‘Finally, I can get started on this!’ Percy rubbed his hands in anticipation.

  Perhaps he was a little too excited to be working on his somewhat disturbing project… But who could blame him? He genuinely enjoyed alchemy, and he’d been looking forward to brewing potions for a while now.

  Storing the fresh batch of Aurora Dew away, he stood up from his desk, before walking to the centre of the room. Next, his gaze landed on the two bodies lying face-up on the floor, atop a large white sheet. They weren’t corpses – evident by their open eyelids and their soft, rhythmic breaths. Though they couldn’t be considered ‘alive’ either, not a hint of emotion present in their vacant expressions. Naturally, these were the clones he had borrowed from his grandpa.

  And this wasn’t the only thing Baldy had given him. Percy was currently using a previously unoccupied room, which he had repurposed into a temporary lab with Archibald’s permission. After all, his old bedroom was already a little cramped with two people living there. Plus, he didn’t want to be doing this sort of thing anywhere close to his stuff.

  “Sorry in advance, fake Grandpa.” Percy said, flipping the first body around.

  Next, he manifested a short cyan dagger, before thrusting it into the clone’s back. Or tried to, at least. The construct barely broke through the skin before snapping in two.

  ‘Ok. Hoping to bridge a gap of four grades with regular pure mana might have been a little too ambitious.’

  Sighing, Percy returned to his desk, taking his jar out of his spatial amulet. Then, he grabbed a handful of teal powder, using it to craft a sturdier knife.

  “Let’s try this again…” he muttered, this time stabbing the clone with more confidence.

  Dragging the tip along the clone’s spine, he sliced a long vertical line into its back, some blood soon seeping out of the wound. Ignoring that, he opened a small leather pouch he had strapped to his waist, revealing some powder shimmering in a vibrant green colour. These were the spores he had previously extracted from the mushrooms.

  ‘Careful now.’

  Percy coated both of his hands in a thin film of pure mana, unwilling to get any of the substance on his skin. Not that it would be the end of the world if he touched the spores by accident. From what he knew, they needed blood to grow. And even if he somehow planted some on himself by accident, they wouldn’t be so difficult to get rid of. Still, it was easier to just avoid dealing with that nonsense entirely…

  Sprinkling some of the spores into the cut, he leaned forward, watching them with bated breath. He had no idea how fast these mushrooms were supposed to grow, but he figured Baldy’s Violet life mana combined with the clone’s equally fertile flesh would have a positive impact on the process.

  Still, he vastly underestimated just how compatible the clone was with the mushrooms, staring at the reaction in shock. The moment the first drop of powder fell into the incision, blood stopped spilling out of that spot, getting sucked inward instead. At the same time, the wound frothed in an eerie green light, a handful of mushrooms soon taking shape.

  And that was only the beginning.

  While Percy had paused in alarm, the mushrooms didn’t wait for him to pour more spores. Releasing some of their own, they caused more to sprout along the cut. Within less than a minute, dozens of them had popped up in a vertical line across the clone’s back. Each of them was larger than any Percy had seen before, including the ones the troll king had planted on himself.

  The madness didn’t stop quite yet, however.

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  Next, Percy watched as the clone convulsed, the flesh on its back squirming. It looked as if a myriad ants were trying to dig their way out, struggling to pierce through the surface at first. Though the reaction reached a critical point soon enough…

  The clone’s back tore with a sickening squelch, erupting in blood and gore. An entire layer of skin and muscle was blown away, chunks of flesh flying across the room. Percy instinctively tried to shield his face from the spray of viscera. By the corner of his eye, he saw hundreds of mushrooms springing forth among the remains, reaching full size within moments. By the time they were done, the clone’s entire body had shrivelled, the rest of its blood sucked dry.

  “Holy shit!” Percy spat, frantically wiping the filth off his face, afraid of meeting a similar fate.

  Though he calmed down a moment later, realizing this was unlikely to happen to him. At the very least, the mushrooms the trolls had planted in their bodies hadn’t grown nearly as aggressively as these.

  “Heh. I won’t be running out anytime soon.” he smiled bitterly, glancing around the room.

  On the bright side, his nearly exhausted stash of green mushrooms had just gone up by a few hundred specimens. That said, he wasn’t looking forward to cleaning the place up.

  “They’re still at Orange though…” he grimaced as his mutated eyes fell back on the darn things.

  The biggest problem with potion making on Remior, was that ingredients above Orange were notoriously difficult to find. This was why it was viewed as a lesser branch of alchemy. After all, potions weren’t particularly effective for the people who actually mattered. Not that it was impossible to drink a potion of a lower grade, but the body’s natural resistance made that inefficient.

  On paper, a hypothetical Yellow potion would contain as much mana as three Orange potions. In practice, however, a Yellow mage might need to drink five or more Orange potions to get the same effect. And the issue got worse as the gap in grades increased. A Blue or Violet mage might need an entire barrel of healing potions to get any value out of them.

  Suffice to say, Percy had really hoped that his grandpa’s mana would elevate the grade of the mushrooms. Evidently, that was nothing but wishful thinking. While the clone had definitely helped him produce a lot more mushrooms, and a lot faster too, each of them wasn’t much different from the originals…

  ‘I suppose people would have already figured it out if it was that easy.’

  In any case, Percy wasn’t about to give up on higher grade potions just yet. He knew the answer had to be out there, waiting for him to discover it. Besides, regular potions were still useful for him and Nesha right now.

  ‘First things first. Let’s actually brew some potions before worrying about their grade.’ he shook the distracting thoughts out of his head.

  Grabbing a different pouch from his waist, he repeated the process with the second clone, this time standing a little further back. Soon, the clone met a similar fate to its sibling, a canopy of crimson mushrooms growing from its remains.

  ‘Wow. Baldy can probably make a fortune doing this.’ Percy mused, running some mental calculations in his head.

  He didn’t know how much each mushroom would go for, though he could harbour some guesses. He estimated he could probably brew a single potion out of each, and the Guild sold them for 10 points apiece – admittedly at a loss. Consequently, each mushroom was probably worth somewhere between 5 and 30 points. That meant his grandpa could probably earn anywhere between 1000 and 6000 points from each clone.

  ‘Never mind… It’s not actually worth the effort for him.’ he quickly realized.

  The clones couldn’t be salvaged afterwards, and each of them took Baldy 24 hours to cultivate. 6000 points weren’t a small sum, but any mage at Blue – or even Green, really – could easily make more in the same amount of time.

  ‘Better not waste them then.’ he shrugged.

  Picking some of the green mushrooms, Percy walked to his desk again, taking out his alchemy equipment. There were two types of potions he was hoping to brew, though he figured it was better to start with the simplest one. He wouldn’t need any secondary ingredients for the healing potions – just the green mushrooms and the extraction principle. In fact, he doubted it would be much different from the lesser regeneration pills he had learned to brew alongside Enki.

  ‘With my eyes helping, I’ll have the recipe down by tomorrow.’ he grinned, eager to get started.

  Yet, as he was about to toss the first mushroom into the cauldron, somebody knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Archibald. Are you alright in there? My connection to the clones was just severed.”

  Percy scratched his head as he made his way to the door. Opening it, he saw Baldy standing outside, Nesha breathing heavily by his side. They must’ve been in the middle of a training session just now.

  “Why are you covered in blood?!” Nesha gasped upon noticing him.

  Curious, Baldy also tried to peer inside the room, though Percy didn’t let him, expertly blocking the sight ahead with his body.

  “Trust me Grandpa, you don’t want to see what’s in there!” he flashed him a sheepish grin.

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