The Real Potion-Making, Defying The Laws!

To understand why the augmentation phase was needed for rank 2+ potions, one needs to understand how rank 2 potions get concocted.

First, the catalyst gets thrown in the cauldron to get heated up. After it finishes, the mixed main ingredient and subsidiary ingredient follow it up.

Unlike rank 1 potions where the reaction always results in creating a useable concoction if the recipe was followed properly, the reaction in rank 2 would always end up failing.

Failure meant getting useless goo.

This would happen even if the microorganisms were taken care of.

That's due to the materials not being able to react to each other at all by nature itself...That's what most witches assume.

If supervised under a microscope, the only result would be the emergence of dark matter slowly creeping from the outside into the inside of the mixture.

The potioneer refer to this as the Dark Reaction.