Mana silently led Roa to an unfamiliar section of the castle. They were walking through a long corridor, with the afternoon sun blazing through the windows from the left side. Roa thought it was awkward just walking, and tried to spark up a conversation.

“Hey Mana, did your ever think your parents named you to mess with people?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well your name is Mana, and magic uses mana. So when people are talking about spells, they would say something like it consumes a hundred Mana right? With you around, people would be conscious of saying mana because it's also your name.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve been told that before. It’s mostly a joke now really.”

“Is that so…”

And like that, the conversation ended.

More silence followed until the two arrived at a door at the very end of a corridor. Mana lightly rapped on the door before they heard a voice.

“Come in.”

The door opened on its own as Mana, followed by Roa, walked in. Lining the room were shelves of random glassware, many of them pear shaped. Some of the bottles held mysteriously-colored liquids, while others held a scant amount of herbs.

In the middle of the clutter was a girl. Bodywise, it looked like a girl. Had the girl not began earnestly speaking to Roa in a frenzy, Roa would’ve thought it was just a child.

“Oh, you’re here! I’ve been waiting for you. You see, it has been a long time since on of my stat cards have failed y'know. Our recipe on the generation of stat cards has been passed down for ages, long before this kingdom even existed. Of course, that means we’ve perfected the art of creating such cards.”

Roa wanted to speak up, but the girl just kept on chattering.

“Usually, when static appears on the stat cards, it means one requires a special type of stat card. So we’re going to be pouring chemicals all over you.”

“Wait a minute! I was told that the stat card was already ready!”

The girl looked at Mana.

“Mana, I explicitly told you to just bring him here, not weave lies.”

“My apologies madam, I thought you had his card done already.”

“... I guess that’s fine then. Now child, why don’t you behave and let me do my job.”

The girl noticed Roa inching towards the door. Roa didn’t want any of the mysterious liquids in the glass bottles touching him. Who knows what it would do to him? But, with a snap of the girl’s fingers, the door slammed shut.

Roa looked Mana in the eyes, and Mana shot back a look that seemed to tell:

It won’t hurt.

Defeated, he sighed and dejectedly sat on the wooden stool that the girl laid out in front of her.

The girl selected a glass bottle a quarter filled with a completely white liquid.

“By the way, my name is Eve. Now, give me your palm.”

When Roa stuck out his palm, Eve extracted one drop from the glass bottle, and dripped it at the center of Roa’s palm.

Roa stared at the liquid. It sat on his palm, jiggling like jelly.

With a dissatisfied look, Eve took more glass bottles and repeated the process.

---

Eve let out an exasperated sigh. She had tried all of her potions, but not a single one reacted on Roa. She began to mutter.

“Impossible. There has never been a case where nothing reacted. I must have missed something…”

Mana had dozed off an hour ago. Roa, on the other hand, was wide awake. He was disgusted by how sticky his palm had become, and wanted to wash it off immediately.

An imaginary lightbulb lit up above Eve.

“Maybe…”

Eve got up. From a white lab coat hanging near the door, she retrieved a test tube that held a puddle of a red, transparent liquid. She pulled the cork off the test tube and carefully dripped one drop on Roa’s sticky palm.

As soon as it touched his palm, the liquid began to spread and glow. Eve ecstatically yelled,

“Success!”

Roa was puzzled. Shouldn’t he be the one jumping for joy?

“Um… excuse me…”

Roa was ignored as Eve’s behavior kept spiraling on.

“Ok, I got it! Now, you two have to leave. I have to do a lot of work to create a stat card with this concoction. Hurry, go! I don’t have all day you know.”

Mana and Roa were pushed out of the room, and behind them they heard the door close. By this time, the sunlight from the windows had already switched to moonlight.

“Hey, is she always like that?”

“Well, Eve was always a tornado. However, I’ve never seen her this riled up before. Of all the times I’ve been with her, she’s never taken out that test tube before.”

“...Is she a mad scientist?”

“I wouldn’t say mad scientist, more like she’s excited about her course of work.”

Roa tried to memorize the route back to his room as Mana escorted him, but like usual lost track.

He laid on his bed and tried to sleep, but couldn’t because of his day of sleep.

Getting up, he decided to venture out in the night.

Lost again, Roa coincidentally ended up at the summoning place again. Peeking in, he saw a few people forming a circle with their arms linked.

“Can I help you?”

The sudden voice behind Roa made him jump and yelp. He turned around to see a tall, sturdy man dressed in a nobleman’s outfit looking at him.

“I… uh… got lost…”

“...I see. If you wish, I can have some of my men show you off the premises.”

“Actually, that would be very kind of you.”

The noble gestured at some of his men, pointing at Roa.

“Someone bring this boy out of the castle.”

“Ah come on young master, can’t you see we’re all busy writing a new teleportation circle? Besides, you always just sit here and watch us anyways. Why don’t you do something for once?”

“You are all under my orders, and you will do what I want you to do.”

“Young master, we follow the master, not you.”

“...Follow me.”

Roa could hear the anger welling up in the noble’s voice.

As they exited the castle, the noble had to figure out their destination.

“So, where do you live child. Judging by your clothing, I would assume the outer part of the slums.”

“I-”

“Wait a minute, how did you even get into the castle?”

The noble pushed Roa onto a nearby tree, surrounding Roa with his arms. An intimidating aura encased the noble.

“What were you trying to do? Kill? Steal?”

“What do you mean? I was summoned by the king!”

A flurry of emotions hit the noble; first surprise, then realization, and lastly panic.

He retreated, and with an apologetic face bowed.

“I’m so sorry about that misunderstanding!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Everyone makes mistakes. Wasn’t everyone told of our summoning?”

“Yes, yes we were! But I didn’t think one of the heroes would be wandering the castle in the middle of the night.”

“Well, I had a nice, long rest and couldn’t fall asleep.”

“Of course, of course, why didn’t I think of that. As an apology, is there anything I could do for you?”

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Roa knew this was an opportunity that could not be missed. Because he didn’t kill any monsters at all, he was still level 1. He estimated that Lucin and the others were already at least level 3. He quickly concocted a plan.

“Do you have anything that would generate a bit of experience? Something extremely easy, of course. My friends have a bit more experience than me and I want to have a slight edge.”

“Hmm… I think I have just the thing. My family’s side business is making potions. When we pick the herbs from our backyard and make potions, we gain experience for both actions. I’m willing to teach you how to make some potions, and you can keep anything you make.”

“That would be very helpful. Even if we’re heroes we still take a bit of damage, and it’s better safe than sorry.”

“Of course! Anything to help the heroes!”

---

The two arrived at the manor in the kingdom. If the castle was not included, the manor was by far the biggest building in the kingdom. At the gate, two guards greeted the noble.

“Young master Sil, why have you returned so early?”

“This man here is one of the summoned heroes, and has so kindly decided to pay a visit.”

The two guards looked at each other for a brief moment, then bowed at Roa.

“We apologize for our rudeness. Please, carry on and have a good time.”

The two guards opened the gates for Sil and Roa.

Sil and Roa walked down a spiral staircase that was directly in front of the entranceway. After passing many doors on the staircase that seemed to spiral endlessly, Roa had already lost track of how deep they were underground.

Roa bumped into Sil as Sil suddenly stopped in front of a door.

“We’re here.”

Reaching into his breast pocket, Sil took out a key which he stuck into the door.

“Fun fact. The key is personalized with our family’s blood. It will only open if we’re the ones opening the door.”

The door unlocked, and the two walked in before Sil shut the door.

The place could be described as its own ecosystem. An artificial sun provided sunlight on thousands of herbs that could be mistaken as weeds, uniformly strewn across a large field. Some herbs nested on the side of a mountain cliff at the horizon, while others were in their own special container. However, not a single animal, insect, nor tree could be seen. The only thing that did not seem to belong was a table and a cabinet lined with vials near the entrance. The door that led the two in betrayed how large the inner room really was.

“This is one of our ten herb growing environments. Since you’ll be learning how to make potions, the hard potions will have a high chance of failure. I don’t know why really, my parents tell me it has something to do with the tune of nature. Anyhow, for basic health and mana potions we only need the herbs near the entrance.”

Sil pointed at an herb that was scarlet, and another herb that was navy blue.

“These two herbs are the only ones you’ll need.”

He grabbed two clumps from each patch, retrieved two vials from the cabinet, and walked to the table.

“To create a health potion, first add juice from the red herbs, then add juice from the blue herbs.”

Sil took the scarlet clump and squeezed it like a rag, filling the vial a third of the way. He did the same with the navy blue clump, mixing both juices together in the vial.

Inside the vial, as the juices swirled together, the scarlet color slowly overtook the navy blue, forming a blood red mixture.

“And to create a mana potion, just switch the order of the herbs.”

This time, when Sil mixed the herbs in reverse order, the navy blue was almost overtaken again, until it suddenly expanded and filled the vial with a light blue.

Roa watched the process, astounded.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t make any sense.”

“How does switching the order of the herbs create different potions? When you add tea and water, or water then tea, the same outcome happens. Yet, this creates different potions?”

“That’s how it has always worked. We have tried other methods, but this was the simplest and most effective.”

“I… nevermind.”

“Ok, I’ll be leaving you to make potions. There are a few things I have to do upstairs. You might not be able to create it perfectly the first time around, but try to replicate the color in these two potions I’ve made as best as possible.”

Sil left as Roa grabbed as many scarlet clumps as he could hold, and put it on the table. He then did the same with the navy blue clumps.

He took a few vials from the cabinet and tried to imitate Sil. But when he squeezed the herbs, barely a trickle of juice came out. It took him six clumps to achieve the same amount of liquid as Sil.

Yet when the liquids mixed, the color was muddier than the two potions that he tried to imitate. If Sil’s potion was at 100% efficiency, then his would be at 13%.

“There must be a process behind this. The only difference I could tell was the amount of clumps he used. Maybe if I use less clumps, the potion would be better.”

The second time he tried to create the potion, he noticed that some parts of the clumps were easier to squeeze than others.

Instead of making potions, he took his time to squeeze as much juice from the scarlet herb clump.

---

“This is probably close enough.”

Roa was able to minimize his clumps per potion to only four. When making a potion, it looked to be about at 33% efficiency compared to Sil’s.

He was able to make three of each potion before Sil came back.

“So how did you do?”

“I was able to make three potions that looked like this.”

“As expected of a hero. Most people would take a week before the even figure out how to make a pure potion. Mine, of course, is completely pure, and is able to heal 50 health.”

“We should probably go back now hero. The others probably miss you.”

“It probably is time to go. I’d like to keep my time here a secret.”

“Of course. As promised, you may keep all the potions you have made. As a bonus, you can even keep the two I made. Here’s a belt that you can put your potions in. It holds up to 10 potions at once.”

Roa accepted the belt and placed the potions left to right, from the best to the worst. When he wore the belt, it automatically conformed to his size.

Back at the castle, Roa thanked Sil for helping him.

“No problem, no problem at all! I hope you gained a lot of experience. Usually creating a few potions of that caliber would level someone from 1 to 3.”

“Is that so? I don’t really feel any stronger at all and I was level 1.”

As the two parted ways inside the castle, Sil muttered.

“Impossible… when one levels up they usually feel at least a little bit stronger. It couldn’t be could it?”