Chapter 11: The First Potion

“An alchemist never worries about money. An alchemist has no interest in it.”  -  Avelra Myr

The water in the cauldron bubbled incessantly.

The flames - which hours ago Serayne had watched with the breathless thrill of a pioneer discovering a brand-new science - now licked the soot-stained bottom with a monotony that was slowly driving her insane.

She sat before the makeshift hearth, scraping a peeled bough along the inner rim for the thousandth time.

Six hours had crawled by since she struck the flame.

For the last four, her single greatest achievement had been ensuring the brew didn't stick, boil over, or scorch into a charred layer of weeds she’d have to chip away with her dagger.

She had scavenged the three-finger-thick branch on a subsequent trip down for water.

After stripping the bark, she'd deemed it a serviceable stirring rod, though the longer she stirred the bluish broth with that hunk of wood, the more she wondered if legendary alchemists had also launched their careers sitting up half the night over a kettle with a stick in hand.

If they had, none of them had bothered mentioning it in their lofty epigrams.

Brewing a potion still felt surreal.

Just yesterday, mana had been a concept as remote as walking on her own two feet, and here she was trying to trap that very energy in a tonic she could drink or sell.

Yet wonder proved a poor defense against exhaustion when the entire art boiled down to repeating the exact same motion and tossing on kindling.

According to Avelra’s notes, completing a single batch took at least eight hours.

With any luck, she’d wrap up around dawn - provided she didn't pass out face-first into the pot and enrich the concoction with an ingredient definitely not listed in the manual.

Serayne stretched cautiously without releasing her makeshift spoon.

When her stiff back flared with a dull ache, she adjusted her lifeless legs, nudging a foot away from the heat - a movement she had to guide entirely with her eyes.

The worn fabric of her hospital top pulled tight across her chest, then slackened as she leaned back over the pot, too drained to care about how disheveled she looked.

Still, this agonizing boredom beat lying helpless in a hospital bed, where the only event of the day was a change of shifts for the orderly delivering lunch.

Here, at least, she was doing something that directly shaped her tomorrow.

Even if the end result was an undrinkable herbal sludge, it would be her sludge.

Clinging to that thought, she picked up Fundamentals of Herbcraft from the stones beside her.

Bracing the open book with her elbow, she reread a chapter she had skimmed earlier, hoping the concentration would keep sleep at bay.

She had hung the lantern from a low-hanging bough outside the entrance, casting a warm amber pool across the yellowed pages and the simmering surface of the cauldron.

Though the title suggested an introductory primer, the author had taken the concept of "fundamentals" far more seriously than modern textbook writers on Asterra.

Beyond simple plant identification, it covered harvesting methods, preparation, drying, grinding, and storage, as well as common mistakes that could bleed a plant of its potency before it ever touched water.

Detailed plates illustrated various E-rank specimens, showing not just their general silhouettes, but leaf venation, root structures, and subtle distinctions between related species.

In that respect, the primer vastly surpassed Avelra’s journal - though it was hard to fault the ancient alchemist for failing to explain things in her personal diary that she had long taken for granted.

You left me knowledge, gear, and a pouch that saved me from hauling everything on my back, so I suppose I can forgive the lack of a chapter titled "What to do when your laboratory consists of a bucket and a stick from the dirt."

A faint smile touched her lips at the ridiculous thought.

She turned the page and gave the cauldron another stir, listening to the crackle of wood until the lines of text blurred together.

Her head drooped lower and lower despite her desperate efforts to stay upright.

A shrill, metallic clatter ripped through the quiet.

Her head jerked up so sharply her black lynx ears pinned straight, and the stick knocked against the rim of the cauldron, splattering hot droplets across the hearth stones.

“Eight hours… finally,” she muttered, tossing the stick aside and reaching for the alarm clock sitting on the sill, its tinny rattle sounding egregiously loud in the nocturnal woods.

The wind-up clock had set her back twenty units of basic materials.

But if she intended to pursue alchemy, she couldn't gauge brew times based on how numb her rear had gone.

The purchase was as vital as the cauldron or the lighter.

To offset the drain on her stockpile, she had made three quick harvesting runs during lulls in the brewing process, casting Gathering on neighboring trunks while carefully reserving enough mana to return.

Thanks to the herb pouch, she no longer had to worry about how to lash bundles of lumber to her body.

She had grown steadily bolder navigating the nearest branches.

Familiar routes, tested handholds, and the ease of stashing loot into a palm-sized pouch turned night foraging from a suicidal gamble into a manageable routine - even if she had zero desire to investigate what was prowling around the roots down below.

I'm not brave. I'm just taking advantage of the fact that those fanged bastards down there can't climb.

At least none had tried yet, and she hadn't encountered any flying predators either.

In a canopy this vast, that seemed like a suspiciously convenient stroke of luck, though she attributed it to the grace period rather than assuming Hollowbriar Forest had kindly opted out of aerial hunters.

Nor did she feel like finding out the hard way whether the Worldheart System had accounted for every creative use of Featherstep, especially since her Talent still required branches to push off of and cling to, rather than letting her soar through open air like a bird.

Scooping water into her wooden bowl, she carefully doused the embers.

As steam billowed with a sharp hiss, she pulled her face back, waited for the worst of the sputtering to die down, and finally leaned over the finished brew.

Despite topping it off hours ago, the liquid had reduced by roughly half, leaving a defined ring along the inner curve of the metal.

The scent was milder than she had feared, though beneath the earthy herbal notes lingered something heavier, faintly metallic - hardly reminiscent of anything one would drink for recreation.

“Right then… but do you actually work?” she murmured, inspecting the blue-green surface.

Sitting by the fire so long had left her mana gauge nearly full, making it hard to gauge any minor restorative effect.

Leaving the brew to cool, she glided over to a nearby trunk, cast Gathering once more, tucked the wood into her pouch, and returned to her landing.

Lifting a small measure of the draught in her bowl, she waited for it to cool from scalding to warm.

After a brief hesitation, she took a sip while opening her status panel, searching for proof that she hadn't spent all night nursing a pot of weed soup.

An acrid bitterness washed over her tongue, twisting her face into a grimace.

But before she could wonder how to wash out the taste, her Mana Points began to tick upward.

The heavy fog of exhaustion broke, replaced by a sudden pulse of clarity.

Serayne stared at the numbers climbing for several seconds - first wide-eyed, then with a hesitant, burgeoning smile - until the gain abruptly capped out, leaving her holding the bowl with the expression of someone who had received a gift, just not quite the one she'd ordered.

According to Avelra, a properly brewed Clear Mana Draught was supposed to restore five Mana Points per second for ten seconds, yielding fifty in total.

Her version had restored a measly one point per second over that same window.

Ten points instead of fifty seemed pitiful after eight grueling hours of stirring.

Yet the longer she looked at the status screen, the harder it became to overlook the crucial truth: the potion actually worked.

Easy now. It's my first attempt. I eyeballed the herbs, stirred with a stick, and learned half the theory after lighting the fire. I don't need to declare myself a disgrace to the craft just yet.

She had gone in fully prepared to ruin her materials, blacken the pot, and walk away with nothing more than a lesson in what to avoid.

Instead, she held something that genuinely replenished mana - even if the yield fell far short of ideal.

Naturally, Avelra’s journal claimed she had brewed a flawless draught on her very first day of apprenticeship.

But Serayne decided that comparing herself to an alchemical prodigy at dawn, running on zero sleep and an empty stomach, was just masochism.

You were a genius. For now, I can settle for being damn promising.

That conclusion left her satisfied enough to set down the bowl and turn her thoughts to a more profitable matter.

Even a subpar potion was still a potion.

If it could give her ten mana points, surely someone out there would pay for an extra skill activation.

The issue was packaging: she had nothing to sell it in.

An empty plastic water bottle seemed like the easiest fix.

But imagining someone tipping back a five-hundred-milliliter bottle and chugging an alchemical draught like a cheap energy drink made her glance at Avelra’s notes, half-expecting the author to turn over in her grave.

Then again, after stirring it with a tree branch, it's a bit late to fret over professional dignity.

The bigger issue was pricing.

She had no idea how to appraise five hundred and fifty milliliters of brew without knowing the baseline volume of an effective dose.

Selling the entire batch in one massive jug without testing standard measures seemed foolish.

She drifted over to the Worldheart Console and began sifting through listings, searching for compact containers that could seal tight and slip into a pocket.

Glass bottles were too bulky, shot glasses lacked stoppers, and decorative jars were priced as though the sellers still lived on Asterra and were remodeling a boutique kitchen.

Serayne’s patience was wearing thin when her finger suddenly halted over a listing for a set of test tubes.

Each held fifteen milliliters and featured a small cork stopper.

The entire bundle of ten was listed for a single unit of stone.

She double-checked the price to make sure she hadn't misread, then confirmed the transaction before the seller could come to her senses and tack on another zero.

Compact, sealed, pocket-sized… they're practically potion vials.

To someone scrambling for dinner or hoarding stone to upgrade their Hearthhold, a set of glass tubes was probably just junk from a supply crate, taking up space meant for actual necessities.

To her, it was the exact answer to a puzzle she’d been agonizing over.

The exchange was littered with oddities like this.

The crates seemed completely indifferent to whether an arrival needed a towel, a mattress, toothpicks, or baffling junk like an antique door key.

Serayne retrieved the set from the console and returned to the cooled brew.

She carefully filled one tube, leaving a sliver of space below the lip so inserting the stopper wouldn't squeeze liquid over her fingers.

In the lantern light, the blue-green tincture looked far more refined than it had in the scorched pot.

Turning the glass between her fingers and admiring it from different angles, she felt a quiet, sheepish pride that not even the bitter aftertaste could sour.

“I suppose that counts as a single dose…” she murmured.

Fortunately, she didn't have to guess this time.

She floated back to the console, set the vial on the appraisal panel, and leaned over the display with undisguised anticipation.

[Clouded Mana Draught (E−)]

[Effect: Restores 1 Mana Point per second for 10 seconds.]

[Description: A poorly concocted mana draught that faintly reeks of blood. It is difficult to fathom what sort of “master” produced this abomination. Furthermore, the serving size is grossly excessive. It is advised that both the draught and the alchemist be sent back to review the basics.]