Alchemist In The Apocalypse: Rise Of A Legend!

Bridge.

[Ace POV],

Easily dodging the claw attack of the level 24 mouse, I threw a fireball at it before it could launch another attack.

[You have acquired the primordial records...

Hearing the notification of the primordial chronicle in my head, I confirmed I had killed the monster as I ignored its body and continued my way forward.

Unlike a few days before, my mana control now compared to then is worlds apart.

In the end, when I saw that Emma was already adapting to the team, I asked her for tips for controlling mana.

It was as I thought when I suspected that she was just controlling mana according to the way she felt but even then, the tips she gave me were of tremendous help.

For some reason, after I got help from Emma, my speed in learning how to control mana was tremendously fast that it appeared like all the difficulties I faced a few days ago were a lie.

I don't know how it happened and why it happened and though controlling my mana is not as easy as breathing, it is still easy to the extent I could make good enough fireballs, fire spears, and fire arrows.

Though they can't be compared to when Emma does it, it's still something.

It's like I thought, having a guide is truly useful.

Thanks to my better mana control, I was also able to have an easier time concocting basic pills.

Together with the cauldron, I already have a success rate of 80% when concocting a basic health pill so I can already be considered a trainee alchemist as I can already make a pill which is the basic health pill with 30% purity.

Together with the pill bottles, I have before, there were a lot of basic health pills with 30% purity in my storage ring that currently has no use.

Though they were useless at the moment, I still did not throw them away. Their materials were brought with my money after all.

They might not be of help now, but they might in be in the future.

And thanks to my familiarity with concocting the basic health pill, I finally started attempting to make a basic Mana pill.

With the experience gained from making the basic health pill, I skipped a lot of mistakes and was able to make one in the end.

Though I had more failures than successes, I was still able to concoct some successfully in the end.

Due to the pill being a little more complicated than the basic health pill, my success rate in concocting a basic mana pill successfully is still very low.

Because of this, I had more basic health pills than the basic mana pills in my storage ring and unlike the basic health pills that currently had no use since we had Emma to treat us if anyone of us got injured, the basic mana pill is very useful in helping us recover our mana.

Since it got harder to level up, we can't experience the effect of returning to our peak state when we level up so if we wanted to recover our mana, we had to rest for hours, and people like Emma and I that use mana, staying manaless is dangerous since you don't know what can happen next and when you'll need to use mana.

At least am better than Emma in the sense that I can still use my blades to fight and I don't rely heavily on mana but for someone like Emma, staying without mana is like cutting half of her strength.

As these random thoughts flashed through my head, I looked at my surroundings.

'The fog is getting thicker the deeper we head in', I thought as I looked at my teammates who had already finished clearing the mouse-like monsters that attacked them and exchanging their corpses for coins in the exchange section in the store.

According to them, no matter how small it is, mosquito meat is still meat.

Around us was a thick fog that made our visibility weak.

We could only see up to 50 meters away from our standing location, beyond that was fog.

50 meters might seem like a lot but considering our improved physique including our eyes, 50 meters was little.

"Let's continue moving", I said after I saw everyone was true with whatever they were doing as we still made our way deeper into the fog.

It might seem we were courting death as we continued our charge into unfamiliar territory but the truth is that we were lost.

Yes, we are lost and don't know and can't trace our way back. Don't know when but by the time we found out we were lost it was already too late so right now we have no choice but to continue heading deeper as everything just looked the same, covered in fog.

I knew the fog was strange but having the ability to make those who enter it lost is not what I expected.

Thankfully, apart from being lost and being attacked by monsters from time to time, we were okay as there was no other danger.

As these thoughts flashed through my head, I returned my attention back to the road to avoid getting attacked when I was distracted.

'It will be better if the fog's purpose is for us to only get lost but something is telling me it's not' I thought as I looked at the fog surrounding us deeply for a few seconds before I returned my attention back to the road.

.....

"Ace come see what we found", Anna called me as she squatted at a particular place with Emma by her side.

Seeing this, I made my way to both of them with Chris by my side.

When I got close to them that they could hear me without me shouting, I spoke.

"What is it?" I asked.

"See this", Anna simply said in reply as she pointed her finger at a particular spot on the ground.

Seeing this, I directed my focus to where she was pointing as I finally saw what she wanted me to see.

It was a footprint. More specifically, it was a footprint that resembles one of humans.

Seeing this, I squatted down and laid my right hand on the footprint and felt it, and noticed that it was still fresh. Which means that means that whoever made this footprint passed here not quite long ago and might likely still be around.

"Uh?" I muttered when I noticed other footprints on the ground following the one I just felt. And looking at the way it was structured and the size of the foot, they are very likely made by the same person.

Seeing this, I stood up and spoke to the team as I made my way forward by following the trail of the footprint.

"Let's move", I said as I and the team changed our location.

.....

At some point in our journey as we trailed after the footprints, we encountered several other footprints too.

At first, we were confused but we later understood why these footprints met up together in the first place.

Aside from coincidence, it was also because of the road.

Different from the grassy ground we were on in the forest was a road that appeared to be made from mud bricks.

We were still in the foggy forest and looking at the signs, the environment, and not this strange road that is situated in the middle of nowhere, it was easy to connect the dots that something was leading us somewhere.

And since we can't go back as we were lost, there was only one option left and that was to follow this road and see where it takes us too.

At least there's a road now and it should be better than aimlessly walking around although the danger that it poses is still uncertain.

As I thought of these things, I ignored the footprints on the ground as they had already lost their purpose and made my way forward following the path the road lead me and my team to.

.....

We finally reached the end of the path the road led us to as we stepped our feet on the familiar grassy ground but this was not where my attention was on. Instead, I had my eyes on another thing.

It was the bridge in front of me. Apart from it being weird to encounter a bridge in a forest, there was something else that caught my attention.

Humans, and there were at least a few dozen of them in front of me.