NOVGO.NET Chapter 2080 Alchemy Lessons Part 1
Chapter 2080: Chapter 2080 Alchemy Lessons Part 1
— Kat —
Everything was cleaned up and Appoline didn’t seem to mind the fact that Kat had set up a chair and table to view things and take a few notes. With a perfect memory the notes could probably come later, but Kat wanted to seem attentive and it just felt right. “Now, the fact that we’re outside isn’t entirely ideal but the room this was all setup in just isn’t large enough for real brewing. The problem with brewing outside you see, is that sunlight counts as an ingredient and the dome here does a good job at storing and releasing sunlight to mimic the effect.
“It’s probably not perfect, but as I don’t know what brewing outside of it is like I can’t really comment. It seems accurate enough based on the journals I’ve read so its mostly a moot point,” explained Appoline.
“How is it that sunlight can influence the potion?” asked Kat.
Appoline nodded, “Right so that goes into a larger explanation of what we’re doing to ingredients. As an example,” Appoline moved over to the old dried ingredients table and looking through it. She glanced over at the fresh stuff she’d ’acquired’ from the pantry but ignored them. Finally, she settled on an old pressed leaf. “This is a bit too old to be good for much so I don’t mind wasting it. This is thistle leaf and can be used in healing potions. It’s not the best for it but it works. It’s known to attack things that touch while being quite hardy. It works as a sort of disinfectant for the potion to help prevent wounds getting infected, and the fact its hard to kill is always a bonus for healing potions.
“Now, normally you’d need water to really help with this process but I don’t need it myself. I can also get fancy with it. Keep an eye on the centre…” Appoline held the leaf up in front of her face and after a few moments there was a flash in the centre. The light almost seemed to burn away the leaf as bits of dust floated away and a glowing ring of light expanded, eventually enveloping the whole leaf as it vanished into the wind.
Appoline looked to be visibly sweating after the display and wiped a hand over her face to remove some of it. “Hoo, I am exhausted apparently. Should not be doing research the same day I escape from prison but TOO BAD. Anyway, what you just saw was me converting the leaf there into… there are a lot of names for it. Some call it essence, some call it alchemic dust. It’s a sort of weird mana but not mana substance. It’s easier with water as I said, because you can saturate the water with mana and then slowly work on the whole thing. What I did was far more advanced…
“But can be useful for other things. Now, you can’t really store ingredients once they get dusted like that. I mentioned that they’re mana but not mana? Well the mana part of it likes to seep into the air and mix with everything else. Even through warded containers. Maybe for some people its possible to store them but I’ve never managed it and I don’t know of anyone who has.
“What potions do, is take that essence, dust, whatever, and turn it into a semi-stable potion that produces a spell adjacent effect. This is why potions are mainly potions and not dried out. If you remove the liquid agent it will quickly turn into something close enough to essence that it looses magic.
“Even then, potions do lose potency over time. It’s simply that if you make them correctly the combination of ingredients and liquid binding agent hold tightly enough onto the mana. Of course, sometimes things explode, because you’re trying to shove mana and mana adjacent things into a smaller area then they might like. Perhaps the entire thing is overly reactive. Healing potions are mostly safe in that they rarely explode and can’t poison anyone. Sort of,”
Appoline paused for a moment and Kat said, “I feel like you want me to ask how they can poison people… so how can they poison people?”
“In two main ways!” answered Appoline with a smile. “The first is by rapidly aging the target until their biological systems throw a fit having a small section of the body be much older then the rest, or simply aging them until they die. Though it’s quite difficult to do that. The other way is that you just… apply gunk that doesn’t do anything and depending on how it reacts to the rest of the body it can prevent healing by being in the way, or if you drink it you can choke on it.”
“Is… is that really a poison?” asked Kat.
Appoline shrugged, “I count venom as poison most of the time so… yes to me at least. Any liquid you can use to kill someone is a poison, and any gas that can kill people without it simply replacing all of the oxygen also counts. Simply killing someone by making them breathe the wrong stuff isn’t poisoning at all.”
“Right…” said Kat slowly. “So back to the alchemy?”
Appoline nodded, “Right, let me just…” Appoline grabbed a few different things, a mix of old and new ingredients and then placed them all next to her cauldron. “So I’m not doing anything crazy here. Sometimes you just want the sap of the plant instead of the whole thing, or perhaps you want to filter it somehow to change the properties but these are just the most basic healing potions so no need to worry.
“I wanted to get started on some anti-scar cream to see if I can fix my own throat but that wouldn’t be a good first lesson and I might be too tired to make it properly. Oh, and the ingredients aren’t the best either so it would be a tough brew. Anyway, we’re not going to get into enhancing limited properties of ingredients right now.
“Now, once your water is in you cauldron, you start to stir it with one hand while pumping mana into the water with the other. Some people believe the best alchemists NEED a water affinity for this but they’re idiots. I don’t have a water affinity… for example.” *Right but is your affinity POISON?* “Now, some people like to have stirring rods that help you push the magic into the water if you lack the affinity, but once again they’re not needed. I can do the same by just barely having my finger inside the cauldron while I’m stirring as you can see here.”
Appoline stood slightly to the side to show off where her finger was. “This makes little difference for easy potions and remember, I like the blood method for this so it matters even less for me. Speaking of, now is the time. Usually I have potions around to heal myself up right away and sometimes stored blood but in this case?” Appoline put her hand up to her face and stuck a finger in her mouth. She bit down hard and then ripped her finger away, leaving it bleeding.
Appoline placed her finger over the cauldron and let the blood drip in slowly. “Notice that I haven’t stopped stirring the cauldron? This is a good habit to get into but technically not all that necessary for most potions. It helps spread things around better.” Appoline continued to stir and soon the water took on a faint shimmer. Appoline noticed this and continued, “Right so now that you can see the water sort of shining? That’s a good indication that you’ve got the technique right. For some potions this is too much mana, for some its not enough. For most, healing potions included, it’s good enough.”
Appoline ran a hand over her ingredient stack and placed half of something in the bowl. Looked like a leaf to Kat, the same as the others but considering the distinct piles perhaps there was a difference. “Now for healing potions we place in a good amount of the first ingredient. This essentially gives a ’flavour’ to the potion and is considered the second most important ingredient of the brew. The most important is called the ’core’ ingredient and is added in some stage specific to the potion.
“You don’t want to add too much at once, and often times you’ll add more of whatever the first ingredient is later, but this part needs to be done perfectly. You might want to start up and watch as I do this,” Appoline continued.
Kat stood up with Lily on her shoulder so that they could both look at the cauldron. The leaves were spinning around inside. “Now, I essentially start to shake the mana and after a few minutes, normally,” Appoline paused as all the leaves inside the cauldron just sort of melted into green dust that started to fill the potion. “If you know exactly what you’re doing you can speed this up.
“Now, you can see that the ingredients are broken down for the most part. For beginners, you’ll end up with imperfections in the water but that’s fine. Straining them out is actually a more intermediate skill. Next up, you just follow the recipe. Adding ingredient after ingredient until you get to the core of the potion. This looks much the same, but normally you can’t seed through it like this. I’m not sure how demonic energy will change things either. Any way… let me continue…”