Chapter 44: Practice
Alex then sat again on the sofa and waited for Alicia to come out from the bathroom.
He realized that the amount of the impurities purged out from Alicia was much fewer than him. After pondering for a while, he concluded this might be because of his previous environment on Earth. Since Earth was polluted and the food he ate might be another factor of it.
He waited for Alicia for quite some time, the girl took a lot longer to wash compared to Alex. She took half an hour to just clean her body. After a while, she was out of the bathroom and Alex looked at her with amazement. He was captivated by the 'new' Alicia.
Alicia was a fairy before she entered the bathroom, but now she became a goddess. She had a beautiful face, purple colored hair that reached to her waist, snow-white skin, and graceful figure. Alex's heart was beating so fast because he was enthralled by her looks.
She noticed Alex was staring at her with such expression. She became so proud she could make him flutter with just her new looks. She went to Alex and bragged about it. "Alex...Alex!" she tried to wake him up now.
"Ah... Princess, sorry," he said embarrassedly.
"Hehe...How do I look now?" she teased.
"Yes...You are very beautiful, Princess," Alex said timidly.
"Hehe...Thanks, then how do I compare with me from before?"
"Ugh..." hearing this question, he didn't want to answer. But Alicia grabbed him, it seemed like she didn't want to release him before getting the answer.
"Before this...Princess was a fairy, but you are a goddess now," Alex said embarrassedly.
"Really?.... Hehe..." she grinned happily. Upon this, the world seemed to become warmer for her. Alex was also captivated by this transformation. But somehow Alex also felt a chill down to his pain because he knew many problems will happen a lot more often from this day.
She was already satisfied with Alex's response and went to bed right away, "Good night, Alex."
"Good night, Princess."
The princess fell asleep and the smile had not disappeared from her face. It looked like she would have a nice dream tonight.
While Alex was still unsure what to do to spend the night. He was wondering whether he should eat another pill or cultivate as usual. Blood replenishing pills, antidote pills, and Qi replenishing pills were not possible for the moment. There were still Qi gathering pills and body foundation pills. He wanted to take the Qi gathering pill but he was wondering if he should take a bath with a body foundation pill first.
He hesitated for a moment and he didn't know about any relationship between the two of them. He then decided to wait first until he finished the body foundation pill. The limit for both of them was ten, so he would wait for ten days to make a foundation for his body first.
The morning came and the class was going to start soon today. When Alex and Alicia came to the class, everyone was shocked by their appearance. Alicia became a lot more beautiful while the average looking Alex now became a prince charming.
Firia was the one who was too shocked by this. One month ago, she didn't see any of this change when she met Alex and Alicia. But this time when she met them in class, she was surprised to see the improvement in their looks. She was wondering what had happened during the last month. She then came up with two suspects, her first suspect was Alex and the second was the dean. She excluded the grand duke because he was in the capital while there was no big ruckus in the capital.
Alicia was surrounded by many students once she arrived, everyone was wondering what had happened. What made her and Alex become like this, the boys were captivated by her and the girls wanted to know her secret. She only glanced at Alex, passing it to him.
Alex was immediately surrounded by the girls, Alicia now regretted what she had done. Alex also couldn't handle them and he put all the blame on his teacher. Once Alex mentioned that it was all the dean's doing, many of them were a bit disappointed, but they thought they could get the secret through Alex since he was his student.
After a while, they started to calm down. The center of attention which was Alex and Alicia also went to their seats.
"It's really you, right? You are not my idol, the dean? Is it the pill again? I want it too," Firia whispered to Alex. Firia noticed it right away and Alex could only admit it.
"Sigh...I will give it later after practice."
The classes ended like usual and Firia was more fired up than usual, maybe since she would get the pill from Alex. After the practice, Alex gave her the blood and marrow pill.
"This is a blood and marrow pill. It will purge impurities from your body, so you have to take a bath after eating this pill," Alex said.
"Yeah, you really need to take a bath after eating this pill. If not, you will become like this 'black and stinky' Alex," Alicia added.
"Eh...Really?" Firia started to become nervous.
"It basically removes all the impurities in your body so that process is expected," Alex said.
"That means Alicia became like that too when she took the pill?" she asked Alex.
"There is no way I can become like that. I already prepared the bath so I didn't need to go through that," before Alex said anything, Alicia immediately cut in. Her face was red.
"Fufu...Alright, thank you, Alex. See you tomorrow!" Firia said with an 'I understand' look and left both of them.
"You..." Alicia wanted to shout but Firia already ran away.
It was now time for Alex to practice at his teacher's workshop. As usual, he went there after saying goodbye to Alicia. He was rather excited today because he would learn a forging with him.
"Teacher," Alex greeted the dean.
"Oh...Alex, you have come. You want to learn forging today, right?"
"Yes, Teacher. Thank you for your guidance and patience all this time though."
"Actually, normal forging will be easy to learn. You just need to melt the ingot, when they become liquefied you pour them into the mold. If there is any excess you hammer them until it is completely fitted with the mold. And then you just wait for them to cool down. After that, you have to sharpen them and the step is completed."
Alex was surprised to hear the dean's explanation because he never thought forging would be this simple.
"The difference between normal forging and the other forging is the magic we use. This other forging is specifically used to make magic weapons. What I will teach you is forging to make a magic weapon. The two main problems are mixing many kinds of metals and harmonizing them, the other problem is purging the impurities within each metal. This is also a problem in normal forging. You need to make the metal without impurities if you want a good quality weapon. But the difference is that we only use one metal when we do normal forging while we have to use many kinds of metals when we do magic forging."
"I will teach you how to remove the impurities from the metal first," he led Alex to his workshop and he showed a gray metal.
"This is iron ingot. We will heat it first and we will hammer them once we heat them. Look at this technique, this was called the metal hammer technique. I was lucky, some elder dwarfs taught me this technique. This hammering technique contains a total of 200 hammerings."
After he said that, the dean hammered the iron ingot 200 times, Alex saw how his teacher hammered it slow at first then he got faster and slower again. This hammering technique was using Mana when hammering, the purpose was to force the impurities out with Mana. But there was something in common from all of 200 hammerings which was the dean used the same strength each time he hammered the iron.
The dean then finished hammering the iron ingot and it became a metallic gray color. This showed that the iron was purified.
"This is the purified iron. You should try this hammering technique first. I will guide you step by step," he said once he was done hammering the iron.
Alex tried to imitate the dean and he tried to hammer the ingot.
"Wrong, you didn't put enough strength…" he warned Alex.
"Wrong, you are not fast enough," again, he reminded his student.
"Wrong, this time you don't put the same strength."
Every time Alex trained his hammering technique with the dean, he always came back to his room so late. By that time, Alicia already slept every time he came back. For the first ten days, Alex's learning speed became faster and faster. This was enough to scare the dean. However, the dean was not aware that Alex took body foundation pills each day.
Every time he took this pill while bathing, he felt so refreshed. He was surprised at first when he put the pill in the water because it melted into the water. But when he got inside the water, he felt his meridian in the body start to open up. He also felt he could use his Mana better and better. He didn't take the Qi gathering pill yet.
Alex still trained his hammer technique and after a month he had managed to completely master the techniques. The dean was scared over the speed of Alex's learning progress.
"Alex, you succeed in the technique...You know how long I manage to master this technique?"
"I...Don't know, Teacher," Alex looked down, he thought his talent was not up to the dean's standard as he took this long to master this technique.
"It was two years! I needed two years to master it well! Do you hear me? This could give me the same talent as the dwarfs. And the elder dwarfs are usually able to master this technique for around half a year to one year. But you only needed one month to master this technique."
"Oh..." Alex was relieved, he thought his talent wasn't enough.
"But don't be too proud of your current achievement, or else you will get the consequences," the dean said, he didn't say what kind of consequences Alex might face though.
"I won't, Teacher," Alex said, he didn't become proud nor greedy even after archiving so much these past few months, from being a gold rank hunter until mastering hammering technique only within a month.
Alex knew that he only relied on basic forging manuals from the System. The forging manual had a set of a thousand times hammering techniques. The two hundred hammering technique from dwarfs was similar to this technique, so he thought maybe this was the downgrade version from the techniques in basic forging manuals.
"Sigh...Since you already master it, we will resume the training tomorrow for harmonizing techniques," the dean continued.
"Yes!" Alex then left after hearing his teacher's final words.
Now, he was wondering what he should do since he finished the training way earlier than his usual schedule. He recalled he still hadn't eaten the Qi gathering pill.
He came back and he saw Alicia try to make a palm-size ice ball, she tried to make a few simple shapes like cube or tube. This was Alex's suggestion to improve her control. She started doing this every day since the holiday. Alex never saw her practicing like this. Maybe because he always came back late and Alicia already finished her practice.
Alicia was surprised to see Alex came back so early, "Alex! You've done your practice?" the ice immediately disappeared and she blushed, "You...Came back early."
"I'm sorry for interrupting your practice, Princess," this was the first time he saw Alicia practice alone.
"I...I don't want to always stand behind you. I want to stand beside you. So I made a goal to improve my skills and keep practicing whenever I can," she said, even though she was embarrassed but the determination could be clearly seen in her eyes.
"Princess..." Alex's heart moved after seeing how eager she improved herself.
'System, can I give the cultivation manual to her?'
[You can Host]
'Then I will give it to her'
[But, there won't be any effect for her to cultivate Host]
'Why?'
[The energy from her body was already imprinted with this world's law. If she starts cultivating Heaven and Earth energy, this world's law will devour that energy]
'I really can't give it to her?' he was disappointed. 'Then how about for people that haven't even leveled up?'
[It is the same Host. System can say, the only one who doesn't have his/her energy imprinted with the world's law is just you because Host never absorbs any energy when killing the monsters. Even the heroes now already imprinted by this world's law]
'Didn't I take them back then?' he remembered when killing a few first monsters in Alisia Forest.
[Host did take them before, but before the world's law infused fully with your body, Host already decided to expel them]
'Sigh...But is there really no way for her to cultivate?'
[I'm afraid no, Host]
Alex was disappointed and he could only sigh. There was nothing he could do to help Alicia improve her skills.
[But there are other possibilities to make her half cultivate]
'What do you mean?' Alex held a glimmer of hope.
[She can try to absorb the Mana in the air like cultivation. Host can call this forced absorption, even though the effect will be small as the absorption speed is also slow. Host can boost them with your pills, like Qi gathering pills. This takes a principle like when they train their body to get a few points status related to the body such as STR, AGI, VIT, or even Dex. This practice can make a new Mana reservoir within the body since this is a different practice. For example, a rank 3 mage cultivates his new Mana reservoir to rank 3. That means he is like two ranks 3 mages during a fight]
'That's it, Teacher said there is no method to increase Mana. So, a few special potions like Spiritual Liquid is the only way to increase someone's Mana,' Alex smiled happily.
"Alex?" Alicia was confused when she looked at Alex who was silent for a while and smiled so suddenly.
"Princess..." Alex hesitated, he gritted his teeth and said, "I actually have a practice method to increase Mana...But..."
Alicia's eyes widened because she knew this practice method would make people go crazy if this was possible, "What is it? Please, tell me!"
"This practice has not been tested on other people yet. So there is no way to tell what will happen later," Alex explained further.
"Other people? Then, you already tested it yourself?" Alicia asked.
"Yes... Aren't princess curious why I can progress here without even killing any monster?"
"Well, everyone has their own secret. But seeing you get stronger makes me happy so I didn't try to dig further," she scratched her cheek and blushed.
Alex smiled gently and he hesitated for a second before asking, "Then, do you want to try my method?"
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone