Martial Online.

In the kitchen of Zhen's cottage, Ambrose stood in front of the kitchen counter with the required ingredients for Soul Healing potion placed in front of him.

Zhen sat in the living room's wooden chair and looked at the scene in the kitchen with a patient expression.

"You may begin." He said.

Ambrose nodded and snatched the bottle of water from the counter. He opened the cork and poured about 1 liter into the cauldron.

As the water dropped to the bottom of the cauldron, quite a few of the waterdrops splattered across the walls of the cauldron.

After that, he moved onto the second bottle.

It was the bottle with the petals of the Flower Guardian flower inside. 

This time, he used pinchers, which he found in the drawer, and carefully dropped four glowing petals down on the water at the bottom of the cauldron.

As the four petals fell on the water, they sank a little bit under the surface and got soaked. It caused them to become slightly heavier and, thus, didn't resurface anymore.

The color of the water turned very dark, almost resembling blackness.

Ambrose put the pinchers down on the kitchen counter, wiped his sweat with the napkin, and took the bottle of crying souls inside.

'Why am I feeling exhausted?' He shook his head as, for some reason, his eyes turned blurry.

After shaking his head, Ambrose carefully opened the bottle and slowly tipped the edge towards the cauldron.

The transparent liquid, in the form of the tears, started to slowly sneak closer to the edge.

As the first tear was about to fall, Ambrose's hand slightly shook because of the strange exhaustion, and more than one tear fell.

"Shit!" He cursed, and he saw three splashes at the bottom of the cauldron.

In that moment, three different sobbing noises mixed with each other and echoed like inside a tunnel.

Instead of dropping just one tear, he accidentally dropped three.

'Fuck, does that matter though?' Ambrose put the bottle aside and wiped his sweat. 'It should be more potent now, no? Ugh, I don't fucking know; I am not a potion maker.'

After that, he dropped some of the crunched dead bone on the chopping board, used his fist to pound it into a powder-like substance, and then scattered it across the water at the bottom of the cauldron.

After that, he grabbed the bottle with the captured crimson light inside and pointed it towards the water at the bottom of the cauldron.

However, no light flew out of the bottle. It didn't seem to work like it did with Zhen.

"Huh?" Ambrose pointed the bottle around, narrowed his eyes, and at that moment, the crimson light shot into his eyes.

"Agh, shit!" He quickly looked away, and he felt like his eyes were tingling strangely, as if there were ants crawling across his face.

"Zhen, how the hell does this work?"

Zhen crossed his arms and didn't open his mouth. His lips turned into a slight smirk as he seemed to enjoy Ambrose's suffering.

"Zhen, are you still there?" Ambrose tried to squint his eyes open, but he only saw red everywhere he looked. 'Did I become blind or what?!'

At that moment, the bottle that locked crimson moonlight inside fell down, and the light inside shot through the cauldron and smashed into the water below.

As the crimson light mixed up with the black, the color turned dark red. It looked like it was filled with strawberry juice. It didn't resemble the sticky kind of potion that Zhen made.

"Argh…" Ambrose rubbed his eyes and recovered some of his visibility.

He picked up the bottle, put it down on the counter, and looked at the cauldron with squinted eyes.

"Uh, I am done!"

"Well, let's see." Zhen stood up, walked over to him, and looked at the cauldron with a slight smile.

From color alone, he knew how the potion concocting went.

"Well, how is it?" Ambrose asked with a wry smile.

The potion concocting process didn't go too smoothly, but he felt like it shouldn't be too bad.

"Well, if you drink this potion, your soul will explode and your innards will melt." Zhen said.

Ambrose's eyes bulged. "Whaaaat…"

"I've never seen a worse potion, I think." Zhen scratched his cheek awkwardly. "You could use this potion as a weapon."

"Y-you're exaggerating, right?" Ambrose laughed awkwardly.

"I wish…" Zhen wryly smiled. "Well, want to hear what you did wrong?"

"Sure…" Ambrose sighed and sat down with his legs crossed.

"First of all, you poured the water in too quickly." Zhen said. "All of the 1 liter of water has to be at the bottom of the cauldron, not splashed across the walls.

"That, otherwise, makes the potion unstable."

"What, seriously?" Ambrose frowned and scratched the back of his head.

"You'll need to train pouring the water." Zhen said with a chuckle. "Second, you dropped the petals on the water.

"You need to put them in the water, not drop them. They need to float on the water, not sink down like a rock."

Ambrose nodded thoughtfully with his arms crossed.

"After that, do not use your fists to crush the dead bone. You added some of your own 'life energy' into those dead bones, which transferred them into half-living bones, such as zombies.

"That's why I told you to gather bones from corpses, not from zombies. Also, you need to calculate the 100 grams of crunched dead bone accurately.

"You dropped nearly 200 grams, and you would think that it makes it more potent, but it doesn't. If the Soul Healing potion is far too potent, it will cause more damage than heal."

"Makes sense." Ambrose nodded.

"And lastly, you poured all of the crimson light." Zhen took the empty bottle that was still warm after the crimson light.

"Once the water turns purple, you know when you've poured enough crimson light, but since you failed beforehand, the color was already wrong, so it was impossible to calculate.

"Also, you were clearly struggling to control it…"

"How can you control it? You never told me how." Ambrose asked with a slight hint of saltiness.

He felt like he was tricked into failure.

"You need to communicate it. Imagine as if you are talking to the light, and then just concentrate it on the cauldron." Zhen said. "That needs learning."

Ambrose nodded.

At that moment, Zhen poured the whole potion down the sink and washed the cauldron clean.

"I can give you some instructions on how you can continue learning to concoct potions. I can't do it personally, as tonight you'll enter the Room of Damnation."

"Right, it's happening today already." Ambrose took a deep breath and walked over to the window, from where he looked over to the far-away burning blacksmith store.

It was still exploding loudly, and most of the townsfolk looked sleepy as they couldn't sleep because of the exploding noises.

"By the way, here." Zhen walked over to him and took out a potion flask from a shelf.

"This is the potion I made yesterday, you will find a use for this soon."

"Oh, thank you." Ambrose accepted it with a smile and placed it in his inventory. "I'll need it in the Room of Damnation, right?"

"Yes," Zhen said. "The Wisdom King gave his approval, allowing me to give this. However, this is the only potion you are allowed to use there.

"Use it wisely."

"I will," Ambrose said.

"The Wisdom King is expecting you in the temple tonight. Prepare your things before that, and be ready when it's time.

"You are not allowed to stop once you enter that place."

"Mm, all right." Ambrose nodded.