“Time’s up!” Mrs Myrtle shouts, sileng the room and pulling everyone’s focus back to her.

  “That should be enough time for even the slowest of you as long as you’ve been paying attention properly,” she says while casting a g a few students still shamefully crushing crystals. “Now, on to preparing redients themselves. You all have it easy today, as the nymph’s blood doesn’t need anything doing to it, and the wyrmroot has already been ed so you just o prepare it. We shall be preparing enough to attempt brewing three times, so please take six stalks out of the ste jar and grab your cutting ptes.”

  Emily follows her instrus, grabbing the smooth white stone sheet and pg it in the tre of the table in front of her as she pops the lid off the wyrmroot’s jar. A rich earthy aroma hits her the moment the seal on the jar breaks, followed by a soothing calm spreading through her body. Ign the effects of the root, she pulls out one of them and pces it oe.

  “Now, yoing to take your preparation knife, and slowly split the veins from the root. Be very careful not to cut the veins, if you break a vein, you will spoil the entire root and be forced to throw it away. Once you have separated the body and veins of the root, leave the veins whole and pulp the body, being careful to keep the sets of prepared veins with their inal bodies unless you want an imbao ruin your potion. If you need an example, watch me do it once first: if not, start when you are ready,” Mrs Myrtle says before looking down at the root before her and raising a small silver kh immense focus.

  Emily watches her slowly bring the ko the edge of the root, before carefully trag it along the side of one of the red veins. She slowly guides her hand down the length of the root without a single quiver. After reag the bottom of the pnt, she lifts her knife back to the top and traces it along the other side of the vein. By the time she reaches the bottom again, the vein is practically falling from the root.

  Seems easy enough.

  Emily grabs her own silver knife and carefully cuts out all of the roots. Her hands smoothly follow her will, without a single vibration or variation from the intended path, a testament to her vastly improved dexterity. Pg the loose veins together on ay tray, she grabs ay mortar ale, grinding up the root’s body before pg it in ay ramekio its veins.

  She repeats this process with the other five roots in the jar, only having her focus broken once when Mrs Myrtle starts moving around the room to ihe students’ preparation. Upon seeing Emily’s trolled and fluid motions, she gives her an approving nod before moving on silently.

  After twenty minutes, everyone in the css finishes preparing their roots, and Mrs Myrtle returns to the front of the room to tinue guiding them.

  “, we move on to preparing our cauldron’s arrays. aell me which array or arrays we will o use for this potion?”

  Several hands shoot up, and Mrs Myrtle picks a random boy in the back row.

  “Just a trol array. There are no unstable ingredients in the recipe.”

  “Good! He’s pletely correymph blood and wyrmroot are both magically weak ingredients on their own and don’t have any major flicts, so we mix them without the need for any form of stabilising array ent,” she says while moving to stand in front of the rge cauldroo her desk. “We will, however, need a trol array to help us mahe rea since most of you won’t have the refined mana trol to do without yet.”

  She lifts the lid of the cauldron and turns it to show its io the css, revealing a plex weaving of runes carved onto a silver panel within. Emily stares at the magic circle, awed by the density of engravings.

  That’s got to be a third circle array at least, there’s over twice as many runes as in my sed circle spells. sed circle mages even activate that?

  “All of your cauldrons have these flexible arrays mounted in the lid. Some of you have used these before, but if you haven’t, you activate the appropriate se by elling mana into the correct point oside.” Mrs Myrtle flips the lid and points to several small silver dots snaking around the edge of it. “Each point will have a small letter carved o it to show what it activates. C is the basitrol array. If you haven’t used one of these before, please have a py with it now to familiarise yourself with it before we begin our brewing.”

  Upon being given permission, Emily follows most of the css in moving over to her cauldron and trag her finger around the outside of the lid. Quickly log the small engraved ‘C’, she pces her finger over the corresponding white dot and pours her mana into it. The moment her mana saturates the array, she feels ahereal e being formed and watches in fasation as her vision splits, as a strand of mana stretches down into the cauldron allowio see inside.

  The odd ge in perception, being able to see outside the cauldron with her eyes and ih her mana, makes her feel slightly dizzy, but she adjusts after a few seds. Curiously, she moves her mana around the inside of the cauldron for a bit, experieng a strange feeling of disect with the strand.

  How iing, it feels like the ands to my mana are being deyed and having small variations removed... It’s artificially removing unstable motions that would upset the brewing! This may have been helpful before I practised trolling my mana enough to develop the mana manipution skill, but it feels limiting right now.

  Pulling her finger away, she breaks her e with the array before pg her hand ft oop of the lid. Shutting her eyes, she directs her mana to flow out of her palm, f into a pure strand oher side and reag down into the body of the cauldron. She performs the same motions as before, firming that she has better trol without the array.

  I guess I don’t o use it then. Though, I’m not quite sure how to view inside using mana alone, so I might have to use it anyway for now.

  Her testing is interrupted when Mrs Myrtle cps her hands to draw everyone’s attention back to her.

  “Right, that’s enough time to familiarise yourselves with the array, now it’s time to start brewing!” She gathers the prepared materials o her cauldron while expining the brewing process to the css. “You should already know this recipe by heart, so follow along as I demonstrate. We start the process by p three hundred millilitres of water into our cauldron and starting the fire beh.”

  Emily follows her instrus, measuring out the correct amount of water and p it into her cauldron. Then she bends doces a hand on the logs held in a small chamber underh. With a small burst of fire-charged mana, the logs ignite, and she quickly retracts her hand before standing back up.

  “While we wait for the water to e to a boil, measure out two hundred millilitres of nymph’s blood and bring over your prepared wyrmroot.”

  Emily pops the lid off of the jar of blood and carefully measures two hundred millilitres using ay gss measuring beaker. She thehe beaker and two portions of veins and pulped root at the ready on the edge of the table o the cauldron. She watches the water ily as the surface begins to shake.

  “Now use your own judgement and add the nymph’s blood the moment the water starts to boil, then repce the lid,” Mrs Myrtle calls out before falling pletely silent with the rest of the css and watg her own cauldron carefully.

  A few small bubbles start to rise to the surfaily’s cauldron, but she holds off on adding the blood. A few students around her rush to add their blood and she scoffs at them internally.

  The heat isn’t evenly distributed so most of your water isn’t even boili, idiots.

  The bubbles in her cauldron quickly multiply until the calm of the surface is broken by a raging torrent of activity. Reag quickly, Emily pours the beaker of blood into the roiling waters. The viscous fluid swiftly overtakes the cauldron, dying the water a crimson hue as they seamlessly bine.

  After emptying the entire beaker, Emily pces the lid ba the cauldron and starts a mental timer.

  Two minutes.

  After the repeated cttering of heavy metal lids dropping into pce settles, Mrs Myrtle addresses the css once more.

  “For each stage now, never remove the lid for more time than is required to add your material. We will leave the nymph’s blood and water to boil for two minutes before we add the pulped wyrmroot body. After that, give it a thh stir with mana for thirty seds, then add the veins and a third of your powdered light crystal. Finally, fully incorporate and mahe rea of yredients for the st four minutes! Don’t let one overtake the other sihis potion requires a careful bance. Good luck.” Her final words fall as Emily’s mental timer finishes.

  Emily pulls the lid off slightly and drops two ramekins of wyrmroot pulp into the mixture. Dropping the lid back down instantly, she ighe light red steam that escapes and pces a hand oop of the cauldron while shutting her eyes. She reaches a small tendril of mana down through the lid and begins stirring.

  After thirty seds pass, she grabs the wyrmroot veins and moves to pce them into the cauldron before notig the ck of crystal powder within her reach.

  Shit, this will set my timings off.

  As quickly as she , she steps away from her cauldron and grabs a ramekin of light crystal powder. She opens the lid and drops the two sets of veins in along with the powder, before pg it down again and eg to the trol array. She watches in rapt fasation through the strange split perception as the glowing crystal powder and ruby wyrmroot veins break down into the violently bubbling crimson mixture, spreading a glistening tint of light through the mixture.

  F herself to focus and ighe beautiful sight, she pushes the mana tendril down into the brew and begins to stir again. The viscous fluid resists her trol, and as time slowly ticks by, she starts to notice bubbles of extreme dark or extreme light f impurities throughout the mixture.

  Each time she notices a problematic bubble f, she quickly reaches for it and pops it with her mana tendril. However, the speed of impurities f soon overwhelms the rea speed of her tendril, and by the time her four minutes of brewing are up, she’s left staring at an uneven mess of colour.

  With a disappointed sigh, she cuts off her e with the trol array, lifts the lid, and pulls her cauldron off the active fire, looking i the failed potion. The viscous red fluid maintains an unappealing appearance, as small off-coloured blobs float about freely.

  “That’s attempt number one done,” Mrs Myrtle calls out while lifting her own cauldron and p its tents into a small gss bottle. “Did anybody in here succeed on their first try?”

  To Emily’s surprise, not a siudent raises their hand in respoo the question.

  Wait, no one succeeded?

  “As expected. out your cauldrons and try again on your own. This lesson only ends when you have tried all three of your attempts so don’t rush and take care in your work,” she finishes before stepping away from her table and beginning to move through the room to watch the students work.

  Emily pours the unpleasant-looking tents of the cauldron into a waste bin before quickly ing it out with some extra water. Filling it with three hundred millilitres of water again, she pces it bato the fire before moving all the required ingredients to the edge of the table, this time making sure not to miss anything out.

  She follows the same process again, following the precise timings needed, and as she adds the veins and light crystal to the mixture again, she takes a slightly different approach. Dismissing the trol array, she pces a hand on top of the cauldron lid and shuts her eyes, pushing a mana tendril down into the brew without assistairring the tents, she focuses on feeling for mana within the mixture. After a minute or so, at the same point where she started to see coloured bubbles, she starts feeling dense points of mana gathering.

  Thought so! I use may to work out where the impurities are without seeing the mixture.

  With great speed and trol, she shes out with her mana tendril, bursting apart any impurities before they fully take shape. The sed four minutes pass, she pulls off the lid and is greeted by a burst of light crimson mist and aig sweet smell, along with a system notification.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  Quest geed: Alchemical Aspirations

  [Alchemical Aspirations]

  [Rank:] D

  [Description:] You’ve joihe world of alchemy by following a known recipe. Now bee a true alchemist and create your own!

  Requirements:

  -Create and successfully brew a new uion (Not plete)

  Rewards:

  -Meiowledge: Chemistry

  _____

  Wait, only a single knowledge for a D-rank quest? It’s either a really useful knowledge, or this system’s unfair.

  As she processes her new quest, she takes a gss bottle from the table and pours the healing potion from her cauldron into it. Putting the cork into pce, she happily marvels at the bright crimson liquid with glittering sparks of light mana flowing through it.

  “We have our first success! gratutions, Miss Coldstone,” Mrs Myrtle says from behind her, catg Emily by surprise.

  Emily turns to face her and thanks her with a smile. Mrs Myrtle urges her to try her st attempt before handing her a list of books for further reading, wishing her luck, and leaving to tinue her job.