Magic Workshop (Part 2)

"Feiqiya, you're too polite." Alec smiled. "That would be far too expensive for you. Only suckers go to places like that."

"As I should, as I should." Feiqiya smiled as well. "Then it's settled. I'll be going now."

"I'll see you out." Alec followed him.

"No need, no need." Feiqiya waved his hand. "Romon, you must learn more from Mage Alec."

"Brother Feiqiya, I will." Romon bowed to him.

After Feiqiya left, Alec walked back from the workshop entrance.

"Romon." He pointed at the young people in several cubicles. "These are all your companions. They're working right now, so I won't introduce them one by one. You'll get to know them eventually. I'll take you to your room."

Romon nodded silently. Then Alec showed him the room. It was not large, but the bedding and everything else were neat and tidy. There was a small table with a little lamp on it, also a magical item with a level-zero Light Spell permanently fixed within it.

"You know how to use this, right?" Alec asked, pointing at the magic lamp.

"I do." Romon had seen one in the Temple at Rika Town. It was a convenient little item for spellcasters; it only needed a trace of magical power to activate and could be used for some time.

"As for lunch, it'll be delivered from Old Vilen's place." Alec smiled at Romon, his smile carrying a slightly suggestive air. "Yvette is a good girl, though her temper is a little fiery."

Romon lowered his head.

Alec assumed he was embarrassed and burst into laughter.

At last, Alec led him to an empty cubicle in the workshop. "This will be where you work from now on. Do you need me to demonstrate how to prepare a potion now?"

"Yes, please. Sorry to trouble you." Romon drew in a breath, trying hard to focus his mind.

"Wait here." Alec left as he spoke. Before long, he returned with a small glass bottle and a box.

Alec sat beside the workbench. "Look, Romon. Since a Solidifying Agent does not retain its activity for long after being prepared, my teacher divided it into two parts." He opened the small box, revealing a pill inside. "It's very simple to use. Drop the pill into the glass bottle containing the liquid. When the pill has completely dissolved, that is when the Solidifying Agent has the highest activity. Do you understand?"

"I understand." Romon answered, but inwardly he felt a chill. He had heard Jefa and Ansen discuss ways to judge a Solidifying Agent's level of activity. The word that appeared most often in those methods was "experience." Yet according to Alec, one merely had to observe the degree to which the pill had dissolved to determine the Solidifying Agent's activity index. Such a simple design revealed Sackville's accomplishments in alchemical potions.

"Then, Mage Alec, how long does it take for the pill to dissolve completely?" Romon asked.

At that question, Alec frowned. "Teacher once tested it. The result then was fifty-six magic seconds. But knowing that result is useless to you, because you don't have an accurate timing tool."

Who says I don't? Romon roared toward the heavens in his heart. I've got a stopwatch in my Shennong Horn Space!

Yet his face showed an extremely curious smile. "Are timing tools expensive?"

"Very expensive. I'd like one too. Experiments would be much more convenient." Alec smiled wistfully.

No way I'm giving you mine, Romon thought.

"All right, may I begin the demonstration?" Alec asked.

"Please wait a moment longer." Romon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then his consciousness entered the space within Shennong Horn and found that mechanical stopwatch.

Romon opened his eyes. At the same time, his right hand had already gripped the stopwatch inside the wide sleeve of his Druid robes. Good thing I wore formal clothes for today's meeting, he thought.

"Please begin."

Alec smiled, lifted the bottle cap, and tossed the small pill into the colorless liquid. Romon secretly pressed the timing button.

The little pill gradually dissolved, and the potion began turning red. Alec's expression grew solemn. He began murmuring an incantation and formed the corresponding hand seals.

Romon also focused all his attention on Alec's actions.

At the instant the pill in the bottle completely dispersed, the final note of Alec's incantation stopped. Romon promptly pressed the button. At the same time, through his Aura Vision, he could clearly see spiritual radiance beginning to flicker gradually inside the bottle. The spell was being stored by the Solidifying Agent.

This situation lasted for a short while. Then Romon saw the potion suddenly flash with a brief golden gleam visible to the naked eye.

"It's done." Alec let out a breath. "Next, I should sign my name." He pointed to the blank space on the bottle's label. "Then you hand it to me for inspection, and I'll immediately give an appraisal of the potion's quality. Finally, I'll pay you according to the result."

"I understand."

"All right. Once you've made a potion, ring the bell on the table, and I'll come collect it. Here are two portions of Solidifying Agent. Take one and try your hand at it first." Alec placed two portions on the table, then left.

Romon watched him go, entered the cubicle, and shut the door. He took out the stopwatch hidden in his sleeve. It displayed fifty-five point four seconds. It seemed that magic seconds matched Earth's seconds exactly.

A smug smile appeared on Romon's face. With this, preparing potions would surely become much easier.

A week passed quickly. During that week, Romon came to know several apprentices working alongside him: three mages and one Druid. Including himself, there were five in all. Their ages were not far apart, and their backgrounds and experiences were similarly close. Basically, they either had no fixed mentor, or had one but received no favor from that mentor. At the same time, all of them had some direct or indirect connection to Sackville and had come to work at the workshop through letters of recommendation from sponsors.

"The entire social structure resembles medieval Europe. Apprentices learned their craft under masters through guarantors. There were neither the open recruitment common in modern society nor much of what could be called volunteering oneself like Mao Sui. This was still a society where relationships were woven through acquaintances. Though the power held by the few spellcasters was no less than that of the modern age, magic and divine arts remained privileges enjoyed by only a minority."

Having lived through the age of information explosion, Romon's insight into this society was extraordinarily sharp.

However, even Archimedes needed a fulcrum before he could pry up the earth. As a level-one Druid, Romon currently devoted most of his attention to preparing potions. In his remaining time, he kept an eye on the plants' progress in the Shennong Horn, and sparred in martial skills with Yvette, who often came to deliver meals.

Romon's life was now exceedingly comfortable. Even regarding the repayment of his debt, after no longer seeing Bakasi, the tax officer of Rika Town, with that ugly dead-man's face, Romon had formed an idea. He merely needed to wait for a suitable opportunity. He focused his attention on Yvette, deliberately growing closer to her.

But the impression others had of Romon was different.

That week, Romon set all three of his daily level-one spell slots to Cure Minor Wounds. This was entirely unlike that fool Jacob, who wasted his level-one spell slots on Flame Palm merely to show off.

Then, in everyone's eyes, Romon displayed astonishing talent in making alchemical potions. His success rate in producing Cure Minor Wounds potions was second only to Alec's. Out of roughly nine attempts every three days, he only failed once. Moreover, the results of those failures were always defective potions rather than complete ruin. Such defective potions, whose effect was equivalent to the level-zero spell "Stop Bleeding," could still be sold in the shop out front. Therefore, Romon did not need to compensate for the Solidifying Agent—though of course, this was the result of Romon's control.

Faced with his colleagues' jealous gazes, Mage Alec's praise, and Yvette's clearly changed attitude, Romon's answer was very simple: "I'm extremely sensitive to the passage of time."

Thanks to the stopwatch's power, Alec even sighed to him once, "Romon, if you chose the path of a mage, I think we could cooperate on some research."

Romon took all of this in stride. So what if they were jealous? No one dared to pull any tricks inside the workshop. As for outside it, Romon's life was highly regular. At most, he went out to practice swordsmanship with Yvette. Before he knew it, their feelings had grown increasingly harmonious.

Moreover, and most importantly, these colleagues of his had struggled greatly in learning their crafts and had experienced much, so they acted with particular caution. In this world, mediocre people were the majority after all. They did not dare make any moves.

This day was Sunday. At noon, after Romon finished auditing Sackville's lecture, he strolled out of the shop. He had half a day off today. Ordinary apprentices naturally could not enjoy such treatment, but Romon and the others had, after all, gained the status of spellcasters. Their treatment was naturally entirely different from that of ordinary apprentices in shops and workshops.

Then he saw Yvette standing prettily outside the door.

The girl had a head of long, wavy golden hair that glittered in the sunlight. Her nose seemed carved from the finest jade by a master craftsman, a delicate little nose that tilted slightly upward. Before her chest, a pair of doves rested quietly, displaying the lovely curves of a maiden.

Romon suddenly recalled an ancient poem from Earth:

The quiet maiden was lovely, waiting for me by the city wall. Hidden from sight, she made me scratch my head and pace in hesitation. The quiet maiden was fair, giving me a crimson reed flute. The crimson flute gleamed brightly; I delighted in the maiden's beauty. She brought me tender reeds from the fields, truly lovely and rare. It was not the reeds themselves that were beautiful, but the gift of the beauty.

A ripple rose in his heart. Since he had vaguely revealed the news last time, she had waited three days before coming.

Though they were still shallow acquaintances speaking deeply, he could no longer worry about that.

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