A/N: I'm very sorry for the late late update. I have no excuses. A lot of things happened. I found myself a job and real life stuff just keeps happening. I was going to stop but then regained my passion. Anyways, thanks for reading and tell me if the terms are confusing.
GR 16: Meeting the Girl with no Voice (3)
#unedited
If you ask me what I remembered most vividly in my previous life, it would be the hospital room, the smell of medicine, the pitying looks from everyone, and the increasingly exhausted looks of my parents and family.
I would wake up only to repeat the same things every day, mundane... lifeless… treatments.
Now that I think back, there was a time that I was ready to stop preserving after seeing black bags under my parents eyes after an operation. I thought I was a burden, and I didn’t want my family to live in false hope of me getting better. My health then deteriorated, of course. I was losing the will to live after all.
But then, one day with the help of my best friend, I realized something. My parents never really considered me a burden. It was myself who thought so. It was me who labelled myself a good-for-nothing. Then I started to figure out my joy of living.
Finding the littlest things that brings a smile to my everyday life and my family, trying my best to enjoy the left over time of my life.
That is why, I am suddenly curious about this mute little girl and her life story.
I want to do something for her. Just like what my best friend did for me. The littlest things that might mean a whole new world for someone.
So here I am, traveling with the said girl whose name I don’t even know. In fact, I don’t even know anything about her but her being 13 years old. I almost didn’t believe it since she was as small as a ten-years-old, but the sight of her counting and desperately presenting her fingers towards me proved that it was true.
It has been a week since I left the castle, 4 days since I left the capital and 3 days since I began traveling with the girl. It’s been difficult traversing the forest for us two girls, and I am pretty sure the sight of two ten-plus-years old girls walking in the forest is an odd enough sight, so I am glad that we haven’t spotted any other humans. I’d rather have it this way. Humans are sometimes scarier than monsters.
Speaking of monsters, I remembered the first time I met one this afternoon. Other people had the luxury of starting from the easy monsters such as mutated horned rabbits or slimes, but I got one hell of a tutorial.
My starting monster was a four-horned frost deer. It was such a scary creature, one that is corrupted by some unknown malice. Its eyes were terrible as if they wanted the destruction of everything in the world. Moreover, it had the strength to back its desire.
I would never choose such mid-bossy monster to fight if I had a choice. One moment I met eyes with the thing, the next it was already on its hooves marching towards me at full speed. The fight started before I could even spit out a curse word.
After a bitter fight that lasted hours, I got two ribs broken, a battered right arm, a bleeding wound on my forehead, and my supply of battle potions cut by half. Plus the fact that our elements were similar turned it into an incredibly hard fight.
In the end, the girl had to carry me sloppily and walked while crying for miles until we could find a safe camping spot to treat my wounds. I had never felt more thankful for the first-aid classes I did under Shawn-san.
As a result, we would have to move slowly in the forest tomorrow while taking any and all chances to collect any herbs we see on the way. To be honest, my body aches every time I take a step forward despite all of my external wounds almost healed due to my overly-effective healing potion. However, my broken ribs still haven’t fully healed, and the pain from it is killing me.
I don’t want to force myself to travel in this state, but the dwindling food made me realize that we can’t afford to delay the journey. There are only a couple of day’s journey left until we get out of this forest and to a village. I can have my wounds treated more properly there, and also restock on everything else. I would also have to find ways to find the family of this little girl. *sigh* There are so many things I have to do. They are starting to pile up.
The crackling of wood burning in the campfire brought my train of thought back to reality. I looked at the black night sky shining with countless stars and the mystical two moons. It is beautiful but I guess I don’t have time to waste daydreaming. I know that I have this idiotic habit since my sick days to be in a daze all the times. It helped a lot when dealing with loneliness but I have a feeling that it only dulls my sense of danger and reality at the present situation. I guess I need to spend more effort to change it.
Looking across from me, I saw the little girl carefully sorting out herbs into different piles like I taught her. As she felt my gaze, she looked up and smiled at me. I returned her a small smile, and decided to start refining a new batch of potions.
From the space bag, I took out a pair of gloves, a small oil-lamp like alchemy furnace, wrapping papers, and small bottles. Although I made plenty of potions for the journey, the amount is quickly dwindling without me having a chance to even sell some of them as according to my initial plan. However, after actually using the potions myself, I’ve begun to think it was a good thing instead.
My potions are strange. I say they’re strange because some potions are strangely more effective (like the Monsters’ Bane) while some have very different effects from normal despite having been made from the same recipe as the ones on the market (such as the Stamina potion that turned into a smoothing-digestion potion instead).
It is not because of my experimenting on the recipe. It is because of something else. Something during the creation process has caused the abnormalities, and I am determined to find out tonight.
I just can’t have peace of mind not knowing what is wrong with it.
With my fighting spirits high, I started injecting mana to the furnace that is in the shape of an oil lamp. Having received mana, the normally invisible letters engraved on the glass part of the furnace started glowing. It didn’t take long before the furnace started to grow in shape.
I took a step back as the furnace grew until the size of a waist-high brick stove. The initially glass-like dome of the lamp glowed and turned into a pot-like shape whilst blue fire made of mana is burning below it.
I can’t help but admire whoever made this (nicknamed) miracle furnace. It is breathtaking every time I watch its transformation as if I was seeing a Harry Potter scene in real life.
I believe the glass material and design used to make this furnace are from the alchemists’ free city to the North. I would absolutely love to go there once. The free city which I heard from Shawn-san is basically a heaven for alchemists. The place is famous for trades and everything alchemy-related.
An alchemist has to at least visit there once in order to be qualified as one and advance their alchemist studies.
Anyways, back to the present. I continuously supplied mana to the furnace as I put on the alchemy gloves as I was writing the runes needed to preheat the furnace. I turned to the little girl whose mouth and eyes were wide open in awe of the magical furnace: "Can you bring the herbs we collected this evening over here?"
The girl snapped out of her daze and nodded. Then she cradled the batches of herbs she piled one by one to the place near me before finally sitting down next to it as she intently watched me making the potions.
First step of making a potion is to pre-heat the furnace. This should usually be done by concentrating mana into a ball before igniting it. However, Shawn-san and I discovered that by inscribing a type of runic language during the process, one can divide one's concentration to simultaneously do the second step, which is extracting the ingredients' essence.
Once I felt enough mana revolving in my body, I directed mana into my gloved hands as my fingertips started to glow. [Ains Zwei Treis], using my index finger, I drew a line of runes in the air. The runes floated for a moment before fitting itself onto the base of the furnace and the originally fierce fire turned tame and stable.
Next up was preparing the herbs. This step might be the hardest step when creating potions not only because I am multitasking as I maintain the fire, but because there are tons of things you have to focus on in this stage. They are the extraction methods and the elements of the different ingredients. Without the proper recipe which includes which parts of the herbs should be used and what order of combination should be done, the potion can easily reverse react and explode.
That is why before an alchemy starts making potions, the apprentice's memorizing and focusing skills are trained to the limits. Each and any recipe has to be memorized by heart, one has to deeply ingrain the process into the mind before they are allowed to make them.
I was like super lucky to have an elite alchemist as my mentor as I technically didn't have to worry about the malreactions of the ingredients or explosion as Shawn-san would quickly stop the process as soon as any signs show up. Not to mention, he was unbelievably keen on spotting abnormalities even before they show. Being his good student, I luckily took after his keen eyes.
Because the potion I am making now is a beginner potion used to heal internal injuries. Most of the ingredients are naturally null-elements or wood elements found in the forest, so the chances of a malreaction occurring in the potion is low. Very quickly, the essence of each ingredient was extracted and slowly floated in the air like a continuous stream.
Motioning with my hands, the stream of essence fell into the boiling water in the heated furnace. I swiftly controlled the fire inside the furnace while continuously using my mana to stir the ingredients.
It was finally the last step as the liquid inside the furnace slowly starts to show opaque bubbles. (Opaque bubbles form whenever a magic potion is in its completion or maturing stage).
Once again, I focused mana into my fingertips as I wrote another line of runes to further stabilize the formation of the potion. The initially green liquid oddly turned into amethyst again after I put them into an already prepared glass bottle.
As I was lost in thought reflecting on how that came to be. My eyes unconsciously landed on the little girl's face. Her eyes were sparkling with admiration and looking here as if she was marvelling at an amazing phenomenon. Had she been able to make sounds, I am pretty sure she would be squealing so hard and pestering me to show it to her again.
It was then that an ingenious idea struck me. I think I found a way to let the little girl 'talk'.
