Chapter 3862: Merging Properties

With the Artifact God busying herself soon, Alex thought of returning to his cultivation session. However, he was stopped from doing that.

"I just need a few weeks to a few months to analyze how these threads work together so I can figure out a way to turn them into the robe we need," she said. "After that comes the long and arduous task of turning all of these into threads, which I’ll need your help for."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "You want me to help you make the threads too?" he asked.

"No, nothing like that," she said. "I just need to use your Soul Space. Time moves faster there, after all."

Alex nodded slowly. "I see. Then I will wait here for you."

"Why don’t you learn the next stage of Artifact making in that time?" she asked, seeing as he was going to be alone for a while.

Alex raised an eyebrow. "What am I learning this time?" he asked.

"Well, you’ve learned how to recognize properties, haven’t you? Now it’s time to learn what you get when you merge two different materials. What is the resulting property?"

Alex looked down as he concentrated. "How do I do that? Do I just work with the materials, or is there a technique that will help me?"

"There’s no technique. Well, there are techniques to help you, but the way my master taught me, you will go much further if you learn it through trial and error and establish an instinct about these things. I suggest you take a few materials, try to formulate in your mind what the resulting property will be when you mix the two, and when you’ve come up with an answer, do the actual mixing. Then you can use the technique I gave you to learn the actual resulting aura. Compare and contrast, start filling in the gaps, and calibrate your understanding of how they work. The more you practice, the better you’ll get at it."

Alex more or less got the gist of what the Artifact God was talking about. "I understand. I will do as you ask."

Once the Artifact God focused on her own task, Alex focused on his. He brought out two random metals from his Soul Space and learned their properties. Using the technique the Artifact God had given him, he got information on the properties of both metals.

Once done, he placed them down and closed his eyes. Alex ruminated on the two properties, and even as he began to imagine how they would mix together, an idea already formed in his head.

Years of hypothesizing the combined properties of different ingredients that went into a pill had left him with an intuitive mind that helped him understand just what the resulting property would be. Not only that, Alex was already beginning to devise the various different attributes the resulting alloy would form should the amount of either of the two differ.

Just for his own ease, he kept in mind three different ideas of how they would react and then began working on them.

First, he formed an alloy with equal amounts of the metals by volume. The resulting metal had a property that was close enough to what he had suspected it would be, though not exactly the same.

Alex adjusted the results in his mind for the other two combinations. He did one part to three parts of both metals for his next turn, and the result came nearly the same as what he expected.

When he flipped the ratio to three parts to one part of the two metals, the result was perfectly what he imagined.

In just three tries, Alex had gotten the result he had expected to get.

Only an hour had passed since he started, and from what he understood, the Artifact God was going to take many more days. So he pulled out two other materials and started working on them.

Different materials interacted differently, so the properties were also different. While metal alloys mixed together well, not all materials could be combined like that. So, despite his success with the first one, Alex couldn’t find success as easily with the others.

Still, this was a learning process, and he learned slowly but surely. For a month and a half, he did nothing but try and work out the properties of various different types of materials, even ones that he wouldn’t naturally imagine going together.

After that time passed, the Artifact God finally stood from where she had remained all this time, working with the two threads, Sunhearts, and a variety of other minor materials that he couldn’t quite notice as well.

She walked up to Alex and looked down at him working.

"How’s it going?" she asked.

"Quite well, actually," Alex said as he looked up. "This turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be."

The Artifact God raised an eyebrow. "Really?" she asked. "Because this is what stumps most people. They struggle for years."

"I can see why," Alex said. "But my knowledge of Alchemy and pills ended up helping a lot more than I expected it to."

"Ah! I can see that being the case," the Artifact God said as she nodded along. "I didn’t consider that would be helpful at all. Do you want me to test you?"

"Sure," Alex said. "How do we do the test? It’s hard to exactly tell you the property of two merging materials to the finest degree."

"It’s simple. I’ll merge them a bunch of different ways, and you tell me which of them came from what I give you."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "That does work. I never considered trying something like that," he said before looking up at the Artifact God. "Let us start, then."

The Artifact God nodded. She closed her eyes for a moment and brought out two different tiny crystals, handing both to Alex.

Then, a moment later, she brought out 5 different mixed crystals that would form from those two in various ratios.

"What would that make?"