Tales of the Legendary Magus

Chapter 36: The First Gene Solution

When he made his way into the classroom Villin felt extremely nervous. In reality, nearly everyone there felt nervous, it was just that Villin did so for another reason. He had already gotten past being nervous for doing something illegal, instead, he was nervous because he was going to try and make his first 'Gene Solution'.

He noticed about a third of the club's members were already there, as for the three second-years, only Amelia had arrived. He used Mentallage to greet her. Mentallage had the same effect when cast with or without a wand and so he didn't have to take out his first-grade wand. This was actually one of the most important aspects of the spell since it allowed people to converse with nearly complete privacy.

The two engaged in some small 'talk' while waiting for the others. Villin also asked her about the tournament that would take place in two weeks. Apparently last year she was in the top five of her year. The tournament happens every year, it is of massive importance. Not only would it decide the class you would be put into but if you did well you could also get great prices, as a very skilled member of Class B the resources he could get by doing well could put him on equal grounds as Class A for a while.

First, there was the 'basic tournament', everyone had to enter this one as it would test your overall comprehension and intelligence, seeing what all you have learned.

Then there were a few other ones. There were tournaments having to do with pill-making, magic arrays, and enchanting. The winner of each of these would get decent rewards, but the real rewards were gotten in the final tournament that has to do with combat. The combat tournament was very straightforward, all matches were one versus one.

Once Amelia had finished explained everything using her own 'Mentallage' spell, all the others had already arrived. It felt weird seeing how nobody spoke a word, yet there were people here and there making gestures, as if they were having a regular conversation. Then there were also some who hadn't learned 'Mentallage', they couldn't initiate conversations since professor Messen told everyone last time this was no longer allowed and they could nod or shake their heads if someone asked them something.

Luckily these people were few and all of them kept to the rules, not using any words.

After some time Edgard Messen entered the room, once he did, everyone heard his voice within their minds.

"Welcome everyone, I am happy to see everyone had made it. As you all may have noticed we only have enough tables for half of you currently." As he said that he waved his hand and a number of metal tables with equipment on them appeared on one side of the room. "So everyone will only be allowed to use the stations for fifty minutes in a period minimum, if there is time to spare the most skilled student will be allowed to use a free station for longer. Since it is the first meeting if anyone managed to successfully synthesize a gene solution they will be getting a station to use for the next three months.

"If you are part of the top three who get the closest to making a solution today, you will be getting some materials to use the following couple of meetings. As for now, Kay, Aria, and Amelia will be in charge. If you have questions that have to do with the creation of 'gene solutions' please don't hesitate to turn to them."

And after saying these words he once more left, not staying in the room any longer. Even though he said that usually, you could only use a station for fifty minutes, this wasn't the case as of yet. Most students here weren't in the potions class yet, hence they couldn't buy any materials without getting suspicion drawn to them.

And so when everyone who had materials found a table there were still three left. Villin had bought a large number of materials the previous day, just before he went to retrieve his new gloves. Spending a total of a hundred magic crystals he got ten sets of materials. This was probably enough to keep him busy for an entire two hours and only left him with a hundred-and-fifty magic crystals.

Even though the cost was severe, Villin knew it would be worth it. He took out his enchanting book and opened it on the third page, where the first recipe was hidden. Similar to casting a spell reading one of the hidden words the first time is a lot harder compared to any time after that and so he didn't have a lot of trouble reading it a few more times.

Villin then took out his materials and looked at them skeptically, all of these materials were good enough for pill-making but that didn't mean they were good enough to make a gene solution. He carefully analyzed each bit, before putting aside a total of two sets of material since he thought he saw an impurity.

In reality, half of the materials he put aside were good enough but as he simply used his eyes and didn't have any experience in rating materials he made a few mistakes.

He looked at the equipment before him. There were a large number of vials, a microscope, a magical device meant to extract all liquids out of materials, and a few other devices that didn't matter for the time being.

He started by taking a number of vials, he would be trying to make the 'mage awakening serum'. This was the second recipe in the book and had a permanent effect. Normally it was used to awaken one's web, but if it gets used on someone that already awakened their web using a different method, it would instead increase their connection to the web.

The recipe's description also said it was highly important. It was both one of the most basic, as well as one of the most important recipes. There was a small section under each recipe showing the date and creator of the recipe. Even though the creator's name was left blank, he did notice the recipe was only made a little over a year ago, furthermore, they had yet to find a way to recreate it in the eastern or western continent.

It was somewhat ironic that such an important recipe wasn't only not created in the western continent, but couldn't even be made there yet as the creator of this recipe was probably a traitor of the central continent.

After he looked over the recipe once more, it was finally time for Villin to concoct his first gene solution.