The Immortal Coward: Path of the Aegis Cauldron

Chapter 8: The Soul-Cleansing Pill Experiment

Cold sweat began to seep down Zarox's back, soaking the servant's robes that still carried the lingering stench of the skin-mutation pill.

"Longevity pills?" he whispered with a trembling voice. "Are they crazy? If we hand those over, we'll never be able to reach immortality! Those are our life savings!"

The envoy from the Shadow Valley Sect, a man in a silver mask with a heavy aura of death, looked at Zarox with a look of contempt. He spat right at Zarox's feet before turning to leave, his black robes billowing sharply. "Prepare yourselves, Heaven's Peak. Our leader, the great alchemist of the Shadow Valley, will arrive tomorrow when the sun reaches its highest point. If you don't have the guts, just hand over the keys to your pill vault and bow before us!"

After the figure vanished like smoke, a haunting silence filled the pavilion. Elder Kael rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowing sharply. "The longevity pill reserves are the backbone of this sect. If we lose, every disciple here, including you and me, will lose access to the life energy required for cultivation."

Zarox felt as if the world around him was crumbling. "Elder, couldn't you just refuse the challenge? Just say you're sick, or that you're on a long journey to find rare plants at the edge of the world!"

Kael snorted, his eyes staring at Zarox with a glint that made the young man want to bolt out the window immediately. "In the tradition of alchemy, refusing a challenge is the same as admitting defeat."

"And the loser will lose everything, including the sect's dignity. Zarox, you've just proven that you have a 'talent' for producing unpredictable alchemy reactions. You will be the one representing the sect."

"WHAT?!" Zarox almost jumped as high as the pavilion's ceiling. "I just joined the Medicine Pavilion today! I haven't even memorized the names of all the herbs here! Why not Aidos instead? He looks absolutely furious and vengeful, that's great fuel for a competition!"

Aidos, who was still covered in green slime and continuously making plop-plop sounds as his skin suffered minor explosions, stared at Zarox with bloodshot eyes. "I'll kill you if I can move more than two steps, brat! You destroyed my left hand with that cursed pill of yours!"

Zarox turned toward Elder Kael with a pitiful expression. "See? He's incompetent! He can't even control his own skin right now. I can't represent the sect, Elder. I'm a coward. If I see a scary enemy, I'll faint before they can even pull out their cauldron. Fainting is a disgrace to the sect, isn't it?"

Elder Kael walked toward the alchemy table, then piled up a handful of rare ingredients that seemed to glow dimly. "You will train all night. If you fail, I will personally ensure you are sent to the Forbidden Forest as monster bait. At least there, your fear will be useful for attracting predators."

That night, the Medicine Pavilion turned into a workshop of madness. Zarox didn't sleep a wink. He kept concocting, discarding, and repeating formulas under Elder Kael's strict supervision. His Aegis Cauldron vibrated almost non-stop, processing ingredients that should have been impossible to combine.

"The dosage is too high, Zarox!" Kael scolded as the cauldron emitted pink smoke that started eroding the pavilion walls like acid.

"I just want the pill to provide maximum protection! If I'm protected, I can focus on winning!" Zarox shouted while continuing to stir with hands that shook violently. He felt as if every second he spent here was a life-or-death gamble. Outside the window, he heard whispers from other disciples about 'the kitchen servant who is going to ruin the sect's future.'

Zarox ignored everything. He focused on one thing: survival. If he won this challenge, he would gain broader access to alchemy knowledge, which meant a more perfect immortality pill. If he lost, he died. A very simple choice, yet an agonizing one.

As the sun began to rise over the horizon, Zarox finally breathed a sigh of relief. Inside the cauldron, there were three pills glowing with an unusual color: transparent with a slowly pulsing gold core. It looked... unstable. Extremely unstable, in fact.

"Is this... is it going to explode?" Zarox whispered, staring at his creation in horror.

Elder Kael approached, sniffed the aroma of the pills, and his eyes widened. "Zarox, what did you mix into this? This scent... it's like life essence that has been forcibly compressed."

"I put in a bit of powder from my old lucky charm," Zarox answered innocently. "I thought, maybe luck could help with the energy stability?"

Before Kael could reply, the pavilion door was kicked open violently. The messengers from Shadow Valley reappeared, this time accompanied by an old man in black robes with an aura so oppressive it made the tables in the pavilion shake. Behind them, dozens of disciples from the Shadow Valley Sect cheered triumphantly, as if they had already won the competition before it even began.

"Sky Peak!" the old man shouted in a hoarse voice that echoed through every corner of the sect. "Prepare your best alchemist to be humiliated before the eyes of the whole world!"

Zarox stepped forward with knees that felt like jelly. He clutched his cauldron tightly, feeling like he was carrying a time bomb. He looked toward the crowd of Sky Peak disciples watching from a distance. Every eye was on him. An overwhelming sense of panic gripped his chest, making it hard to breathe. 

"Master," Zarox whispered to Kael, who stood beside him. "Am I allowed to run in the opposite direction now?"

"One step, and you lose your head," Kael answered coldly.

Zarox had no choice. He walked to the center of the main field, where a large alchemy table had been prepared under the scorching sun. The alchemist from Shadow Valley, a man with a pale face and long black fingernails, was already waiting there with a sinister smile.

"So, this is your champion alchemist? A fat, trembling kitchen servant?" the man laughed, his voice sounding like metal scraping together. He flicked his hand, and a giant cauldron that looked like a monster's skull appeared over a dark blue spiritual fire. 

Zarox swallowed hard; he tried to place his cauldron on the provided stove. However, just as he was about to start, he felt something was wrong. He reached into his pocket; the challenge letter from the enemy was tucked there, and somehow, the letter began to emit a burning heat.

Zarox pulled the letter out, and his eyes widened. The letter wasn't just an invitation. It was a tracking talisman that was now emitting a black aura toward the enemy's cauldron. The enemy's cauldron suddenly vibrated, and the liquid inside began to turn into a deadly poison ready to explode toward the audience.

"Damn it!" Zarox shouted. "He set a trap in his own cauldron!"

Without thinking twice, Zarox grabbed a handful of the ingredients he had just concocted during the night, a highly unstable purple liquid, and threw it right into the enemy's skull cauldron.

"NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" the enemy alchemist screamed, but it was too late. The cauldron let out a massive boom, and instead of a pill being created, a thick mist appeared whose smell made anyone who inhaled it feel like dancing uncontrollably.

As the mist blanketed the field, Zarox saw an opportunity. He grabbed his own cauldron, intending to run away, but he instead crashed into something hard behind the fog. It wasn't a human, but the figure he had been avoiding all this time—the Leader of the Shadow Valley Sect himself, standing behind the mist with a sword already drawn, ready to finish Zarox right then and there.

"You think you can stop us with dirty tricks, little servant?" the Sect Leader's voice sounded right in front of Zarox's face. The sword swung sharply, cutting through the air, and Zarox could only stand frozen.