Gulp. Liam swallowed the potion as a look of relief washed over his face. The red potion slowly healed all the wounds and the tears in his body that were drained of every juice inside, thanks to the mana core and the nether core clashing again.
The entire process took about fifteen minutes but it might as well have been hours because it was fifteen minutes of pure agony. In that fifteen minutes, Liam felt debilitated for almost two entire minutes while the rest he was at least able to maintain some amount of sanity.
This was extremely dangerous because, for those two minutes, he would be completely vulnerable. However, this was already the best he could do.
Healing a broken mana core was not hard. For that matter healing a broken nether core was not hard either. Perhaps for a low-tier world like Earth, these things were a death sentence but for higher worlds, it was as simple as curing a disease or regrowing a limb.
But one still needed a good alchemist to achieve that. Or at least have enough wealth to afford the pill.
Thankfully, the fairy had given him the recipes for it, along with several other recipes. It was by no means a walk in the park and after many many iterations of failed concoctions, Liam managed to prepare several pills for recovering both his mana core and his nether core.
However, the big problem still remained. The two couldn't co-exist and no matter how much Liam tried, he was back to square one again and again, every single time wiggling on the ground like a worm.
Without this no matter what he tried Liam would only be completely naked and vulnerable in this dangerous place. Even if he returned home, he would be no match for Crawford, the PVP tower master, let alone the divine temple high priestess.
It was a non-starter for him to continue being in this weak state. Instead of waiting for a limit breaker fruit to magically fall into his lap, Liam wanted to do something in the meantime that would help him even if it was a little bit.
Keeping this in mind, he spent the past few months buried in the recipes he had learned so far and understood the field of alchemy from scratch. He went through every single herb that he had knowledge about and studied them from top to bottom.
He studied why certain herbs were used for certain recipes and how they modified the final concoction. He even studied the way in which herbs were used as catalysts for smithing and other crafts.
Sitting inside the stone tablet world he had spent days and days understanding every little thing about this field as fast as he could expending tremendous amounts of mental strength. He only stopped when he was utterly exhausted and even then he used a mental rejuvenation pill that he concocted to get right back up. Eventually, he stumbled onto something.
It was not a perfect solution. In fact, it was far from a perfect solution but it was something he could work with and his gamble was based on a calculated risk that he already knew the outcome of.
Liam had survived so far with a completely broken down mana core and a completely broken down nether core. Keeping this in mind, he thought of a bold idea. He wanted to try what if he healed his mana core and nether core partially but not completely?
After diving into a couple more days of research he created a pill that would heal one's core almost completely but not 100%.
With this 'cracked' mana core, he also tried to create a 'cracked' nether core. While a broken mana core and a broken nether core could co-exist, he wanted to see if a cracked mana core and cracked nether core could co-exist.
To Liam's surprise, his wild idea had worked!
However, it came with a price. When he actually executed the idea, the cracked cores did not really stay cracked for long. The cracks started widening and slowly the entire core eventually became broken down, thereby sapping away his power completely.
And thus started the vicious cycle.
If someone else learned about this they would have been shaken to their core and would have run away in the other direction but Liam was truly desperate. He needed to get stronger to get back and reclaim his home before something like that ceased to exist.
So he sat down and created several modified mana core healing pills and nether core healing pills. Every time he consumed them, his body would be healed and two powerful cores sat in the center of his body.
However, in a matter of days, this started changing. The cores started deteriorating and eventually, they clashed against each other and completely broke down, in the process also tearing apart his body and bringing him right back to zero again.
At this time, Liam consumed the pills again only to torture himself all over again. He had to continue the cycle if he had to regain at least some of his fighting ability. It was not his best but with the cracked core he was able to get 85% of his maximum capacity at the right time.
For now, he had to work with this. It was at least better than nothing. To this mix, he also added a healing potion to replenish his body reserves. Each time the cores broke and reformed he was putting both his mind and his body through a lot.
Liam knew that down the line he would have to pay a price for this too but for now, this patch-up job had to work. Especially because his main strength, his soul, was still in the repair phase. Unlike broken or cracked mana cores and nether cores, healing one's soul proved to be a lot more tricky.
The soul healing recipe that he received from the fairy did not quite cut it. Even with him altering the pill as much as he could, he couldn't succeed. This meant that he would have to rely on his 'cracked' cores to navigate through this stage. No matter what he was determined to make it work. Fate was not going to hand anything to him but he was going to survive nevertheless and claw his way up from here.
A few minutes later the pain was replaced with a cold indifferent look as Liam once again continued heading inside the forbidden territory. He had already gained a lot but there was a lot more left to gain.