Nhiria's Chronicles: Realm of Regrets Chapter 114 – Breaking Limits

Sokram went on with the preparations.

The scent of tallic blood ink, mingled with the faint, gritty shimr of diamond dust, hung in the air as Sokram ticulously drew the intricate lines of a small array across the arena floor.

He then carefully placed several glowing runestones over precise points, their soft hum a reassurance that the protective wards were active.

The chromatic cauldron reflected the arena’s fla lights.

Its surface glead like polished aluminum, yet it was forged from Mana-Tainted Sterillium, a tal created by alloying steel and mithril.

Sokram positioned an azure runestone beneath the chromatic cauldron. With a thought, a vibrant, cerulean fla blossod from its surface, licking eagerly at the cauldron's base, casting dancing shadows across the arena floor.

Kasine watched with curiosity and amusent as his techniques were completely different from hers.

She couldn’t understand the array and runestones at all.

Sokram separated ten different types of roots he got from Hannah and threw them into the cauldron.

Kasine frowned at the sight but held her tongue.

As a seasoned alchemist, she knew those roots functioned only as neutralizers, never combining effectively, and would typically cancel each other’s effects.

She waited, curious to see what would erge.

When she saw him add water, Kasine couldn’t resist a jest: “Trying to make soup, are we? Haha!”

“No, I’m lacking a decent neutralizer.” As soon as Sokram answered, he activated the spell.

At his current level, it wasn’t a spell he could use by casting solely with his thoughts; he needed to use hand position as well.

His hands now extended toward the cauldron while also controlling the temperature from the fire emitted by the runestone under it.

Kasine fell silent, stunned, as Sokram used the spell without a single chant.

She watched with her mouth agape as the murky liquid in the cauldron, which monts before had promised only uselessness, now shimred with a milky luminescence, pulsating with a mana purity that made her own alchemical senses vibrate in astonished recognition.

The ‘soup’ transford into one of the purest and most mana-rich neutralizers, beyond anything she had ever seen.

After a few minutes, she could sense Sokram straining himself and warned, “It’s good enough, boy, you’re going overboard!”

But Sokram paid her no mind.

All he needed was to extract the final impurities while maintaining the temperature at the precise boiling point; then, this part of the process would be complete.

Feeling his mana pool being drained, he started to regulate his breathing so his mana recovery could keep up with the consumption.

Soon, the water beca a semi-transparent white liquid, but if soone looked at the bottom of the cauldron, they would see a thick, pitch-black, gooey substance.

These two liquids were exceptionally rare and difficult to produce, at least for anyone who didn't possess the proper thod.

But Sokram did.

Yet, to fool any unseen eyes watching from afar, he played the role of the excited genius making a discovery.

He smiled broadly as drops of sweat traced down his face, then shouted, “I knew it! Haha!”

Kasine recognized what it was by the sll.

She looked at Sokram, astounded.

Not even a renowned alchemist like her could achieve that without years of preparation.

But while lost in thought, she saw he was reaching the most crucial part: the extraction.

This was the stage where most alchemists felt utter despair, for if the two substances mixed, all their hard work would be utterly ruined.

Suddenly, the fire went out, and Sokram, using Force, made the liquids rise from the cauldron.

Kasine saw the liquids begin to mix again and warned, almost crying, “No! They are mixing back!”

Sokram grinned confidently, reassuring her, “Don’t worry, Nana. Just trust .”

With his left hand, Sokram held the sphere of liquid aloft. And with his right, he manipulated Force to create a center of gravity with a strong pull at the center of the floating sphere.

The denser pitch-black liquid beca concentrated in the center of the sphere.

While the white liquid beca pure again, this ti, even richer in the properties he needed for the next step.

He held the liquid sphere floating, as if it were a miniature planet of white, semi-translucent water, with a pitch-black core.

Once he felt that the two liquids were separated within the floating sphere, he knew he could finally separate them without the risk of spoiling everything.

Controlling both the sphere and the center of gravity in the core of the sphere with his mind alone, Sokram began cleaning the cauldron with conjured water, washing away all the impurities that remained in it.

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Only when perfectly clean, he willed for the white liquid to fall back into the cauldron, while the pitch-black core remained floating.

“Perfect separation…”

Once the strong sll reached Kasine’s nose, her eyes widened in shock. “Ten Roots Pure Extract! And so much of it! Be careful not to drop it! I’ll kill you if you do!”

Sokram could only chuckle hearing that, because that pitch-black, gooey sphere was worth ten tis more than what he did selling the baby crows.

Sokram summoned two two-liter bottles, divided the extract between them, and sealed them.

Then he summoned another ten bottles for the white neutralizer.

Once done, he cleaned and purified the cauldron once more, and with a bottle in hand, he approached Kasine and offered it to her with a sincere smile.

“A gift, Nana Kasine.”

“I’ll accept as dowry.” She snatched it from his hand, and it disappeared into the depths of her spatial ring.

Then she pinched his cheeks as her eyes sparkled while saying, “Very filial of you, grandson! Very filial!”

Karini and the others who stopped their training and ca to see what the commotion was about all looked at Kasine in disbelief.

They had never seen this shaless side of her before.

This was a side of her that had also shocked Sokram in his previous tiline, a revelation he'd only made after the fall of Eversnow.

At that ti, he had lost contact with Leona for a few years.

But one day, while traveling, he saw Kamus and Lymus from afar and rushed to greet them.

That was when he learned that Karini and the twins had died during the attack, and Cecille and Leona had been living with the White-Fur clan since that day, trying to recover physically and emotionally.

After gaining Lucille’s permission, as he was working for her at that ti, he went there for training and spent a few months living with them.

He only left after Luke ca looking for him, claiming one of the girls had been kidnapped.

By then, thanks to Kamus's brutal training regi, Sokram had improved a lot and quickly massacred Lucille’s enemies.

From then on, he would visit them from ti to ti until Leona’s death. After that tragic event, he never found the strength to face them again, until much later when Kamus sought his help to avenge Lymus's and Cecile’s deaths.

Pushing those sad mories aside, Sokram smiled at her brightly, fighting the tears that threatened to escape his eyes, “This is a gift to you, Nana. The dowry will be much more. Don’t worry, I’ll not disappoint you.”

Saying that, he cast a quick look at the twins.

He saw them struggling to suppress smiles, blushing profusely even as they pretended to still be mad at him.

Then, turning back to the cauldron, he offered with a smile, “Do you want so neutralizer, too, Nana?”

“Yes, son!” Kasine appeared beside him with a greedy look, snatching five bottles without even asking.

Sokram didn’t mind at all.

Kasine, however, perhaps not entirely shaless, picked up the ring with the gold he had given her and slipped it into one of his pockets, quipping, “So pocket money for you, son.”

That almost made her family fall back in shock at her shalessness.

Only Kamus knew that side of her, and seeing her acting so unguarded with Sokram was a sign she recognized his talent.

The only other person she acted like that with, besides Kamus and now Sokram, was their other daughter, Kesia.

She would show no reservation in front of those she believed to be as talented or more talented than herself.

Sokram then sat down in ditation to recover ntally.

Now that he possessed every ingredient necessary, he also needed to be in top condition to concoct the two pills strong enough to help Kamus and Kasine reach the Semi-Perfect Existence level.

This would be an easy task if he were a Flawless Existence or even a Reford Existence.

But at the level of a True Existence, he still would be over-exerting himself.

Once fully recovered, he began the next stage imdiately.

This ti, Kasine stayed nearby, but instead of anxiety, she had only curiosity.

First, he added two small portions of the neutralizer into the cauldron. Then two equal portions of the beast blood, unpurified, followed by two drops of the Ten Roots extract, and then activate the fire runestone controlling the fire until the mix reached the optimum temperature.

Finally, he summoned a Frozen White Lotus.

Kasine’s eyes went wide, and she almost yelped at seeing him bring an entire flower so close to the fire.

But the shock deepened once she felt the cold elental mana radiating from his palm, watching the flower feed on his freezing energy, its petals waving as if still alive.

Sokram used Force to pluck six petals, then stored the flower back into the ring.

The plucked petals floated over his palm as if protected by a Force field, and controlling them with Force, he made them float on top of the cauldron’s mouth until they lted into crystalline dew.

Only then did he let them drop into the solution that was already boiling.

Taking a deep breath, Sokram activated the spell with his two hands pointed toward the cauldron.

Mana poured from him in a relentless torrent; no matter how desperately he breathed in more, it was never enough.

Suddenly, his hands curled into a claw-like grip, a desperate hold on sothing unseen that threatened to slip away at any mont.

Veins bulged along Sokram’s temples, his breath coming in ragged bursts, while erratic mana flickered wildly around his fingertips.

Sweat trickled down his face, his face contorted into a deep, painful frown.

His overexertion was clear to all, but he didn’t falter.

Soon, inside the cauldron, two small beads started taking shape inside the storm of mana.

Sokram’s mana pool was depleted to a re tenth, but he refused to let self-doubt disturb his focus.

His heart rate spiked, its rapid thumping audible even to the sensitive ears of the Ferals.

Leona’s hands clenched into fists, her nails digging painfully into her palms, as she struggled against her overwhelming overprotectiveness.

Karini and the twins also watched with worried expressions, sensing the amount of energy Sokram was controlling at that mont.

Though they didn’t understand the intricacies of Magi, Sokram’s contorted expression clearly showed he was pushing beyond his limits.

Kamus remained calm, observing his wife's expressions flicker: from confusion, to surprise, then to extre elation, and finally, stupefaction. Her gaze snapped from the pills taking form to Sokram, as if she had just witnessed an impossible feat perford by sothing far beyond her comprehension, a monster bigger than herself.

And Lymus, too, seeing her grandmother's expression, looked at Sokram’s back, feeling as if the two of them were worlds apart.

Sokram wasn’t so calm; the condensation of the pills was taking too long, and he was running out of mana, so he took a risky gamble, using Force again in the core of each pill.

He created a gravity point.

Once he had the pill’s cores secured, he changed Hannah’s spell formula. That change wasn’t sothing he should be using at that level; it would force his mind to make calculations down to the molecular level at lightning speed.

The backlash of such an effort soon beca evident: The first few drops of crimson trickled from Sokram's nostrils.

Then, a thin line bled from the corner of his eye, followed by a dark stain spreading from his ear.

Soon, his face was a grotesque mask, blood oozing steadily from every orifice of his head.

A grim sight that only increased the other’s worries.

Kasine lunged forward, only to be yanked back by a familiar grip.

Kamus’s hand, a solid weight on her shoulder, anchored her, stilled her surging panic.

Suddenly, the energy emanating from Sokram ceased.

All he had ti to gasp before passing out was, “Store it quickly…”

Before his body hit the floor, Leona was there to pick him up. “Why push yourself like this, you dumb kid?”

Seeing Leona already by his side, Kasine, not wanting his work to go to waste, quickly stored the pills in her spatial ring without even a glance.

An unknown amount of ti later, when Sokram woke up, he found himself in an unfamiliar room, his head was pounding, and his mouth was dry.

The first thing he did was check his Chaos Core.

Sensing it was intact, he then focused upward, probing his brain.

And realized that his brain activity had doubled.

Opening his eyes, a screen opened before him, right after:

[First Mind Lock forcibly lifted, caution advised.]