After sorting everything out with the police and they were long gone, Rhonda said, "I'm not so sure about this arrangement now that you've just let those kids go after wrecking everything."
Luke shrugged and telekinetically set up his equipment and started exercising before responding, "While I don't plan on fighting much, I'll need at least some combat experience, and helping those kids get better at using their magic offensively will, hopefully, help them out against the fraxions. Getting used to my own magic in a combat scenario while improving the odds that some teens come in after I finally can't go on any longer and start wrecking shop felt important in the moment."
After a beat, but before Rhonda could respond, he continued, "Also, if you were so serious about not wanting me here, you could have told the police I let them go, rather than just stating they escaped."
Frustrated, Rhonda replied, "That's because I still think your plan's the best bet I've heard anyone suggest on how to beat the fraxions, long-term. If it weren't for your improvement so rapid I hadn't thought possible, I'd be saying otherwise, but you really might be able to pull it off. To go from a nobody to this," she gestured at him, "is a work ethic I've only heard celebrities claim to have, without actually seeing any of outwardly. But still, letting them go and arguably helping them out with the sparring? I get your reasoning, but that doesn't mean I'm not mad."
"Think of their time with me like the punishment you want them to get. I'm not going to beat them up constantly - they'll probably be beating me before too long - but they'll still be getting bumps and bruises. Maybe an occasional broken bone, but I'll, hopefully, have the ability to mend those before we have that accident," Luke said.
Rhonda rubbed her face before breathing, "Whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." After regaining her breath, she said, "So, you said you want a rest potion?"
"Yeah, the longer I can stay awake, the better. More time to train," Luke responded.
She flew his exercise potion to beside him and got a bottle of white liquid out from her work room before saying, "For now, just take a sip of mine when you need it. Considering how much of the stuff I have and your advance payment for potions I still might not even finish in full if the acceleration of fight times keeps up, you can just use it for free, in exchange for the potions you won't get."
Luke shrugged as he said, "I'm sure you'll get them all done. With you moving from every other week to every week for my stuff, you have around a year and a half to get it all done. It probably won't be that bad. Five months ago, I figured I had somewhere between two and two and a half years and you're not that far before me. You will have time for sure."
"You're probably going to run out of exercise potions at this rate, too, so you'll have to slow down, then," Rhonda said as she made her way back to work on more potions.
"I'll probably have the last few months off, yeah, but at the rate I'm growing with your and Shoeberts's help, the last two potions are going to disappear slowly. There has to be some extra magic going around making people able to get more physically fit than before, because even I am astounded by the feats of endurance I can do," Luke said.
"Maybe," Rhonda replied noncommittally.
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Rhonda was creating more potions in the back while Luke did 80 pound barbell squats, already well past his first hour of doing so. He didn't keep track of time at this point, simply going until 10 reps after he felt the rapid increase in difficulty of reaching the limits of his endurance. He was still a ways off from that benchmark.
"...Stir the mixture while keeping the spell inside the liquid for 30 minutes, and then I'll just need to place it in a special tub with some special enchantments - which you can investigate after I've had my time in the arena - for five days. After that, I'll need to run it through a filter and process it a bit more," Rhonda was explaining her process to Luke. "A bit of magic crystallizes out during the curing. As far as I know, no one has found any use for the crystals beyond being painful if left inside. I also add a bit of flavoring at the very end, since they taste pretty bad without it and it doesn't impact its effectiveness at all."
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"So, exercise potions are just super processed coffee?" Luke asked.
"Basically, yeah," she said, stirring Luke's next potion.
"It really just starts from basic coffee beans and water?" Luke asked to further clarify.
"The specific brand I work with is the best I've found, but yes. It can work with any part of any plant, really, not just coffee beans. It's just that none of those plants are anywhere near as effective as even the bad coffee beans. Dixon probably uses sawdust, simply because wood's everywhere, maybe whatever the cheapest food is. I haven't looked into it, I just know they're cheap and bad," Rhonda said.
"Would the inedible wood not have extra side effects?" Luke asked.
"Nope," Rhonda said. "The plant, once imbued with the first spell, is converted to whatever magical stuff makes potions tick by the spell during the stirring phase, and any remaining plant matter is destroyed as part of the enchantments. They're mostly there to boost the power of the magic that attached to the water molecules, but they have a few other properties to help make the potion not bad that you don't really need to know about to be good at this. Some people have tried to isolate the magical stuff from the water, but it completely fuses to the water molecules. Beyond the inert crystals that form, there's no particles to be taken from the water."
"Do all potions work the same way, just mix water and a specially imbued plant to imbue the water with the properties desired?" Luke asked.
"Not every potion uses plants, or even just one plant, but yes," Rhonda said, "that is the basic blueprint for every potion we know of. I need different spells and a different tub for the various types of potion - which, for most of the combat-oriented ones, I have multiple of so I can have many going at once - since they all have unique ingredients, but yeah. Exercise potions are only as expensive as they are because the specific brand of coffee bean I use is expensive. If leaves of some specific tree were the most powerful, I'd be using those to a significantly cheaper result, but potioneering - proper potioneering, not putting massive markups on the cheapest materials you can find, Dixon - is expensive."
"Why do you hate Dixon so much?" Luke asked. "I get they're competition and have bad potions people buy, but you mention them every, like, third sentence when you talk about potioneering as a profession."
"They're an insult to all of us proper potioneers that actually try to make potions. They spend zero effort trying to research or develop better potions, give potions bad reputations due to their lacking ingredients so people don't even try to give a proper potioneer a try at the prices we need to charge, steal the cheapest recipes for new potions as they crop up, and actively suppress knowledge about the greater field of potioneering for their own profit.
"It's not like people can't find us - you did, after all, but they make it sound like we're charging over twice the cost for only a few percent better products, using bots and cheap review bombing sites to make it seem like any other potioneer is lying about their effectiveness and that people should just buy Dixon, instead.
"They're a blight on the potioneering industry and will probably lead to many, many people not getting the help they need due to their misinforming propaganda. Not that I started this business for money - I just love potioneering as a whole, but they have definitely reduced my client count and people don't trust small-time potioneers because of them. Something needs to be done, but I don't know what. They're not a monopoly, just the largest in the field. The stuff they do can cause their bot accounts to be banned, but no one can prove it's at the orders of Dixon themselves, so they can just get new bots.
"Just, as a whole, their company is everything wrong in potioneering and similar businesses," Rhonda ranted. "And there's nothing I can personally do to fix it. Only thing I haven't tried is murder and other stuff I will not do, even over this point. The best blow I've seen anyone get against them is when I won a defamation case from them calling some of my potions actively poisonous, when that's literally not even possible unless the consumer ignores instructions or someone adds in a poison after the fact."
"Sounds rough. Not really sure how to help you with that," Luke said. "Smashing their machinery would just cost them time, I'd assume, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get away with that. Maybe our new friends could with their disappearing act."
"You're not even sure they'll come back," Rhonda responded. "Besides, they do sell cheap - if still overpriced for their effectiveness - potions for people who want potions. Taking them out of business fully would hurt more than it helps, I just want them to lower their prices to sane amounts and stop spreading misinformation about potioneering as a whole."
After a bit of thought, Luke responded, "Yeah, that's true. They also probably need to mark their stuff up a bit more to pay for employees, expansion, and delivering the potions across the world. From what it sounds like, they should still be only a dollar or so more expensive than water bottles. That's still way cheaper than what they sell at right now. Their exercise potions are, what, $2.50 right now?"
"$2.75 per bottle, last I checked," Rhonda corrected. "They just went up because of some politics or whatever, I don't pay attention to pretty much anything outside these walls or the grocery store anymore, so who knows exactly why. The cashier I talked to mentioned something I don't remember to that effect."