Matt nodded, that all made sense to him. They watched the first round progress in a comfortable silence, until the two hour time limit ended.
Nearly half of the two hundred thousand alchemists were eliminated for either failing to make the potion, or because the quality of their entries fell below the standards required to move on to the second round.
The second phase forced the alchemists to identify a variety of herbs and list their uses without using their AI. To make things interesting, it was set in faux rift situations, where herbs could be harder to identify than normal. It wasn’t a hard test considering everyone’s Tier, but if the contestant relied too much on their AI, or couldn’t handle the pressure, they could be eliminated at this phase.
For everyone else, it was about rapid
