Zilan then began seriously examining the test results of his remaining students. Since they’d stuck with him, he was going to make sure to train them to his best capabilities. Do not be mistaken though, his own selfish motives were also in play. After all, the better the followers, the higher the chances his plan had of succeeding.
Of course, to look at Zilan in a worse light because of his other ‘motivations’ would quite frankly not be smart because, if you think about it what great leader, unless he/she were a saint, did not have ulterior motives when they trained their followers or when they granted them power, resources, wealth and so on.
Besides in his case, Zilan was trying to better the world in his own way therefore his thoughts were unlike those of others. Plus when all is said and done, the one profiting the most wasn’t necessarily him.
“Hmm, this is slightly interesting.”
“Oh! I didn’t expect that.”
“Ahh…I’ll leave these two for later.”
“Hoo…this is pretty impressive, too bad.”
“Excellent work on those that mattered.”
Hearing the comments and watching the expressions their teacher was making as he went through their work, some of the students were slightly afraid but most were excited. They didn’t know how beneficial knowing their exact field of expertise was but they could tell that they were extremely fortunate because even if they were able to find out by themselves in the future, it definitely wouldn’t be as easy this.
If these seven people actually revealed to others that someone had predicted their fields for them with absolute accuracy, probably the whole of the Association would laugh at them. However, in the future when they became experts those same people would beg to know which godly person could perform such a great feat. Some might think this was an exaggeration but in truth, that’s just how valuable knowing ones field was, especially when it came to those who had the peculiar, queer, lesser known or even yet to be discovered fields. These people who were not ‘normal’ were forced to undergo the same learning as others and naturally their progress would be far slower than the ‘normal’ people who practiced their respective fields.
If they had the same opportunities or simply knew which area of Alchemy they excelled in, their practice would probably vastly accelerate. It was the same for mortal humans in schools, if one had a particular subject that they had a talent for but for some reason it was not offered in a particular school then that person’s grades would naturally not be the same as someone who did all the subjects they were good at.
The suffering was similar but when it came to Alchemy, specifically in the Beast world, multiply it by a million times and maybe that would barely show the disadvantage these people faced.
When it came to finding out the fields of his seven in-name disciples, Zilan didn’t experience any difficulty nor did he expend much effort. The reason for this?
He had already laid all of the ground work when he gave out the ingredients and the test questions.
How? Just like with most of everything else he did, he had sought instruction from Zaum and used one of his methods of identifying fields.
The theory was really quite simple. The main trick laid within the ingredients and their types, they had to be a specific combination depending on who was being tested and they all needed to be essence ingredients. Basically, the part of a herb, insect, animal or plant where the majority of its essence was contained. And obviously only ingredients that possessed this essence could be used.
As for the test questions, these were flexible as only a few rules needed to be adhered to.
Once he was done making sure that he got everything right, Zilan couldn’t help but have mixed emotions. Some things he really hadn’t been prepared for and now he was hesitating.
For the two sisters he was truly surprised by their aptitude. The Association deemed them below average seedlings and honestly, he was having a hard time refuting that.
The older sister Silei was pretty much poor at everything, her refining skills removed very few impurities and she made less than an eighth of the total discoveries that were in the test. Furthermore, all of the discoveries she did make came from the ingredients that required to be borderline wasted. To make matters worse she didn’t even memorise all the ingredients giving them her own weird names whenever she answered a question. Like, “green squiggly one” or “pretty red one” giving Zilan a headache trying to decode what she was talking about.
Her sister, Ulei, was pretty much the same, except she actually took the time to memorise the various ingredients names. As for her performance it was a little better but not by much and is turned out she was of the same field as her sister so the other discoveries she made were useless anyway.
“Basic but broad, Fire element Alchemy.” In essence this meant they excelled when it came to refining anything with the fire element. This could be considered a rather main stream and normal field that many people possessed but with the skills Zilan would impart to them, their ability to refine fire element ingredients into dans (pills), scriptures, or in some cases tools, would be at the very least ten times better than their equals. This was truly a pity though, since normally even fifty times wouldn’t be a problem. It’s just that their basic talent, the raw materials for Alchemy, were really just too low.
As for Grouch Illiones, his work was genuinely impressive and astonishingly well balanced. The discoveries he made were more than half of the total which just happened to be the highest in the class. However, what made Zilan’s brows furrow was that the credit for all of this went to his exceptional flame. Granted his control of the flame was excellent and his observation was passable but that didn’t mean that his flame wasn’t compensating for his many faults and lack of talent.
That being said, Zilan liked Grouch since it was obvious he’d been putting in the work on how to control and grow his flame. He was neither complacent nor arrogant which as a teacher, Zilan quite liked. Therefore, because he could virtually do many things thanks to his flame Zilan intended to assign him four different fields.
“Healing, Fire element Alchemy, Poison and finally the exclusive art of Formation Alchemy.”
Then there was Hendrek who got every single discovery there was when it came to certain type of ingredients while absolutely failing everything else.
There was no need to think about his fields too much.
“Primary will be Water element Alchemy and for the secondary as a challenge I’ll assign him the Illusion Alchemy and Basic Crafting Arts.”
The remaining group of Misty, Andrete and Lorn, with the exception of Lorn all had one field each. Each of their fields were queer and unique but what they all had in common was that Zilan was hesitant to guide them on their path within these fields.
“Andrete, the ability of the lost mouse either played a part in this or he’s just bloody lucky. Bloodline Alchemy.”
The art of Formation Alchemy was a very high level practice but Zilan was still willing to part with some of its secrets. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as happy when it came to talking about Bloodline Alchemy. Even the most basic of bloodline Alchemy scriptures could be considered a treasure amongst treasures and this was due to the simple fact that it made evolution easier to a degree when done well. Not a lot at the basic level but it helped, considerably.
“Misty. I estimated it’d be good if she has the highest overall grades but she instead decided to try and give me a heart attack. In what way, is she suitable for Body modification Alchemy? In what way?!”
“Then there’s the true killer, Lorn. This guy shows talent in both Death and Killing Alchemy, but apparently those two aren’t enough for him adding on even Lightning Alchemy.”
“I’m a generous man, I am, but there’s no way in hell I’m teaching you all three.” Declared Zilan.
Teaching Alchemy was extremely expensive, time consuming and tedious. Mistakes could even lead to death and Zilan did not intend on giving out secrets of Alchemy that his Ancestor fought for just like that. They had to be earned.
Important announcement ;
If you would like to read chapters in advance without having to wait days, then check out my patreon page. Reward tiers have been updated to reflect my increased chapter output.
