Morning broke with the sun’s ascent, the birdsong breaking Azrael free from his twisted nightmare. Saved from Sophie’s wrath and a horde of blue skinned paladins Azrael rose.

Outside Alena was once again practicing her blade skills, as she did every other morning. He did notice that today she was a fair bit slower, no doubt hampered by sore and weary muscles. His body was equally fatigued, despite a player’s enhanced regeneration. Leaving her to her practice Azrael turned instead to the surviving potions from last night.

Picking up the first vial he expended mana to make a mortar. Afterall, even if he needed to empty his mana it was good to use for something useful. Placing it down on the table, he lifted the vial to his lips and drank the entire vial.

Next, he picked up his stone writing block and checked which recipe he’d used for this vial. It was the first one, using Elana’s ratios. He opened his status and watched his mana tick up; one, two, three… seven, eight.

The first potion replenished eight units of mana. That was three more units? Three more mana? than Elana’s potion, meaning that there was probably some correlation between the amount of ghost mint oil and the resulting efficacy of the potion. He scribbled he results down onto his writing block, before grabbing the second vial. This one had been made with double the ingredients, but the same amount of water. He let the minty flavour roll down his throat and waited, watching his status.

One, six, twelve…fifteen. Fifteen mana. Almost double, but not quite.

He downed the third potion, with triple ingredients. Twenty-one mana. Again, an increase just short of proportionate to the increase in ingredients.

He downed the fourth potion, the one he’d brewed with the most amount of ingredients, quadruple the original ratios.

Twenty- five mana.

Azrael frowned.

Twenty-five? Shouldn’t it have been slightly under thirty-two, if it was following the same pattern as previously? He jotted the results down with the rest of the results. Had he somehow brewed it wrong? He shouldn’t have. He checked the rest of his notes. There were no mistakes.

Slightly baffled Azrael picked up the next potion. This one followed Elana’s ratio of ingredients, but with double the amount of water.

As he drank the potion Azrael noticed that the minty flavour was significantly weaker, diluted with more water. The potion’s effect were equally weak, restoring only four mana. Compared to his original base of eight the twofold increase in water seemed to dilute the effects by an equal amount. It wasn’t unexpected, but he couldn’t help but frown. He’d hoped that all of the water would turn into a weak potion, so that he could mass produce them with lower material costs. It was a pity that magic was actually realistic in this game.

His next two potions though, one with a twofold amount of ghost mint and one with a twofold amount of mana crystals showed interesting results. The first, with a doubled amount of ghost mint replenished 16 mana, while the increase in mana crystals only increased the mana potion’s effect by one, bringing it up to nine compared to the one made with the base ratio.

From these findings Azrael could conclude a few key points. Firstly, increasing the amount of ghost mint and the mana crystals increased the efficacy of the potion, though with diminishing returns. At some point there may be a cap, based off a criteria that he hadn’t yet discovered. This was represented by the quadrupled potion. Of course, only one of each potion wasn’t enough to formalise a proper set of rules. That would be… unscientific.

As to the last two potions he’d tested they revealed an interesting relationship between the two ingredients. The increase in ghost mint had resulted in an equal increase in the potion’s efficacy, while the increase that occurred by doubling the mana crystals didn’t result in any significant change.

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From this he could begin to conclude that the ghost mint acted as the binding agent for the potion, with the increase in ghost mint resulting in an equal increase in the potion’s amount of mana. The test with the mana crystals revealed that there was in fact a wastage of mana, as the ghost mint was unable to bind everything to the potion and so much of its potential was lost.

Of course, there was the potion where he’d doubled the amount of water. The weakened efficacy of the diluted potion simply went to prove that there was a correlation between ratio of ingredients to the amount of… water.

Water?

The thought sparked another and Azrael began to think of the ‘failed’ fourth potion. Was the reason that it had such a drastic decrease in efficacy be because there wasn’t enough water? Could that be the reason?

If the ghost mint acted as the binding agent to bind the stored mana in the mana crystals to the potion, then did the water act as the ‘container’ for the mana? Azrael knew that you could saturate water with sugar or salt to the point where it didn’t accept any anymore. Was that what was happening here? Did the water of the fourth potion reach a saturation point?

Azrael checked the pot he used. He’d eyed out the measure for the water, but it had always been roughly one cup. Assuming that the amount he’d used was one cup, or roughly a quarter of a litre, then the saturation rate of mana was approximately one mana to every 10ml.

Azrael ran through all his notes again and found that his theory checked out. He would of course have to run another series of trials, but it was a beginning.

Letting out a satisfied huff he let his note block fall back onto the kitchen bench. His gaze fell onto the final vial – the one brewed with mana stones. Honestly, he was a bit wary of this one, though he wasn’t sure why. There was just something about the thought, something maybe from the depths of his subconscious that might have been warning him. Of course, maybe and might weren’t enough to stop him from downing it. After all, it was all in the name of science!

Letting out a short burst of mana to replenish his once again topped up reserves, Azrael picked up the vial and gave it one last cautious sniff. Mint. How unexpected. Open the hatch and down it goes!

The minty blue brew ran down his throat, just like all the other potions. Like all other potions he felt it slowly replenish his mana, all six of it. Unlike all the others he received two notifications.

Warning!

Due to intaking a small amount of tainted mana the stability of your internal mana will be impacted until it is purged or assimilated!

Warning!

Due to replenishing over a quarter of your natural mana capacity through external means, within a short period of time, your natural mana regeneration will be stunted for a period of time!

Azrael paused when he noticed the two notifications, reading both with care. He took a deep breath in, before letting it out and dropping into [Meditation], letting his awareness expand outward through his body. Like the notification had stated there was a turbulence in his usually calm and controlled mana stream.

Where his mana usually flowed smoothly from his core throughout his body, it was now agitated, jumping around as if charged. It wasn’t by much, but even this little bit of agitation caused him to have difficulties gripping and controlling his mana. Over and over his mana flow jumped around, trying to rip itself apart in an attempt to either purge or assimilate small streamers of tainted mana.

He tried summoning a flame, unsuccessfully drawing mana to cast a flame three times, before finally managing to let it ignite above his hand. It jumped and fluttered, almost guttering out a few times. Before raging up uncontrollably as the internal turbulence of his mana influenced his control. He dismissed the flame, letting his hold over his mana go.

He noticed that he’d managed to purge a small part of the foreign mana, but the large majority remained stubbornly interfering with his own mana. Letting out a sigh, he habitually continued [Meditation]’s breathing patterns, before realising that his mana wasn’t replenishing, or rather it was replenishing extremely slowly. It was still far faster than when he’d first started the game, but after getting used to a higher rate of mana regeneration, plus the added bonus from [Meditation] he could acutely feel the difference.

A knock sounded from his front door, and he looked up, expecting to see Alena’s lithe form. Instead, the open doorway was filled with James’ massive form. His body was slightly bowed to allow for his massive blade to pass through the door.

“Morning, Boss.” He said with an easy grin, as if he wasn’t just intruding into Azrael’s house, “Some lads and I are heading off to explore down river. You wanna come?”