387 Spicy Gourd

Alex had breakfast with the ladies and returned back to his room. Instead of going to the game again, he decided to go online and search for a few different things.

He wondered if he was just not searching hard enough, and there might have been other people with similar experiences as him that came to the same conclusion as him.

So, he looked up keywords such as 'Helmet' and 'formation' together. There were indeed many people that had a similar theory as him.

"Ooh, there's something. Finally," he thought and opened the video. The video had barely any views and is explained in detail how people 'assumed' the helmet functioned.

The helmet's infrastructure was proprietary, so people didn't have a blueprint on what was what, and had to go off of how they thought it worked. So, the assumption was all Alex could get right now.

Unfortunately, the video didn't touch on what he wanted, and the formation part was just him mentioning it looked like one. Disappointed, Alex opened another one.

This one definitely talked more about the formation, and even assumed that it was one. He didn't assume it for real-life however, he just assumed that this was a formation for something important in the game.

The person in the video said that they had tried the design with many different metals, but they could never activate it in the game, let alone know what it did.

So in conclusion, they needed to find the metal or metal combination that was needed for the formation to be made over to work it.

Alex thought that was true. The person would indeed need a formation plate that could make the carvings function.

"Aw man, I can't wait to leave that formation in 2 weeks so I can learn what the hell that formation is for," Alex thought.

He checked a few more of such videos and posts, one of which led him to the forum. He was about to close out of the forum when he saw a red dot on his profile.

"Hm… what's that?" he wondered and clicked it. It led him to his profile, where he could see his latest interactions.

"Oh, right. I forgot I had made a post yesterday," he thought and opened the post. There were a bunch of comments on his post and quite a few upvotes.

He checked through the comments and frowned a little. All of them either showed amazement at the fact that he was an alchemist or disdain in the fact that he was still making Common rank pills.  There were also people trying to show off their maximum pill harmony in the comments too. Alex ignored that.

He tried searching for the ones he needed, but all he could find was confusion as to what Structure and Composition were. Not a single one of them, however, seemed to know anything about the topic. That was really weird.

He felt disappointed and tried to close the forum once more, and once more he stopped because there was still a red dot on his profile.

"Huh?" he thought and opened it. On the messages section, there was a red dot as well. He clicked it and it lead him to the messages he had received.

A member that went by the name of Spicy_Gourd had messaged him and the message said,

-Spicy_Gourd: Who are you? Where are you in the game?-

Alex was a little surprised that someone asked him something like that so suddenly. He messaged back.

-White_Wolf: I'm from the Crimson Empire, in the Western Continent. -

He didn't answer the first question as that was not something he was okay with sharing with a random stranger. He was about to close the laptop when he got a message back.

-Spicy_Gourd: Then how do you know about Structure and Composition? No one is supposed to know about it.-

Alex was even more confused now. 'What does he mean no one is supposed to know?' Alex wondered.

-White_Wolf: I learned it from a book in a library.-

-Spicy_Gourd: There are books that teach you about that? Is the Crimson Empire advanced in Alchemy?-

-White_Wolf: I wouldn't know. I don't know the alchemy level in the other continents. -

-Spicy_Gourd: What's the highest pill you've seen?"-

Alex thought through his memories, most of which he couldn't 'access' since he was not in the game right now. So, he had to go off of what he remembered.

-White_Wolf: It's a 48% harmony True Pill made by my sect's leader. She is considered one of the best alchemists in the empire. Not the greatest though.-

Alex waited for a while and only got a response after a few minutes.

-Spicy_Gourd: What? That's so bad. What about a Saint Rank pill?-

-White_Wolf: We have barely any Saint realm cultivators, and most of those are hidden experts. So, we don't have any that can make Saint rank pills even if there was a recipe. The most I've heard someone can make is a pseudo-Saint Rank pill-

-Spicy_Gourd: Damn, you must live in some backwater empire. How do you not even have Saint Realm experts?-

Alex was feeling weird now. 'I knew there were saint realm experts everywhere else, but are they really so readily available?' Alex wondered.

-White_Wolf: We don't have a connection to other parts of the continent, so the empire has stagnated.-

-Spicy_Gourd: whatever. Anyway, I don't really know much about Structure and Composition yet. I'm still learning about it. I'll try to let you know if I learn anything. Let me know if you find anything else.-

Alex said okay to his offer and closed the conversation. He came out of the conversation not learning about Alchemy, but a bit about the world. Adding onto that, he had another question now.

"How does this empire have knowledge about something that is apparently so rare that the outer world doesn't even know about it, but at the same time is one of the least developed societies in EC?" he wondered.

He had an answer to the 2nd question, but the first one still puzzled him. He decided to forget about it and got ready to go to his classes.