World Seed

Author’s Corner: Greetings to you, my glorious readers/leeches/NEETs/generally bored people. I bring to you another chapter! Some of you may have caught the hints in the last one about where the story is going, and for those that did I say bravo! No clue how many chapters it will take to fully reveal itself, but I shall do my utmost to maintain a steady stream of releases.

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A few minutes after separating with Jacobs, I reached the alchemy store once again. Since we hadn’t gone out far enough to find any trees small enough for him to cut down, it couldn’t be helped that he still had to go back to look for some. As for me, I needed to get busy learning how to brew potions! My leg is killing me and I want nothing more than to finally be able to finish healing that wound.

“Welcome, sir-- oh, hello again.” I was greeted by the beautiful half-elf once again as she recognized me.

“Hello, miss.” I smiled to her, limping my way forward. “I managed to find some of the herbs, and got the money for the training.” I pulled out a bundle of the blood weed, a few fireflowers, and the silver coin. Seeing these, she seemed a bit surprised, but nodded her head, taking the silver coin and giving me back three large copper coins.

So… the guards just purposely gave me regular sized coins in bulk, then? Guess that explains why they weren’t so eager to exchange all one hundred of them for a single silver coin. Must have been like someone asking to give you a hundred pennies for a dollar. Too much small change! I thanked her for the change, and put it in my inventory. At the same time, she produced a small box containing various items, including a mortar and pestle, a few thin glass vials, and what looked like a dropper.

“This is the most basic starting kit for alchemy. As your skill grows, you’ll need more and more kinds of tools, and will eventually need to establish your own lab in order to brew everything. For now, though, this will be all you need. And, of course, a journal.” She pulled out a thin book and set it next to the box. “Once you grow a bit more, you’ll be given a device to properly record all of your notes on.”

I nodded, opening up the journal, not surprised to find that it was blank. Taking out the two sketches I made earlier, I put them in the front of the journal, as my notes about the two herbs. “Okay, so when can we begin?” I looked up at her and asked curiously. I really wanted to get my leg fixed.

“We can start now, of course. It shouldn’t take too long to teach you how to brew the basic health potion. However, any recipes after that will cost you, or require you to experiment to discover.” She smiled, pulling the various items out of the box. Only now did I notice that the glass bottle I saw earlier was a rounded beaker, with a small burner with it in the container. “First, fill the beaker half full with water, and turn the burner on by supplying it with a small mana supply.”

I nodded my head, putting the beaker onto the rack of the burner. When I was looking around for the water, my faithful teacher produced a small flask to pour in. I then tried to pour just a small amount of mana, maybe two or three points. Unfortunately, that was barely enough to even get a spark, so I put in ten and it activated. “Good, now, you’ll need to refresh the supply once a minute, or get a mana crystal to power it. Next, while waiting for that to boil, crush together two stalks of blood weed, and three petals from the fireflower.”

Once again, I followed her instructions, putting two blood weeds into the mortar, and plucking three of the seven petals of the fireflower to put in as well. Afterwards, I took the pestle and began crushing them thoroughly, doing my best to reduce the plants into a fine powder. Once a minute I would put in another ten mana to the burner, which I had to do a total of twice before the water began to boil. By that time, the plants were fairly well ground, and she seemed to be satisfied with it. “Okay, now pour the mixture into the water.”

After I followed her instructions, the red powder was poured into the water, making it look vaguely blood-colored. “This is the tricky part, as it requires a bit of timing and experimentation.” As she spoke, the water was shifting shades, from lighter to darker red then back again. “Depending on when you infuse mana into this concoction to finish the brewing process, the effectiveness will vary. This is a typical step found in most recipes that serves to stabilize the different compounds by binding them together with mana.”

Watching the liquid, I wasn’t sure at all what would be the best result. So, as it started going darker again, I went ahead and infused mana into it, steadily increasing the amount until its color settled. Of course, by that time, it had already shifted halfway back to light red. By now, the burner had again turned off, so the potion gradually stopped boiling, now settled on a rather neutral red color.