On the next day afternoon, Belinda went to Horác. After entering the laboratory, she was surprised to see two strangers sitting in the corner and drinking tea.

The older man wore a long white coat, while the younger boy wore the uniform. He seemed to be around 15 years old.

„Oh, you are finally here! Come! Come!” Horác called her over, then spoke with the others. „He is Belinda who I told you before.”

Hearing the ’he’, Belinda was speechless. She knew others thought that she was a boy, but she didn’t think that Horác would let the misunderstanding continue… She could imagine how happily would Horác laugh and say ’sorry, I misspelled’ when her body would change while growing and everyone could see she was a girl.

„He is Zell Hiador.” Horác said to her. „He is teaching pills refining. The kid next to him is Piusz, his helper. They will teach you how to refine.”

She looked at them and was confused. Piusz seemed to be restless and sweated a lot.

Hiador put down his cup and stood up. „If you are here then let’s go! Learning to refine isn’t that easy, so don’t waste the time here!”

He smiled friendly, but Belinda was able to see he was nervous. She didn’t have the chance to say anything, the two men left the lab so fast as if a monster chased them.

Horác broke out with loud laughing. He really enjoyed their reactions.

Belinda finally understood the situation. Horác never sealed his aura in his lab and spent almost all his time here. For someone to enter here was the worst punishment. She sighed and went after them.

Piusz waited for her at the end of the corridor. He was wiping off the sweat from his face.

„You are really incredible! You can so casually stay there. I heard stories about Horác, but I never thought that his aura was this bad.” his eyes shined with awe.

Belinda was taken aback. She didn’t saw any sign on him for lying or trying to mislead her with ulterior motives. Her feelings told her the man in front of her was reliable.

She didn’t know what caused it, but her sixth sense became stronger. Some days before she went to the cafeteria to eat her dinner. It was a usual day, there were a lot of students speaking and laughing. Next to her table sat some boys and told jokes. She didn’t paid attention to them, but when one of them started to speak her body froze. His voice was casual, there wasn’t any problem with him, yet her body became cold and all her muscles told her ’that man is dangerous’.

After that it didn’t happened too often, so she didn’t intend to tell anyone about it.

They went down to the second floor and went into a little room. There were some cauldrons on the floor and a lot of herbs around it.

„This is my practicing room. Sorry, I didn’t have the time to clean up.” Piusz said then took away some herbs so they could sit down.

Belinda looked around. She didn’t see the teacher from before.

„Come and sit here, I will teach you.” Piusz already sat on the floor and hold some books. „I started to learn to refine 3 years before, so master said I can handle this task. He’ll come later to see your progress.”

Belinda nodded and sat down. Because of Horác’s sudden idea, she didn’t want to become others’ burden.

Seeing she didn’t mind it, Piusz smiled. He was a little afraid of that, she didn’t accept him and want his master to come here. He remembered how angry Hiador was when he heard Horác wanted him to personally teach a first-year student. In the second year, everyone had the chance to learn it. They never did an exception, so Horác was too unreasonable.

Piusz shook his head, then opened a book and started to teach Belinda.

Refining pills was almost the same in every novel. You needed to control your internal energy and used it to mash the herbs, then merge them. It was the same in this world too.

Belinda understood these things, but she wasn’t sure if she could do it. Because of Horác’s tasks, she didn’t attend the classes. She learned how to control the water, but she never did similar training what she saw in the classroom.

After an hour, Piusz felt that he told everything that was necessary and he took out some fruits.

„Maybe it sounds easy, but refining is harder than you can imagine. Every time, the first thing the teachers teach is how to make fruit candies.”

Belinda was surprised. Fruit candies weren’t pills, but the way to made them was the same. These fruits were the same that you could get in the garden, so the candies didn’t have any energy in them. This was the cheapest way to learn how to control your internal energy.

She was sure, Horác didn’t told them what his intention with this training was. She was afraid, she would need to learn a lot of things before she had the chance to made candies. Now she felt reassumed and happily watched how Piusz made it. He repeated it 3 times, then let Belinda try it.

She sat next to the cauldron and dropped a fruit in it. She followed what Piusz said, but she failed at the very beginning. She wasn’t able to smash the fruit into a puree. She learned how to wrap around her body with internal energy as a protection layer, but she never attacked with it.

„… Can you clear a corner for me? Then I won’t be in your way to refine.” she said suddenly. From the first try, she realized it would take a long time to learn.

Piusz was surprised. He had a daily task but gave up after his master told him to teach Belinda. He didn’t think that she wouldn’t want him to watch her practicing.

He easily cleared out a corner and helped Belinda to take there the things she needed.

The two of them sat down to their cauldrons and continued their work in silence.