Chapter 37

A few hours past noon, Kai got home. Outside his house, the improvised festival was still going strong. People were laughing, eating street food and generally having a good time.

He wished he could join them, but he had no time to spare. He wasn’t going to get another chance to earn so much money anytime soon. He might finally be able to help his family in a concrete way.

No one else was home, so he got to work. He had played like it was no big deal, but doubts were starting to arise. To keep his mood up he decided to check his status. He had gotten a lot of experience messing around with sub-tier-one ingredients and concoctions, and his skills had grown as a result.

Skills:

• Running (lv73>74)

• Swimming (lv71>73)

• Meditation (lv60>62)

• Awareness (lv51>54)

• Herbology (lv44>49)

• Acting (lv36>44)

• Processing – Plants (lv14>23)

• Reading (lv10>19)

• Gardening (lv10>12)

• Sneak (lv1>7)

• Mana Sense (lv38>40)

• Mana Manipulation (lv4>7)

• Alchemy (lv2>4)

• Inspect (lv1>4)

Every level in the orange grade skills mattered a lot. If he survived the next two days, he was sure to see even more.

Glancing over his other skills, Running and Herbology were stuck at the thresholds. Hopefully, he could push Herbology over the edge. For Running he had a different plan. He would worry about it after this ordeal was over.

Depositing the large bag of ingredients near his alchemy station, he couldn’t mess this up. He needed a plan to tackle things correctly. His body was itching to get started and figure things out as he went along, his mind knew better.

He owed Uncle Moui more than a silver mesar. For how much he joked around the hunter, he was serious when money was involved. He had taken a risky venture.

The first thing he needed to do was a little math. He had haggled over every copper chip with Reishi, but he only eyeballed the calculations in the rush to not let the unique opportunity slip away.

The conversion between chips, copper mesars and silver mesars was confusing. Having it all spelled on paper would help him see the whole picture. Kai took his dad’s silver pen and started scribbling away. It wasn’t complicated math, but he was rusty. Ten unpleasant minutes later, he was done.

1 copper mesar = 100 copper chips

1 silver mesar = 50 copper mesars

Investment: 2 silvers (0.6 mine, 1.4 Moui’s)

Healing potion:

• Cost per unit: 50 chips

• Number requested: 100 units

• Total cost ingredients: 1 silver

• Net profit per unit: 60-80 chips

Energizing potion:

• Cost per unit: 60 chips

• Number requested: 50 units

• Total cost ingredients: 0.6 silver

• Net profit per unit: 100-120 chips

Bait Poison:

• Cost per unit: 100 chips

• Number requested: 20 units

• Total cost ingredients: 0.4 silver

• Net profit per unit: 160-200 chips

He only used silvers and chips to make things less confusing. Now that the numbers stood before him, he had a clear idea of the immensity of the task ahead, and of its rewards.

Kai had to brew a grand total of 170 potions in little over two days. More than half of them were for healing, the easiest by far. Only the bait poison might create some problems, but he only needed to make twenty. The energizing potion fell somewhere in the middle, closer to the easier end.

The profit he would get from each potion was proportional to the difficulty of the brewing process and heavily dependent on the quality he achieved.

The healing potions were more than half of the total order, but little more than a third in potential profit.

If he estimated to produce potions of average quality, his gains would be 1.4, 1.1 and 0.7 silvers respectively. When he looked at the number, he couldn’t help but gasp. Even after repaying Moui, he stood to make almost two silvers. That was a lot of money for him and his family.

However, there was a caveat. He considered he would make potions of average quality to be realistic, but he had not counted possible failures. If he messed up a brew, he wouldn’t just lose the profit, but have to shoulder the cost of the ingredients too.

I can’t fuck this up, and I have no time to lose.

Prepping his alchemy station, he planned to start with the healing potions first. The recipe Reishi provided was new to him, but he had done something similar, and the process wasn’t hard. He would train his skills while mass producing these potions and then focus on the truly challenging ones.

To optimize his time, he added a little distilled water to his cauldron and lit the burner at the bottom. Then he moved on to processing the ingredients.

There were only three ingredients for this recipe. Out of them, the lushstalk was the only true tier-one ingredient of the potion.

It was a bright green stalk, as long as his forearm, looking like it would take root the moment you put it on the ground. Following its mana channels, Kai carefully cut the part he needed. Only a narrow strip along the stalk contained over 90% of its properties. He had no problem executing the cut. The stalk was similar to a lifebloom, but even easier to handle.

The other two ingredients were only pseudo-mana herbs, almost trivial to process. Using a pestle to push out their properties and adding them to his boiling cauldron in the right order, Kai observed the herbs mixing with his skills.

He used a little tendril of mana to fight the biggest impurities, sift the result and put it in a vial. Just like that, he was done with his first potion.

Bringing the vial filled with greenish liquid to his eyes and focusing on Inspect, he deemed the quality to be average. A decent first try. He was confident of reaching high quality in a few more. Time management was the problem. He went quickly, but still spent half an hour on this one potion. He needed to make 99 more.

I need to get better and faster.

Kai pushed down the note of panic in his gut. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could do this.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

Right then, he heard the door opening and the voices of Alana and Kea cheerfully talking.

“Mum!” he called. No time for shame, there was too much work to do.

Alana rushed to his room, her eyes scanning him and then jumping around the room to find the possible emergency. Finding nothing, she let out a sigh of relief and looked at him.

Kea’s head peeked through the door. “Why did you yell like a bird in heat?”

Both Kai and Alana’s eyes moved to her. She shrugged. “What? People talk around town, and I have ears.”

He would have liked to investigate that further, but now was not the time. “I need more distilled water,” he said, shaking a half-filled glass bottle.

The gazes moved back on him. To avoid the series of questions, he preventively explained. “I might have taken a loan and need to brew a ton of potions in the next two days to pay it back.”

Alana put a hand over her face, massaging her eyes. “You did what? How much did you borrow and from whom?”

Kai could already feel the lecture forming on her mother’s lips. “No time to explain. Don’t worry, I have everything well under control.” He gave them his best grin, then pointed to Kea. “I need you to go take a bucket of water.”

Taking the few parts of a small condenser Dora gave him and handing them to a stunned Alana, he continued. “And I need you to start distilling water. Put the water in, make it boil, collect the vapor in this bottle and bring it back to me. It’s easy, just be careful not to break it, it’s the only one I have.”

Alana was fuming, her gaze promising retribution. Containing her anger, she carefully took the condenser. “We are going to have a little talk after this is over.”

Kea looked at him with schadenfreude, thankfully she followed his suggestions.

Slightly more relaxed, Kai was thankful he had his family to count on. He had not considered how much distilled water he would need. It was easy to make, but very time-consuming with the small condenser Dora gave him.

I’m sure they won’t be too angry when I bring in the big bucks.

At least that was the plan to appease Alana’s wrath. Bribe her with money. What could go wrong?

With one crisis solved, Kai dedicated himself completely to his alchemy. The next healing potion turned out higher quality. By the fourth, his result was almost perfect and only took him twenty minutes.

Phase one accomplished. Now comes the hard part.

There was no way he could complete the order by brewing potions one at a time. He needed to do them in batches. It wasn’t uncommon, every professional alchemist did it to be more efficient. Only apprentices brew one thing at a time, since their aim wasn’t to maximize profit, but to learn by consuming as few ingredients as possible.

Kai was tempted to fill his cauldron with as many herbs as it could contain and wing it. His cautious side won.

He briefly debated if he should double or triple since the recipe was so easy. Thankfully he chose the first.

In theory, you just used double the ingredients and did the same thing. Or so he thought. Practice had something to say about that. With a bigger mixture, the heat spread differently and—more importantly—the reaction between the ingredients’ mana became more chaotic. It was easy for one side to overwhelm the other or even react in unexpected ways.

Sweat formed over Kai’s forehead as he frantically controlled his mana to save the batch. Both Mana Sense and Inspect zeroed in to understand what was going on and find a way to solve the mess.

After a few close calls and intensive use of his skills and mana, the two lowest-quality potions he ever produced were saved.

Thanks to my boring brain I only went for two. Those would have been money flying out of my pocket.

Even if the potions weren’t completely ruined, it couldn’t be called a success. He spent too much mana and Inspect was showing the first signs of strain. If he pushed too far and didn’t use his resources correctly, he was never going to make it. And he was famously terrible at pacing himself.

Come on, there’s a first time for everything.

Taking a moment to calm his mind, Kai tried a double batch again. Knowing what to expect and look for, things didn’t go as disastrously.

A bottle of distilled water had appeared at some point. He had been so focused on his cauldron he hadn’t realized. He continued to try batches of two until the quality rose again.

Then it was time for batches of three. Unlike passing from one to two, with a triple batch the increase in difficulty was only quantitative. Just more of the same.

Kai continued to refine his skills well into the night. At some point, Alana came to bring him dinner and he ate a couple bites between one try and the next.

Mastering the triple batch wasn’t complicated, but his resources were at the limit. Trying with four was risky. Inspect was causing him a noticeable headache and his mana channels were at 60% capacity. The strain of low mana was beginning to make itself known, his body and thoughts would turn sluggish if he continued.

If the batch of four presented an unexpected reaction, he didn’t think he could or should try to save it.

He should probably go to sleep, but he was too anxious. He would only end up turning around on his bed for hours. Now that the quality of the product was high, he continued brewing the triple dose, focusing on optimizing his resource usage.

Even with that, his mana and focus dwindled rapidly. A few batches later he made a stupid mistake and his quality dropped to average. Kai decided to call it a day. He counted the yield of his marathon. There were 38 neatly arranged vials containing healing potions. He had hoped for more, but it was a viable number according to his timetable.

If he wanted to complete the order in time, he needed to finish the healing and energizing potions tomorrow. Leaving the last day for the more complex bait poison.

Too exhausted to think or even feel anxious, he sought his bed. The good news was that his pillow was one step away. The bad was that his room smelled of alchemy. Mostly herbal with a little hint of burnt.

Kai opened the small window to let a breath of air into the room and let himself fall on his bed, not bothering to change his clothes. With a last curious thought, he noticed his mana levels were around 45%, dangerously low. He gave a tired but satisfied smile.

Tomorrow would be harder, but he could do it.