Ultra-Level Weeb: Rise in an Awakened World

The previous night had been... eventful.

And, unfortunately for Max, also surprisingly exhausting. Not because of the system. Not because of studying potion recipes. But because he’d ended up making far more trips to the bathroom than any reasonable person should’ve needed in a single night.

Enough, in fact, that Zerena had eventually frowned at him over breakfast and asked whether he’d upset his stomach. Max had immediately denied it.

There was no way he could admit the real culprit. Or, more specifically...

Her butt.

And those bare thighs.

After spending an embarrassing portion of his previous life relying almost entirely on imagination, actually being allowed to touch them had turned out to be catastrophically effective.

His brain had never really recovered.

Truthfully...

Max would’ve much preferred skipping those private sessions altogether. Doing it with Zerena sounded infinitely better. Unfortunately, he wasn’t delusional enough to think he was there yet.

There were still plenty of boundaries left to chip away at. One ridiculous system task after another, one reluctant sigh after another.

If things kept going this way, maybe one day she’d treat giving him a handjob the same way she now treated kissing.

As an unbelievably annoying chore.

And if fortune smiled on him after that. Maybe a blowjob wouldn’t sound completely impossible either.

It was an absurdly optimistic plan. Then again, so was most of Max’s life lately, so he endured it.

Morning would come soon enough, and with it another chance to complete the system tasks.

Unfortunately, Zerena wasn’t in the mood.

Which, translated into practical terms, meant she had absolutely no desire to spend another morning with Max’s saliva all over her breasts, mouth, and armpits.

So, with all the mercy of an overworked supervisor, she shooed him toward something actually productive.

Potion making.

And so, instead of enjoying another round of highly questionable system tasks, one could now witness the rather tragic sight of Max inside the laboratory, cleaning stone mortars, pestles, glassware, and the large black cauldron sitting proudly in the center of the room.

Honestly, he would’ve preferred one of those elegant Chinese-style cauldrons with the little handles on the sides.

Instead, Zerena had bought what looked like the kind of cauldron witches probably argued over in children’s fairy tales.

Still...

Appearance wasn’t everything.

The thing was forged from a metal with remarkably high mana conductivity, and the runes engraved across its surface allowed the heat and mana flow to be controlled with surprising precision.

Now that everything was finally ready, Max began preparing the ingredients.

First came the Sunpetal Flowers, their petals left to soak in warm water so their medicinal properties could slowly infuse into the liquid.

Next were the Redleaf Herbs. Rather than boiling them immediately, Max crushed the fresh leaves into a thick, dark-green paste.

The dried Azureleaf came after that, its brittle leaves ground into fine flakes, ready to dissolve more easily during brewing.

As for the Silverroot...

That part was refreshingly simple.

It was already sold as a fine powder, leaving Max with one less thing to prepare.

Normally, boiling herbs was the easiest way to draw out their essence.

The Redleaf Herb, however, was an exception.

Too much of the Redleaf Herb’s healing properties remained trapped inside the plant fibers themselves. Simply tossing the leaves into boiling Mana Water would leave a surprising amount of those medicinal compounds behind, wasting one of the herb’s greatest strengths.

Instead, the crushed paste was mixed directly into Mana Water and stirred continuously.

A simple set of heating runes engraved around the cauldron kept the Mana Water warm rather than boiling, allowing the healing oils and mana-rich essence to slowly seep out of the crushed leaves without damaging them. The constant stirring helped separate the useful essence from the plant material. As the process continued, the exhausted fibers gradually gathered along the inner walls of the cauldron, where they were scraped away little by little.

What remained was a faint green medicinal liquid.

Technically, it could already be called a healing potion.

Realistically?

It was closer to an expensive herbal tonic.

It could help the body recover, soothe internal discomfort, and slightly accelerate the healing of small scratches and bruises, but that was about it. On its own, it lacked the mana density and stabilizing components needed to become a true potion.

Once the extraction was complete, the mixture was carefully poured into another container and left to cool.

The cauldron was cleaned before a fresh batch of Mana Water was poured in.

This time, Max activated the Fire Runes engraved around the cauldron.

This was where the troublesome part began.

The temperature couldn’t simply be raised and left alone.

It had to be constantly adjusted throughout the brewing process.

Using nothing more than several straight lines of runes rather than a complete rune array, Max had to manually increase and decrease the heat whenever the recipe demanded it. Mixed among the Fire Runes were Cold Runes, allowing him to lower the temperature just as quickly whenever necessary.

A proper rune array could distribute heat with remarkable precision, controlling different sections of the cauldron almost independently.

Max wasn’t there yet.

For now, he was limited to adjusting the overall temperature of the cauldron—raising or lowering it almost instantly—but achieving finer control would require far more practice.

This was one of the biggest reasons so many mages never became potion makers.

The herbs weren’t the difficult part.

The recipes weren’t either.

It was the rune control.

Keeping the temperature perfectly stable, adjusting it at precisely the right moments, and maintaining every rune without letting the mana fluctuate demanded countless hours of practice. Even experienced mages often ruined batches simply because they lost control for a brief moment.

For Max, however...

The hardest part had already been overcome.

All he had to do was guide mana through the channels in his fingers and form the required runes. Controlling that flow no longer felt particularly difficult. Creating his Mana Core had forced him to develop a level of mana control most newly awakened mages could only dream of, and the core was still growing stronger with every passing day.

Once the fresh Mana Water reached the proper temperature, the Sunpetal-infused water was poured in first, allowing its anti-inflammatory and restorative properties to spread evenly throughout the mixture.

Next came the Silverroot Powder and the crushed Azureleaf flakes.

Both were added gradually while the mixture was stirred without pause.

The order mattered.

The Mana Water already contained a natural concentration of mana, while the Azureleaf introduced an even greater amount. Left unchecked, those mana particles would repel and collide with one another, making the potion increasingly unstable. Silverroot Powder acted as a stabilizer, calming those reactions and encouraging the mana to bind together into a denser, more uniform mixture instead of erupting into chaotic fluctuations.

By then, the earlier Redleaf extraction had fully settled.

It was passed through a fine filter to remove the larger pieces of plant matter, though tiny suspended particles were intentionally left behind. Those carried part of the herb’s medicinal essence, giving the liquid its slightly transparent crimson color, not unlike diluted rose syrup.

The filtered Redleaf extract was then poured into the cauldron little by little, stirred continuously so each addition blended completely before the next followed.

Now came the most important step.

The Infusion Array.

Unlike the heating runes, this rune array wasn’t responsible for controlling temperature.

Its purpose was to bind everything together.

As mana flowed through the array, it encouraged the stable mana supplied by the Azureleaf to absorb and carry the healing properties of the Redleaf and Sunpetal throughout the entire mixture. Rather than allowing each ingredient to act independently, the array fused their strengths into a single, balanced potion.

The result wasn’t stronger healing.

It was faster healing.

The mana became the carrier, delivering the medicinal properties through the body far more efficiently than the herbs could on their own, allowing wounds to recover in a fraction of the normal time.

The final step was simple in theory.

A new array was drawn around the cauldron while the infusion array continued operating. The mana-gathering array remained active as well, feeding mana into the mixture while the potion continued heating beneath a sealed lid.

No stirring, no touching.

Just careful control through mana alone. Which meant multitasking, a lot of multitasking.

Fortunately, Max had plenty of experience with that from his previous life. Not potion-making, obviously.

Not even remotely close.

When Max said multitasking, what he actually meant was having four different screens open at the same time while pretending he was being productive.

One monitor playing porn, another serving as background noise. A third displaying whatever novel, manga, or forum thread had hijacked his attention that week.

And somewhere, hidden beneath the chaos, a fourth screen desperately trying to convince everyone that actual work was occurring.

Compared to that?

Managing a few magic arrays at the same time was practically a professional skill.

Honestly, this felt less like learning and more like discovering that years of being a terminally online degenerate had accidentally provided transferable job experience.

Truthfully, Max was fairly confident he could still handle at least two of those screens while managing the potion arrays.

Possibly three.

His previous life hadn’t exactly prepared him for magic.

It had, however, prepared him for the highly specialized skill of dividing his attention between an alarming number of unrelated activities.

The only thing stopping him from testing that theory right now was the very real possibility of Zerena noticing and immediately yelling at him.

Not just because she was particularly scary.

But because explaining why he’d installed a floating screen beside a potion cauldron and was watching steamy scenes while brewing military-grade healing potions felt like the sort of conversation that ended with blunt-force trauma.

Still, the temptation was there.

A small, degenerate voice in the back of his mind kept insisting that if he was going to live in a fantasy world, then surely magical floating screens existed for a reason.

Civilizations didn’t invent advanced magical technology so people could use it responsibly.

History had repeatedly proven that.

Fortunately, Max resisted.

Mostly because the reward waiting at the end of this process was significantly more motivating than the sort of solo "practice sessions" that had occupied an embarrassingly large portion of his previous life.

So for once, Max found himself fully focused.