Chapter 23
That afternoon, inside Helena's potion workshop, alchemical lamps filled the room with clean, steady light.
At a worktable sealed against outside interference, Elise and Helena were brewing potions.
Elise was working on a perfect-grade First-tier [Spirit Potion]. Helena was preparing the two formulas used to treat blood-warp sickness.
Gwenaeris stood behind them, hair spilling over her shoulders, watching in elegant silence.
Then the corner of her mouth twitched.
In Gwenaeris's eyes, both Elise and Helena were mediocre potion makers at best.
True, Helena was a Second-tier potion master, and Elise had reached the upper end of First-tier skill. But to an elf, their methods were painfully mechanical.
From ingredient processing to the brewing itself, Elise and Helena showed the same rigid habits.
Which material required which treatment? Which step came next in the formula? They followed the book to the letter.
That method had one advantage: it rarely went wrong.
Its weakness was just as plain: it never produced anything remarkable.
If Gwenaeris were brewing these potions, she might not even bother processing the ingredients so carefully.
Plants had spirits. By guiding spirit energy through them, elves could sense the subtle changes inside plant-based materials.
...
[Potioncraft skill experience +97.]
At the worktable, Elise finished another potion.
She looked at the clear, faintly glowing [Spirit Potion] before her and felt a rush of satisfaction.
Since advancing to Prime Cleric, she had spent day after day burning through spiritual energy and mana on potioncraft practice. At last, she could turn out perfect-grade First-tier [Spirit Potions] with consistency.
She turned toward Lady Gwenaeris—and found not a trace of approval on the elf's face.
"You did well," Gwenaeris said, clearly reading what Elise wanted. She offered what she probably believed was a gentle smile, then added in what she probably believed was a tone of praise, "This potion is acceptable."
Elise said nothing.
If she hadn't been contracted to Tymis, she might have believed Gwenaeris was actually complimenting her.
But through Tymis, Elise could sense the spirit-energy fluctuations that others failed to hide.
Gwenaeris was humoring her.
You're good. You're competent. But in the end, you're still just a mere technician.
That was the real verdict Elise felt radiating off her.
"Lady Gwenaeris," Elise said, swallowing her irritation, "may I ask for your guidance?"
Right now, only one thing mattered: pushing [Potioncraft] to LV4 as fast as possible.
"Plants are living beings," Gwenaeris said. "You humans call their spirit inert energy, but to elves, it is quite active..."
She spoke at length.
The conclusion was simple.
Humans couldn't learn it. Humans were fools who looked down on plant spirits. Humans treated plant life with far too much arrogance.
Elise fell silent again.
Human society had, in fact, studied the spirituality of plants—but humans lacked the elven racial gift. They simply couldn't perceive the tiny shifts within plant spirits at any meaningful depth.
So humans didn't regard flowers, herbs, and trees as sentient beings. Their attitude toward plants naturally lacked the sort of... equality elves expected.
To an elf's eyes, that read as human arrogance. Humans looked down on plant life.
And since humans were worse than elves at potioncraft, that was obviously punishment from Gaelianaris, the Earth Mother, and Gaelianaya, goddess of the elves.
Gwenaeris held rigid human potion masters in open contempt.
Still, once her disdainful little lecture was finished, she did teach them practical knowledge.
That knowledge was the reason Elise endured the elf's looks and kept asking questions.
[Potioncraft skill experience +3.]
[Potioncraft skill experience +4.]
As Gwenaeris explained, Elise digested the material, and her [Potioncraft] experience kept ticking upward.
Once she had absorbed the lesson, Elise bowed, returned to the worktable, and started another potion.
...
[Potioncraft skill experience +117.]
This time, the system awarded more experience.
A smile touched Elise's lips at once.
Just then, Helena finished her own potion. Like Elise, she swallowed the pressure of being quietly condescended to and asked for guidance.
Gwenaeris still wore that faint you humans are hopeless expression. With a blend of "kind" reminders and helpless sighs, she laid out her understanding of potioncraft.
Fortunately, Gwenaeris had only agreed to exchange knowledge with them until the Day of Light. A few more days, and this would be over.
Unfortunately for Gwenaeris, her people had sent her to support the Church of Light in building the new city. Once she finished humoring these two blocks of deadwood, she'd face a parade of human potion masters exactly like them.
The thought of spending years this way made the room seem to darken around her.
She missed green forests and clean wind.
Elise, meanwhile, brewed potion after potion and forced herself to keep asking questions.
At last, just before dinner—
[Potioncraft skill experience +108.]
[Congratulations. Potioncraft has risen to LV4.]
The system prompt appeared.
[Potioncraft] had reached LV4.
Elise checked the skill modifier without a moment's hesitation.
[Potioncraft: Magical pharmacology knowledge of Aurelia.]
[LV4 Effect: Increased learning speed. Increased skill comprehension. Perception of medicinal property changes.]
Perception of medicinal property changes?
Elise nearly shouted inside her own head.
Before "bothering" Gwenaeris for guidance, she might not have grasped how valuable that effect was.
But after days of being looked down on by the elf, Elise knew exactly what those words meant.
She thought for a moment—then did not carry the finished potion over to Gwenaeris for more advice.
Instead, she laid out a fresh set of ingredients and prepared to brew again.
Activate modifier.
Elise spent mana to trigger the modifier effect of [Potioncraft].
In an instant, the spiritual world in her perception transformed.
Everything else stayed the same, but the spiritual energy within the potion materials in her hands had become startlingly vivid.
It was as if the plant spirits humans had always dismissed as "inert" were no longer sluggish at all.
They were clearly alive.
Clearly active.
So this is how elves experience potioncraft?
Elise picked up the ingredients, and for the first time, a sense of complete control settled over her.
A material's medicinal properties included its spirituality. Once a potion master could sense those things directly, there was no need to process ingredients by rote.
My hand is the measure.
She understood that feeling now.
This time, she didn't reprocess the materials the way she always had. She simply took up the herbs she needed and added them to the cauldron, one by one.
"Hm?"
Gwenaeris had been drifting through her own thoughts, but the change in Elise's technique snapped her attention back, sharp doubt rising in her chest.
Over the past few days, she had suggested more than once that Elise try to "sense" the spirit of plant life—with poor results.
Because of that, although Gwenaeris acknowledged Elise's sensitivity to light-attribute mana, she had also filed her away as a typical human: arrogant toward plant life.
Now Elise had abruptly changed her whole approach.
Of course Gwenaeris was puzzled.
She suspected Elise was simply flailing at random.
But Elise had already stepped into a new world.
Before, when she brewed, she judged medicinal properties through book knowledge.
If an herb looked a certain way and carried roughly that kind of spirit, she applied the corresponding method.
Processing materials was different now.
She no longer cared about any of that.
She knew how much of a given medicinal property she needed, so she took exactly that much material.
Once the ingredients went into the cauldron, handling impurities mid-brew became just as simple.
First, identify what didn't belong and remove it.
Second, use mana to guide the ingredients through their reactions—including the shifts in their spiritual properties—and fold them into the potion base.
And then—
The potion formed.
[Potioncraft skill experience +158.]
The system prompt appeared, the experience gain dozens of points higher than the last.
So this is the world elves see? Elise's heart leaped. I can do it too.
Then another thought struck her.
Elves were born with a gift for sensing plant life—and only plant life.
But potion materials weren't limited to plants. There were minerals, animal materials, and far more besides.
The modifier [Perception of Medicinal Property Changes] almost certainly granted more than an elf's perception.
It covered the spiritual changes of every potion material.