God of Trash

Rhys spent the rest of the day in the mustelid class, but whatever enlightenment awaited him beyond that train of thought, he couldn’t grasp it yet, nor could he grasp it before six A.M. the next morning. He rose, a little annoyed at himself. He’d freed himself from Cynog, only to throw himself into Sorden’s class! He should’ve had the foresight to see out this enlightenment, first.

Ah, well. Sorden liked him. He was pretty sure he could ask her for a few days off to focus on the mustelid class. Not right away, of course. He was eager to start learning advanced potions techniques. But after a week or two, if he still couldn’t break through on the mustelid enlightenment in his free time, he’d ask her for a week off.

Sorden’s tutoring was a far cry from Cynog’s. There was less getting-beaten-up, and more accidentally scorching or searing himself on superheated caustic materials. His Resistances steadily leveled, but his potion making screeched along at a glacial pace.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t read the recipes, or that Sorden wasn’t a good teacher. He could, and she was. But at higher levels, the recipes became more vague and left more to the potion-maker to decide, which wasn’t ideal for a beginner like Rhys. Sorden pointed out the best ways to go there, which herbs to pick and which ones to generally avoid unless they were specifically called for, but even then, he still made mistakes. Mistakes which generally ended with him gaining a new scar, until his hands, arms, and face were covered in red burns.

Higher-level recipes also called for more and stranger techniques. He had to carefully modulate his mana to give it just enough power now, then pull back to the bare minimum the next second. Or keep his mana swaying at the right pace to keep an herb melding with the liquid.

Now, he hovered over a boiling pot. Blue smoke billowed by, stinging his eyes, but he couldn’t look away. Not now. It was too close.

With his left hand, he stimulated the blue-white grass to swirl clockwise and fed it mana to empower its properties. With his right hand, he gripped the silver bud powder, clenching down on it to keep it from gaining too much mana. Enhancing with the left, suppressing with the right. All his focus poured into the pot, not an inch to spend elsewhere. Slowly, the two materials melded, forming a new, silver-white liquid.

The silver reached the edge of the pot. The entire body of potion turned silver. Sorden stepped forward, expression tense. “Now!”

Rhys dropped his hands and slammed the lid on. He went to grab ahold of the herbs again, but it was too late. The silver bud powder eagerly drank in mana, and the blue-white grass ran rampant. Pressure welled up against the lid. His eyes widened. He pushed down on the lid with both hands, locking his feet under the cauldron to keep the whole thing together.

Sorden flashed away. The cauldron rumbled, and then pressure slammed into the lid. For a split second, Rhys suppressed it, but then he lost his grip on the lid. It flew past his head, narrowly missing his nose. He jerked his head back just in time and only got splashed, rather than getting a face-full of boiling silver liquid. It flew up, then poured back down, threatening to rain all over Rhys.

Sorden stepped forward. She spun her hand, and all the droplets froze in midair. With a calm gesture, she called the silver liquid down into a separate cauldron. She stood over it, focused. Mana flowed from her palms. The potion spun placidly, no longer over-excited. Sorden put the lid on the cauldron and stepped away, and the potion simply simmered, rather than exploding.

She sighed, then looked at Rhys. “You almost had it. If you hadn’t lost focus at the last second…”