35 That One Shop With Exploding Herbal Medicine

Simultaneously, at the tenth seat's household, a whooshing sound echoed throughout the room as Vita jumped under her solid stone desk for cover. The stone desk was her greatest decision; a non-corrosive table for her experiments, while doubling as a shield during failed attempts.

After the loud crash, a boy around the same age as Krael, barged into the room, successfully tearing the door off of its last hinges.

"Ama, Ama, did you fail again?"

"Who're you calling 'Ama'?!" Vita jumped out from below the table to scold the frantic young boy.

Realizing his blunder, Virgil cleared his throat and amended his words.

"What happened, Vita?"

Virgil walked around the few scattered debris to where Vita had crashed into a half-burnt armchair.

"I tried mixing a sealing formation and a healing potion together." Vita grunted, unable to let go of the inspiration she had for making a large-scale healing formation supplied by a powerful highly concentrated healing potion, like some sort of replenishable battery-ran device.

Vita was a Mage-born, her power leaning for to the Healer-kind's, as was her family's. But unlike any other person in her family, she was dedicated to her research and experiments so much that she had been called a mad woman at times. It didn't help that she had randomly adopted a kid she took a liking to, a decade ago.

"it's a no-go then?" Virgil grabbed his waists, and stretched his spine. Vita's explosive failed attempts were a usual for the duo, but Virgil had decided to take a break from his own experiments at the next crash next door.

"Who said I was giving up?!" Vita jumped up from the chair vigorously. "Now that I think about it, how's your experiments going?" Vita ruffled Virgil's hair roughly. Virgil was a bit small for someone his age but he was already about her height. Give a few years and she might not get to touch his head without standing on a chair. She had to take advantage of the present time!

Externally complaining, but internally soft-hearted, Virgil put out a dissatisfied expression after Vita finished messing his hair, a tinge of red barely visible to the eye coating a portion of his cheeks just below the corner of his eyes.

Virgil had been adopted by Vita from the elder priest's home, for a chance to cultivate his talents. It might have been a whim for Vita but the duo had been together for so long that they treated each other like real mother and son pairs, though Vita stubbornly refused to be called 'Ama' by him, saying that if Virgil called her that and he had children someday, she'd become an 'Oka' soon enough.

(A/N: Oka = Grandmother; Obaba = Grandfather)

"It's going good, I think. At least it's not exploding."

Vita lightly punched his shoulder as they headed to Virgil's room, the mess and numerous vials rivaling Vita's room.

"What are you working on again?"

"Birthing potions for males", Virgil replied, nonchalantly.

"You haven't given up on that yet?" Vita raised an eyebrow at her adopted child. He had been working on it for almost a year now ever since Vita introduced him to the world of relationships.

Since Lumea was a city that advocated less boundaries in social and political affairs, the people didn't mind same-gendered relationships, albeit the majority preferring heterosexual relationships for the sake of continuing the family lines. Virgil had wanted remove that hindrance in a person's list of reasons when choosing a partner for life. He thought it was a necessary boundary that he needed to remove, but after a year, he was yet to accomplish it.

"Of course not. I just feel like I'm so close already but I can't grasp it because the willing test subjects are so hard to find." Virgil sighed.

A bubbling sense of camaraderie consumed Vita, as she tearfully placed a hand on Virgil's shoulder as if to say that she knows how it felt. The two frustrated mixed-blood Healers sighed again.

Remembering that it was more or less past noon, Virgil asked, "Have you even eaten yet?"

"Oops…" Vita sweated a bit at the sharp look Virgil gave her. They were both occupied with their experiments yet Virgil was always good with the housework and the business. He always had the free time to do extra things without letting his experiments go stale, to which Vita was slightly envious off but grateful. It was not every day that you'd find someone willing to take care of an overgrown big baby such as her. Sometimes it felt as if she was the child and Virgil was the parent.

"Oi, Vita!" Tarruk's voice reverberated through the halls and echoed into Virgil's room.

"What does that little fool want now?" Having found an escape route from the subject, Vita was quick to act annoyed to flee from Virgil's nitpicking.

Vita huffed but went out to go to the shop they owned at the end of the hall. Not only did they sold clothes, magic-infused leather armors, magic devices and various potions with different levels, they also sold services for direct healing, disease detection, birthing aids, formation creations, and potion creation for whoever was asking, as long as it was in a very reasonable price and the creators, namely Virgil and Vita, could find inspiration in making it.

Virgil followed behind, smiling to himself, and holding a bit anticipation for the banter between the siblings, Vita and Tarruk, to happen.

"What", Vita asked as soon as she pushed the beads hanging from the stone archway to the side.

"Got 'em order for yer healing potions a—"

Tarruk didn't get to finish when Vita slapped the back of his head, a small vein thumping angrily on her forehead as she squinted at her younger brother unhappily, despite the attention of the customers present in the shop. This wasn't the first time the customers had seen them bickering, and such fights was the norm for siblings so they didn't mind at all. In fact, they found it quite amusing.

"Dun blame 'em failed experiman's on me! Not ma fault ye exploding the places to smithereens!"

"How many times have I told you not to talk like that! You sound like some perverted old man ready to do summin' bad."

"Ah! But yer doinnit too!" Tarruk complained, one hand rubbing the back of his head that had grown a harder skull due to the many times Vita had hit it.

"I did not!"

"Yes ya did! I just heard ye!"

"I did not! You just heard wrong!"

While the two began to banter, Virgil walked around them and climbed up a high barstool at the back of the counter to accommodate the customers.

"So what can I do for you", he politely asked.

The customer was an adult man that looked around twenty years of age, along with another man that was similar to his age.

"Salutari, Virgil", the man with the wider shoulder width greeted.

"Sorrel, salutari", Virgil said as he nodded with a smile. Turning to the man a step behind him, Virgil greeted, "Xynel. What can I do for the both of you today?" Virgil turned to Sorrel for an answer to his question.

"We were asking Tarruk if you had any potent or high-grade healing potions left", Sorrel answered. "But he said that he didn't think you had any left in the shop so he was going to ask if you could brew a few for us."

Due to the mixed blood running silently in their veins, any Healer born within Lumea was exempted from the corruption that the pureblooded Healer-kinds had been doomed with, though their blood lost some of the efficacy. As all races know, the Healer-kind were more or less a living panacea. To make up for the lost efficacy, Lumean Mage-borns had perfected the creation of healing potions that used their blood as the main ingredient, since treating a patient directly by hand wasn't as effective as the potion. Virgil, as Vita had realized in the early years of his life, contained the bloodline that had a purer Healer's blood. It was hard to tell the percentage of blood lineages before but Vita had created a device that could roughly tell with just a drop of blood on the palm-sized quartz. A combination of color would tell the percentages of the person's blood lineages and therefore, they can decide what the child would be. She had left that quartz at the elder priest's home after finding her rare treasure called Virgil.

"A few? How many do you need it for?" Virgil implicitly dug what they were going to use it for. Sorrel gave a sideways smirk before jutting his chin at Xynel.

"You're the same as ever, Virgil." Xynel laughed. Like Virgil, Xynel was an orphan that used to live with the elder priest until he had come of age, and was old enough to earn and pay for his own cave house and necessities. It had been a few years after moving out that he had encountered Sorrel, his neighbor, and had developed intimate feelings for each other, and decided to live together.

"I could make you a few but it would take at least a day, depending on the number."

"I only need two. One for Sorrel's grandmother and grandfather", Xynel finally elaborated. "We can get it the day after tomorrow."

Virgil nodded and began listing down the order, not asking any more than that. Tapping the pen on the paper, he looked up abruptly.

"About that thing…"

"What thing?" Sorrel looked to Virgil, puzzled about what they were talking about as he paid half the price for the two potions. He would pay the other half in two days' time.

Xynel blushed fiercely and pulled Sorrel's arm to indicate that they should get going.

"It's nothing", Xynel said to Sorrel, before piercing looked to Virgil and signaled him to shut up with his eyes.

Virgil pouted. "I'm not going to get results at this rate", he said as he watched the couple left their shop, hand on his cheek.

Although Xynel was older than Virgil, the former had taken care of Virgil when he was a child at the orphan's home, where the elder priest lived. Virgil's father had died by the fangs of a beast in the deeper regions of Inferis' forests, while his birthmother had died giving birth to him. It was also partly Xynel's influence that Virgil wanted to try making the birthing potion for males that could create a temporary magic and spirit-infused womb that could shield a human baby as they grew.

Xynel had acquiesced to trying the potion, albeit being so embarrassed to accept the vial from Virgil. But looking at it now, it seemed that they have yet to reach that stage. Virgil sighed.

"Why can't they just do it", he grumbled to himself.

"Owee!"

"Stop overreacting!"

Virgil turned to his Ama Vita and Tito Tarruk. Oh right, he still had to nag that mad lady about not forgetting lunch lest she starve herself someday. Virgil sighed helplessly, jumping down from the barstool to join the bantering fest, making Vita quite miserable and a bit guilty and Tarruk finally finding his chance for revenge.