Chương 134: Chapter 130 - Fantasy Nonsense

Alric had found a hobby. This would have been more encouraging if the hobby had not involved copied recipes, suspicious herbs, and the growing urge to invent a filing system. He sat in the smaller office at the new inn, though calling it an office still felt generous. It had a desk, a chair, two shelves, a window that opened only when persuaded, and a corner already occupied by three barrels becoming wine.

The still house was becoming someone else's headache in the practical sense, which meant Stromni was shouting at walls with professional joy. Once the still could start running, he would be there a lot. They were pushing to get the still house working before winter hit. This meant Alric had, somehow, become slightly free. This had happened in the past with the brewery; he had hated it then. He was, however, free enough to choose a problem. He had chosen ingredients as a hobby.

The thought had started, as many dangerous thoughts did, with booze. He had asked the adventurers guild for a list of various things they could provide. He'd noticed just a few of the many plants he had never seen or heard of before. Fruits with names that sounded like someone had dropped a basket down stairs. Roots sold in bundles by old women who glared when you bought them. Oils used by apothecaries. Herbs with colours he did not trust.

Flowers that apparently nobles bought at prices suggesting scent alone had become a form of extortion. Somewhere in all of that, there had to be something useful. Something new. Something potentially… Delicious. He had figured the issue quickly; he was looking for something that tasted wrong alone and wonderful when given the right company. If it tasted great alone, nobles probably owned it, taxed it, controlled it, claimed their grandfathers discovered it.

He had been thinking about Turkish Delight that morning for no good reason. One of his favourite sweets in his old life. Sugar, something squishy, fragrance, softness, that strange delicate chew that encouraged him to eat one more piece several times in a row while pretending he had not already decided to finish the box. And roses. That was the important part. Roses were not food by themselves. No sane person bit into a rose petal and declared that dinner had been saved.

A rose on its own was perfume pretending to be salad. It was bitter, waxy, soapy, or simply wrong in a way the mouth did not forgive quickly. But rose in sugar was different. Rose in syrup was different. Rose handled properly became something delicate and floral and dangerously easy to eat. That was the lesson. A bad mouthful was not always a bad ingredient. So yes, Alric had decided, he was going to investigate the fantasy nonsense. He was going to take fantasy nonsense seriously.

That thought sat in his head with a shape that was almost respectable if he did not look directly at it. Gods existed. Mana existed. Blessed beer existed. A building he owned had glowed for a week because priests had decided public utility was apparently close enough to holiness. There might be something useful buried under all of it. There might be flavours that did not exist in his old world. There might also be poison, but that was what notes were for. The first copied recipe lay on the desk in front of him.

Mana potion. Margaret had given him a copy of the recipe that morning; it was clear she was reluctant to do so. He had tried to ask questions but she had pushed him saying if he didn't understand, he should wait until he'd had a few lessons. He had expected the recipe to be strange. He had expected it to be incomplete. He had expected, in a general sense, to be annoyed. He had underestimated it. The paper itself was good. Better than the notes most suppliers sent him.

The hand was clear enough, though reading still pulled at the inside of his skull if he tried to hurry. Letters here had the rude habit of making sense and then abruptly becoming shapes again if he looked too long. He had learned to slow down. It still irritated him. It irritated him more because when he tried to learn the local alphabet, he could not; the letters would morph into the alphabet he already knew. At wildly different fonts and sizes.

He rubbed at his forehead, picked up the charcoal, and began again from the top. There was only one herb in this recipe, it was referred to as 'wickleaf' or 'mage herb'. Wash the leaves in cold water. That was fine. Then warm water. Less fine, but perhaps reasonable. Then salt water. Alric paused. Then warm water again. He stared at the line for several seconds.

"Why?" he asked the paper. Cold water first makes sense. Dirt, dust, insects, whatever else the plant had acquired while doing plant things. Warm water after that might loosen sap or wax or surface oils. Salt water could draw something out, remove pests, help with bitterness, even affect something magical if salt does mana stuff. The final warm wash might remove the salt. That was all possible. It was even plausible. If a thing was nonsense, he could dismiss it.

If a thing had the outline of sense hiding under bad instructions, he had to respect it enough to be angry properly. He wrote beneath the first line. Cold wash. Warm wash. Salt wash. Warm wash. Possible cleaning or leaching. Keep each wash water. Observe colour and smell. He considered adding taste, then stopped. Taste only after not dying had been established. He added: Do not discard unknown extracts. That felt better. He read on. Separate leaves by colour. Combine equal handfuls. Alric leaned back in his chair.

He waited a moment, as though the recipe might apologise. Separate leaves by colour implies colour matters. It could mean age, variety, maturity, drying state, mana saturation, health, oxidation, or any number of things I don't have names for. Then the recipe told him to combine equal handfuls. Handful was not a unit. Whose handful? A child? A farmer? Margaret? A dwarf? A man with delicate scholar hands? A dock worker who could palm a cabbage?

Equal handfuls has no place in a process should behave the same way twice. He wrote harder than necessary. Separate by colour. Weigh separately. Record colour, source, condition. Test colours alone before combining. Handfuls unacceptable. Is it a ratio maybe? He paused, then added: Unless goal is inconsistency. That also felt better. The next instruction gave him a moment of hope. Bruise leaves by hand. He frowned, but not entirely in objection. Bruising rather than cutting might matter.

Cutting destroys more structure. Bruising releases oils, scent, juices, perhaps less bitterness. Leaves are delicate. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Then cut stems. Different treatment for stems. Also possible. Stems are fibrous. They might need cutting to expose the inside properly. Do not use iron. Alric stopped again.

"Of course." He looked at the room, as though someone might have hidden a responsible adult in it. Do not use iron could be superstition? Most things written like that are superstition until proven otherwise… It also might be superstition because something went very wrong sometime. Iron could matter. Alric leaned back in his chair slightly, looking at the ceiling. Iron could react with it? Iron could stain it? Iron could change flavour.

Iron could do who knows what to some odd compound and, in this world, it might do something to mana that could level the building. Bronze is fine, doesn't rust. Copper might be bad. Ceramic might be better. Wood might be safest. Skin contact might even matter if the person bruising the leaves has mana and did not know they were adding it. He hated it more when the nonsense had the nerve to be plausible. He leaned forward again. He wrote: Bruise leaves. Cut stems. Use non-iron tool first.

Later compare iron contact in tiny sample. Leaves and stems separate. Check aroma after bruising and cutting. He read the next line and felt his optimism begin losing blood. Soak in water for one hour. Discard water. Alric slowly lowered the paper to the desk. He had endured many insults since coming to this world; some were personal, some were cultural, some were even delivered in letters with baskets. This one was new; it was botanical. They had just made an extract. Weak, perhaps. Bad, probably?

Bitter, poisonous, over-green, muddy, useless, or full of whatever this recipe is trying to remove. Any of those things are possible. But it is still an extract. The water had taken something from the leaves. Colour, bitterness, scent, sap, sugar, poison, magic, flavour. He did not know. That was the entire reason throwing it away without checking was offensive.

"Discard the water," he muttered.

"Of course. Why keep the first liquid that successfully took something from the plant? That would be dangerously close to having a reason." He wrote: First water extract. Keep. Label. Observe colour, smell, sediment. Possible unwanted compound removal. Possible wasted flavour. He underlined wasted flavour. People here were surrounded by ingredients they did not understand. That was not their fault. He did not understand them either. But he at least intended to be curious before throwing things away.

The next instruction made him sit up. Use three parts white wine and one part herbs. Now it was personal. White wine meant alcohol. Alcohol meant solvent, extraction, preservation, acidity, sugar, volatile aroma, bitterness control, sterilization, and several other things people had discovered by accident and then spent centuries pretending they meant to do all along. Three parts by what? Volume? Weight? Fresh herb? Dried herb? Pressed herb? Was the wine sweet or dry? Young or old? Strong or weak? Sour? Clear?

Did the region matter? Did the grape matter? Was it even grape wine? The recipe did not say. He wrote: Wine extraction. Record wine type, strength if possible, sourness, sweetness, age. Compare water/wine/spirit later. Do not let potion makers choose wine unsupervised. He looked at that last line, considered whether it was unfair, and decided it could stay. Then came the heating instruction. Heat till it remembers dawn. Alric stared. He let out one of the biggest sighs of his life.

He read it again because perhaps his headache had finally become creative. Heat till it remembers dawn. He rubbed both hands over his face and tried to be generous, which was becoming a moral failing. Dawn might mean colour. Pale gold, pink. A lightening of the liquid. It might mean the first shimmer of steam. It might mean low heat, not boiling. It might mean a temperature reached by morning sun in some place with a beach. It might refer to mana glow. It might be a temple phrase.

It might mean the smell changes from green to bright. It might mean someone had once looked at a pot, thought the colour reminded him of dawn, and decided we all needed to share this headache. He picked up the charcoal again and underlined remembers dawn three times, not because it was important, but because he wanted future historians to know where the crime had occurred. Then he wrote: Observe colour. Observe steam. Observe smell. Watch for glow. Record actual heat if possible. Ask what dawn means.

Do not accept poetry as temperature. The charcoal tip broke. Alric considered this a reasonable response from the material. He sharpened it with a knife and continued. Add bluegrass oil, seven to nine drops depending on region. Nine if region unknown. There were moments when a recipe gave away that someone, somewhere, had once paid attention. This was one of them. Seven to nine drops is narrow. Depending on region might mean variation. Nine if unknown means there had been enough bad outcomes maybe?

Or weak outcomes, or nervous apprentices for a rule to form around uncertainty. It was still terrible. What region though? Region where the herbs grew? Where the oil was made? Where the potion was brewed? Where the drinker came from? Local mana density? Soil? Altitude? Weather? Does bluegrass oil from one valley behave differently to another? Was nine safer? Stronger? More stable? Or had someone once used nine and survived loudly enough to become tradition?

"Nine if region is unknown," he said, looking at the line.

"The calm confidence of a person who survived by accident and mistook it for expertise." He wrote: Bluegrass oil. Dose 7, 8, 9 separately. Record oil source, herb source, brewing location. Region may mean potency, strain, soil, mana. Find out overdose risk before being clever. Oil mattered for flavour as much as potion work. Some oils carry scent well. Others screwed it up. A single drop could change a drink. He added: Smell oil alone. Dilute before judging. The next lines were better.

Cool in cold water until the oil clouds. Warm until the oil clears. Alric exhaled through his nose. Finally. Not good. Still no temperature, no vessel, no time, no description of how cloudy counted as cloudy enough, and no explanation of why it needed to clear again. But at least something observable happened. Oil clouding could mean thickening, crystallising, precipitation, an emulsion forming, something binding to the oil, or a change in solubility.

Warming until it cleared again suggests a temperature cycle, perhaps to force something out and then back into it, perhaps to separate unwanted material, perhaps to activate the oil? That was fine. Not knowing was allowed. Pretending "until it remembers dawn" was a measurement was not. He wrote: Temperature cycle. Oil clouding marker. Record cooling method, time, vessel, appearance. Warm slowly. Observe separation, sediment, smell.

Then, because irritation had not completely abandoned him, he sat back for a moment and listened. The inn around him was quiet enough that he could hear the faint movement of work elsewhere. A door closing. Someone crossing the courtyard. A cart outside. Life moving through the spaces he had acquired and still felt faintly guilty about owning. Somewhere in the building, barrels sat in rooms that had once held guests, and he tried not to think about the fact that storage had become a predator.

He looked back at the recipe. Skim top layer and preserve it. Filter lower liquid through linen. Pour preserved top layer back in and filter again. At first, it looked like madness wearing an apron. Then he frowned. Top layer. Oil, probably. Bluegrass oil and whatever oil-soluble material it had collected. Lower liquid would be wine, water, plant extract, dissolved compounds, suspended solids, and whatever mana did when not being helpful enough to identify itself.

Skimming the oil could prevent it being lost into the linen during the first filtration. Filtering the lower layer could remove plant matter before reintroducing the oil. Filtering again might distribute the oil, remove fine residue, or pass the whole mixture through linen now coated with something from the top layer. It might even be clever. Poorly written. Probably copied from someone who did not know why it worked. But not automatically stupid. That annoyed him almost as much as the dawn.

He wrote: Separate oil layer. Preserve covered. Filter lower wine extract. Recombine measured oil. Filter again. Test oil layer and lower liquid separately before recombining. Linen may affect separation. The recipe was not a clean process. It was a pile of useful actions badly stacked. Cleaning, extracting, leaching, oil handling, heating, cooling, filtering. All tangled together. Someone had found a path through the forest and then described it as "walk until the trees approve."

Then came the part that made him put down the charcoal and simply stare for a while. Distill until one third remains. Recombine distillate, residue, and reserved oil fraction. There were things a man could forgive. This was pushing it. Distillation separates. That is the damn point. It takes volatile things from less volatile things. It changes concentration. It carries aroma, alcohol, water, unwanted heads, useful hearts, unpleasant tails. Why the hell recombine it?

Distilling, then recombining everything, was either pointless, misunderstood, or doing something that had nothing to do with separation. All three possibilities were irritating. Maybe distillation sterilized something or heat transformed some other compound. Perhaps one third remaining is a concentration marker. Perhaps the act of distillation changes how mana sits in the liquid or some vapour loss matters. It could be transformation, not purification. He hated that sentence because it was useful.

He wrote it anyway. Distillation may be transformation, not purification. Then: Keep distillate. Keep residue. Keep oil separate. Compare recombined vs not. Measure volume. Track aroma. Do not recombine blindly. Recombine measured amounts only. He stared at the line again. With a sigh, he turned to the last line of the recipe. Push mana into the final potion until it can hold no more. Wait, wait, wait, wait. This is almost the only line that matters.

"So... Something in the herb holds mana, or is a mana carrier or it preserves mana..." He said outloud. He leaned backward, looking at the ceiling again. The mana potion recipe was dumb. That was clear. But it was not useless. This had just enough sense in it to be dangerous. It contained cleaning. Sorting. Water extraction. Alcohol extraction. Oil handling. Temperature cycling. Separation by density. Filtering. Mana charging. Salt adjustment. Distillation. Resting. Decanting. Those were real things.

Mana charging was a new one. They were simply buried under vague measures, poetic crimes, inherited superstition, and the belief that explaining why something worked would make it less magical. It probably would, he'd give them that. Alric's mind took a dark turn momentarily, he wondered if the alchemists hadn't planted something like this. To make it seem more complicated than it needed to be. Beneath everything else Alric had written so far, he wrote: Isolate compound that holds and preserves mana. Charge it.

Dose it. That's it He reached for a fresh sheet of paper. Alric was not ready to write a better mana potion recipe, but he could begin writing a process. It was not much later that Alric was hanging bunches of herbs in the cellar. He had learnt the herbs were called WickLeaf, Margaret had some she had begrudgingly parted with. He hung them close to the grates, but not where they could get rained on. He hummed an old Earth song while he did it.