Chapter 147: Helping Aunt Lana

Chapter 147

Helping Aunt Lana

As darkness fell and the moonlight shone down, the cheerful singing of the villagers could be heard faintly in the distance. However, this didn’t deter the two women from their work.

One was anxiously tending a fire, while the other was sitting and selecting herbs without much caution. Who else could they be but Ellie and Aunt Lana whose heart filled with hope?

Aunt Lana knew well that her husband’s body could barely hold on any longer. Every day, he spoke of how he would soon become a burden to the family of 4. The heaviest responsibility would fall on Lana, his wife, who had to take care of the children and tend to the farm alone. Whenever the topic of survival came up, it inevitably led to discussions about his health issues and the eventual prospect of him becoming partially paralyzed.

Even though Aunt Lana and her husband had some money to spend, it wasn’t enough to buy even a single bottle of low-level restorative potion. There were also other necessary medicines like bruise ointment and wound healing potion for the remaining lacerations, which together would cost several silver coins.

If they could buy just one bottle of potion, there might be some hope. However, after a healer examined her husband’s condition, it was found that his injuries had accumulated over a long period. Actually, he should have already been partially paralyzed or dead. The wound healing potion he received previously was still trying to help healing the wounds, but the injuries were too severe and had not been treated properly. Thus, the potion merely prolonged the inevitable.

The couple decided not to use their savings, as the money might help sustain the family for at least 1 year. Otherwise, the children might starve to death, and a single potion wouldn’t cure the head of the family.

Until today, Lana had regained her hope after living in her dark life. She wasn’t sure if Ellie would truly have an ability to concoct potions, but Ellie was a student at the magical institute. If there was no other hope, wasn’t it better to trust the girl who offered a last glimmer of hope? At the very least, if it didn’t work, she could accept that she had tried her best, better than doing nothing at all.

Ellie didn’t ask for anything in return for her help, but Lana felt indebted to the young girl once again. Even if the treatment didn’t work, the gesture of help would stay in Lana’s heart, and she vowed to repay it someday!

“Is the fire strong enough?” Lana asked after quickly building the fire. Ellie looked at the bonfire in front of the house and nodded.

Aunt Lana’s husband couldn’t get up to watch the potion-concocting process due to the cold night air immobilizing him. So, it was just Lana helping around. The 3 children were at the village square, enjoying the big meal hosted by the village chief in honor of the two girls. Lana didn’t call them back. She planned to fetch them later when the noise died down.

"Place that cauldron on the fire and pour in these 9 cups of water."

Ellie sent the potion-concocting cauldron given to her by the Setter family when they learned she wanted to practice concocting potions. She also sent over the standard measuring cups. For this session...Ellie would produce 18 bottles of restorative potion. After giving 1 bottle to Aunt Lana, she would still have 17 bottles left for future use. Not just the restorative potions, Ellie also planned to make other potions much more than the amount she would give to Lana to make the most of her time.

Lana had already prepared 3 separate fires to concoct restorative potions, wound healing potions, and internal injury potions—all to aid her husband. But after calculating the time, Ellie realized she had enough time to concoct 2 additional cauldrons of potions. Thus, she instructed Aunt Lana to prepare fires for relaxation potions and concentration potions as well.

Indeed! These two potions were based on formulas Ellie obtained from the Max family. There were other formulas too, but Ellie was more interested in these two, so she spent more time studying them.

This session, she wanted to concoct the special formula that she had spent some free time to look for the flaws in using herbs. Ellie didn’t have extensive potion-concocting knowledge and still had many aspects to try inspecting. Therefore, this was only her 1st version of the improved formula.

The improved version was intended for users of levels 1-4, covering a wider range than the original formula’s creator. The enhancement didn’t come from new knowledge but from using higher quality herbs from her own dimension, similar to Christopher Iros’s formula but with no modifications other than the herb quality with more life force.

In summary, Ellie had set up 5 cauldrons for Aunt Lana. Additionally, there were 2 cauldrons that required Lana’s labor as a trade-off. Even though Lana knew she was helping with tasks unrelated to her husband’s treatment, she wouldn’t complain.

Concocting 5 cauldrons of potions simultaneously would shock any real apothecary into a heart attack!

Even though these 5 cauldrons were all low-level potions, given that Ellie wasn’t even a 1-star level apothecary yet and still a student, there should have been limits to her ability to control the process! Anyone observing would say it was beyond her capacity to manage all 5 cauldrons at once.

They would be even more surprised when they saw the results of all 5 potion batches. Each batch turned out to be a low-level potion of perfect quality! Even the 2 new types of potions she had just studied ...

“Uh, do you need me to do anything else?” Lana asked as she watched Ellie toss various herbs into the pots. She could only follow and observe the girl’s actions with confusion.

Lana knew nothing about potion concocting but had seen skilled apothecaries at work. Many times, she had witnessed healers preparing potions to treat the villagers. All of them worked with intense concentration and serious expressions, completely different from Ellie’s relaxed demeanor.

Lana swallowed hard. She didn’t know what the outcome would be, but seeing Ellie use a high-quality cauldrons and toss in so many valuable herbs, she could only trust that Ellie wasn’t wasting these precious resources for mere play.

“No, it’s okay. You can sit and watch now.”

Ellie waved her hand. She no longer needed Lana’s assistance. Working alone, Ellie could handle the task easily. While potion concocting might be difficult and complicated for others, especially with multiple cauldrons, it was no problem for Ellie.

By observing the life force of the potions throughout the concocting process, Ellie could tell what each cauldron needed. For example, if the life force in a cauldron was burning too much and the herbs lacked balance, she would lower the heat. If a cauldron’s life force was too intense to meld properly, she would use more heat to dissolve it.

That was Ellie’s approach to potion-concocting. While others had to carefully monitor the heat, remember the exact timing for adding herbs, Ellie needed not to follow those meticulous procedures to succeed.

Lana watched as Ellie waved her off to rest. Despite the suggestion, Lana continued to follow closely, curious about what the girl would do next.

If it were other apothecaries, they would certainly criticize Lana for doing this. Potion formulas weren’t something to be shown to just anyone. Although the institute taught them freely, it’s because the students have paid for their education. Moreover, the potions taught were only low-level ones.

It’s not surprising that the institute didn’t emphasize potion concocting as much as other kingdoms. The secretive nature of potion-concocting knowledge in the Ares Kingdom was rare, keeping the methods under wraps. In contrast, other kingdoms had various potion-concocting techniques, and the students learned only the common low-level ones. Higher-level potion formulas were kept secret by the families that own them.

Seeing that Lana was still worried about the cauldrons, even though they needed about half an hour to brew, Ellie decided to engage her in conversation.

"Besides your husband’s condition, how are other things going, Aunt Lana?"

"Hmm? Other things? They’re going well. There haven’t been any beast attacks in the village. If there are any, they’re only low-level beasts. It’s really fortunate. Since our village has 2 students from the number 1 institute, it seems like the beasts are more afraid of our village," Aunt Lana said happily.

This topic was widely discussed in the village. No one knew exactly why, but after Nara and Ellie started attending the institute, beast appearances became rare. This year, there hadn’t been any attacks on the village. The villagers thus joked that the beasts were afraid of future repercussions if the village had 2 magicians returning to protect it. They speculated that the beasts might fear being retaliated against in the future, thus avoiding trouble.

Of course, it was just a joke for most, but some people took it seriously. Even the village chief seemed to believe it, claiming that the light deity had chosen his daughter, which made the beasts afraid.

While some believed it and others didn’t, Ellie felt that this issue was somewhat connected to her, whether in a small or significant way.

It seemed that being a part of this village earned her the attention of the Setter family, the city’s governor, once again. She wasn’t sure if it was fortunate or unfortunate that they protected her hometown, but Ellie didn’t want to owe them too much. Someday, she would have to repay this debt.

“Ellie, you don’t need to take the beast issue so seriously...”

“Hmm? It’s good that there aren’t any beasts causing trouble. I don’t see why I should worry.”

“Mmm, true. With no dangerous beasts disturbing us, this year’s harvest seems to be better. It’s good for other families, but for ours, it’s the same as before. With 3 family members unable to work and my husband always sick, we still need to buy herbs even without proper treatment. Instead of having more to harvest, our expenses have increased.”

“I see.” Ellie thought about the 3 little troublemakers who were now starting to run around. They could take care of themselves a bit at the age of 3-4 years, but they weren’t much help with outside work. They were too small for heavy tasks. Mostly, asking them to gather firewood was already quite a challenge.

Whether they could work hard or not, they still needed to eat. The more they grew, the more food they required to grow healthily. There were other limitations too.

With no beasts around, smaller animals stayed in the forest. In the past, they could hunt and sell or eat these beasts. Now, it was tougher. The traps they set caught only small animals, which sold cheaply or were kept for their own food.

The farmland remained the same size. With average income staying constant and expenses increasing, they were in a difficult situation.

“Don’t worry. Now we’ll have Ellie’s potions, so we won’t need to spend on herbs anymore. We’ll be able to work more. In the meantime, I’ll save money for the potions. You don’t need to worry, Ellie. I still owe your parents, and now I owe you. Once the children grow up a bit, they can help more. Maybe two of them can work in the city to bring in extra income.”

Aunt Lana spoke with hope, having already laid out her future plans. She just hoped that her husband wouldn’t pass away too soon, leaving behind the 4 vulnerable lives.