Frank was staring at Mia dumbfounded and a little angry. Maximillian had created a pocket space inside the academy grounds where he could teach Mia about alchemy but the girl was both a genius and the most incompetent alchemist that existed.
The basics of alchemy were very simple. If you wanted to make a potion you made a soup and in the case you wanted a pill you just cooked everything on fire before compressing the results. Of course there was a lot more but the basics were just that. The problem was that Mia couldn’t follow the basics of alchemy but could still use it, contrary to everything he believed.
He started with potions that were easier than pills and the most basic potion only needed water and a plant with the basic properties of the potion, in this case a mana potion. An alchemist would boil water, the purer and mana richer the better, put the plant into the place where the water was being boiled, usually a cauldron, using a specific to make the water hold what you wanted from the plant while burning the rest, in this case the parts of the plant that could hold more mana than normal things did, and when there was nothing left of the plant to be burned, you used another spell to combine the water and the plant making the potion.
The spells were simple spells that a child would be able to learn and couldn’t be used for anything else. Mia used those spells once, said they were shit, not in those exact words, and began to try another thing.
Mia sent a pulse of mana into the plant and once she identified the parts she would need, she just cut it with some wind. Once the water was hot, she would put the bits of the plant she separated in there, a little of water created by her own magic and use that water to spin the water and mix the herbs. Mia had perfect control of pretty much any basic element she created so spinning the water a few hundred kilometers per hour was not hard. Barely 10 minutes later she had a better mana potion than one she made using the normal method.
Frank was looking at both potions while he let Mia read notes on other materials so she would have some idea of what could be used for what. The basic spell that mixed the water with other material did pretty much what Mia did but worse because it was like trying to mix something in the water by shaking the recipient from side to side very fast. It worked but not as great as mixing it. That is also ignoring the fact that Mia could just sense the different parts of the materials.
Frank knew of people who had free control of water, people who could hear the materials used for alchemy, people who had enough control to cut a piece of something and just that but never someone who could so casually do all of them. Half of learning alchemy is learning the spells you need to clean and mix the materials together and Mia didn’t need those. The rest was just learning about the materials and Frank wasn’t here to teach those things. Anyone can learn about those if they so wished. Everyone knows a herb, part of an animal or monster that can be used for something.
Feeling a little slighted by Mia, Frank decided that his non-apprentice would suffer a small prank.
“Alright Mia. Now, let’s make a pill.” Frank said.
“Ok, uncle Frank.” Mia said, closing the book she had.
“I’m going to show you the normal process so you can try it yourself after.” Frank said as he took a simple healing herb, put it into his pill furnace, which was basically a small cauldron on top of pedestal, infused some mana in the furnace so it would generate heat and once it was hot enough he used a spell that compressed the herb into a pill. “As you just saw, the furnace itself generated the fire, I can actually create magical fire myself but furnaces are usually the best option as they are more mana efficient, and once it was hot enough that it started to burn the herb I compressed it into a pill.”
“Ok, but what about the parts that you don’t want of the plant?” Mia asked.
“Let me tell you a secret. Pure magical fire has some strange properties and if you compress something to make a pill while the fire is still there, it will burn anything but the strongest part of the plant allowing the pill to be formed with only a single effect.”
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
“What if I want more than one?”
“You just have to balance the energy between the materials. Let’s say you want a pill to both restore your mana and vitality. The energy in the plants that allows one to have their mana and vitality restored must be somewhat equal. As you experienced, every material used in alchemy has mana inside it that does something and we just do what we can to make something usable of that mana. Since these are natural applications of mana, the stronger mana, usually the one in greater quantity, will ‘eat’ the rest, increasing its size. So depending on what you are doing you might need way more than one material than the other.”
“I see…” Mia said, thinking deeply.
“Here, use this herb to make a pill. I don’t think you will need the furnace but if you want to, you can use it. Also, pills normally use a lot more herbs. This pill that I just made that is barely the size of a pea would be considered a failure since only a baby would be affected by it.”
“Wouldn’t just eating the herb be better at that point, the parts that have the mana you want?”
“No, because it wasn’t purified so it might go wild. Why do you think people can’t take too much medicine at once? If you try to heal something that doesn’t need healing, it will damage you.”
“I know about that.” Mia said, pouting.
“Ok, go on.” Frank said as he watched Mia completely ignored the pill furnace. The herb he gave Mia was a mild explosive one that wouldn’t really hurt her, just throw some smoke at her. He couldn’t wait to see her face when she failed.
Mia put the herb inside a ball of air, ignited the inside of it and once the herb began to burn, she quickly compressed the air ball as fast and strongly as she could. She couldn’t put her everything into it since there was a chance that her death mana could flare so it was a bit of a struggle for a few minutes since the herb was trying to expand for some reason.
Once she finished, a small orange pill the size of a pea was formed and Mia catched it with her hands. Frank was completely frozen. The herb was a fire herb that should consume all air around it once ignited. He has no idea how Mia managed to control the explosion but she did.
“I am done, uncle.”
“Good. Why don’t you eat it? It will be good for you, even if it is really small.” Frank said, still trying to get back at Mia. The pill would damage Mia in any way. Mostly she would feel like she ate pepper for a few moments.
Mia gulped the pill down and a moment later she was on fire but not really burning.
“Cool, a pill that covers me in fire, I can even control it… Ah, not much duration. I guess using only one herb was not enough to be useful.” Mia said. Frank looked at Mia in astonishment. He had no idea what just happened.
“Yeah, pretty cool, right? Now, you should read about the materials and think if it would be better to use them in potions or pills. I need to talk with your master.”
“Alright.” Mia said as she returned to her book.
Moments later, Frank appeared in front of Maximillian, in his office.
“Are you sure she is human?” Frank asked, really shaken.
“Yes. She is a bundle of surprises, ain’t she?”
“She just ignored a millennia of alchemy teachings and made a pill out of something I use to spice my food.”
“I think now would be a good time to tell that Mia has less mana than the average kid her age.”
“Wait? What? How?”
“No idea. She has such control of her mana that you can’t really tell. She told me that her mana is compressed while everyone else's is loose. That is also why she can’t really use normal spells, they waste/use too much mana.”
“How did she use dimensional magic then? I barely know people who have more mana than you and none of them could.”
“Turns out I am wasting almost all the mana I use on my spells. Did you know that changing a node in a spell a single millimeter can reduce its cost? Vibrating it just a little bit slower or faster can do the same or make the spell form faster?”
“Somewhat, yes.”
“Well, all of Mia’s ‘spells’ are perfect by default. Since everything is just in the right place and vibrating in just the right frequency, she doesn’t need to put more mana in the spell to compensate for the errors.”
“...Fuck you, Maximillian!”
“Fuck you too, Frank.”