As soon as he swallowed it, he mentally prepared himself to find himself flying up above his spiritual sea, facing another monster in front of him. However, all he got was a bunch of new notifications.
'Huh?' he thought, 'what's going on?'. He saw the notification and was surprised that he just got the points with no problem.
"Was the last time a fluke then?" the thought of it made him scratch his head. "Ok, I will try this one more time and see if it really was a fluke or not. If nothing happens, I will go back to making pills," he said as he pulled out another monster core from his bag.
From the aura, he could easily tell it belonged to an Organ Tempering 1st realm monster. Without thinking, he put the core in his mouth and swallowed. He was half expecting to just see another set of notifications, but instead, he found himself in a familiar place.
'It happened once more,' he was shocked. 'Then that means that in front of me is…' he slowly looked forward to seeing something clearly visible in the otherwise black sky.
The monster was a bull-like monster with tusks. It suddenly saw Alex and started running towards him.
"Still slow for a monster that is supposed to be in the organ tempering realm. I wonder If I am the stronger here or the monsters are just that weaker in my spiritual sea?"
Similar to last time, it took some effort, but he defeated the monster. As he looked at the corpse, his spiritual sea started to glow. Yellow light started shining from the spiritual sea, surrounding a small shadow. The yellow aura started covering everything and just like last time, it devoured both him and the corpse.
Alex found himself back in the alchemy room as a bunch of notifications went off.
"So, it wasn't really a mistake, huh. Monsters do show up in my head when I eat the pills," he said as he sighed. "This monster was weak, comparatively, but what would happen if a strong one showed up."
"Would I die if I ate that one core?" he wondered. He sent his consciousness into his storage bags to search for it. He had never really taken it out or done anything with it as he had felt a bit guilty about it, but now he was thankful he didn't.
He quickly found it and took it out. The Mother cat's monster core. A very thick aura started to permeate from the core as it filled up the room.
Alex's body started to shake as he had two different feelings in his mind. One was an instinctual feeling of fear and made him want to get away from it. While the other was an instinctual feeling of eating, that made him want to devour the core.
Thankfully, the two feelings counteracted each other and helped him keep a clear mind. The aura was something he hadn't felt ever. When the mother cat died, her aura had all but gone, so she couldn't make Alex fear her. But now that he was looking at the core, he started to wonder just how strong the cat monster really was.
Just as he was thinking that his left arm started itching. He tried to scratch the itch away but it didn't go away. "Huh? Did the wound from the saber not heal properly?" he wondered as he kept on scratching it.
He put the monster core back into his bag, and suddenly the itching stop. "Huh?" he was surprised. "Did it…" he took out the monster core once more.
The monster core filled the room with its aura once more and his left arm started to itch as well. "What is happening?" he was surprised. He tried putting the monster core back in and taking it back out. Each time he did that his left arm would either start to itch or stop itching.
He stripped his upper half, revealing his smooth, white skin except for that one scar the wolf gave him. He took out the core once more and realized it was exactly this scar that was itching.
He slowly brought the core towards his arm and it started itching more and more. Finally, he tapped his scar with the core.
A bright light flashed from his scar as something shot out. Alex stumbled back in fear as he tried to at what has just come out of his arm.
"Huh?" he was even more surprised now. "No way!! It's you. How did you?" he couldn't come up with any questions to ask.
In front of him was a small monster trying to nibble on the monster core that it took from Alex just now. The little monster was barely any bigger than his actual palm and had white fur all over its body. It was the little white kitten.
It was the same little white kitten that he fought for and nearly died saving. The mother and son pair of the cat monster had disappeared while he was near death and he had not been able to find where they had gone as not even the elders had found anything.
But now, the little cat was in front of him. He finally got out of his surprise and realized the little kitten was trying to eat its mother's core. Alex didn't care if the kitten ate its mother's core or not as it might end up benefiting it in the end. However, if the same thing that happened to him, happened to the little cat, It would certainly take a lot of harm.
"No, don't eat that. Give it to me," Alex said as he tried to take back the core.
"MEOW," the little purred and moved away from the core. Alex was stunned once more as he couldn't help but ask,
"Did… Did you just understand me?"