Card Apprentice Daily Log

Chapter 3133: Lifespan Extending Elixir

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Azorheim, Temporal Cave Valley, Temporal Cave No. ES3030

After adjusting the temporal speed of the cave and deciding on the first batch of people I would attend to, I used Hive Spirit to relay instructions to the selected individuals, ordering them to gather at the campus plaza immediately. From there, Henricks would bring them over while I worked on developing an elixir capable of extending the lifespan of Card Apprentices and humans alike.

The first batch contained exactly 3,463 Card Apprentices and mortals.

That was a ridiculously large number of people to move into another realm at once. Fortunately, I had Henricks to handle the transportation, and Azorheim didn’t charge people simply for entering the realm the way the Inter-Realm City did. As long as they followed Azorheim’s rules and didn’t cause any trouble, there was no reason for their presence to become a problem.

As for where I planned to put them all, the temporal cave itself was more than large enough to accommodate everyone. I would, however, have to spend some additional resources expanding its available space to suit my needs. Even with that extra expense, it was still considerably cheaper than using the Demon Merchant Code’s facilities.

With the logistics handled, I turned my attention to the lifespan-extending elixir.

I had Dredre search the Infinity Library for recipes capable of extending the natural lifespan. The initial results were enormous. The Infinity Library contained countless elixirs designed for prolonging life, repairing aging bodies, restoring vitality, or even forcibly extending one’s lifespan through increasingly exotic methods.

So I narrowed the search.

Humans shared enough biological similarities with numerous Dark races that there were quite a few suitable references. Unfortunately, that didn’t make the search particularly small. Even after specifying the desired effects, target races, cultivation levels, material requirements, compatibility, and lifespan extension I was looking for, I was still left with a mountain of information.

And would you look at that, I was in an Azorheim temporal cave. Here, I could afford to spend as much time as necessary studying the available recipes without having to worry about wasting time in the outside world without having to rely on my clones and Hive Spirit. I could read through the relevant records, compare different formulations, eliminate unsuitable ingredients, and work toward something that would be safe for both ordinary humans and Card Apprentices approaching the end of their natural lifespans.

By the time Henricks arrived with the first batch, I intended to have a clear idea of which recipe I wanted to use. Or, if none of the existing recipes satisfied my requirements, I would simply make one myself.

As I went through the information, I began grouping recipes that used similar ingredients or produced similar effects. It had been a while since I had devoted myself to pure research, and I found myself genuinely enjoying it. There was something satisfying about digging through mountains of knowledge, comparing different approaches, and slowly figuring out why certain formulations worked while others failed.

Once I had gone through the material and sorted the recipes according to their ingredients, effects, limitations, and side effects, Hive Spirit and I began testing them through simulations. We tested their effects on both Card Apprentices and humans, paying particular attention to how different bodies responded to the same formulation.

That allowed us to eliminate a massive number of recipes.

Some simply didn’t work on humans. Others worked on humans but failed when used on Card Apprentices. There were also recipes that technically achieved the desired result but came with such severe drawbacks that using them would have been little better than solving one problem by creating another. Some consumed enormous amounts of rare ingredients, while others extended lifespan at the cost of vitality, leaving the user alive but increasingly dependent on the elixir to maintain themselves.

Eventually, I was left with only a small heap of recipes that met my basic requirements.

At that point, I stopped sorting them.

Instead, I used everything I had learned from the research to start creating my own recipes.

I wasn’t interested in making just one universal lifespan-extending elixir. I wanted different formulations capable of producing different effects in humans and Card Apprentices alike. Some could focus on restoring vitality, others on repairing damage accumulated through aging, while others could focus primarily on extending the body’s natural lifespan.

Economical production, efficiency, and suitability for mass production were still important considerations, especially considering the number of requests waiting for me. But they weren’t the only things I cared about.

After going through that mountain of material, I had realized something rather important.

Extending someone’s lifespan could mean far more than simply making their heart beat for a few more decades.

What was the point of giving someone another thirty or forty years if every one of those years had to be spent relying on others just to survive? What was the point if they had to repeatedly sacrifice their dignity, endure constant pain, or remain trapped inside a body that could barely function?

That wasn’t really extending their life.

It was extending their suffering.

If someone spent every additional year wishing for death, then adding more years to their existence was little different from increasing their sentence.

A true lifespan-extending elixir should do more than increase the number of years remaining on someone’s clock. It should restore what aging had taken from them. Repair their ailments where possible. Restore vitality. Give their bodies enough strength to actually enjoy those additional years.

Even if it couldn’t return them completely to their youth, it should at least give them back a small piece of what it meant to truly live.

That was exactly the kind of lifespan-extending elixir I wanted to create.

With a clear goal in mind and the assistance of the Hive Spirit, I began formulating various recipes based on the physiological effects I needed to anticipate. Thanks to the reference materials I had just reviewed, I knew precisely what properties to target for my specific demographics: humans and Card Apprentices. Most of them were heavily aged, barely clinging to life through the artificial aid of baseline medicine and life-sustaining cards.