As the referee's wand sent up fireworks, the competition officially began.
Several contestants quickly lit their fires and casually tossed ingredients into their cauldrons, looking completely confident.
In the judges' seats, an elderly woman with a full head of white hair and smooth skin watched the scene and couldn't help shaking her head. She covered her mouth and said to the judge beside her:
"Have the contestants from Koldovstoretz and Mahoutokoro become this careless? Don't they even check the quality of the ingredients before using them?"
But only a few contestants across the entire room had made such a basic mistake.
Although the organizers had only announced that they would provide the ingredients, and hadn't mentioned the little trap of mixing in extra or substandard ingredients among those "provided by the organizers,"
most contestants still chose to inspect them after noticing the unusually large quantity and variety.
Harley quickly selected enough ingredients to brew two batches of Draught of Living Death based on her memory.
Then she began weighing the Valerian Root while lighting the fire beneath her cauldron, letting the pure water inside come to a boil.
Harley swiftly followed the standard procedure. Ten minutes later, her potion had turned into a uniform tea-brown liquid.
That was exactly the ideal state for the potion at this stage of brewing.
"Bang!" Harley was working intently when an explosion suddenly sounded in the distance, followed by a foul stench.
A chain reaction followed, and several contestants' cauldrons developed problems of varying severity.
"Are the other contestants really this bad? Don't they know to check their ingredients before brewing a Potion?"
While the potion in her cauldron heated, Harley fanned away the stench with her hand and silently complained.
After all, the smell made it obvious that someone had used Valerian Root