained from the Snow Wolf, Yeti, Ice Python, and Snow Giant that he fought on Frostsnow Island. Other than that, he had gained several Cores from the previous day from the Mythical Battlefield, which included the Mana Core dropped by the Mutant Darkshadow Archdemon.

Qin Ruo gave the Alchemist Elder all but the Mutant Darkshadow Archdemon’s Core to be refined into water-type Mana Core Fragments.

He handed everything else aside of the Mutant Darkshadow Archdemon’s Core to the Alchemist Elder and ask for it to be refined into water-type Mana Core Fragments—the refinement of other element-type cores (non water-type) would incur an extra 20% processing fee—while one-fifth of the Mana Core Fragments would be kept by the guild for other research purposes.

“Do you require any other service?”

The white-bearded Alchemist Elder looked at Qin Ruo cheerfully after receiving several Grade 4 Mana Core Fragments.

“Refining Scroll!”

“Ten gold coins per hour!”

Qin Ruo nodded in agreement. Then, a small hexagram portal rapidly emerged under his feet and he promptly disappeared from the Alchemist Guild’s hall…

Inside the hall, a few other players also disappeared from the hexagram portal’s radiance. Just like Qin Ruo, all of them had chosen to enter the Quiet Chamber of the Alchemist Guild.

***

The Quiet Chamber of the Alchemist Guild was actually a small cubic-shaped study room. It only housed a study table and a chair, and only allowed a single person to enter at a time. The special feature of this room was that the elements in it are held in perfect balance by a special magic circle. Additionally, it was completely soundproof. These features made it a perfect location for Magic Scroll construction as the Elementalist would not be distracted and hence would increase their success rate in scroll making.

Yet on average, the Quiet Chamber’s rental was rather expensive… Ten gold coins per hour was equivalent to twenty yuan for a one-hour room without a heater installed.

Qin Ruo sat at the study table and piled the Grade 3 and 4 Mana Core Fragments given by the Elder earlier on the desk. He cleared out all distractions in his mind and pulled out a clean, unused scroll on the desk…

With a deep breath, Qin Ruo first grabbed six fragments from the Grade 3 Mana Core Fragment pile.

After that, he placed his hand on the opened blank scroll.

“Frost Sting!”

Miraculously…

An odd-looking mesh diagram of lines rapidly appeared on the blank scroll, with a Frost Sting picture floating at the center of the mesh. At the same time, Qin Ruo’s lightning quick hand swiftly picked up few Mana Core Fragments at the side and dropped in onto the scroll.

If someone was at the scene, he or she would have exclaimed in surprise by now!

Qin Ruo actions were steady, accurate, and quick!

None of the Mana Core Fragments were misplaced. All Fragments were precisely dropped on the six equally shaped tiny “holes”. These tiny holes appeared as a result of Qin Ruo’s magic activation to complete the mesh diagram. It was not appealing at first, but once Qin Ruo embedded the Fragments, the entire scroll resonated due to his exceptional finishing touch.

After the six Fragments were placed at their respective spots, the Frost Sting drawing at the center became vibrant and it emanated a strong chilly aura like the actual Frost Sting…

*Whoosh!*

The scroll held on Qin Ruo’s hand suddenly came alive and automatically rolled up at an insane speed!

The system notification then sounded.

Construction of Frost Sting was successful!

It went well as Qin Ruo had expected. The success rate of constructing a Tier 3 Magic Scroll was not low. The percentage of success was usually at 70 to 80%. It was just that Qin Ruo had not made any scrolls for quite some time. Moreover, his mastery points in this were not that high in the first place, so he decided to acquire extra Grade 3 Mana Core Fragments for practice purposes.

He kept the completed scroll into his backpack and quickly pulled out another brand new blank scroll on the desk. He condensed the water element once again right after he emptied his mind.

“Frostbullet Storm!”

A new and different mesh diagram appeared on the scroll, while several Mana Core Fragments fell from Qin Ruo’s hand like lightning…

Success!

Once the dexterity of his hand reached a certain threshold, Qin Ruo stopped working on Tier 3 Magic Scrolls and instead shifted his focus to construct Tier 4 spells like Snow Eagle Dive, Darkfrost Sting, Raging Snow Roar, and more.

As compared to Tier 3 spells, Tier 4 spells required a more focus. Both the speed and rhythm of embedding the Mana Core Fragments had to be controlled precisely. This was because a Tier 4 scroll required a minimum of eight and a maximum of twelve fragments.

An AoE spell is notably the hardest of them all, since it needed to be completed within five seconds, which made it the most painstaking to construct due to the high failure rate.

Qin Ruo took the opportunity of his high dexterity after successfully creating three Snow Eagle Pierce spells in succession to swiftly construct yet another two Raging Snow Roar spells… Then he finally felt the fatigue. Such a task that requires prolonged strain on the body and mind was unsustainable for a long period. This was why not many people managed to maximize the mastery points of Tier 4 Magic Scrolls construction until this day.

Within an hour, an ordinary player would most probably be able to successively complete twenty to thirty Scrolls before they took a rest and continued later on… If they continued in that state of fatigue, it would greatly increase the chances of failure.

Qin Ruo was pretty smart about this as he first tried out with a few Tier 3 Magic Scroll to be familiar with the process, before increasing the difficulty to Tier 4 Magic Scrolls, followed by Tier 4 AoE Magic Scrolls…

Even so, he only managed to complete three highly difficult AoE Magic Scrolls and immediately reverted to the easier level. Through this method, Qin Ruo would naturally find the process of making regular Tier 4 scrolls less demanding and could thus construct it with a higher probability of success. He kept this pace until all the Tier 4 Mana Core Fragments were converted into scrolls, then only lowered the difficulty level again and worked on the Tier 3 scrolls.

His success rate was consistently high at the early stages but dropped slightly later on. When Qin Ruo left the Alchemist Guild, he managed to accumulate about fifty extra Magic Scrolls, with the majority of them being Tier 4 scrolls.

As he walked out of the guild, Qin Ruo sensed that he was being followed. Bewildered, he turned around to take a look but was unable to identify anything strange in particular.

Qin Ruo dropped by the Bank Vault to store a few sets of MP Potions, then returned quickly to Savis Town’s entrance. Slayer’s Heart and others were already there when he reached.

With most supplies replenished, they were all set.

As the group entered Moonrise City however, iLittle Arrow lowered her voice and relayed the following message to all members, “It seems like we were being followed.”

***

At the same time, inside a shop in Savis Town.

The Bowmaster from Pharaoh Clan frowned when he saw the two underlings he sent to follow Qin Ruo return with defeated expressions.

“Where is he?”

The two of them shook their heads in dismay.

“Boss, that guy teleported to another city with a group of people!”

After a long silence, the Bowmaster punched the shop’s wall and exclaimed furiously, “He’s lucky this time!”