Potion making

Arjuna wiped off the sweat from his forehead. He had just finished another batch of potions and was ready to head out. He walked past the other apprentices who were still working on their batch of potions and went to the office of his teacher Cadmus Nycodus.

Arjuna quietly knocked on the wooden door. A rough sounding voice came from the other side

"come in"

Arjuna walked into a room full fo white tiles, white floor, walls, and ceiling. Tables littered with various alchemy tools were littered around were placed around the wall and at the farthest wall, Cadmus stood with his back facing the door. Cadmus somehow knew who was coming and talked to Arjuna while working on an amulet

"you're already done, right? you can head out early or feel free to try some stuff with the tools."

Arjuna thought for a moment, if he did head out then he could get EXP from gathering more herbs, but if he practiced with the tools he would get better in it. After thinking for a bit he figured out that studying alchemy would be the best thing for his master. Arjuna said in his characteristic calm and quiet voice.

"I'll go try some things out in the alchemy room"

To which Cadmus responded in a gruff voice

"suit yourself"

Arjuna walked back from the office into the alchemy room where other apprentices were giving him an ugly jealous look. Arjuna continued walking to his ow specific station unlike the rest of the apprentices Arjuna had free access to the tools in the alchemy room while the rest of the apprentices had to use their own tools.

After Arjuna joined the dawn alchemist's he quickly rose to the top of the apprentices. He beat the rest of the apprentices in knowledge and was very hardworking which many of the alchemists favored over the proud and lazy apprentices sent from the rich families.

Turns out the dawn alchemist was one of the landmarks in the entire city and people from all over the country came to learn from the masters and to buy their goods. Yeah, Arjuna was freaking lucky that he somehow got recruited by a powerful organization that had branches around the continent and he didn't want to lose this chance. Though the dawn alchemists originated in this city they moved their HQ to the capital.

That didn't stop the massive multitude of people who were sent to learn from the masters left at the original branch. Merchant families and clans sent many people to the city of dawn to learn here and they were also the ones who were giving Arjuna the nastiest look.

Arjuna paid no attention to them and continued walking to his station. In front of him was a set of beakers, some Mortars a large plate of wood that had a magic circle inscribed on it. Arjuna pulled out some herbs from his inventory and placed them into the mortar and started grinding. Alchemy was a subject that included so many things from creating new materials to potion-making. Which was what Arjuna was working on. Currently, he was working with herbs that he was very familiar with, the herbs that he had been picking up for the last few days. It was an important ingredient for the generic health potion and its name was goldenseal.

Goldenseal taken by itself was a healing herb and could heal mild injuries before it was viewed as a precious herb but during the golden age, it became widespread and is now a staple plant. Arjuna had been taught all of this by the alchemists and by Boops who had drilled Arjuna even harder than the alchemists themselves.

Arjuna started by grinding the goldenseal, and while doing so he slowly injected mana into it. He had been leveling up his mana manipulation skill that way and it was currently sitting at level 4.

For some reason when Arjuna mixed mana into the liquid goldenseal the process afterward. From the measuring to the inclusion of the other materials and even the use of the transmutation skill itself everything was much easier it mixed better the process was smoother and the transmutation took less time.

Arjuna looked around and saw nobody else doing it except for the alchemist master that he had the chance to watch once. Apparently the skill mana manipulation was rare and only a select few had it. Arjuna didn't tell anyone but that was probably the reason why he was finishing and getting better results than the rest of the apprentices.

Today he was going to inject as much mana as he could into the herbs as he ground them. He was expecting the liquid explode but he was prepared. All for the sake of science!

Now if Arjuna's guess was right there was a maximum amount of mana the goldenseal had, and he intended to figure out the exact measurement needed to fill it up completely. As he ground up the herbs he slowly injected mana with his left hand that was holding down the mortar. Luckily the mortar was able to conduct mana really well and Arjuna could see the green liquid getting lighter which was a sign of mana going into it.

He then placed it into a beaker when it became a light green and started doing the same process with the rest of the ingredients. Arjuna ran out of mana so he stopped for a bit to let it recover. While waiting he started looking at the recipe for the health potion again. The goldenseal was the main ingredient and took up half of the entire mixture. When everything else was mixed in Arjuna then would need to place it on the transmutation tablet and wait for a few minutes.

Arjuna recover enough mana and continued injecting mana into the herb solution. Eventually, he finished and mixed everything at a precise ratio and placed it on the tablet. Arjuna waited as the light green liquid slowly turned into a red color. Usually, the potions came out as dark red, but now it was a bright rose red. Arjuna poured the contents into potion vials and capped them. When he finished capping the last bottle a notification came up.

[mana infused health potions]

[potions that have been infused with mana increases health and some mana over a period of time]

[rank: D]

[+100 EXP]

Arjuna looked at the title he got when he first got when he made his first potion.

[congratulations you are the first player to make a batch of potions]

[rewarding title: (potion prodigy)]

[potion prodigy: 10% chance increase in making potions]

Now with the title benefits and his class benefits his bonus was huge and he had a much higher chance than most people in successfully creating any type of potion. In all the amount of time, Arjuna needed to create a batch of potions was about an hour, the mana infused one took 3 times as long because he needed to take breaks.

Arjuna pocketed the potions and left the dawn alchemy building. Every step that he took created a loud creak on the wooden floor. He walked past the apprentices who were still working, past the mysterious symbols on the old walls and the plants that were littered randomly around the place. Arjuna had expected the alchemy building to look impressive and large. But when he came to the building, he saw that the building was large, it just wasn't impressive. It looked old. The entrance to the entire thing was a rickety old wooden gate with the sign 'dawn alchemists' on it. And then a path that leads to another wooden building with white walls that had obvious stains.

When Arjuna had walked in everything looked like he had expected it to be, with wooden floors and walls that had paint that was almost about to peel off. The only rooms that looked well kept were the alchemy room and the office. For some reason, the noble kids and people sent from other places didn't complain about the unkempt environment, instead, they acted like it was normal.

Arjuna eventually got used to seeing the dusty rooms and halls and quickly walked out of the building and then the courtyard. He looked up at the sky. It was still sunny but according to Boops, it was about 6:00. Arjuna's schedule was to wake up and collect goldenseal, then take it to the alchemist guild, then go to the dawn alchemist for lessons and to practice his skills. He now had a bit of free time and decided to again wander around town looking for anything he could do.

The city of dawn was always busy, even if there was a possibility of war hanging over their heads that didn't stop the people from living their lives. The market place was crowded and so was the square. Arjuna couldn't find anything interesting and was about to head to the adventures guild as he had made some friends there, but large building caught his eye.

Next to its name was a target with an arrow in the bullseye.

"archery guild"