Getting Schooled

As I stirred the solution in the small desktop cauldron, Gabella kept a rhythmic tapping of her foot on the floor. Any time my mixing slowed or quickened, I would experience the pain of a ruler striking my knuckles. It may seem cruel, but I would seldom make the same mistake a second time, so it was definitely effective.

I had already perfected preparing ingredients. We had started with more common alchemical ingredients, like Nightshade, Milk thistle, Stinging Nettle and Feverfew. After I was proficient in the common skills required for prepping those, I moved onto the Warlock's Boils. Granny Gabby's eyes followed the delicate, precise movements my hand performed as I cleaned and dissected the flesh of the fungus.

My seemingly 'natural' talent for the work I was doing was thanks to a combination of my high agility allowing the manual dexterity required and my high intelligence enabling me to learn the Alchemy (Level 1) skill after only ten minutes.

After getting the skill, I invested enough points to bring it up to Level 3. I am glad that I now know that I can acquire skills through practice and hard work, not just through skill points in the system. I will have to find master's of other useful abilities and see if I can get a crash course to pick up skills that don't appear in my catalogue.

I made sure to increase my level slowly; that way, I would only look to be outstanding and not extraordinary. Even with that precaution, I am sure that Gabella's eyes could see that I was something outside the realm of the normal. That evening I perfected my abilities in Gabella's eyes. As night approached, she created a familiar that looked like an owl made of wispy light. It took a note explaining we would remain overnight at her place. She sent it to the guild so that when the guardsmen reported our lack of return, they would know why we had yet to return.

Before we went to sleep, we enjoyed a delicious meal. Luna had prepared it while she was using Gabby's kitchen throughout the afternoon and evening. Luna had prepared a majority of the raw ingredients I had in my Storage into ready-to-consume meals. All the meals would be held in the stasis of my Storage so that when we take them out, they would be just as freshly cooked as they are right now. Dinner consisted of meat pies that were stuffed with several ground types of meat, including wolf, bear, boar and deer, and a medley of root-type vegetables. It was some of the best cooking I had ever had. I checked Luna's Status and noticed she had levelled up the cooking skill she had acquired after we had started journeying together. She was now a level 3 cook. I was excited to see her results once she hit level 5.

The next morning, now that Gabella was confident in my skill improvement, she moved the lesson onto the potion brewing. We started making Lesser Potions of Healing and Mana. Then we moved on to Poultices that removed adverse status effects.

The brewing process was twofold. The first part was following a process of mixing, straining, stewing and boiling the components. The second part, which I found to be much more challenging, took place outside of an ordinary person's view, in the magical realm. Using my Eyes' ability to see the magic and controlling my magic through a delicate tuning process, I was weaving in and interlacing my enchantments with the ingredients as I refined and combined them.

The items I produced improved in quality with every few consecutive attempts. The first was a complete failure. The next three were usable but of low quality. Then finally, I produced a Standard Quality Lesser Potion of Healing. On brewing my tenth one, I got a Superior Quality result. I knew right away that the quality had improved thanks to my AR display, but I acted like I only noticed the potion's brighter colour. Gabella whistled as she saw my result. She directed me to make the remaining different types of alchemical products.

She explained how the superior quality made it equivalent to a standard quality (non-lesser) Potion. Gabella watched me with a renewed interest as I produced first a Standard Quality of the Lesser Potion of Mana on my first attempt, and then consecutive Superior Quality ones after. It was the same each time I changed the recipe; first a standard, then all superior after that.

After brewing for several hours, the witch set me up to make the requested Poultices for the quest. "I was not expecting to allow you to make these yourself today, but I really wanna see how you do with it," Gabby explained while I cranked out the requested twenty Quest Items, all at superior quality.

Corking the last one, I looked over to my teacher. She had a warm grin stretched across her face. "I have never had a student who was more worthy of my lessons. Here, take this note back to the guild with you, along with the finished potions. And since you helped me out by producing the elixirs that I am going to get paid for, I have a little extra gift for you."

Gabella glanced over her shoulder at Luna. Luna was in the kitchen. She had borrowed the witch's kitchen again while we had been conducting our potion lesson. However, this time, Luna had acquired and levelled up the Baker skill to level 2 as Luna had spent the day making bread, pastries, and sweets. She was currently busy packing up her creations into wooden boxes I had made her during our first time travelling through the woods.

Convinced she would not overhear us, Gabella leaned in, "Here, this is a standard quality Greater Potion of Healing. It can regrow limbs and remove scars, no matter how long ago they happened. Say a tail, for example... I think you catch my drift. Wait until you have some privacy as the regrowing process can bit intense and a bit painful as the nerves are regrown." Sweeping the little old lady up into a bear hug, I expressed my thanks for her and just how caring she indeed was. "Yes, yes, enough of that," Gabby scolded me. "You ought to put me down before I start to think I have a chance and decide to keep you here." She winked at me as I released her.

Luna and I left in the latter half of the afternoon with all our new food, gear and completed quest items in hand. I had gotten a full set of alchemist tools from Granny to celebrate my graduation. As we thanked her and we turned to leave, I felt her give my butt cheek a pinch as I heard her say, "Anytime, sweet cheeks," under her breath.

What an energetic granny.