Over the next several days, Demi applied herself to the joint problems of investigating Tata’s ailment and taking her first real steps into the world of alchemy.
For the former, there was scant information in the library that seemed directly relevant to the dryad’s condition, although she learned many interesting things over the course of investigating. In the end, she was probably going to have to discover what was wrong and devise a course of treatment on her own.
And there was some urgency behind her search. Once they were alone, Glimmer had said what he had not said when the two little girls were in earshot. Tata would not necessarily survive to see the southern blightwood cleared, and even if she did, there was no guarantee that her condition would improve.
That was a heavy concern.
Surely there’s something I can do, Demi thought to herself, In this world of alchemy and magic. Surely there’s something that a goddess can do against such a thing.
So she focused herself on the latter task—learning the basics of alchemy—in the hopes that she might make progress toward her goal of helping Tata to survive.
Among the many different styles and schools of alchemy in this world, there were two broad divisions: Stable Alchemy and Fluid Alchemy.
All of the different types of alchemy could be classified as either one or the other: Fluid or Stable.
As she had already discovered, the most common type of alchemy in practice was Stable Alchemy. Stable Alchemy used specific, set ingredients to create compounds and reagents, which could then be used to create more complex synthesis. It was similar to the crafting that Demi had done so far. So long as a person knew a recipe, had the correct ingredients, and had sufficient mana capacity to accomplish the synthesis, it would succeed, and the maker would end up with the item that they were trying to make.
Stable Alchemy had been practiced in this world for hundreds and hundreds of years. It was one of the bedrocks of civil society, after all. Alchemic meat was produced by means of Stable Alchemy, as were most common medicines, potions, and many objects used in the course of everyday life. Practitioners of Stable Alchemy were called “alchemists,” as might be expected. Any reasonably sized settlement was sure to have at least one alchemist.
The other kind of alchemy was Fluid Alchemy.
People who practiced Fluid Alchemy were known as high alchemists, and there were rarely more than five in an entire country.
One of the reasons there were so few practitioners of Fluid Alchemy was that it was a comparatively recent invention, the product of a revolution in alchemical thinking that had happened around 350 years previous. The figure at the center of that change was the mysterious genius, her very own Shadowstep Alchemist. All authorities recognized him as the father of Fluid Alchemy and all of Fluid Alchemy was ultimately traceable back to him as the original source. Naturally, his writings were sought after by all of those prospective students attempting the difficult path toward being a high alchemist.
Luckily, the Goddess’s Lending Library now contained many books penned by the Shadowstep Alchemist himself.
I wonder if Hollyhope used them for research when she was writing her light novels? Demi mused idly. She is definitely a fan of the Shadowstep Alchemist.
While Stable Alchemy was taught at academies or learned through an established journeyman-apprenticeship system, Fluid Alchemy was only passed on through direct apprenticeship.
Because there were so few high alchemists, the different lineages of Fluid Alchemy were just that, actual lineages, practices passed down directly from teacher to student, as opposed to the more robustly documented styles of Stable Alchemy. Each lineage had its own interesting quirks and proclivities. When one read about them generally, one could almost catch a glimpse of the personalities of the individual alchemists who had passed down their techniques, generation to generation.
It was difficult to study Fluid Alchemy because it was difficult to find a high alchemist to study under at all. And finding a master was only the first step. As difficult as finding a master might be, it was easy in comparison to the second step: convincing that master to take you on as an apprentice.
High alchemists almost never took on more than one apprentice at a time. This made the alchemy masters very choosy. Fluid Alchemy required a very precise confluence of skills and natural gifts, along with much dedicated study. Students had to have the right talents and the right temperament or they would not be able to progress in their studies.
With Stable Alchemy, if a student failed an entrance exam at an alchemy school, they could always study harder and attempt it again, or apply to another alchemy academy or apprenticeship program. If a student of Fluid Alchemy failed to impress their prospective master, it could easily be the end of the road for them, purely because there were so few high alchemists.
And even among those with the right set of resiliencies, there was still a very high washout rate for high alchemists. Although almost all of them completed some amount of training, very few ever advanced to the point where they were able to call themselves masters and take on apprentices.
Becoming a regular alchemist was by no means easy, and also required a great deal of study and hard work, but the demands of Fluid Alchemy were something else altogether. Formal training for stable alchemists rarely lasted for more than four years, unless the student started when they were very young. Meanwhile, no proper Fluid Alchemy apprenticeship lasted less than six years, and they could last much longer, depending on the high alchemist master.
And skills and knowledge were not transferable between the two disciplines because the systems were so different. Being proficient in Stable Alchemy was not useful with regard to Fluid Alchemy, and vice versa. In a hard-coded technical sense, the two fields were entirely walled off from one another by the world system.
Fluid Alchemy functioned according to its own specific rules, with its own internal logic. It was essentially a system inside a system. Because of this “system with a system” status, Fluid Alchemy had its own skills, titles, and bonuses. And all of these elements were all bound up in an essential tool.
Unlike any other skill or discipline that Demi had experienced in this world, Fluid Alchemy could not be monitored or managed through the world system. Instead, everything was routed through a special book: the cyprianus.
A person could not even gain experience or progress in levels without a cyprianus, regardless of how hard they studied or worked. That was a very high opportunity cost, on top of everything else.
It seems so difficult to even begin, Demi reflected thoughtfully. I wonder if it’s like this because of constraints imposed by the world system. It’s almost as if Fluid Alchemy is its own little program running inside the operating system of the world, and yet completely separate from it.
To make matters more complicated, a cyprianus could only be produced through synthesis using the techniques of Fluid Alchemy. That made it something of a chicken-and-egg problem for Demi. She did not have a high alchemist as a master who could make a cyprianus for her, and she could not become proficient enough at Fluid Alchemy to make her own because she could not gain any levels—because she did not yet have her own cyprianus.
Fortunately, there were some useful books in the library even for a self-study student. She could still learn about Fluid Alchemy even if she could not gain experience in the systematic sense.
Fluid Alchemy was predicated on a complicated way of classifying and understanding the material world. It was focused on a deep understanding of synthesis ingredients through the use of several analytical tools, the most common of which was the ability to conceptually break each ingredient down into symbolic units.
Fluid Alchemy proposed that each thing that existed was made up of a unique mosaic of these symbolic units. With a keen understanding of symbolic units, they could be manipulated, and this manipulation became the backbone of transmutation.
Certain ingredients were more readily broken down into easier-to-understand symbolic units, units that were compatible with many different arrangements. This was one of the things that made a particular ingredient well suited as a component for Fluid Alchemy synthesis.
For instance, one of the most basic ingredients used in Fluid Alchemy was Mystic Vervain. This was a relatively common woodland plant that had a number of useful symbolic units in its mosaic, for instance, “forest,” “plant,” “herb,” “flower,” and “leaf” which might be expected of many plants, but also “iron,” “healing,” “blood,” “dreams,” “guard,” “ward,” “aroma,” “canine,” “moon,” and “magic,” among others. Entirely on its own it could cause the trait “healing dew” to appear on potions and medicines, which made them more effective. Of course, this trait could also be influenced and modified by other items used in the synthesis.