D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 2135 Flower of Alchemy Part 2

Chapter 2135: Chapter 2135 Flower of Alchemy Part 2

— Lily —

Things were going smoothly now. In fact, from Appoline’s perspective they were going too smoothly. “How are you managing the shapes so well here? The spinning makes sense because you can just sort of force them into orbit with the density of your mana, fine. The first few layers of the net, well it took you a bit… but now you’re forming the shapes with seemingly no effort even though your face tells a different story,” asked Appoline.

“Um… sort of cheating?” offered Lily.

“Hey,” Appoline gestured as if she was making a slice directly through the air. “If you’re ’cheating’ in such a way that I cannot detect and clearly has no effect on the potion that I can see? Then I don’t think I can consider it cheating,”

“Ah… well…” Lily glanced back at Kat for a moment. “You see, what Kat and I managed to work out is that, a lot of mana manipulation is trying to concentrate on all the details and then forcing the mana to match the image you have in your head, but it’s constantly fighting against that image and you have to really try to keep it the way you want it while focusing on the mana and things drift…”

Lily shook her head for a moment before continuing she DID still have to focus a bit and Appoline hadn’t been kind enough to ask between steps. Lily was currently wrangling the mana into a hexagon shape that was meant to surround both cores and then collapse down onto the rest, leaving it forming half of a rune that would be finished in the next step.

“So… I’m not sure if you noticed or not but Kat and I are mentally linked. Sure we can theoretically close it, but in a practical sense we have a constant link between our minds. What we figured out, or, Kat asked and I tested, is that I can form the mana construct, Kat can reach across to my mind to look at it… and then make an exact copy in her mind and just… keep it there.

“She doesn’t need to adjust it and it just sort of remains the way it should. I can constantly compare the version in the cauldron with the one in my mind and the one in Kat’s, and because she can’t really sense mana hers isn’t influenced at all. It just remains fixed in her mind the same as always unless I realise something needs to change and I make the request for her to do so.

“It lets me essentially offload a good chunk of the mental work to Kat… but because it’s not a struggle for her she can keep it up forever with no visible effort. Better, arguably, she can keep track of multiple at once so I can even look back at the old ones by checking her memories of those thoughts. It means that I only have to struggle with the mana itself. If my mental model slips it’s a minor and temporary issue,”

“Fascinating,” commented Appoline an unreadable expression on her face. Tweedle was pouting off to the side, clearly somewhat annoyed that Lily had such a shortcut.

“It’s still not easy exactly to form the mana correctly, but it’s not tooo bad you know?” explained Lily.

Appoline nodded slowly. “That makes sense. I wonder if there’s a potion I could make to emulate the effect? I don’t tend to get into that sort of thing… but it would make some sense? HMmm… would it be better to set up all the steps ahead of time and use it as a teaching tool or perhaps make it so that you need to form the mental image. Though how would you imprint the mental image into the potion?

“Unless I make something that records the steps? But that would be better off as an enchantment. Even my lacking experience in the art can tell that much. Forcing it into a potion though… hmm…”

“What is the difference anyway?” asked Kat. “Like, what do potions do better then anything else?”

Appoline shrugged, “I’d love to say everything… but no that’s not really true. Potions specialise is powerful, temporary effects. Enchantments are more for long term stable effects. Most of the other specialties are variations on enchanting. Script creation is just the act of writing a spell or enchantment on a single use bit of paper…

“Blacksmithing can be done without enchantments I suppose, but they tend to get combined so often its hard to separate them in my mind. Jewel crafting is really just enchanting for people with too much money. I guess there’s spellcraft but that feels quite different because usually spells are combat adjacent at least…”

“Aren’t healing potions permanent though? The wounds don’t open back up?” Tanisha commented. Kat and Lily gave her odd looks, followed by Tweedle and Appoline. “What? I know how healing potions work!”

Appoline glanced at Tweedle and made a ’go ahead’ gesture as she moved over to acquire the next ingredient for Lily to add. This one was Ashen Wool from an Ash Sheep and the matching ingredient was Crow Eyes from a Crowbell plant.

“Um… so… healing potions are temporary in the sense that they TEMPORARILY boost your healing for a short amount of time. Sure the wounds don’t come back, but healing potions aren’t ’removing a wound’ so much as they are ’speeding up the healing process’ which can go away afterwards without issue,” explained Tweedle.

“I knew that,” grumbled Tanisha. Kat didn’t need to note the eye twitch on that one. Wasn’t worth calling her out about it though.

Lily frowned as she remembered what needed to be done with this next step of the potion. She needed to turn the essence into a cloud, coat it around the core… without solidifying it yet. The step after this would then have the two sets of ingredients mingling… but Lily wasn’t actually sure she could. Even knowing what to do in theory, even with the help from Kat.

The step was complex, required the drawing of accurate runes, and the merging of two sets of ingredients at the same time, all the while keeping the cores spinning for obvious reasons. “I… this might be my limit I think. The next step is too much,”

“That sounds like quitter talk,” commented Appoline. “Why give up before you’ve even made an attempt?”

“Because despite how it might look, this is already pushing the limits of my control,” countered Lily. “I can lean on Kat to help with the mental burden of things but I still need to make sure the mana goes to the correct place. This is… a bit much.”

“Might as well try. If it looks like it’ll fail, I’ll yell. Hmmm… yes and if it fails you can just use your shadows to throw the cauldron to the ground upside down. Should prevent the fallout from being a problem,” countered Appoline.

“Alright then,” Lily agreed hesitantly and got to work. The first step wasn’t a problem, keeping the essence from forming a solid shell was just a matter of keeping it moving. Keeping it moving alongside the core was a bit harder but it wasn’t impossible. So Appoline added the next set of ingredients and Lily got to work.

Her mind felt like it was being stretched in all directions as she tried to rapidly break down the ingredients so that she didn’t have to hold this shit for an extended period of time. Her eyes started to glaze over as her focus narrowed to her other senses. Kat’s comforting presence helped, and the overwhelming memory of exactly what she had to do was firmly pressing into her mind even as it started to fog over.

Lily wrenched the ingredients to pieces and soon was shoving the essence together. Only for something to tickle her ears. She didn’t hear what was being said, but apparently it was something. She felt herself being yanked away from the cauldron even as she heard a clang and her eyes started to focus on the real world once again. Kat was pulling her backwards, and Kat’s tail was throwing the cauldron away.

Lily tried to use her shadows to guide it to the ground but as soon as she tried to gather the mana up it slipped through her fingers. When that failed, she just sort of let herself relax and be yanked away inside. The door slammed closed as the cauldron hit the floor. Instead of the wide variety of effects, the liquid seeped out as a thick viscous slime and started to sink into the ground. The grass started to grow uncontrollably, reaching upwards at a rapid pace and hiding the cauldron from view.

This simply continued in a wave, as more and more grass started to grow. Further and further out the wave of green continued to increase until abruptly there was a popping sound. A sound reminiscent to those little firecrackers continued to go off until the grass thinned enough to see they were what was exploding. In the end, Lily was left frowning, wondering what she’d done wrong.