Kale did not waste any more time... with the announcement of the test’s resumption.

His eyes traveled to the 2nd glass box, which contained four items.

The first item was a small ingredient box with multiple pockets, each containing a different herb or plant, along with various beast body parts, mostly from small insect-like creatures.

The next item was a cauldron-like thing, but at the same time, it was a modified living plant, usually built by Fleshcrafters precisely for specific uses of pill crafting.

The top part looked like the mouth of a carnivorous plant, and a little farther down was its flat, furry belly. That was the area where the medicines would be processed. This object was referred to as a Solvane Cauldron.

The third item was a mortar and pestle.

Fourth was obviously another Beast Core.

Kale opened the first box and looked at the contents, since everyone had different ingredients.

Unlike the Toolcrafting test, this time he was not slow in his actions, nor did he try to wait to see what would happen to others. Rather, with a confident grace, he took one action after another.

With his wealth of knowledge, it took him only half a minute to think of the right recipe for the pill, with the ingredients in hand.

So, he picked those particular medicinal herbs and began grinding them separately into a paste with a pestle and mortar.

Thankfully, he would not have to ground the insect body parts; he really didn’t like the thought of it. It felt rather disgusting, since he was pretty much a clean freak of sorts.

After he finished grinding, he would start processing. One by one, he began to put all the ground ingredients into the ugly mouth of the Solvane cauldron. However, no reaction was seen because this thing was like a direct fan. Unless you plug it into an electric board, it won’t start spinning.

Kale put his hand on the furry part, which was its stomach, though the thought of a plant having a stomach to process food was quite weird. But it was a carnivorous plant after all.

They have every right to have a fat, round stomach like every asian dad. Who was he to be a racist to a plant?

He shook his head and erased those thoughts, and the moment he poured his mana onto the creature in the shape of a cauldron, it was like watering a desert plant. This thing that seemed dead instantly came alive.

The creature’s vicious mouth started to swallow the ingredients placed on it. The carnivorous mouth even turned to him, as if it actually wanted to eat him as well. Kale only frowned at that. The Cauldron started to vibrate madly as he continued to pour more mana onto it.

Suddenly, a familiar wave of pain rushed into his mind. The damned plant beast was rebelling against him.

But Kale remained unperturbed. Using his previous experience of binding down the Beast Will, he also began to do the same with this one. Chaining down the creature with his mana.

However, he encountered a problem on that front. Frowning, Kale realized that, unlike the Beast Will that was on the Beast core, this one was not in an incorporeal form. So, the same method was not so effective.

On the other hand, time was also running out. The plant beast was not able to cause him much pain, but the problem was that he could not let it continue retaliating and devouring all the ingredients he had put into it.

His eyes flashed with a cold glint, and Kale focused hard on his mana control. This time, trying to fine-control this energy didn’t feel too hard, nor did it consume too much mental power from him.

Through the specific veins of the plant where mana traveled, Kale transformed his mana from the state of smooth flowing water to become rough spikes, which proceeded to cause the plant a great amount of pain. The Solvane Cauldron shuddered visibly.

Kale did not stop and delivered more pain by making his mana sharp and jagged. Only then did the digestion of the chimera plant slow down to a crawl.

He created a second stream of his mana, sending it towards the half-digested ingredients, which had been broken down due to the stomach fluids of the carnivorous plant and other digestive processes. In this state, those ingredients could now all be fused.

He started to control them using his mana.

To his shock, he found that this mana of his almost felt like an ethereal extension of himself; he could sense all that it touched in a strange way that even he himself could not describe properly. It was a magnificent feeling.

But he did not dwell on it too much, afraid that he would be sidetracked from what he was supposed to do. As he had to be extremely careful, even the smallest of faults would cause him to fail.

After all, from Grandmaster Kraul’s earlier words, it was easy to deduce that these tests were designed in a way that the candidates were prone to fail in them all.

So, Kale had to be extremely careful throughout the whole process. Drawing on his immense reservoir of knowledge, he followed the specific recipe for the pill he was creating, subtly controlling each broken-down ingredient as he mixed them.

His eyes sparked with a brilliant glow; technically speaking, this was just a chemical reaction.

Yet it was operated by magic and other supernatural forces.

He began to draw comparisons, with a rush of excitement, with his passion as a scientist.

The similarity between science and magic.

The ingredients were ground in a mortar and pestle to make the reactants easier to use in the chemical reaction.

The stomach of the Solvane Cauldron was a proper reaction environment.

The stomach fluids of the carnivorous plant were reagents that aided the chemical reaction, while his mana was the guiding hand that controlled how far into the reaction the procedure should be stopped.

Eventually, when all the chemical reactions were complete, the essence of each ingredient combined into a shiny, light-green liquid.

At this moment, the retaliation of the chimera plant of Solvane Cauldron intensified even more, for such a potent medicine was in its very stomach. Yet, it could not absorb the ball of energy into its own body.

Filled with immense anguish, the creature screeched, ignoring the pain to it by Kale.