CHAPTER 570: CHAPTER 535: NEW ABILITY

Eventually, the Empress obtained a divine elixir from Perfikot, along with five legendary potions.

In exchange, Perfikot received a divine artifact from the Royal Family’s treasury.

Unlike the previous artifacts, this one is a defensive and auxiliary artifact, a brooch embedded with a silver gem.

The usage is very simple, just wear it on the chest, and the brooch can provide tranquility, calmness, and continuous physical recovery.

Although it doesn’t instantly refresh the body to its optimal state, the gentle continuous recovery is still very practical for the wearer.

As a defensive artifact, in times of danger, this brooch can deploy a shield strong enough to withstand attacks from an Extraordinary of rank.

According to Perfikot’s estimates, the shield deployed by this brooch is sufficient to protect her from at least a team of Steam Knights for a quarter of an hour, making it a very powerful shield indeed.

For an individual, this brooch can serve as a life-saving card, and its everyday wear can keep the user in a consistently good state, justifying its title as a divine artifact.

After obtaining this brooch, Perfikot wore it on her own chest.

However, as an alchemist, Perfikot was more curious about the brooch’s manufacturing process.

If she could replicate this shield, she could produce more powerful Steam Knight armors, or even Godslaying Armor.

Moreover, stepping back, purely from an alchemist’s curiosity, Perfikot was very interested in the brooch’s crafting technique and operation principle.

After all, for a brooch to maintain its effect eternally, it presents a very intriguing research subject for Perfikot.

Simply put, these magic or alchemical tools known as divine artifacts can be seen as infinite perpetual energy sources.

From the materials Perfikot currently holds, it’s known that these artifacts have existed for at least several hundred to a thousand years, and it piques curiosity as to how they have continued operating and maintaining energy for such long ages.

Limited by the preciousness of these artifacts, no one has dared to dismantle them for research, which has resulted in past research by countless alchemists yielding mainly crude imitations.

In fact, the research over the millennia by most alchemists on these artifacts has contributed to the foundation of today’s traditional alchemy knowledge system.

This is why today’s traditional alchemy is hard-pressed to produce anything awe-inspiring, and before Perfikot publicly introduced Imaginary Alchemy, the biggest role of alchemy was to replace high-precision machining and assist industrial development.

As for alchemical products that could improve people’s livelihoods? Sorry, most traditional alchemists looked down on this.

In a certain sense, their characters and styles mirrored those of the mages.

They disdained to lower their noble heads and overlook the hardships of the common people’s lives.

For example, when Perfikot lived in Langton, the city suffered from coal dust and smoke pollution due to heavy steam engine usage, a problem easily solved by any alchemist above standard competence.

Even when someone spent vast sums seeking a solution, those traditional alchemists couldn’t produce satisfactory results.

It wasn’t until Perfikot, suffering from the coal smoke emitted by her lab’s steam engine, nearly triggered asthma, that she designed a smoke-filtering device, solving the problem.

Even when Perfikot already shared the solution with other alchemists, they still arrogantly refused to address Langton’s coal dust pollution.

Hence, despite the existence of Extrordinaries, and capable alchemists and mages performing unimaginable feats, they contribute little to societal development and livelihood improvements.

Some might think they would have made significant progress in replicating divine artifacts since they ignore livelihood and focus on artifact research, yet such is not the case.

The simple reason is: it’s just too difficult.

Though exceptional talents created powerful alchemical or magical devices over the past millennia, juxtaposing them against true artifacts reveals their poor imitation.

However, this changed significantly after Perfikot made Imaginary Alchemy public.

Young alchemists with ideas, creativity, and the drive to realize them, previously hampered by traditional alchemists monopolizing knowledge dissemination and promotion channels, promptly transformed their ideas into reality under the aid of Imaginary Alchemy, ushering societal transformation.

Although it’s early to see innovations drastically impacting society now due to time constraints, some of the results submitted already promise an exciting future for Perfikot.

Of course, Perfikot herself dared not dismantle artifacts for research due to their invaluable uniqueness, irrecoverable if lost.

However, after creating the divine elixir and breaking Weir’s curse to reach a new realm via the elixir, page six of the Jade Record was revealed.

The capability provided by page six granted Perfikot a means to tackle the research on artifacts.

Because the ability on page six is — replication.

An ability seemingly bland, appearing somewhat useless.

Depending on the complexity of the object being replicated, it consumes a huge amount of Perfikot’s spiritual power to produce an identical copy.

There are no differences between the two, except one is a replica, nothing more.

Initially, the ability seemed ordinary enough for Perfikot to dismiss it as useless.

Until she attempted replicating a pocket watch and fully dismantled it, finally realizing, "The original can’t be dismantled, but the replica can, right? It’s dismantling shouldn’t pose a problem."

Thus, Perfikot replicated a new brooch and dismantled it, launching a novel study into artifacts.