A Stone-skinned Boar leisurely rubbed its tusks, each nearly as big as half its body, against a tree trunk. After a long while, it finally felt they were sharp enough.
Then its rear started to itch, so it turned around, preparing to rub that against the tree too.
Suddenly, its head spun and its whole body went limp. It collapsed to the ground, but hadn't completely lost consciousness. It could only see a High Elf holding two empty bottles and grinning maliciously at it.
"This Shadow Potion and Dizziness Potion may not be proper potions, but they're actually pretty useful."
The High Elf was Karen. To test the effects of his Healing Potion, he'd decided to find a tough, thick-skinned beast as a test subject. This Stone-skinned Boar was his prey.
One bottle of Shadow Potion let him approach the boar under the tree's shadow without being noticed. The other, a Dizziness Potion, left the powerful boar's limbs weak and sprawled on the ground, completely at his mercy.
Watching Karen grin maliciously, Sathis, standing behind him, was speechless.
He was an elite-level professional, yet Karen had quietly summoned him to act as a bodyguard just to catch a Stone-skinned Boar.
And he hadn't even been asked to catch it. He'd just watched Karen deviously take down a beast that didn't even qualify as a low-level monster with two potions—and now he had to drag it back himself.
Sathis was starting to question his life. I'm an elite Spellbreaker. Did I come here to be a laborer?
Why not hire a farmer? Why drag me along? Have you no shame?
Karen didn't care what Sathis thought. As long as it worked, that was all that mattered. What if someone risked being hunted by the entire High Elf race just to assassinate him?
It was safer to take a skilled fighter like Sathis along whenever he went out.
Karen cheerfully prepared a large cage for the Stone-skinned Boar in his laboratory.
Then the Stone-skinned Boar endured all kinds of inhumane torture.
Karen tested various injuries. First, he tried lacerations, applying different small amounts of Healing Potion to see whether lacerations of the same size healed at the same rate.
Then he tested lacerations of different sizes to see how much Healing Potion was needed.
He checked how much potion worked best, healing the fastest without using too much.
Then he tested different kinds of wounds to see how the necessary amounts varied.
Just as Karen was about to test whether the Healing Potion could regrow severed limbs, Antonidas walked into his laboratory.
Antonidas glanced at the Stone-skinned Boar in the cage in the corner. It wore a vacant expression and looked completely devoid of hope. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Hey, buddy, don't spend all your time cooped up in the laboratory doing experiments.
"Our adventuring party came across a map while completing a mission recently. It marks an ancient Night Elf Druid alchemist's laboratory. Interested in taking a look?"
"Oh? What's the story?"
"We were hunting a Loji Bird this time and found a map in its nest.
"We identified it as written in the ancient Night Elf language, then asked a mage who studies it to translate it. Turns out it's a map to an ancient Shadow Elf Druid alchemist's laboratory.
"The Druid alchemical system is a bit different from the current mage alchemical system. What do you think? Interested?"
"Absolutely. What have you arranged so far?"
"Everything's ready. We've researched the location and narrowed down the general area. We're just waiting for you."
"Great, no problem. Let me know when you're setting out."
"Sure. Remember to bring plenty of potions."
"And I'll bring Sathis along too."
"That's great. Then there shouldn't be any risk."
Deep in a primeval forest more than a thousand kilometers from Dalaran, Karen and the others struggled through the undergrowth.
"Damn, this is the area you narrowed down? How are we supposed to find anything in this endless sea of trees?" Karen and the others had already been trekking through the forest for more than ten days.
"Time changes everything. The site dates back thousands of years, after all.
"The land has changed so much. I didn't expect it to be this bad.
"And Druids were close to nature to begin with. They built their laboratory right in the forest.
"The forest has expanded over the years, so the laboratory is now deep inside it. There's nothing I can do. According to the map, we're almost there," Antonidas explained.
"I don't believe a word of it. You had a perfectly comfortable laboratory, but you dragged me into the forest to feed the mosquitoes..."
"Look ahead. Could that be it?" Antonidas interrupted Karen's complaints. A small wooden cabin stood in the distance, surrounded by weeds and wrapped in countless vines.
"I don't think so. How could a little wooden cabin like that be a laboratory? And look at all these weeds around it. It probably doesn't have any protective measures at all," Karen argued.
"Not necessarily. Look, this is the only man-made structure around here, in a place where hardly anyone ever comes.
"According to the map, it can only be here.
"After thousands of years, I doubt any protective measures would still be in place.
"Why don't we take a look first?" Antonidas suggested. They cleared away the weeds as they made their way to the cabin.
"This little cabin doesn't seem ordinary. It really does have the feel of something ancient. But it's still in such good condition after thousands of years, without the slightest trace of decay. There's definitely something unusual about it. Sathis, go check it out first."
"As you command, Your Highness." Sathis went ahead alone and carefully inspected the cabin. "Your Highness, there don't seem to be any protective measures."
"Good. Let's go in."
They pushed open the cabin's wooden door and stepped inside. Everyone was stunned by what they saw.
Though it looked like a tiny cabin from the outside, the interior was enormous—at least ten times the size of Karen's rudimentary laboratory.
The cabin had been enchanted with spatial magic, expanding the space inside dozens of times over.
Vines divided the interior into five rooms. The first was a living room, probably meant to entertain guests.
The cabin occupied its own separate space, cut off from the outside world, so the cups on the living-room table were free of dust.
But when they reached out to touch them, the cups crumbled into powder.
The outside world might not have been able to enter, but that hadn't stopped time from taking its toll.
The next room was a dining room. A dining table stood in the middle, with food still on it—if the blackened lumps could still be called food.
The food was still on the table, suggesting the owner had left in a hurry due to some unexpected matter and never returned.
The room in the middle was an alchemy laboratory. There were no potions being prepared on the alchemist's workbench, and the ingredients laid out there had all lost their potency. It seemed the owner hadn't practiced alchemy for a long time. There was nothing else in the room.
The place Karen had looked forward to most had nothing of value at all.
But Karen wasn't disappointed, because in the bedroom beyond it, he found lots of notes in the form of books made from leaves.
Worried they might crumble to ash like the cups, he carefully used magic to preserve them and made copies to study in detail when he had time.
The last room was a storeroom. It had nothing of value either—at least, nothing valuable to Karen.
Some items had survived in the cabin. Antonidas and the others carefully packed them up and took them away as antiques.
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