"Thank you, Your Grace. Praise the Lady!"
Crestet nodded. "To advance is to serve the Goddess better, so that you can protect our fellow believers. You must remember this—trust me—it'll help you fight the temptation of losing control. The 'acting method' can help you digest the potion and lower the risk of losing control, but it's not the be-all and end-all. To a certain extent, you can even confuse playing the role with your own existence. You know, there are many actors in the theater that develop severe psychological issues. At a certain level, you might really go insane."
"In addition," Crestet emphasized, "not only is losing control related to the potion, it's also closely related to your emotions and mental health. The most important thing for a Beyonder is to control yourself. Only then will you be able to withstand the temptations of evil gods and devils, resisting emotions like greed and jealousy and the erosion of desire. Of course, I don't mean that you should get rid of all your emotions and desires, because that is something that no human or even demigod can do; perhaps only some special Sequences are able to achieve that sort of state."
Klein recalled. "We must keep our emotions and desires at a reasonable level and not allow them to drive us to do something irrational and abnormal."
Crestet nodded. "Yes."
"That's all I wanted to warn you about. Now, I'll pass you the Clown potion formula and the relevant ingredients."
He turned around and moved a few steps, blocking Klein's view. When the surrounding lights vanished, Klein understood that the formula and ingredients were in the suitcase that stored the holy artifact.
Soon the light returned. Crestet presented the items on the long table.
Among them, the most eye-catching item was a palm-sized gray goat horn. It was crystal clear, swirling with colors and faint layers of unique patterns. Next to it was a blue rose with red veins on the petals that connected them together to form a human face with a smile.
Hahaha, woowoowoo, hahaha, woowoowoo... Klein heard illusory laughter and crying diffused with each other, and he saw pieces of gray halos floating in midair.
A crystal of the single horn of a mature Hornacis gray mountain goat and a complete stalk of a human-faced rose. The main ingredients of the Clown potion! He nodded and took a few steps towards the long table.
"80 milliliters of pure water, 5 drops of tornapple juice, 7 grams of black-rimmed sunflower powder, 10 grams of golden cloak grass powder, 3 drops of poison hemlock..." Klein looked at the unfurled goatskin parchment and compared the written content with the formula that he had memorized.
With the apparatus in the alchemy room, he distilled some pure water needed by the potion. Then, he washed a black metal pot and threw in the supplementary ingredients one after another.
As the Beyonder ingredients hadn't catalyzed just yet, he didn't see any obvious changes in the liquid in the metal pot.
When he was done with the preparations, Klein cast his gaze at the two main ingredients.
He picked up the human-faced rose and threw it into the metal pot. After a few seconds, when the strange flower touched the liquid, it produced a sizzling sound, and the illusory laughter became shrill.
Klein then grabbed the crystalline mountain goat horn and threw it into the metal pot.
The terrifying laughter disappeared, and the surrounding gray halos slowly converged into the metal pot. Klein saw the liquid was colored in a mix of gold, yellow, and red, with the three colors remaining distinct at their boundaries.
There were bubbles churning and fizzing from the liquid. The scene reminded Klein of the carbonated drink Sprite.
Klein poured all the liquid from the black metal pot into a glass bottle, then raised his hand as he looked at the tri-colored liquid.
Crestet, who had been silent the entire time, said, "Don't hesitate. I didn't notice any problems with the concoction of your potion."
Klein raised the bottle, gulping down the potion.
Bitter! So bitter!
Klein's face was flushed red. The rest of his body was experiencing a similar reaction. As for his spirit and mind, they felt like they had been extracted into a thin needle, fusing with the potion, drop by drop.
Then his mind reflected his figure. Due to this strange projection, Klein discovered that he could precisely control his facial and bodily motions.
Meanwhile, his ears buzzed. He heard murmurs and shouting echoing around him—something that hadn't happened in a while.
Hornacis... Flegrea... Hornacis... Flegrea... Hornacis... Flegrea...
Klein imagined the layered spherical light and slowly entered a Cogitation state. Bit by bit, he escaped from the state of having his spirituality seep out. At that moment, he knew that he had advanced successfully, becoming a Sequence 8 Clown.