Chapter 245 - Soul Manipulator

Lena had accepted Timothy as an illegal student of sorts, and she was about to teach him the basics of Phantom Alchemy! This branch of magic was very important, but it also required a set of skills and intelligence that most people, or entities, did not possess, so if Timothy even had the slightest chance to understand this craft, he had to start with the basics! Knowledge was one of the most valuable aspects of this craft.

“First, you have to understand what souls are made of, Timothy. See when your soul is in your body, it's massless, almost insignificant, as it's attached somewhere between your conscious, and subconscious, deep inside your brain. However, when you choose to use any form of magic that separates your soul from your body, your soul can't be massless any longer, it turns into gas.” Lena explained.

“Yeah, I've picked up on that. Since oxygen is also a type of gas, does that mean that my soul is currently made out of oxygen, amongst other gases?” He followed along.

“No,” She said, “See, there is gas all around us, and entities such as ourselves use the gas to hide from the rest of the world all the time, but there's an established distinction between gas that fills the air around us, and the gas that we entities are made of. We're made of Phantom Gas, which is a combination of gases our souls self-create, the moment we separate our souls from our bodies. It's more advanced. You can also call it Conscious Gas, that's another term for it, and it's what ghosts are made out of as well, but under different settings. Ghosts are stronger than us, since they don't have a body to get back to.”

“Jesus…” He sighed, “This is more complicated than I thought it was gonna be, but I can't lie, I've had similar theories about the ghost world, so you're making enough sense to me. How does this reflect in potion making, though? It's becoming a bit hard to paint the big picture.”

Lena was eager to answer, but something that Timothy said threw her off topic, so she couldn't help asking. “Jesus- what does that name mean to you? I've heard a bunch of Rogue Entities mention this name before.”

“Oh?” He grunted, and didn't want to answer her question directly. “Let’s just say that if Rogue Entities are mentioning Jesus, then the Ghost World as we know it, might be interplanetary… Do you understand what that means?”

“No,” She shook her head.

“It means that souls from a different planet are somehow entering the ghost world here, on our planet. It's very weird, and if they're mentioning Jesus, I'm certain that they're understanding the ghost world as a weird version of hell, rather than what it actually is.” He added.

It was easy to go off topic here, because perplexing information was being exchanged between them, it was simply inevitable. However, it was best to shake the miscellaneous topics away, and focus on the big picture, and that was exactly what they did. He encouraged her to remain on topic.

“Regarding potion making, you will always need Rogue Entities to make your potions.” She introduced, “They're the base of every kind of potion known to us, and on most occasions, ghosts help make stronger potions, on the count of their retard-like power. Now, I'm going to give you a bottle, containing a captured ghost entity, and you're going to try to make a simple potion that improves one's phantom mana quality. They're worth a lot in the market, despite how it's the most simple potion for an alchemist to make.”

The bottle that she then handed over, was a simple bottle that looked like it was made out of glass. In it, floated a pale, red-colored soul.

Timothy was to take a fraction of this soul, and put it in the cauldron, however, in order to do this, he had to absorb a certain ability, called the Soul Manipulator, and make it part of his arsenal. Lena was rather gifted in terms of manipulating mana channels, so she replicated the ability for him in less than a minute!

Once Timothy absorbed it, he opened the bottle containing the red soul, confidently, because he knew he could control it! Apparently, red souls were quite powerful, but that didn’t matter, as it couldn't escape its bottle even if it had all of the power in the world.

Timothy pinched a fraction of the red soul, and flicked it in the cauldron. The red features then expanded into a thin, red cloud within the cauldron, to the point where it barely seemed different from cigarette smoke.

Timothy accomplished the first part of potion making successfully, just like that. Furthermore, since this red ghost didn't explode on him, it further confirmed that he was strong enough to be dealing with the dangers of this craft. Lena insisted that his high MQ was coming in real handy, as the ghost could sense it, and therefore was too scared to misbehave!

Anyway, after this step, he had to add filler. In this case, filler was absolutely impure gas, commonly found in gas clouds, and he had to add this one in the cauldron due to multiple reasons. Firstly, it would help expand the base he had set up by pouring that red soul in, absolutely thickening the ‘gas’ that was floating within the cauldron! This was very important, because it would give the resulting potion enough precedence to be strong, and usable at the end.

Secondly, the impure gas would poison the ghost fraction straight out of consciousness, and push it towards a state where its only purpose would be to survive within the impure gas. This in turn created a counter-effect which kept the gas together, knitted, and strong!

Lena didn't offer a bottle for this part of the process, but rather, a hose. Timothy grabbed a hose, poured impure gas in the cauldron, and he did so a little bit at a time, so as to not destroy the fraction of the red soul that was floating inside the cauldron. He didn't need a special ability for this, he just had to be careful.

After pouring enough impure gas in it, he then had to purify the resulting concoction of the prior, two step-process that he had fulfilled. This part was a bit more difficult, and this was where he had to put his MQ into use!