Brewing healing potions

After finishing all this, Allen did not return to the outer city. Instead, he wandered around the city and casually asked about the market for healing potions. He found that prices really did vary considerably, particularly between healing potions of different qualities. From what he learned, common potions such as healing potions were generally divided into inferior, medium, high, and perfect quality, and an inferior potion might not fetch even a fraction of the price of a perfect one.

Fortunately, even inferior healing potions would still turn a profit as long as he could make them. He did not stay in the city long, returning to his rented house in the outer city once he had learned what he needed. After yesterday's cleaning, the house no longer looked as shabby as it had when he first arrived.

Back at his lodgings, Allen suddenly realized a problem. The outer city was not as safe as the inn. There was practically no law and order here, and many vagrants lurked about. It would be bad if one of them slipped into his house one day and stole his things. At that thought, he immediately reinforced the door and windows, but he still did not feel it was secure enough. It would be nice if he could set up a barrier around the house, but he was not a mage and had no such ability.

In the end, he could only take his valuables with him whenever he went out. Once the potion-making equipment arrived, he planned to dig a hole inside the house, take the equipment out when he needed it, and hide it in the hole with a chest over it when he left. Most people probably would not discover it that way. He did not want to go to all this trouble either, but he really had no other option.

While he still had time, he immediately found a shovel and dug the hole. Then he covered it with a wooden board for the time being, leaving the place looking much as it had before.

Only that evening did he have time to continue studying Jinlun's healing potion formula. Jinlun had written it in great detail, clearly noting the quantity and properties of each ingredient and the order in which they should be added. It also included Jinlun's improvements to the healing potion. In truth, his so-called improvements involved increasing or decreasing the quantities of ingredients to find the best proportions, as well as adding new ingredients to see how the potion would change.

Unfortunately, all of Jinlun's attempts had failed. It was easy enough to guess that the best proportions were those in the original formula. After all, countless predecessors had researched and refined it, so improving it further was extremely difficult. Still, Jinlun's approach of adding new ingredients and studying the changes was a good one. It simply required many attempts before any new discoveries could be made. Jinlun had only tried a few times, which naturally amounted to nothing.

Of course, Allen would not overreach now and try to move beyond the formula to develop a new one before he had even produced a finished potion. The most important thing now was to brew a healing potion and improve his success rate.

So, for the next week, he kept studying the formula Jinlun had left behind while also visiting the library to look for information on alchemy.

A week later, he arrived at the market as agreed. The vendor greeted him warmly, patted the large crate beside him, and said to Allen, "Here's the alchemy equipment. There isn't much, but it's all very expensive. I got it from a mage apprentice. Take a look and see what you think." As he spoke, he opened the crate. Inside were transparent bottles and jars, along with some things that looked like distillation equipment, all piled together. Allen picked up the bottles and examined them. They looked somewhat like laboratory equipment from his previous life, but because of the workmanship, they were not very clear and had a yellowish tint.

The vendor continued explaining beside him. "These are made of the finest glass. They cost a fortune. If that mage apprentice hadn't urgently needed money, he wouldn't have sold them to me. Look, I got this from him too." The vendor held up a peculiar piece of equipment and fiddled with it in front of Allen.

He recognized the apparatus. It was used to separate different substances and could be considered high-end equipment, but it was not part of the set he had ordered. "Allen, look. This is good stuff. I spent a lot of money buying it for you."

Allen caught on. "You mean you want me to buy it?" "Of course. It can improve your success rate when making potions!" He chuckled inwardly. If improving the success rate were that easy, every mage could become an alchemist.

"Five gold coins. I can't manage any more than that." Allen named his price outright. Sure enough, the vendor immediately rejected it. "That's not even a tenth of what I paid for it. Allen, you can't rip me off like this." "I'm not a fool. We both know how much you paid for it. Besides, I don't necessarily need it, and I never ordered it from you. You're putting me in a difficult position by asking me to buy it now. I've spent all my money on ingredients. There's no way I can come up with that much." Confident that no one else would buy the thing, he began bargaining mercilessly.

The vendor also realized that buying this contraption had been a terrible decision. In the end, after some haggling, Allen bought the apparatus for just six gold coins.

Next, he hired some people to transport everything back to his house in the outer city. Now he had both the equipment and the ingredients; all he lacked was Duskweed. Once everything was settled, he visited the Alchemy Association. Its staff had prepared everything on time, and after inspecting the goods, Allen took the crate of Duskweed away. It was already noon when he returned to the house in the outer city. Rather than rush straight into brewing, he ate and rested first.

Finally, once everything was ready, he took Jinlun's formula out of his backpack, along with the notes he had made from the information he had collected at the library over the past week. Then he carefully arranged all the apparatus and equipment on a large table and began preparing to brew a healing potion. Before this, he had never seen how anyone else brewed potions and did not know whether others did it the same way he did.

So he used the approach he had followed in school experiments in his previous life, completing every step in sequence. He worked very slowly and kept detailed records of each step, carefully noting the time, the forms that appeared, colors, quantities, smells, and so on.

At last, he reached the most critical step: infusing magic power. Everything else had been preparation for this step. This was also the step that determined whether the potion could carry magic power. He immersed the Water Elemental Heart in the liquid, then slowly used his mental power to draw out its magic power and attempted to blend that power into the liquid.

However, the liquid seemed completely unresponsive to the Water Elemental Heart's magic power. He carefully tried several times, until he finally lost control. The magic power erupted uncontrollably, and the liquid instantly boiled, changed color, and lost all its potency.

He was not surprised that it had failed like this. After all, failure on his first attempt was perfectly normal. He immediately poured the spent liquid into a waste bucket and quickly washed the equipment clean. Rather than begin a second attempt straight away, he took out his notebook and carefully checked it for anything he had done poorly or overlooked. Finally, he recorded these problems to avoid repeating the mistakes next time.

A week passed, and he still had not managed to brew even a single finished potion. He had nearly used up all the Duskweed, yet every attempt had ended in failure. He opened his notebook, its pages densely covered with precautions for brewing potions. He could no longer find any oversights and had reduced every deviation as much as possible. To eliminate discrepancies in the weight of the ingredients, he had even made a small balance and recalibrated his measurements using one milliliter of water. Yet several more attempts still failed, which showed that these were not the causes of his failures at all.

After studying the problem for some time, he found that everything pointed to the final step-infusing magic power. This step was truly crucial, because he was using the Water Elemental Heart rather than magic power of his own. This had to be the reason for his ultimate failure, but it was also a hurdle he simply could not avoid, because he had no magic power himself.

He did not give up, because he now had no other path and had to remain determined to brew it successfully. If he gave up now, all his previous efforts really would be wasted. After resting and adjusting for three days, he resumed brewing healing potions. During this period, apart from eating and sleeping, all he did was brew potions. Eventually, he used up the last of the Duskweed and had no choice but to buy another large batch of ingredients.

At the Alchemy Association, he ordered fifty portions of Duskweed, just as he had last time, while purchasing the other ordinary ingredients from the vendor. Over the following week, he calmed himself and recalled what he had felt while infusing magic power in the final step. Since he had added Light-Fusing Agent, the liquid should, in principle, have been able to absorb magic power. Yet whenever he tried to infuse it, it always felt wrong, as though he had not found the point of balance. The moment he infused magic power, it triggered a reaction, and the potion failed immediately afterward.

He kept searching for that point of balance but simply could not find it. The ingredients for each batch of healing potion could never be identical, and there were always slight differences in their medicinal properties. Even different parts of the same ingredient displayed different medicinal properties, so he failed to find the point of balance every time. Each attempt to infuse magic power was like controlling someone walking a tightrope: the slightest slip meant failure.