In Mushoku Tensei with an A.I. Chip

Alchemy. It was this field of potioneering that helped the Original springboard his way past his peers at the beginning of his journey which allowed him to rise all the way up to become a Breaking Dawn monarch. 

In the Magus World, the Original had been able to capitalise on the A.I. Chip's computational ability and processing power to perfect his potioneering skill, improve existing potion recipes, deduce incomplete recipes and more. 

With the A.I. Chip's help, the Original managed to massively increase his Magic Power and Spiritual Force at a time when the body he inhabited was not so talented and lacked necessary resources. 

In short, the Original's situation has been rather similar to the split soul's circumstances in this new world. 

The native's body the split soul inhabited just wasn't that talented in magic in all honesty. Despite Luke dedicating nearly all his time and energy in growing his mana reserves, he was stymied by biological limitations of a lacking natural talent. 

But Luke wasn't someone who simply said 'oh well, it is what it is', and made the best of what he had. 

Just as the Original had done so, Luke would use Alchemy to increase his natural potential or failing that, brute force his way into expanding his magical capacity. 

There was one hitch in his plan, however. 

The Alchemy of this world was incredibly poorly developed. To the extent that it was baffling to Luke. It wasn't even suitable to call the potion-making of this world 'alchemy', as they merely made concoctions without any magic involved.

Alchemy in the Magus World was a combination of ingredient processing and spellcasting. Magic was involved in nearly every step of the alchemical process of potion making. Yet the alchemists of this world had no such practice. They just mixed the ingredients together in certain combinations and processes and called what they made 'potions'. 

Based on his, and the A.I. Chip's observations, everything in this world innately possessed mana. A human, an ant, a blade of grass, heck even a rock. The only thing that differed was the amount of mana it had. 

A regular human might possess 1 unit of mana, while an ant would have 0.0001, for instance.

Mana concentration would in turn alter the entity or object it was in. 

It was commonly held that animals with a larger than normal concentration of mana resulted in what was known as monsters. Magic herbs and even magical ores with special properties were magical because they contained more mana than their more mundane counterparts. 

In a world where mana was everywhere and anywhere, how was the most advanced potion invented by the Asuran alchemists an aphrodisiac!? 

No need to even mention elixirs that could raise Magic Power or Spiritual Force, even healing potions were not developed past the stage of healing balms and salves that could only repair surface level cuts and bruises. 

It was dumbfounding, and Luke could only conclude four possibilities from the available evidence. 

1. Potioneering and Alchemy just worked differently in this world, and even mana filled ingredients didn't necessarily mean the alchemy Luke was familiar with in the Magus World would be the same everywhere else.

2. The sheer commonality and availability of things like Healing Magic and Touki meant there was little need for alchemists to invent healing potions or body strengthening elixirs. Thus, Alchemy was a path less trodden.

3. Alchemy that produced potions of true potency and efficacy was, for some reason, taboo or monopolized by a hidden organisation. And the methods to make them in the common consciousness had simply been lost to time.

4. The inhabitants of this world simply never tried making any potions for purposes past their superficial and immediate needs. 

And based on what Luke had observed in this world, from things like a distinct inability to cast spells chantlessly or lacking a systemized training methods for generating Touki, it was very likely to be option number 4 - the people here were just too unimaginative. 

Not stupid per se, just… lacking the initiative to stress test and break preconceived notions or commonly established facts and rules. It was no wonder why magic and swordsmanship barely developed after thousands of years, and technology in this world stagnated at the iron age. 

The scientist in Luke could never allow him to just take anything he saw or learned for what it apparently was. He loved to poke and prod the supposed fundamental laws of the universe, to record, measure, compare, replicate, enhance and innovate. 

Which was what brought him to now, only an hour after the slightly tense breakfast with his parents. 

Luke had been making preparations for a month now, since he decided to stop relying on the natural growth of his mana capacity through training and maturity. 

He has been bulk purchasing samples of every existing herb, animal and monster part through the local Adventurer's guild. He was able to afford the expenditure by relying on the allowance he had been getting from his parents and grandparents ever since he was five. 

Valentina gave him a tidy sum of 5 gold coins every month for buying anything he wanted. Selena slipped with a gold coin or two every once in a while based on how cute he acted on that particular day. 

Amarant was the most generous, setting aside a hundred gold coins every year after Luke had talked him into helping him learn financial management skills through saving and investing.

Pilemon gave him the customary allowance of 1 gold coin a month, which was a lot more than what the average commoner family made every month. 

That was not all of Luke's wealth either. He also had on him several magic items gifted by Anthony to his apprentice. The value of these magic items, if sold, would be a little over 1000 gold coins. 

In total, Luke had around 800 gold coins of liquid assets, and another thousand or so if he decided to sell the magic items Anthony gave him. Not that he would of course. 

He gave 500 gold coins to the procurer for the Notos Greyrats, who was basically someone well connected with merchants and could get whatever the Notos Greyrats wanted as long as they could afford it, to purchase samples of every possible ingredient including herbs and monster parts. 

After a month, the procurer had done commendably, stocking up a warehouse with over a thousand samples of ingredients. Less than half the money Luke gave him had been spent so far, and this was only the first batch of goods the procurer had gotten. There would undoubtedly be more ingredients coming from other regions where they grew exclusively while some only bore fruit or bloomed during certain seasons. 

Compiling a comprehensive compendium of every possible ingredient that took into account every species, variant or genome of the flora and fauna of the Six-Sided world would be a monumental and massive undertaking. Just trying to compile all the different types of fungi alone would likely be over ten thousand different types. 

The easiest to procure ingredients, which were the most common and easy to get ahold of would be stocked very quickly. For everything else, it would take much, much longer. This was a massive undertaking that had a timeframe of decades to complete. The hard part now was for Luke to scan each and every one of the samples, analyse its molecular structure to build an extensive, comprehensive record of ingredients in this world. 

The point of the exercise was naturally for the A.I. Chip to be able to cross reference with the surviving records it salvaged of ingredients from the Magus World, to find comparability with the potion recipes remaining in its databases. 

While many flora and fauna of the Six-Sided world bore a strange resemblance to the ones from the Magus World, like apples and chickens for instance, they might possess vastly different alchemical properties. 

This was because it was a different world entirely, of course, but it was also because mana was suffused into everything in this world. Not even the A.I. Chip could predict what effects this may have in potioneering without further analysis. 

Once Luke, or rather, the A.I. Chip had built up a sufficient database on the ingredients from the Six-Sided world; it could begin running simulations to replace the ingredients in the potion recipes from the Magus World. 

This would be a time-consuming process, no two ways about it since it would be essentially brute-forcing trial and error through the immense computational abilities of the A.I. Chip, and there was no guarantee it would work either. 

Luke could just be wasting his own time and money by indulging in pointless experimentation. Nonetheless, he would never know if he didn't try. 

With that thought, Luke picked up the first herb and started scanning it with the A.I. Chip.