Perfect Potion

After the academy opened, everything went very smoothly.

Although the students had doubts about what they were learning at first, Joseph dispelled them by leading by example.

Later, when they struggled to keep up with their studies, a group of teaching assistants stepped in.

This new approach was a great success and earned unanimous praise from the students.

The noble students now had personal attendants of their own, while everyone else had excellent assistants to help them get started.

The students were happy, and so were the teaching assistants, each of whom made a fortune.

The students were studying with enthusiasm, and even the noble youths threw themselves into their lessons.

Joseph also offered some high-quality potions that Drew had never sold to the public as rewards for students with good grades. This only made them study harder.

After observing that everything was going well, Drew stopped concerning himself with the academy and focused on his alchemy research.

It was the same old subject: Cure Potions. They were the toughest problem Drew had encountered so far, far harder than advanced alchemy.

Recently, Drew had tried brewing Mana Potions, an advanced potion.

Although advanced potions demanded far greater control over mana, Drew had still managed to make them successfully.

His success rate was only 30%, and the quality was usually Excellent. Only when he was lucky did he get an Outstanding one.

The difficulty had risen sharply, but compared with making Cure Potions, it was nothing.

Drew had spent months working on Cure Potions without making any progress. After so many experiments had yielded nothing, he considered approaching the problem from a different angle.

Drew thought about how well the human body could absorb things. He recalled collagen, a substance he had learned about before. It was a protein, and absorbing it was beneficial to the body.

But even within the same kind of protein, the sizes of its constituent molecules could vary greatly.

Some were only a few dozen daltons, while others were tens of thousands of daltons—a difference of several thousand times.

The human body could only absorb collagen molecules smaller than three thousand daltons. If the molecules were too large, the body could not absorb them. Could the same be true of Cure Potions?

The mana clusters that produced the healing effect could only be absorbed by someone with the constitution of a professional. Ordinary people could not absorb them.

So even if the potion was diluted, the smallest mana clusters remained unchanged, and ordinary people still could not absorb them.

What if he changed the structure of the mana clusters without affecting the healing effect?

He could reduce the potion's potency in exchange for making the clusters small enough for the human body to absorb.

Drew decided to start researching this approach that very day.

After many experiments, Drew found that the mana clusters in a finished Cure Potion were extremely stable.

But once, after a mistake during brewing, he made a Cure Potion of Common quality.

Under the microscope, Drew saw that the mana clusters were not all the same size.

Compared with the Excellent- and Outstanding-quality Cure Potions he had made before, this Common-quality potion contained a few slightly larger mana clusters.

Those larger clusters made the mana in the potion slightly uneven, lowering its quality.

Why were there mana clusters of different sizes in the potion? Drew took a sip and found that it was indeed less potent, but it had no other effects. So the larger mana clusters still worked the same way.

Drew did not know what other people's Cure Potions looked like.

Karen had no Scanning System when brewing, so he could not observe the mana clusters. And Drew had never made a low-quality potion himself, nor had he discussed the matter with other alchemists or seen their Cure Potions. He had nothing to compare his work with.

So Drew asked the mayor to have a merchant caravan purchase a Common-quality Cure Potion made by someone else.

Under microscopic observation, he found the same larger mana clusters.

After comparing them, Drew found that his Common-quality Cure Potion was identical to a normal one.

Then why didn't high-quality Cure Potions contain these larger mana clusters?

Could it be that the better the ingredients fused together, the higher the potion's quality, and the more stable and uniform the mana clusters became?

In other words, if the quality rose beyond what he could currently achieve and reached the Perfect level, would the mana clusters become even smaller?

The smaller the mana clusters, the more evenly dispersed the mana. Could an ordinary person withstand it, then?

But his brewing technique was already near perfect. Improving it further would be difficult.

Still, if Perfect Potions were a real thing, someone must have succeeded before. With the help of a system, there was no way he could fail. He just had to find the reason.

Drew continued making Cure Potions. He turned the Scanning System's power up to maximum and added the liquid one drop at a time, each drop as small as he could manage.

With greater precision in his brewing, the quality did improve, but it still fell short of Perfect.

His technique had reached its limit. Perhaps he needed to refine the ingredients at the source. Could he improve things further that way?

Drew acted as soon as the idea came to him. He stopped using the Material Extraction Device and began extracting the ingredients by hand. Perhaps there was little difference between ingredients extracted by an ordinary person and those extracted by a device.

But Drew kept the Scanning System running as he worked, processing the extracted ingredients with great precision.

Once extraction was complete, Drew thought the liquid seemed purer after being extracted by hand. Maybe it was just his imagination.

He used the hand-extracted liquid to brew a potion, and its quality was indeed higher.

Seeing that it worked, Drew decided to strive for perfection and eliminate every unfavorable factor. He replaced all his alchemy equipment with tools made from materials that insulated against mana.

By eliminating even the slightest influence from his equipment, Drew's Cure Potions grew steadily better with each attempt. Then, one time, after a successful brew, the potion glowed gold during the solidification stage.

After the golden light faded, the finished potion had changed from red to gold.

Drew held the potion in his hand, puzzled.

Every other potion he had made had looked the same when it was completed. There had been no unusual effects; he could only determine a potion's quality by examining its mana after it was finished.

But both the golden light during the brewing and the changed color showed that this potion was extraordinary.

Drew sensed the potion in his hand. It had indeed reached Perfect quality, and surpassed the standard by a wide margin.

Yet he could also feel that this Cure Potion was different from those of other qualities.

Drew used the Scanning System to examine the mana clusters under a microscope and found that their structure had changed.

They had become even smaller, and seemed to have formed two distinct structures that combined into something like a binary star system.

The two kinds of mana clusters corresponded to one another and rotated in tandem.

Drew stared at the potion, unsure whether this altered Cure Potion still had healing properties. Should he try it?

What if it was dangerous?

Drew thought it over and decided to take a sip. After all, he had made it himself; even if it made him cry, he had to drink it.

Drew was afraid to drink much, so he took a tiny sip and carefully observed how he felt.

It was still a Cure Potion, no doubt about it. Its effects even seemed smoother and gentler.

He had no idea whether an ordinary person could withstand it. He needed to find someone ordinary to test it on.

After all, the energies of their respective professions had already altered professionals' bodies, making them different from ordinary people.

As an intermediate professional, he was very different from an ordinary person.

Every professional went through an adaptation period as an apprentice, during which their bodies were altered by their profession's energy.

Upon becoming a full professional, their bodies underwent a qualitative transformation, and every advancement brought another alteration. It would be best to test the potion on an apprentice, who had yet to undergo the transformation of a full professional but had some foundation.

He would test it on an apprentice first, then on an ordinary person if there was no danger. Wait, there was an even better choice. Drew thought of someone.