Chapter 47: Max the Genius Potion maker
"You’re done?" Zerena asked, unable to hide the surprise in her voice.
She stared at the cauldron.
Then at Max.
"...Already?"
Max nodded enthusiastically.
Compared to an experienced potion maker, eight hours wasn’t exactly miraculous.
Compared to a beginner?
It was absurd.
Most apprentices spent nearly an entire day struggling through their very first batch, constantly stopping to check temperatures, stabilize their mana, or recover from mistakes that forced them to start entire steps over again.
Max...
Had simply kept going.
The speed alone was already approaching that of potion makers who had spent close to a decade standing over cauldrons.
Not because he possessed years of experience.
Because his understanding of runes had quietly erased one of the profession’s greatest bottlenecks.
That was also one of the biggest reasons potions remained so expensive.
The ingredients certainly weren’t cheap.
But the real cost was time.
The stronger the potion, the longer it usually took to brew.
Some high-grade formulas occupied a potion maker for days.
The truly exceptional ones could take weeks.
Every additional hour meant more mana, more concentration, more chances for a batch to fail, and fewer potions that could be produced in the same amount of time.
Which was precisely why skilled potion makers charged so much.
"You didn’t mess them up... did you?" Zerena asked, looking at him with obvious suspicion.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust his system.
She didn’t trust him.
Even with that ridiculous cheat of his, finishing an entire batch this quickly sounded absurd.
Max simply shook his head.
The confident little nod somehow made her even less convinced.
Still looking skeptical, Zerena headed downstairs.
She’d changed into a loose shirt and a pair of pajamas.
Unfortunately for Max, the word loose appeared to have different meanings depending on who was wearing it.
The shirt still stretched across her chest well enough to remind him that physics had its limits, while the pajama bottoms hugged her hips, butt, and thick thighs far more enthusiastically than they probably should have.
The faint outline of her panties didn’t exactly help either.
She froze.
The moment the lid lifted, a wave of warm steam drifted out of the cauldron and washed over her face.
A rich floral fragrance filled the room.
It wasn’t overpowering.
It was... refreshing.
The scent slipped into her lungs, leaving her feeling strangely clear-headed, almost as if every breath carried a trace of mana with it. Even her body seemed to respond instinctively, the pleasant aroma making her mouth water.
It smelled less like medicine...
And more like an exceptionally expensive flower tea.
Zerena’s eyes widened.
"...He actually did it," she whispered, almost to herself.
She knew that scent.
The recipe had described it in detail.
A properly brewed Minor Healing Potion should carry a light floral aroma with no trace of burnt herbs or bitter mana.
This was exactly that.
Still...
A potion maker never relied on smell alone.
There was one final test.
Without another word, Zerena suddenly grabbed Max’s hand.
"Huh?"
Before he could react, she’d already snatched the small knife lying on the table.
"Wait—"
Slice.
She made a shallow cut across the tip of his finger.
"Ow..." Max winced, jerking his hand back on instinct as a bead of blood slowly welled up from the fresh cut.
Max instinctively tried to pull his hand back.
"It’s just a small cut," Zerena said, holding onto his wrist.
Before he could complain further, she picked up the glass instrument Max had learned was called a pipette. Dipping it into the freshly brewed potion, she drew up a few drops before letting them fall onto the cut on his finger.
"Ah..." Max winced.
The potion was still warm, making the fresh cut sting for a brief moment.
Then, right before their eyes, the wound began to close.
The bleeding stopped.
The split skin slowly knitted back together until there wasn’t even a scar left behind.
Zerena stared.
Her eyes widened.
A stunned smile slowly spread across her face.
"...You actually did it."
Max would’ve smiled too.
If she hadn’t casually sliced his finger open without the slightest warning. Rubbing the spot she’d just cut, he quietly pulled his hand back, glare. Zerena either didn’t notice or simply didn’t care about his glare.
Now let’s check the quality," she said, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.
She immediately reached for several finger-length glass vials, each roughly an inch wide. Fine runes had already been engraved across their surfaces.
Max had prepared them earlier while waiting for the ingredients to finish processing.
They weren’t ordinary bottles.
The engraved runes continuously gathered tiny amounts of ambient mana and slowly infused it into the potion inside, helping preserve its medicinal properties.
In an ordinary environment, they could keep a potion from deteriorating for years.
Stored somewhere rich in mana, however...
The effects became even more interesting.
Over time, the runes would continue feeding mana into the potion. The process was far too slow to notice over days or even weeks, but after months—or even years—the potion’s potency could gradually increase.
A well-preserved Minor Healing Potion could eventually rival some freshly brewed higher-grade ones.
The quality Zerena was talking about wasn’t simply whether the potion worked.
Every properly brewed Minor Healing Potion naturally attracted and absorbed ambient mana over time. The runes engraved onto the bottles merely accelerated and preserved that process.
The better the potion...
The better it responded.
That was why quality mattered so much.
One by one, Zerena carefully filled the engraved glass bottles.
Her smile grew a little wider with each one.
One.
Two.
Three.
By the time she sealed the sixth bottle, her eyes were practically sparkling.
Then she looked back into the cauldron.
There was still potion left.
Her eyebrows slowly rose.
"...Did you use more herbs than the recipe called for?"
Max immediately shook his head.
"No."
He had already prepared an explanation the moment he’d realized the yield was higher than expected.
"I only used enough ingredients for six bottles," he said. "I didn’t have enough System Points to process any more than that. Even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain the rune arrays long enough."
Zerena looked back into the cauldron.
Then at the six bottles lined up neatly on the table.
"Well... let’s just hope it didn’t lower the quality," Zerena muttered.