Chapter 262 - Potion making

Timothy and Ortana went down to the basement, so they could practice alchemy. At some point they considered the basement to be a more quiet space, and the best place to relax in too, because the main floor was getting a bit crowded. Well, the mule he had created made it seem crowded, as it chowed down on anything it could get its tongue around!

The mule had a brain of its own, Timothy gave it one, so the mule wasn’t a brainless zombie who listened to every verbal command, no, it was just a mule who was atoms away from being considered normal. Likewise, it behaved normally, and at some point Timothy felt as if he was dealing with a giant puppy who would insist on stealing everything off of his plate! It ate twenty pounds worth of bug meat so far.

“I'm seriously considering putting that bastard in a cell,” He thought, “It may not be as cruel as I imagine it to be.”

Anyway, they made it down to the basement, and got into work. A man and a woman being locked in a room together, alone, may sound like a recipe for an awkward situation, but even though Ortana looked young and pretty in this form, she was actually quite old, and since Timothy wasn’t interested in bagging grannies, he was fine with working with her in seclusion. He was curious about the mana potions, and he wasn't interested in using them as lotion.

Regarding potion making, the one ingredient which was called Tutalian Weed, seemed to be the base ingredient for a variety of mana potions. Its long leaves served as a canvas in the cauldron, and luckily, Ortana had foraged tens of them earlier on, so they won't run out of these essential weeds anytime soon! She tossed one of them in the five-foot wide cauldron, and the weed enveloped most of its bottom.

Afterwards, this thing called the Hukish flower was tossed in, or specifically, its bulbs. This weedy flower looked a lot like the average, chamomile weed, except it was red, and its bulbs were twice the size of what the average chamomile bulb could grow into. Paired with the canvasing Tutalian Weed, Ortana officially started making what is called the Base Formula! That's what the books called it.

In order for this formula to be useful, it needed a bit of mana in it. Mages could exert raw mana out of their bodies, mana in its purest form, to be exact, but this trick was mostly frowned upon, because a mage would practically just pour their accumulated mana away, and therefore it wasn't commonly practiced. As a mage that was curious about alchemy, however, Ortana had a good reason to exert tens of mana points from her fingertips!

“This is what gives the weeds their first, good mix.” She said, and started pouring mana into the cauldron.

In total, she poured out six-hundred points before she decided that it was enough. She'd regenerate these points in a matter of minutes here in Mundi, so she did not care about spending them.

The weeds had an interesting reaction to her mana. The canvasing Tutalian Weeds had thickened, looking a lot like the arms of the common octopus after a few mere minutes, and the Hukish flower buds had turned into a powder, further thickening the previous weed.

Ortana then sliced the thick, Tutalian Weeds into seven, one-foot long pieces, and finally added water to it. The weed slices turned mushy, and once she ran a ladle through them, the weeds tore apart, creating half a cauldron’s worth of red liquid, approximately thirty liters (eight gallons).

“That's a lotta juice…” He pointed out.

“Not for long,” She said, and then sprinkled ten thick thorns of the Dominus Luminousanitunus cactus in the cauldron.

The thorns started absorbing the red liquid as soon as they got dropped in it, and eventually, as weird as it may seem, the thorns absorbed half of the total liquid! Once Ortana sparked a little bit more mana in the cauldron, the thorns turned blue, and tore apart as easily as a damp piece of paper would!

Mana made this alchemical process quite easy, and it was easy to discover many types of potions as long as one was willing to put in some time experimenting. Specific combinations of weeds, and mana usage, would of course result in a variety of potions, as it was supposed to!

Anyway, Ortana sprinkled the rest of the seven ingredients in the cauldron over time, and as Timothy watched closely, he learned how mana potions were made. He started understanding how essential water was, as the liquids within the cauldron kept being absorbed by the ingredients. Ortana ended up adding water three more times, or an equivalent of one-hundred liters (twenty-six gallons) in total, just to end up making ten more decent mana potions.

Mana itself mixed the ingredients together, and densified the liquid as well, and with that said, Timothy finally understood how hundreds of thousands of mana points could be crammed in a single, tiny bottle! A lot of work, and ingredients went into it.

At the end, Ortana added a slice of that giant worm they found, and it dissolved within the five liters (more than a gallon) of liquid easily. It seemed disgusting to drink something that contained a worm, but it dissolved far too quickly for anyone to notice its presence in a bottle. Besides, the team has been eating cooked, bug meat here today, so the worm didn’t disgust them as much as one would expect, they were getting used to it.

“I’ve read that it adds some flavor to the potion, grape flavor, so hopefully the potions won’t burn our throats as much this time.” She explained.

The potions were almost ready. The liquid would just need to sit in the cauldron for an hour or so, only until its acidic insides died down. The potions would end up being a lot safer to drink that way.

“So, that’s it. It’s a lot of work, but four-hundred and fifty thousand mana points crammed in a bottle, deserve every minute they take from you.” She remarked.

Timothy grabbed an empty bottle afterwards, pondered over the matter for a moment, and said. “This is some fine work you did here, plant lady, rare work even! You do realize that we can turn these weeds into gold, though, right? We can stack bars of gold here, if we take the potions through the portal, and sell them.”

“What would we need gold for? We’re mages, not materialists.” She countered.

“Gold is a currency, and we can use it however we want.” He said, “At some point we can just toss money at our problems, or we could use it to buy rare ingredients, and make even more expensive potions! I’m sure there are species of plants back in the main universe, that’ll make these potions tens of times stronger! We just have to look for them, but essentially, what we have here is an opportunity to make an infinite amount of money for ourselves!”

Noticing that she was getting uncomfortable, he then grinned. “No need to rush, though, we have all the time in the universe to figure it out, hehe.”