D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

Chapter 2142: Chapter 2142 Consistent Inconsistency

--- Lily ---

Over the next few hours Lily would find her potion brewing to be... inconsistent. It was hard to truly call it bad, Appoline usually had words of encouragement and some advice to avoid the problem caused by whatever issue plagued the potion, though in one particular case there was almost none.

During the brewing spree Lily managed to create a wonderfully glowing potion that was a nice cherry red, slightly bubbling, that gave of a soft, almost perfect light. Appoline congratulated her... and said, ”Do it again.”

Considering the next attempt led to more black sludge, Lily felt rather upset. Even that, Appoline had some words of wisdom for though. ”You were too excited Lily. You let that joy seep into your creation... along with way too much mana. Once again.”

Lily had sighed, ”Always too much mana?”

”Perhaps,” countered Appoline. ”It will likely remain your biggest hurdle, though not your only one.”

At the very least it was interesting to look at the various final products, either in her memories or lined up next to each other. After her initial success, that could barely be counted, Lily had remained extra careful. Taken it slow, managed everything well... and got only a slightly better potion. It was closer to the correct shade of red, more vibrant and lively...

But also closer to honey in texture and moved slowly when you shifted the ladle to stir it. Even tilting the entire pot to check just revealed more slow moving liquid. Though it was at least a liquid. ”What the heck is wrong with this one?” Lily had asked.

”This one is actually a lack of mana,” admitted Appoline. ”I hardly thought it possible, but you do need SOME minimal level of your own mana to keep the potion bound together.”

”Wouldn’t keeping it ’bound together’ result in something less... gloopy?” asked Lily.

Appoline shook her head. ”No, not at all. This potion here is at risk of separating back into its components and hardening up into an unusable mess. You can correct it in this case with just a bit of extra water and some mana. NOT too much. Just a tiny dash. Any more and it’ll destabilise, but you can save this potion.”

”Wait so it’s not good right now?” asked Lily.

”Eh... it’s not bad, and truthfully it might be perfect if you were to slap it on a wound right this moment but it’s not going to store at all. The shelf life on a potion like this is a day at the absolute most, likely closer to an hour. Even fixing it I doubt it’ll survive the week,” Appoline had admitted.

Lily was a bit upset about this... but hearing it was a ’fully effective’ healing potion had cheered her up at the time. Leading her to be a bit sloppy with her next brew. This one, unlike the others, was far too pale. Washed out pink like your whites after you’d washed them with brand new red pants. The bubbles, few that there was, also just floated off into the air instead of popping after getting too large. ”What’s the issue with this one? Too much space mana?”

”Actually, I think this is mostly instability in the core of the potion. It’s leaking mana and if we don’t bottle it quickly then you’ll lose most of the power,” commented Appoline. Once the words had been heard, Lily swiftly got to work using her shadows to quickly bottle up as much of the potion as possible. Once it was all sealed away, the colour darkened a touch... but it was still far too pale when compared with Appoline’s successes.

Lily’s next attempt produced a solid potion. It wasn’t amazing, just ’ok’ with a bunch of small mistakes. A little too much mana, core not as stable, the ingredients weren’t completely used up... but it was fairly good. Buoyed by that success Lily had then taken that success and micked the actions closely to make her best potion yet... and the failure immediately afterwards. Lily simply couldn’t ”Do that again” as requested by Appoline.

After the first major failure since beginning her brewing, Lily decided to take a small break. Just a tiny one. She wasn’t really hungry and she still had plenty of mana but it seemed like the right thing to do. Mentally reset and get away from the disappointment. Lily ended up brewing pot of tea for everyone, even delivering a glass over to Kat.

For her efforts, she was thanked with a rather... involved kiss. Tongue was introduced and Lily hardly even remembered how she ended up at the garden chair with a teacup in hand. In fact... she had no idea at all where the teapot had vanished too, nor where the extra glass had come from because it wasn’t one of the ones she’d picked out when planning to share tea with everyone.

Eventually, Lily finished her tea and firmly put the lost time out of her mind. If the smug feelings coming from Kat were any indication, checking her girlfriend for memories of what exactly happened would just lead her to serious embarrassment and it was simply better for everyone, mostly Lily, to ignore the issue entirely and pretend it didn’t happen.

Lily solidified this plan by making her way back over to the brewing stands and getting back to work... but not before noticing that in her short break Hedera had already made multiple batches of healing potions. Just three, but... ”How? I... it took me hours to make a handful of batches and you’re nearly caught up after just a few minutes?”

”You were giggling to yourself for a lot longer then a few minutes. In fact, I think it’s been about half an hour,” Appoline said informatively. Lily found herself blushing at the frank admission. *Woops. I did not realise I was quite that zoned out of it. I thought it would be five at most!* ”And please remember that I am quite practiced at this. Not just brewing in general, but a multitude of healing potion recipes.

”I could make them in my sleep. While doing other things. If someone was throwing ingredients in for me I could simply do this all automatically without a single thought on my behalf. I have thousands of hours of practice just making healing potions. There is no reason to compare us, certainly not yet anyway. Get some practice of your own in first,”

Lily took in a deep breath before exhaling. ”Alright... though... hmm... why don’t you have someone do something like that? Set it all up to be automatic?”

Appoline sighed, ”Honestly as comical of an idea that it is... if you want truly perfect potions you have to take slightly differing amounts of time with the various steps. Some potions might take me a minute, while others take a minute and a half, and some rare ones taking me two or more minutes. There is also the fact that, while you weren’t paying attention to it, I regularly swap the ingredients around that I’m using.

”I try to balance them out. So if I find a particularly potent ingredient, I make sure the others are equally as robust or, perhaps, if the recipe would work better with some other ratio I look for that instead. There are too many small adjustments I am constantly making. Sometimes I even shave off small amounts of an ingredient to ensure the best quality.

”Sure, perhaps I COULD work out some sort of system to get... perhaps... ninety-five percent of the quality I normally have... but the amount of money and time it would take to set up a system like that would be horrendous. Even if it was just paying someone to chuck me ingredients, I’d need to charge less for the final product and pay for the time of someone else.

”An enchanted device would be worse. It might take me decades to pay it off... and all the while I’m not improving my skills a single bit.” Appoline paused. ”Well... no, perhaps I’d managed to figure something out after such a long time... but even still it would be a bespoke enchantment setup that would have me in the red for years. I simply can’t justify it. Even before it was too much. Now? Barely worth thinking about.”

Lily nodded slowly. ”Ah... yeah I guess that’s fair. I suppose I just assumed automation was the answer because it’s a big deal in my home dimension... but the fact individual power is so important here makes it a much harder sell.”

Appoline shrugged, ”I won’t deny that for someone of lesser talent and skill it might be worth setting up, or perhaps a big alchemy guild with dozens of apprentices. I’m still not sure it would be, but I can see why it’s being considered. For me though? I don’t think it will ever be the answer...”

Appoline’s eyes narrowed. ”For the moment though?” Appoline lightly bonked Lily on the top of the head. ”Stop looking for shortcuts! You need practice! Not even a day and you’re already trying to do less work. That just means you need to practice more!”