Arthur returned to John’s side and then took out everything he had gathered so far. “First I need to build a cauldron,” he held each ore with both hands, closed his eyes and started to circulate his spiritual energy fast inside his body.
The trick to make a good cauldron wasn’t to just add pieces of ores together, but to make sure each piece would be bathed with the same type of energy like what he was doing now.
And that process didn’t take more than ten minutes before he roughly refined all the pieces he got. “At least this would make it a basic cauldron, suited for this life saving task.”
He turned towards one of the barks he collected. This one was different from others in that it wasn’t a real bark of a tree, but a residual material gathered over time around a real bark.
“I hope it can work as a glue,” he held it before touching the tip with his fiery ore. The next thing that happened was for the fire to catch it and start to melt it like a candle.
“Nice and easy,” he calmly moved the melted liquid over the rough edges of the ore pieces. He didn’t have time to shape them to nicely fit each other, so he decided to use this as a glue material and to fill in the holes in between the ore pieces.
After covering all the edges he started to align them on top of the concave part, which formed the base of that cauldron.
“Almost set,” he muttered while glancing with content to the rough cauldron he just created. “It should do the job,” he glanced over at the extremely pale John before waving his hand over the cauldron and a gush of water appeared to fill part of it.
Then he took out the explosive ores from his ring and put them together.
“I hope it can withstand the heat,” he stood on the side, watching the cauldron getting hotter with each passing second.
And the ores under it started to rage with wildfire.
“The basic healing potion requires only to have a large concentration of energy inside the fluid,” he said while starting to cut the leaves to smaller pieces using his sword, crush the seeds with his hands, and squeeze the fruit over the top of the cauldron.
Even the pieces of bark he collected were cut with his sword to smaller pieces as small as he could before throwing everything at once in the boiling water.
And then he used his sword to mix everything together before closing his eyes and started to circulate his energy inside his meridians.
Despite him starting to overuse his recently collected energy without starting truly to cultivate or build his base, he knew it wasn’t too much to ask from such pure energy.
After all he already had the strong foundation inside his body that could sustain the pressure of his usage of the energy.
“It’s done,” after ten minutes most of the water had evaporated and only a small amount remained in the depth of the cauldron. “At least it can be used to make more,” he glanced at the cauldron before using his long sleeves to carry the hot cauldron and use it as a pot.
“Drink this,” he said, yet John didn’t react despite having his eyes semi-opened.
“Damn, he is already in a world of his own,” he couldn’t help but curse before he hurriedly put the cauldron down. He blew his hands to decrease the sense of extreme heat in them before he searched his ring for anything to be used.
“This necklace… it would do,” he took out a large necklace in the shape of a curved crescentic moon and had a deep groove in the middle before using it as a small cup and filled it with the potion.
“Drink this,” he put it in John’s mouth before returning again to refill it.
“I think this would do,” he muttered as he already made him drink what could be considered as two full potions. “As for these…” he glanced at what remained at the base of the cauldron and there was enough to make ten potions or even more.
“I shouldn’t let you be wasted,” he moved and filled the necklace before heading to his opened wound just below his knee and started to soak it with the potion.
Then he stood aside and waited.
“Neigh!”
All of a sudden that loud neigh came from his back, startling him. He hurriedly turned around and pointed his sword in reflex towards that huge horse’s face.
And that horse only glanced briefly at him like an adult gazing at a kid holding a useless stick.
“Neigh!”
The horse neighed again before it pointed its head down towards the direction of the cauldron and then turned to the back and walked a couple of steps there before stopping.
“Neigh!”
It neighed again as if it was urging him to come.
“Do you want this… potion of mine?” Arthur was speechless for a few moments before he realized what was going on. “But I can’t leave him alone,” he pointed to John who was now closing his eyes as if he was sleeping… or dying.
“Neigh,” the horse neighed then moved towards John as it bypassed Arthur and stopped beside John’s body and shook it with its head.
“Alright, alright,” Arthur understood his meaning before hurrying to carry the helpless body of his friend and let it fall over the back of the giant horse before he took in everything and walked to the depth of the darkness alongside the horse.
As he went deeper, the darkness started to prevail again and he couldn’t see clearly anymore. “Sorry pal, but I need to use my ores to see,” he took one explosive ore and let its light show him the way around.
And the horse didn’t show any sign of disapproval this time and kept walking in fast steps, or its steps were just too wide for Arthur to simply follow using his normal pace.