**Chapter 12: Class**
Ten days passed in a flash, and the day for ntor Clark’s class arrived.
Jie Ming woke early, ate breakfast, and followed the enrollnt guide’s directions to the Alchemy Workshop.
The Alchemy Workshop of Noren Academy sat in a relatively secluded corner of the campus. Unlike the eye-catching towers, it was low and sturdy, like a fortress rooted in the earth.
Its outer walls were made of dark stone, etched with basic runes.
Stepping through the workshop’s gates, Jie Ming found a spacious interior filled with the mingled scents of tal, minerals, plants, and peculiar chemical reactions. The sll was odd but not unpleasant.
With ti to spare before class, he wandered around.
The workshop’s interior was complex, like a giant honeycomb of countless rooms and corridors of varying sizes.
There were warehouses stacked with raw materials, high-temperature furnace areas, potion-making zones filled with distillation equipnt and test tubes, and nurous basic and advanced experintal areas.
Their first class was in a spacious basic alchemy lab on the east side of the workshop.
The lab’s walls were silver-white tal, lined with dozens of sturdy worktables, each equipped with an adjustable magical light, fixed tal clamps, and an exhaust chimney.
Entering the lab, Jie Ming was surprised to see quite a few people inside.
But judging by their robe badges, only he, Amy, and a haughty-looking male apprentice were true Alchemy apprentices.
The others, marked by different badges, were from other disciplines. Jie Ming even spotted the genius with level-nine soul purity from the aptitude test, already claid by a Soul Magic ntor.
The other apprentices seed equally shocked by this genius’s presence, clustering around them.
Jie Ming had no interest in joining the crowd and found a quiet spot near the wall.
To his surprise, Amy was there too.
“You’re not mingling with them?” he asked, a hint of surprise in his tone.
Over the past few days, their occasional cafeteria etings confird Amy’s knack for socializing. She could connect with anyone, regardless of personality, making Jie Ming briefly wonder if she had so supernatural charm.
Amy greeted him and shrugged casually at his question. “Quite the opposite. Now’s not the ti for networking. If I went over, I’d just be background noise.”
Jie Ming nodded noncommittally. She was the expert here, and he had no place to comnt.
“Speaking of, our Alchemy batch only has three newbies. What are these others doing here?”
“They’re learning Alchemy too, but for them, it’s an elective. From what I know, besides that Soul Magic genius, the level-nine Augusta heiress and the level-eight Horn heir have also picked other Logistics disciplines as electives.”
“You can take electives?” Jie Ming glanced at the soul-purity genius, recalling Jack’s words.
It seed Logistics truly was the Noren Workshop’s orthodoxy. Even Combat Division geniuses were sent to study Logistics.
He understood why these top talents got special treatnt. Though Jack said aptitude wasn’t crucial, Jie Ming, having tackled the ditation thod, knew a high aptitude gave a head start.
In cultivation, one step ahead ant staying ahead. True cobacks were rare.
“I’m jealous. If only I could take electives too,” Jie Ming sighed.
Alchemy suited his needs, but adding Potioncraft or Runecrafting would be even better.
“You can, if you want,” Amy said, looking at him. “Alchemy classes are once every five days, with the rest of the ti free. As long as you complete assigned tasks, you can spend credits to study other disciplines.”
“Oh? The guide didn’t ntion that.” Jie Ming’s eyes lit up. “How much for elective courses?”
“Not much. I heard basic knowledge for any Logistics discipline is five credits, but you’d need to buy extra tools…”
Their chat was cut short as ntor Clark appeared at the podium.
Still balding, monocle in place, he wore a worn but spotless alchemy robe.
At his arrival, the apprentices crowding the soul-purity genius fell silent, scurrying like quail to the nearest worktables.
“Welco to Alchemy, one of Noren Academy’s most stable and foundational disciplines,” Clark said, unfazed by the apprentices’ reactions, his tone calm and asured.
“Here, you’ll learn the core of Alchemy—understanding, decomposition, and reconstruction.”
“Understanding is grasping a material’s essence, analyzing its elental makeup and energy properties. Decomposition breaks it down to its fundantal units. Reconstruction uses your ntal strength to guide energy and matter, reshaping it into new forms or imbuing it with new properties.”
His gaze swept over each apprentice, turning stern. “Alchemy demands imnse ntal strength. Your precision in controlling it determines your ceiling in this art.”
He stepped to a small operation table by the podium, where a heavy, irregular golden lump sat.
“You should’ve previewed basic Alchemy, so I won’t waste ti. Today’s first lesson is basic shaping,” Clark said calmly. “This is one of Alchemy’s foundational practices, using ntal strength to control an object’s form. We’ll practice with gold.”
At the word “gold,” so apprentices showed surprise or excitent.
In the mortal world, gold was a precious currency.
Clark seed to read their thoughts, explaining coolly, “In the wizard world, gold isn’t rare. Controlling multiple planes, we have countless ways to obtain it. At a certain Alchemy level, you can even transmute other materials into gold.”
“Compared to other tals, gold is stable and uniform, making it easier to analyze with Alchemy. Though it resists ntal strength, making control harder, this resistance ensures that even if you fail, it won’t trigger violent energy reactions, explosions, or toxic gases—just damaged or distorted material. It’s the safest and most suitable practice material for beginners.”
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