One for initialization, via traveling hexarm. Fifty-five to extrude copper and quicksilver. Three to rectify polymer timing, moving waste elsewhere for further initialization. Two to bundle the polymers. Eight to purify to silver, six to project to silver. Four to reconnect and reshape. Eleven to gild. Two to transport. Thirty to disassemble into Critellium. There's one that got away--a fourth initalization wand is possible in the extruder, which can save 1 instruction, but traveling hexarms fight me every step of the way. I could not solve the modular geometry with a larger hexarm, and length-1 seems insufficient to get the last atom in place.

You know, there's not a purpose to it, at least that I'm aware of. A few texts about error-correction mention RI in theory, but not in practice. It has always been, to me, a rebellion against proper alchemy. Build tremendously expensive, sprawling machines, scribble all over your transmutation engine with track and hexarms, and look your professor in the eye and say that it's optimal. It saves one instruction. They can't fault you. But you do have to learn many advanced techniques and learn your engine inside and out to study RI, so I suppose that is why it is still an official, yet strongly discouraged and unpopular, path. If you have mastered RI, you have mastered alchemical engineering--and though it may bother those who taught us, N. Tolomeo finds it more important that we learn alchemy. Why not let our mischievous streaks take us to expertise? Why not present us with the shining achievement of Maximos Critelli and dare us to *ruin* it?

- Alchemist Kazyan, /u/StillNotABrick