A couple of days later, Emily and Juliana walk through the cafeteria hand in hand to join their friends for breakfast. They find Tom and Ivor sitting together in awkward silence and sit down to both of their relief.

“Where’s your sister?” Emily asks Tom as Juliana orders them food.

“I think the lab for your next class,” he answers unsurely. “She left a note on my door this morning saying that she grabbed one of the lab assistant missions last night and she won’t be joining us for breakfast.”

“That’s a shame,” Juliana says disappointedly. “At least she’s earning points though. What about you, Tom? You planning on taking a mission any time soon?”

“Maybe. It’s hard to find anything easy on the mission boards without them being taken the moment they’re put up.”

“What about joining herb gardening with me? It’d be nice to see a familiar face there, and Miss Hawthorne told us the other day to bring a friend if we wanted since she needs more helpers.”

Tom goes silent, considering the offer for a bit.

“I can’t believe you’re asking him to join you and not me,” Emily puts her hand on her heart and feigns offence as Tom thinks.

“You know you’d be my first choice if you weren’t so busy already,” Juliana teases, sticking out her tongue.

Emily chuckles and focuses on her toast as it arrives in front of her.

“Sure, I’ll garden with you,” Tom finally answers, to Juliana’s delight.

“Great! My next slot is tomorrow before dinner, meet me in the herb garden at 6.”

With their plans for point earning decided, the group eat their breakfast over light conversation. Finishing her food, Emily checks the time and realises it’s time to leave for her class.

She stands up and gives Juliana a goodbye hug and a kiss before leaving the cafeteria with Ivor for her first alchemy lesson.

“What are we going to be doing today?” Emily asks Ivor excitedly as they walk through the hallway towards the practical labs, happy to finally join the class after memorising so many textbooks on beasts in preparation.

“We were meant to be learning to brew basic healing potions, but it may change with you joining,” he signs back uncertainly.

“I hope not, I’m excited to see how potion-making works.”

“You may still, but I’m not sure. When other people have joined, we normally cover the basics in their first lesson.”

His response kills her excitement. They soon approach a door with ‘Intermediate Alchemy’ written in the centre. As Ivor pushes it open, Emily sees the lab behind it and lets out a small gasp of admiration.

The room is large, with dozens of worktables set up. Each table is identical, with a neat setup of pots, glassware, and a large cauldron to the side. Several mages are already standing behind their table, casting glances towards the door as they hear it open.

I wonder if Hester helped set these desks up.

Emily follows Ivor in, and they both make their way to two of the tables near the front of the room. Ivor picks a table next to a girl with messy hair, glasses, and large eyebags. Emily instantly recognises her as the clerk from her nighttime trip to the hub.

“Hey, nice to meet you again. I’m Emily Coldstone of house Mandrago,” Emily greets her with a smile.

“Ah, the one who can’t order everything at once,” the girl says with a tired nod. “Anka Zaluzian.”

Emily blushes slightly at her comment.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine, you aren’t the worst I’ve dealt with,” Anka dismisses while slowly looking between Ivor and Emily. “You two know each other?”

“Yes,” Ivor signs with a nod. “She’s J’s girlfriend.”

Emily is slightly caught off guard by him answering for them and says nothing before Anka responds.

“I see,” she says without much reaction before turning back to face the front without another word.

I guess they get along.

Emily joins them, standing in silence for a few minutes as a few more classmates come in. At the exact moment the clocks strike 9 am, the door opens again and a tall, thin woman with long flowing crimson hair steps into the room wearing familiar silver robes. Silence falls as she walks to the workstation facing the class.

“Good morning class, today we are joined by a new member, so we shall be doing a quick overview of the basics before we attempt any brewing,” she says to the class with a stern tone, setting off several displeased groans across the room. “No complaints, or else I’ll give you a pop quiz on desert herbs.”

The sounds of dissent from the students are instantly cut off by her threat.

“Good,” the teacher says before turning to Emily. “Welcome to my class Miss Coldstone. I’m Aileen Myrtle. You should address me as Mrs Myrtle. Now, Mr Eleocharis has told me good things about you, so I trust you should have no issues with me only giving you a brief overview and some extra reading for after class.”

Emily silently nods in confirmation, causing the corner of Mrs Myrtle’s lips to curl slightly. Satisfied with Emily’s response, Mrs Myrtle looks at the blackboard on the wall behind her and flicks her wrist towards the chalk at the base. As if following silent orders, the chalk jumps up into the air, hovering at the centre of the board awaiting further instructions. Mrs Myrtle turns back to face the class and begins her explanation, her hand lowered to her waist and dancing a fine, calculated performance as she speaks.

“Alchemy is the art of experimentation,” her words are accompanied by the rhythmic scraping of chalk on stone. “For every potion, concoction, or transmutation that you see, hundreds of hours of work have gone into fine-tuning the processes, contents, and quantities required for the perfect end result. Through alchemy, we seek to fully understand and realise the potential of magic. Many of you here will never go beyond the bounds of simply recreating known recipes, yet you shall still be called alchemists. Why is this?”

She casts her judgemental gaze around the room, with every student whose eyes she meets shrinking back. Under this tense atmosphere, Anka raises her hand.

“Miss Zaluzian?”

“We’ll still be called alchemists because even without creating new recipes, brewing existing recipes takes vast amounts of knowledge, fine mana control, and a precise eye for detail that most common mages lack.”

“Exactly!” Mrs Myrtle says with a proud smile. “Even those of you lacking talent in this field, are leagues above those who have never set foot into a concoction lab. Never forget that!”

Glancing around, Emily sees most of the students in the class rising with their backs straight and their chests pushed out proudly.

I think I’ve just found a group with a larger sense of inflated pride than average nobles.

Silently laughing to herself, Emily turns back to focus on Mrs Myrtle as she continues.

“Now, who can tell me the first step of brewing any known potion?”

The room quickly fills with raised hands, and Mrs Myrtle picks one at random.

“Gathering ingredients,” the boy from the middle of the room answers.

“Correct! The first stage for brewing a potion is gathering the ingredients. Most of the components making up a potion are magical materials, from metals and crystals to herbs and beast organs. When gathering materials, be that through purchasing them or going out and finding them yourself, always strive to use the best quality ingredients you can. Beast organs should be cleanly cut from the corpse and stored without contamination, herbs should be harvested carefully to not damage their roots. Never accept subpar ingredients unless you want your potions to be of low quality, an affront to the title of Alchemist.” She pauses to look around the room, making sure her point has landed.

I guess their sense of pride is useful if it leads to better potions being sold…

“Now, what comes after you’ve gathered all your ingredients?”

This time a small girl at the back of the room is selected to answer.

“Preparing your catalysts?”

“Wrong, anyone else?” Mrs Myrtle says with a hint of disdain.

Several hands fall at her admonishment, and she selects a girl on the front row to answer anew.

“Preparing your lab.”

“Quite obviously. How can you expect to brew anything if you don’t have the appropriate tools?”

Emily can’t help but silently agree with Mrs Myrtle’s statement.

“When preparing your lab for a concoction of any type, look through your recipe at all the intended stages and plan exactly which tools and containers you will need. Then gather all of them and set them up in an orderly manner. Never clutter your workspace with unneeded objects to maintain a comfortable workflow, and always plan your actions in advance,” she says before gesturing towards the worktables set up before each member of the class. “Look towards our setup for classes as the gold standard. Each time we have brewing practice, your tables shall be set up in a manner that I approve. Now, once you have your lab set up appropriately, you can then move on to preparing your catalysts and ingredients. The exact preparations to be performed vary depending on the recipe and ingredients you are using, but the general rule is to prepare all catalysts to their final stage before you touch your primary ingredients or your separating agent. After your materials are ready, what is the next step?”

This time, only a couple of hands are raised, including Ivor who gets chosen to answer.

“Set up any needed arrays,” he signs to Mrs Myrtle, who nods in agreement.

“Yes, setting up any needed arrays. This once again varies vastly from potion to potion, but most brews will require some form of stabilisation or control array. The latter can be ignored if you have fine enough mana control. Then next comes the most important part of your entire process, the brewing itself! The general rule is as follows: combine your primary ingredients in a fluid of some form, be that simple water or another magical ingredient itself, and apply heat or cold for a certain amount of time. Then mix in your catalysts and manage the reactions that follow, never allowing a catalyst to be fully combined, hence ruining your potion. Finally, add in your separating agent and fully remove both it and the catalyst, leaving you with a finished brew.” Finishing her explanation, Mrs Myrtle turns to look at Emily. “Did you follow all of that?”

“Yes.”

“Good, in that case, I shall now return to my planned class, brewing a basic healing potion.”

The scratching chalk pauses, a full breakdown of Mrs Myrtle’s brewing instructions written out on the large blackboard. The chalk flies up to the first line, ‘gathering ingredients’.

“You should all have done your homework, so who can tell me the ingredients required for a basic healing potion?”

Emily joins the rest of the class in raising her hand, having taken the liberty of reading several alchemy textbooks in advance. Mrs Myrtle sees and raises a brow slightly while pointing towards her.

“Go ahead, Miss Coldstone.”

“Two stalks of wyrmroot, the blood of a nymph, and powdered light crystals.”

“Good.” The chalk springs to motion, writing Emily’s answer. “Now can anyone else tell me what’s special about this recipe?”

She picks a random student from the middle of the room again.

“There is no separating agent.”

“Yes, and can anybody tell me why?”

This time only Anka and Ivor raise their hands. Emily looks at them curiously, not knowing the answer herself.

“Miss Zaluzian?”

“Crystals are often an outlier to the catalyst rules. When light crystals are used as a catalyst, they boost the effects of healing potions without contaminating them, so they can be left in.”

“Good, five points to Anka Zaluzian,” Mrs Myrtle says with a hand on the base of the blackboard, revealing a set of runes carved beneath, as the whole board momentarily lights up with the glow of mana. “The second step has already been completed for you. Please take a moment now to familiarise yourself with the equipment on your tables, I expect you all to use the correct tool for each step without me having to tell you. Now, to process our catalyst you will each need to take the light crystal provided and powder it using your preferred method. I will give you five minutes, start!”

The room quickly fills with the sound of rustling robes and ceramics clinking against each other as the students hurry to grind up the light crystals. Emily looks over her worktable and finds a single small glistening white crystal next to two jars filled with blood and six thin brown roots with ruby-red veins tracing their bodies.

Taking the crystal in hand, she picks out a small ceramic ramekin and holds the crystal in the air above it, between both palms. Carefully, she creates a small layer of pure mana across her palms, before slowly moving her hands apart, holding the bubble of mana in place with her will and focus. The small crystal floats freely within the bubble as Emily uses her second core to send a small burst of light attribute mana into the crystal.

Instantly, the crystal starts to glow brighter and vibrate. She pours mana into the supportive bubble, careful not to add too much at once until the crystal comes to a halt. Then, under the curious gazes of a few other students who are distracted by the bright light, the crystal breaks itself apart into a fine powder. The powdered crystal falls, in a thin glittering stream, directly into the ramekin below.

To finish off her preparation, Emily grabs a small set of balancing scales and carefully divides the crystal powder into three equal portions before looking around and seeing a few students looking at her strangely. Confused, she looks to Ivor and sees him standing with his crystal in a mortar and one of his hands holding the side, injecting mana into it, lighting up the array carved around its outside. His other hand holds a pestle that he uses to delicately crush up the crystal.

I see, the array on the mortar stabilises the crystal in the same way as my mana bubble, but without as large a mana cost. I wonder if I could create an unattributed spell to perform the same function, or does it need to be in the form of an array to work?

Emily turns back to the front and waits patiently for Mrs Myrtle to continue guiding the class, ignoring the murmured conversations around her about her strange preparation techniques.